Sex Positive: An Epitaph?
Posted on | September 1, 2009 | 10 Comments
“Safe sex came from activists, porn stars, sex workers and their community driven efforts.”
This quote comes from the webpage of a documentary I just Netflixed, or put on my Netflix® queue (out of respect for their trademark), called Sex Positive, about Richard Berkowitz, a S/M-huslter turned AIDS-activist who was one of the inventors and popularizers of “safe sex.” In 1983, right at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, a viroligist named Sonnabend, Berkowitz himself, Richard Dworkin and Michael Callen wrote the first safe sex manifesto, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach.
25 years later, the sex ed curriculum I teach from introduces teens to their basic methods: reduce the number of partners, use condoms, etc. Richard Berkowitz is a folk hero and it thrills me that a documentary has been made to trumpet that fact.
After the grassroots deployment of safe sex by sex-positive activists successfully defeated the AIDS epidemic, the fight against the retreating disease was co-opted by government institutions and conservative groups that were anything but sex-positive. The first casualty of this shift was that most government money stopped going towards the kind of sex ed that includes information about safe sex. President Bush (in what I wish could be called his greatest blunder, but which realistically might not even make his top 10) famously spent 1.5 billion taxpayer dollars on abstinence-only education, which has been shown not to work. I only linked to one study because I’m sure you can perform a google® search with the best of them. (In case you’re wondering, my scrupulous respect for trademarks started when I got my trademark for How to Make Love to®…)
In a battle being fought right now, we might see the second casualty of America’s rejection of a sex-positive, safe-sex model: A debate is going on inside the Center for Disease Control (CDC) over whether to recommend for the first time male infant circumcision as a beneficial, routine operation, muchly on the basis of trials in Africa. I took a stance against the African circumcision movement in earlier posts which you can read here and here and here, so it’s no surprise that I’m against this recommendation for a population that is not even suffering from an epidemic.
To summarize my basic stance, I’m against cutting or burning any healthy, genital tissue off of a boy or a girl as a matter of simple human ethics. As adults, we can all do what we want to our own bodies. But these are children and I’m against all of it, whether you call it genital mutilation or circumcision or surgery. Routine male circumcision was introduced to our culture in Victorian times, as a sex-negative effort to reduce male masturbation and curb perceived male sexual excess. I believe that the same misandrous view of male sexuality is the underlying, if unconscious, drive behind the popularity of the operation in our still-overly-Victorian society. “Men have too much sex drive anyhow. Won’t hurt to carve off a bit of that thing and take them down a notch.”
On top of this, I’m against half-measures that are advertised as cures for disease. Whether in Africa or in the US, if someone thinks his lack of a foreskin is protecting him or his partner, he won’t be as careful to use condoms. I get this opinion from my experiences as a sex educator, where it’s particularly hard to sell the idea of condom use in oral sex, because of the universality of the myth that oral sex is safe. Oral sex is safer in some ways, true, but it’s not safe. In the same way, even if some studies suggest that sex with a circumcised man is slightly safer, it’s in no way safe. If the CDC is going to advocate a half-measure like circumcision, they should also throw their gravitas behind the blowjob: No cervical cancer there. No pregnancy. Reduced risk of genital herpes. I could go on. (To say nothing of the perfectly safe handjob.)
I do sympathize with the folks at the CDC. They’re charged with the health of a population that has for years gagged the communication of accurate sex information, leaving them to grasp at whatever they can do to lower disease stats. Circumcision is sellable to the anti-sex, closed-society part of our country, for the same reason that they like abstinence-only education: you can implement both without ever having to talk about sex. You have the option of saying nothing at all or even flat lying about it.
This toxic reluctance to talk about sex is what Berkowitz heroically overcame in his key role in turning back the AIDS epidemic. I’d love for this documentary to be not a eulogy for a movement now dead but a call to follow in his footsteps and start talking again. Thanks RB.
Berkowitz’s autobiography is Stayin’ Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex. His blog is here. My favorite anti-circumcision organization is Intact America.
Tags: abstinence > Africa > AIDS > Circumcision > condoms > foreskins > HIV > oral sex > Sex Health > sex negativity
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10 Responses to “Sex Positive: An Epitaph?”
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September 1st, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
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September 2nd, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
Don’t write off Sex Positive yet.
There is a growing movement, hopefully energized by the news of the CDC’s probable recommendation, among circumcised men to regain what was taken from them during circumcision. The foreskin restoration movement is growing as more men realize the benefits of having a foreskin. See http://www.RestoringForeskin.org to read stories of men who wish they had never been circumcised and are doing something about it. Many of these men are breaking through sex negative barriers to be more open about their sexuality and their feeling of wholeness after restoring.
