The lures of cybersex
Let’s hope that, in a couple of weeks or even sooner, Anthony Weiner and his sexual antics will have mercifully disappeared from the news and we can get back to fun things like the continual decline of our economy. But his case is an excellent reminder of just how powerful a force the internet has been in facilitating sexual dalliances, especially of the mind.
Pornography has a lengthy history. But it used to be that a person had to seek it out in a manner that involved something more active than the mere pressing of a key on a computer. The process seemed more risky and less private, because a person could be seen pursuing the habit in public by appearing in an adult store for a video or attending a strip joint.
Plus, society was more disapproving of these things. Magazines such as Playboy and its ilk were sold in mainstream stores, but the consumer usually had to call attention to himself by asking for them, since they tended to be kept behind a counter and away from childish eyes.
As for the type of sexual carrying-on that was not merely of the mind, but required the interaction in space and time of two bodies that actually touched (what a quaint thought!), it wasn’t so long ago that most prostitutes could rightly be called streetwalkers, since instead of having websites they actually prowled the streets looking for johns. Other forms of unfaithfulness in marriage certainly existed (read a John Updike novel if you doubt it), but the opportunities to find a partner were more limited, and one usually had to make do with the locals. The were “swinging” couples (what a quaint word), but finding another twosome so inclined usually involved complex machinations and print advertisements in magazines and specialized periodicals.
Now it’s all been swallowed up by the computer, the perfect medium for the exchanges needed to arrange illicit sex in the real world and/or cybersex in the virtual one.
Bill Clinton’s famous dalliances took place before the internet had achieved hegemony in this arena. The evidence he left was all too physical. Clinton may have thought he was playing it safe by not engaging in “real” sex (by his own definition), but it was very real indeed compared to what we know so far of Anthony Weiner’s proclivities.
One would think that real sex has a greater lure than that of the cyber variety. But don’t underestimate the power of the human imagination. The realm of sexual fantasy has long held a powerful draw, but only recently has it been so extraordinarily easy to indulge it. Pornography is so ubiquitous online that it requires an effort to avoid it rather than to acquire it, since unsolicited hardcore sites and sexual spam still crop up unwanted from time to time on screen and inbox.
For someone like Weiner, the opportunity to correspond online with nubile females and indulge fantasies of his own astounding sexual power was apparently too enticing to resist. What’s more, a person engaged in such endeavors can comfort him/herself with the idea that it’s not really real, it’s just harmless play, no infidelity to one’s spouse is involved, and that it’s safe because no body fluids are exchanged.
That, of course, is hogwash and purposeful self-delusion, as Weiner has subsequently learned. But it is a trap into which many seem to fall. It has often been said that the brain is the most powerful sexual organ. That’s the part of the body that engages most strongly with the internet to enhance the entire experience and bring it an especially addictive quality to those susceptible.
I don’t think I can add much to neo’s elegant reflections (on a very non-elegant topic, by the by).
On the note about the power of human imagination, evolutionary psychologists have done some studies and the results suggest that, our brains having evolved before television and the internet, they often register the contents of the screen as real. I seem to recall one study, for instance, which found that people who watch sitcoms regularly report greater satisfaction with their social life than those who don’t. Likewise with pornography, the surreal goings-on depicted on the screen touch the male brain in a way that, on a continuum, registers as more real than not.
There’s a sociological aspect too, explored thoroughly in the book “Pornland” by the very liberal feminist Gail Dines. As usual with ideologues of her ilk she often takes things too far and simplistically attributes ultimate blame to capitalism, but her content analysis (as it were) of the “porn experience” is actually quite insightful. The darker side of sex is the power dynamic – this is what love is supposed to obviate – and the more impersonal the experience, the more license is given to – not lust per se – but power lust. For men at their worst, loosed from the bounds of culture and constraint, there are few, if any, satisfactions greater than conquering a woman. Not just getting a woman – but conquering her.
This last is what I think was being expressed in the old saying in praise of the Romans, before they went decadent: “The Romans conquered the world, but obeyed their wives.”
I’ve long had a pet theory that the reason people so often turn into barbarians over the internet is because it provides an environment relatively free from the implicit, civilizing chains of the social contract, or “covenant,” as Thomas Hobbes called it. Which means, in turn, that it is as close as we can get to what Hobbes stipulated the covenant was designed to suppress: the so-called state of nature. (This is what he was talking about when he wrote his famous line about life being “solitary, poor, nasty, brustish, and short” – not civilized life, but life in the state of nature, the “war of all against all.”)
