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... with emphasis on the pure.
Recently, there was an essay by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pandarus on metafandom decrying Western civilization’s need to sexualise everything, and, specifically, fandom’s need to sexualize close friendships like, say, Sam and Frodo’s, and another one by minisinoo linked to it in the comments about the nature of phillia, the ancient Greek term for the closest and most passionate kinds of friendship, and modern society’s uncomfortableness with it. I was reading away, thinking, “she’s got a point here,” and feeling just a but of guilt since I’m one of those people who sexualises phillia (hello, Wyatt/Doc slash), and then my defensive mechanisms pried up the mental railroad ties and derailed my train of thought. “Why,” I suddenly asked myself, “is sexualising relationships necessarily bad?”
Why do we—we meaning western culture, not just we in fandom—have this pervasive sense that sex, regardless of how hot it is, regardless of whether the people involved love each other, regardless of whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual, is something dirty and impure? That sexual desire is something base and animalistic and innately selfish, that cheapens the people involved? That once desire is introduced into the equation, love is no longer phillia, but eros and eros only?
I’ve got a theory. My theory is that the problem here is that sex is physical, and that society has a strong streak of asceticism that teaches that all physical pleasures are inherently lesser than those pleasures which are purely intellectual or emotional. The general school of thought in Medieval Europe used to be that mankind had two natures, a divine nature, and a bestial (meaning “animal,” not “savage and brutal”) nature. One’s physical body, and physical things like hunger, lust, etc. are aspects of one’s bestial nature, the things that humans share with animals, while things like reason are aspects of one’s divine nature, things that one shared with God and the angels. Therefore, satisfying one’s physical desires was giving in to one’s animal nature, and denying them (via fasting, celibacy, etc.) brought you closer to God. Indulging your physical desires, obviously, didn’t.
This idea didn’t go out with the middle ages, either. The Victorians, who were far more comfortable with the concept of phillia than modern society (witness all those 19th letters where men declare their passionate love for other men, or women, for other women—they can’t all have been secretly homosexual), were desperately uncomfortable with sexuality and sensuality in most forms. Especially female sexuality, but that’s another essay—or is it? I can’t be the only person who’s noticed that Victorian fiction is replete with heroines who are slowly but attractively dying of consumption, who become ever more spiritual and good as their bodies waste away--they are ideals, in a sense, because their frailty makes them less physical than a healthy woman, and thus less sexual. Because if the hero and the heroine love each other in a chaste and spiritual way, that love is better, purer, and more real (with no sinful sex!). And so I can’t help but wonder if some of those intense Victorian friendships didn’t feature a certain amount of suppressed sexual desire/romantic love (which is the reason for the aforementioned Wyatt/Doc slash).
Does that suspicion mean I am shallow and obsessed with sex, and unable to truly comprehend real friendship?
Maybe, but maybe sex doesn’t always have to demean relationships, either. If Gilgamesh (who, I’d like to point out, “loved Enkidu as a wife”), had sex with Enkidu out there in the wilderness, does this mean that his grief at Enkidu’s death is meaner, more petty? That his quest to try and bring his friend back is somehow worth less because they once experienced physical pleasure together? If Sam’s love for Frodo had a sexual dimension to it, does that make his willingness to fight at Frodo’s side, carry him up Mount Doom, and continue Frodo’s quest for him when he thinks Frodo has died (and bear in mind that he thought Frodo was dead when he took up the burden of the ring, so the prospect of hot hobbit lovin’ was out of the picture), pure selfishness, instead of self-sacrifice? If Starsky and Hutch are sleeping with each other, does that really make their devotion to one another “cheap?” Maybe sex, instead of lessening these relationships, can add something to them. Not in every case (sometimes sex is just cheap physical gratification), but sometimes.
Does expressing love in a physical fashion negate it?
I don’t mean to say that all fic should only be shipper fic—far from it. I love gen fic as well, and there are some fandoms where I even prefer it to shipper fic, and the sort of passionate phillia that pops up all over the lace in Victorian novels is a guilty pleasure of mine. But I think we should examine why the concept of introducing sex into intense friendships bothers us so much.