September 2nd, 2009 @ 2:34 pm
I was taught in Catholic girls High School (can you believe it) that we should use “condoms and foam”. This was in the late eighties and the principal must have been a very liberal nun but was more concerned for our health and knew that some of us where having sex. So she started a class called “relationships in women’s lives” as to not startle any of the parents. But I will never forget what they taught and it was great information and has helped me stay free of diseases. I knew a gay man who was a friend who got HIV from oral sex because he had a pierced tongue that never healed properly. It is misinformation that leads to the HIV spread. That is why they have a much lower rate of it in Europe where they have better sex education and low rates of male circumsicion.
September 2nd, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
Hilarious. I’ve read a couple of histories of sex ed and good education (sex or otherwise) always seems to be the story of one or two brave teachers/administrators taking the risk to really educate the children in their charge. What an amazing experience to have a woman who you knew had purposely renounced sex to tell you in detail how to protect yourself. That’s sex positive from the least likely direction. I love it.
September 2nd, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
I’ll check out that site. I’m very glad to hear that men are talking openly about their experiences of restoration. We need those voices to enter this discussion. A social tradition of genital modification (GM) is very difficult to overcome, as heath workers have learned in Somalia and other areas where they practice female genital modification. Our society is showing itself to be no more capable of enlightened change in this area than the most remote Somalian village. Lack of open discussion has always been the Achilles heel of the sex positive movement, keeping it from becoming a coherent powerful force, like the sex-negative movement is. So happy to hear that people are speaking out.
Thanks for your comment.
September 16th, 2009 @ 9:42 am
It is very strange that the CDC is ready to push circumcision when their own study says circumcision made no difference. The CDC’s circumcision committee comprised of mostly white, circumcised men who have a history, monetary, or a cultural reason to promote circumcision.
Europe doesn’t circumcise and they have a lower HIV rate than the United States where about three-fourths of men are cut. Clearly, it makes no difference.
When in doubt, follow the money. Circumcision is a billion dollar a year business.
October 6th, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
I think the reason this film falls flat is because it lacks truth. I believe Mr Berkowitz never left his hustling job until recently. I understand he and Dr Sonnebend don’t even talk to each other these days.Whats that all about? I remember Mr Berkowitz saying he did not believe HIV was the cause of Aids?I’m hearing a lot of judgement from Mr Berkowitz.Does HIV know judgement? I don’t believe our lifestyle was or is a death sentence. Its a virus. Did Ryan White’s lifestyle kill him or was it a virus? To disagree with Mr Berkowitz is to become his enemy ask Larry Kramer.
October 7th, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
There is truly another side to every story. I can only imagine how heated the atmosphere was in the early ’80s surrounding the epidemic. I am sure that friendships were broken and people were all but literally run over in the effort to find a solution. I say that not to pardon any particular behavior, but simply to say that I have no reason to doubt what you say.
I will say that “lifestyle” taken as a generalized term has a lot to do with disease spread, not just HIV either. In sex ed today, when talking about STI prevention, we spend a lot of time framing “lifestyles” as healthy vs. unhealthy, in terms of reducing partners, avoiding controlling relationships, using condoms, etc. During the great influenza of 1918, congregating in public was discouraged. That wasn’t to say that there’s anything immoral about a parade, but during those months, parades did kill people.
It is certainly true that HIV is not the equivalent of a moral judge and that confusing HIV with a judgment from god, or something like that, leads to blaming people for their own illness, which is appalling and wrong. History is full of examples of people mistaking disease or misfortune for some generalized disapproval from god or the universe and good fortune and health for god’s blessing. There’s a great book called “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb that raises the the idea that we over-interpret good fortune as virtue or right thinking. He aims most of his analysis at nonsense how-to books like “Rich Dad Poor Dad” but his general notions apply also to the interpretation of good health as virtue and not just luck.
Mainly, thanks for reading my blog and thanks for your comment.
October 10th, 2009 @ 7:37 am
Lets agree to disagree…Maybe the word lifestyle is the problem. Sexual choice would be more accurate and less judgemental.Influenza and HIV cannot be compared spread very very differently.Not a good comparison. But you hit the nail on the head by your comment to blame people for this disease is intolerable.Morals and judgement should be left outside. Scientific facts win me over when it comes to understanding diseases.
October 11th, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
I think you’re right. We’re getting stuck on the word lifestyle and I’m happy to throw it overboard, if only because that’s the word Republicans use when they’re trying to ban gay marriage. I like sexual choice, particularly in this context because a sexual choice is in no way inherently unhealthy.
I brought up influenza precisely because it was so different from HIV. Every disease has an array of behaviors that encourage its spread. When some of those behaviors are things the society is biased against, everyone is eager to point a finger and blame the victim. An appalling number of Americans took AIDS as a sign that god hated men having sex with men whereas precisely zero Americans took the 1918 influenza as a sign that god hated a parade.
Like you said, morals and judgment must be left aside in favor of facts.
I just watched the documentary Outrage on HBO. It was terrific. It’s important to be reminded how the Reagan and Koch administrations were so non-responsive to the disease.