Curious to know your take on this point of view:
Suzie Bright on the Starr Report:
And now we have the Starr report. Wanna know what
professional sex radicals and pornographers have to
say about the "The Referral"? I'll tell you -- we're dyin'
out here. It feels like everything we've worked for has
been hijacked to some totally isolated island
controlled by Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition. Last
week friends e-mailed me with requests to get to the
bottom of the notorious Footnote 210, the cryptic
oral/anal reference that remains unexplained yet
dripping with innuendo in the report's index. Is this
what all my patient and reassuring essays on anal sex
have come to -- a gig as an expert interpreter on the
footnotes of a witch hunt? No fucking thanks! The
chances of me now running a little innocent sex-ed
column about the joys of rimming are absolutely zero.
I've never been so turned off to anal sex in my life.
Last week I also got the copy-edited proofs for the
new edition of "Best American Erotica," my annual
anthology of the year's most outstanding erotic prose.
As usual, I have a little crush of awe and admiration for
every author I include. I think they're each so original
and sensitive. But now I look at their valiant work and
wonder, "Does anyone want to read erotica anymore?"
When the American public is being told that Ken
Starr's narrative is the raciest, steamiest prose since
Harold Robbins last rubbed himself on a rug, what
does that do for the reputation of erotic writing? This
sucks!
I had thought of writing about the current medical
debate about the "size" of the clitoris this week -- but
it's impossible to write about anybody's clitoris these
days if you don't include Monica Lewinsky's. I want to
write about adultery and sex changes and Internet sex
communiqués, but I can't even get to my own
perspective on these issues without being suffocated
by images of Hillary's tight lips and Ken's youthful
cross-dressing. Bill pleads to the grand jury, between
bathroom breaks, "You've criminalized my sex life!"
and I'm saying, "Yeah, well, all you assholes have
criminalized everyone else's sex lives from the get-go,
and now you've successfully cauterized your own!"
Where do we go to have a sweet sexual moment, a
private intimate thought, without being invaded by this
wire-tapped, semen-stained coup d'état ?
Speaking as someone who has agitated on the front
lines to illustrate the benefits of erotic candor, I feel
robbed, I feel sick. I joked that the Meese Report was
unintentionally sexy because it quoted so much actual
pornographic prose. But the Starr Report is
ANTI-erotic because it takes every sex act, no matter
how vivid, and turns it into a cross between shame and
chopped liver. Starr may make Clinton look awful, he
may crucify privacy rights and due process, but he
makes sex look like we're better off without it.
SALON | Sept. 25, 1998
Doug |