Recently, there was an essay by
pandarus on metafandom decrying Western civilization’s need to sexualise everything, and, specifically, fandom’s need to sexualize close friendships like, say, Sam and Frodo’s, and another one by minisinoo linked to it in the comments about the nature of phillia, the ancient Greek term for the closest and most passionate kinds of friendship, and modern society’s uncomfortableness with it. I was reading away, thinking, “she’s got a point here,” and feeling just a but of guilt since I’m one of those people who sexualises phillia (hello, Wyatt/Doc slash), and then my defensive mechanisms pried up the mental railroad ties and derailed my train of thought. “Why,” I suddenly asked myself, “is sexualising relationships necessarily bad?”Why do we—we meaning western culture, not just we in fandom—have this pervasive sense that sex, regardless of how hot it is, regardless of whether the people involved love each other, regardless of whether it’s heterosexual or homosexual, is something dirty and impure? That sexual desire is something base and animalistic and innately selfish, that cheapens the people involved? That once desire is introduced into the equation, love is no longer phillia, but eros and eros only?
I’ve got a theory. My theory is that the problem here is that sex is physical, and that society has a strong streak of asceticism that teaches that all physical pleasures are inherently lesser than those pleasures which are purely intellectual or emotional. The general school of thought in Medieval Europe used to be that mankind had two natures, a divine nature, and a bestial (meaning “animal,” not “savage and brutal”) nature. One’s physical body, and physical things like hunger, lust, etc. are aspects of one’s bestial nature, the things that humans share with animals, while things like reason are aspects of one’s divine nature, things that one shared with God and the angels. Therefore, satisfying one’s physical desires was giving in to one’s animal nature, and denying them (via fasting, celibacy, etc.) brought you closer to God. Indulging your physical desires, obviously, didn’t.
This idea didn’t go out with the middle ages, either. The Victorians, who were far more comfortable with the concept of phillia than modern society (witness all those 19th letters where men declare their passionate love for other men, or women, for other women—they can’t all have been secretly homosexual), were desperately uncomfortable with sexuality and sensuality in most forms. Especially female sexuality, but that’s another essay—or is it? I can’t be the only person who’s noticed that Victorian fiction is replete with heroines who are slowly but attractively dying of consumption, who become ever more spiritual and good as their bodies waste away--they are ideals, in a sense, because their frailty makes them less physical than a healthy woman, and thus less sexual. Because if the hero and the heroine love each other in a chaste and spiritual way, that love is better, purer, and more real (with no sinful sex!). And so I can’t help but wonder if some of those intense Victorian friendships didn’t feature a certain amount of suppressed sexual desire/romantic love (which is the reason for the aforementioned Wyatt/Doc slash).
Does that suspicion mean I am shallow and obsessed with sex, and unable to truly comprehend real friendship?
Maybe, but maybe sex doesn’t always have to demean relationships, either. If Gilgamesh (who, I’d like to point out, “loved Enkidu as a wife”), had sex with Enkidu out there in the wilderness, does this mean that his grief at Enkidu’s death is meaner, more petty? That his quest to try and bring his friend back is somehow worth less because they once experienced physical pleasure together? If Sam’s love for Frodo had a sexual dimension to it, does that make his willingness to fight at Frodo’s side, carry him up Mount Doom, and continue Frodo’s quest for him when he thinks Frodo has died (and bear in mind that he thought Frodo was dead when he took up the burden of the ring, so the prospect of hot hobbit lovin’ was out of the picture), pure selfishness, instead of self-sacrifice? If Starsky and Hutch are sleeping with each other, does that really make their devotion to one another “cheap?” Maybe sex, instead of lessening these relationships, can add something to them. Not in every case (sometimes sex is just cheap physical gratification), but sometimes.
Does expressing love in a physical fashion negate it?
I don’t mean to say that all fic should only be shipper fic—far from it. I love gen fic as well, and there are some fandoms where I even prefer it to shipper fic, and the sort of passionate phillia that pops up all over the lace in Victorian novels is a guilty pleasure of mine. But I think we should examine why the concept of introducing sex into intense friendships bothers us so much.