With something as fundamental as the sexual dynamic unleashed by the manumission from the covenant that the internet and pornography provide, the lust for sexual domination and conquest is proportionally let out into the wild, roaming around, growling stupidly, eyes burning with blind, demonic fury.
To be somewhat too simplistic, but still suggestive, we are tipping over to a place where it might mournfully be said:
“The Americans obeyed the world, but conquered their wives.”
(I realize that this way of putting it blames men too much; still, I think it captures something important.)
As Y2K approached, it seemed that we were entering the Second American Century. Today, stagnation or outright collapse of the West seem like legitimate scenarios.
If technological progress continues, what Neo has described is just the beginning.
“”Plus, society was more disapproving of these things.””
A liberal will tell you all that occured because of American’s backward and childish view of sex. But it doesn’t get more childish than wanting to “liberate” sex till it’s just another recreational indulgence around you like tv watching or being on a bowling league.
Meanwhile back in around 1991:
“Back in the dawn of online when a service called The Source was still in flower, a woman I once knew used to log on as “This is a naked lady.” She wasn’t naked of course, except in the minds of hundreds of young and not-so-young males who also logged on to The Source. Night after night, they sent her unremitting text streams of detailed wet dreams, hoping to engage her in online exchanges known as “hot chat” – a way of engaging in a mutual fantasy typically found only through 1-900 telephone services. In return, “The Naked Lady” egged on her digital admirers with leading questions larded with copious amounts of double entendre.
When I first asked her about this, she initially put it down to “just fooling around on the wires.”
“It’s just a hobby,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get some dates out of it. Some of these guys have very creative and interesting fantasy lives.”
At the start, The Naked Lady was a rather mousy person – the type who favored gray clothing of a conservative cut – and was the paragon of shy and retiring womanhood. Seeing her on the street, you’d never think that her online persona was one that excited the libidos of dozens of men every night.
But as her months of online flirtations progressed, a strange transformation came over her: She became (through the dint of her blazing typing speed) the kind of person that could keep a dozen or more online sessions of hot chat going at a time. She got a trendy haircut. Her clothing tastes went from Peck and Peck to tight skirts slit up the thigh. She began regaling me with descriptions of her expanding lingerie collection. Her speech became bawdier, her jokes naughtier. In short, she was becoming her online personality – lewd, bawdy, sexy, a man- eater.
The last I saw of her, The Naked Lady was using her online conversations to cajole dates and favors from those men foolish enough to fall into her clutches.
The bait she used was an old sort – sex without strings attached, sex without love, sex as a fantasy pure and simple. It’s an ancient profession whose costs always exceed expectations and whose pleasures invariably disappoint. However, the “fishing tackle” was new: online telecommunications. ”
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/cybersex_pr.html
Wired Issue Number 1
vanderleun – nice counterpoint to my focus on men. Good find on the story too.
It reminds me of one of the great moments in Churchilliana:
Woman: “Why, Winston I do believe that in 100 years women will rule the world.”
Churchill: “Still?”
kolnai: actually, I believe you added quite a bit of interest to the discussion.
And by the way, that story was not a “find” for vanderleun. Note the byline.
Eeee… that’s embarrassing. Apologies Vanderleun. I should say, “Good piece you wrote there!”
Now I return to my hole.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Wait until the Holodeck is a standard appliance in every home.
You’ll be able to enter into a full 3D immersion environment and have virtual sex with any other human on the planet.
The game has just started.
Any male is susceptible.
Remember “Revenge of the Nerds?” At one point in the movie, the nerds slipped cameras into a sorority and spent the weekend “watching.” Included in the viewers was a young kid. Kids, then, learned from Hollywood that it was alright to violate the privacy of a female’s body. Kind of contradictory thinking isn’t it when pro-choice liberals put out that kind of a movie.
There is a freedom from engagement as well as a freedom to engage.
There is no chance that Weiner is a genuinely happy person. Gringo’s assessment of him as a man without a center is correct. He has no center but since Nature abhors a vacuum, he is subject to an ongoing process which Kolnai, in a very enjoyable torrent of mad monk prose, identifies: “. . . lust for sexual domination and conquest is proportionally let out into the wild, roaming around, growling stupidly, eyes burning with blind, demonic fury.” Haven’t we seen something suggesting that from Weiner.
Liberals. They don’t learn. Yesterday I listened to a local radio talk show. The subject was the provision of pornography to prisoners. The talk show host thought that might be a good idea because it would give “Bubba” a different target.
Always thinking about the rights of the perp.
Vanderleun, it is fascinating–and sobering–indeed how repeated immoral behavior changes a person’s character. I wonder if that’s why Weiner was able to lie so aggressively to the media at first, and now acts as though he ought to be allowed to just “get back to business” (whatever that means in his own mind). His personality and whatever conscience he once had have been permanently altered by his repeated behavior. Of course, he might have always been a narcissistic pig even without the internet to feed his sexual fantasies…
Weiner was an aggressive banty rooster from his first days in Congress.He had to share the stage with older, more experienced cock of the walks like Robert Wexler, but this guy was itching to to play the attack dog from the start.Note in the pictures of Weiner how sinister and cruel he appears as he’s posing;reading the texts is to be exposed to outsized monomania and a fetish for his own schlong.Ewwww.
I think the danger in all this fantasy cybersex is that it becomes a substitute for real human relationships. Being disappointed or having your heart broken teaches you something about human beings, as does having a friend or partner who knows you and knows just what to say when you’ve been disappointed. It gives you an abiity to read other people who are coping with bad events and empathize (in the true meaning of the word). Partners (even short-term ones) should be partners for more than sex, yet the message or video on the screen makes no demands. Cybersex seems like a breeding ground for narcissism. It certainly shouldn’t be treated as cool by adults.
According to Halacha,Clinton was correct in saying he didn’t have sex with that women. Only if there is contact between the genitals is there sex.This according to my late first wife,who had a scholarly interest in Torah. Not that I think Weinerly acting out is a healthy thing to do.
My mom of all people mentioned the addiction side of the story, the lure that’s so strong it overpowers common sense.
That’s no excuse, but perhaps it puts Weiner’s denial into perspective.
And as a quasi-tangent, I loved Updike’s classic adultery tale “Couples.” Highly recommended, and I’m still sad he recently passed.
When I was in college, I had occasion to question the definitions… and yes, it may well have had something to do with Bill Clinton’s linguistic acrobatics, which were topical at the time.
Would I be cheating on my girlfriend if I read Playboy? (Most, I think, would say “no”.) What about an online chat room? (Clinton would no doubt say “no” to that, as would renminbi’s first wife, but opinions obviously differ.) Where does one draw the line?
The conclusion I reached — applicable for me, your mileage will almost certainly vary — was that two-way communication was the key. Ongoing two-way communication is a relationship, and I decided to treat it as such.
(Imagine a situation before our ubiquitous online communications; say, a married couple in the 1950s world of Leave It To Beaver. If a husband then had discovered his wife was regularly sending and receiving mail from another man, and the letters were sexual in nature, would that be treated as the equivalent of an affair? Would it be treated the same way, even if she had never met the man in question? I think the answers are clearly “yes” in both cases.)
Specifically, I thought of the ways in which an affair is damaging too the primary relationship. Spending time away from one’s partner to be with the other, devoting time/energy/money to the other relationship, being distracted with one’s partner due to thinking actively about the other, and so on. All of that pertains just as well to a cybersex relationship, in a way that a lifetime subscription to Playboy does not.
And that brings us back to “the lures of cybersex”, as Neo put it — and I’d submit that one of the lures is that it IS a sexual relationship, one that seems more “excusable” than a traditional affair. (“No, honey, I’m not doing anything illicit; I’m just sitting at the computer.”)
Of course, thinking that one could get away with this long-term is first-class stupidity. (This is the 21st Century, in which everything, from the sexual escapades of Presidential candidates to secret Sate Department communiques, winds up on the Internet eventually.) And that’s how I feel about Congressman Weiner — not just that he’s a moral midget, and a liar, and yes, that he’s been essentially cheating on his wife — but that he’s also astonishingly stupid.
Thank God someone so stupid doesn’t have his grubby hands near the reins of power. Oh, wait…
Daniel in Brookline, as usual, well said.
I remember reading in college – and maybe it’s not true, but it struck me as at least possible – that when advertisers did things like hide the word “sex” in ice cubes in a liquor ad, it wasn’t so much to titillate as it was to raise people’s anxiety level. IOW, thinking about sex made people nervous, which might make them want to do something (like, maybe, drink) to alleviate their nervousness. The threesomes in cigarette ads – you could read those as fantasy, of course, but in real life, how many men would actually believe, down in their… um… hearts, that they had the wherewithal to serve and satisfy both of those beautiful women?
I think the “lure” of cybersex, in addition to its no-strings-ness, is the same as in any other form of solo fantasy: freedom from performance pressure. You’re exactly as good in virtual or imaginary bed as you say you are – even though you suspect (or know) that in real life, maybe you’re not so hot.