Sex is a purchasable commodity

In theory, sex is free. There's no tollbooth on the bed, no subscription fees for the right to use your own body. As we all know, the really pisses of corporate America, who feels that everything should be a purchasable commodity, that people shouldn't be able to walk or breathe without raising stock values, much less do something that's actually fun.

A lot of people think that advertising, etc. is sexualized because "sex sells". This doesn't just mean that sexual imagery overrides one's ability to think, though this is definitely true. It also means that corporate America is furiously trying to convince people that sex is a commodity and that in order for it to be a part of your life, you have to give up huge amounts of cash, preferably to them. (There is no doubt in my mind that this is why prostitution is still illegal, because purchasing sex directly doesn't do a damn thing for anyone's bottom line but the prostitute's.)

Ordinary, everyday middle class America is understandably disgusted by this, in part because we find ourselves buying into it. It's part of the reason that there's a religious-oriented backlash against sexual expression itself, I think. Most of the backlash is plain old woman-hating, but the sudden surge in the appeal of strict religious views on sex is the promise that it will make it something privately held instead of purchased. It makes us uncomfortable to have our private feelings and desires exploited so casually and openly, and it's really frustrating to try to figure out exactly how much of the crap they push on us we have to buy in order to get our own sexuality back. Do we need the car and the plastic surgery in addition to the clothes? If we don't get these things, will we never have sex again?

We are angry and frustrated and we think it's immoral. As long as it's done to us. But I've noticed that the entrance fee to the sexual life is something we feel fine putting on the poor. In all the rowdy debates on abortion over at Alas, a Blog, it's alarming how many times people poo-pooh any suggestion that distributing free birth control is a great way to reduce the number of abortions. "Just zip it up if you can't get birth control," is the battle cry. The message is loud and clear--sex is a commodity and only for those who can afford it. If you trespass and have sex even though it doesn't belong to you, your punishment will be unending pregnancy and childbirth.

As I've said before, the reason that it doesn't cause more alarms to go off about the appalling hypocrisy in the Republican party regarding the sexual behavior they prescribe for the rest of us and the kind they indulge in themselves, it's because money is morality to the upper class. Only the peasants need worry about things like sexual morality. For instance, going to a prostitute is wrong for you and me, but if a couple of high-dollar prostitutes are sent to your room as a gift for some money-making deal, that's happening in the world of the monied and isn't a big deal at all, as we learned from Neil Bush.

Apparently, this thing is on a scale. The aristocracy, of which the Bushes are a dominant family, can do whatever they want. The merely monied are always courting scandal if they push the envelope, especially Hollywood celebrities, but they are still outside the rules most of us live by. The middle class is allowed to have sex, as long as they pay the entrance fee by buying the right clothes and birth control devices, but they are under a good amount of survelliance and should probably constrain their sex lives to a series of monogamous relationships without too much kink. The upper middle class is given a little more breathing room for naughty behavior like one night stands, but their entrance fee is higher, requiring more expensive clothes and plastic surgery. The poor are under complete surveillance and are instructed to just not have sex at all.

Needless to say, the higher up in social rank you get, the easier it is for you to be gay and still be treated respectably, which is why prominent conservatives can chastize gay people on one hand and socialize with them and/or actually be gay on the other. This hierarchy is exactly why someone can feel that it's acceptable to oust gays from the military and from teaching jobs and other middle class occupations but then get all huffy when his cock-sucking habits are exposed by blogACTIVE. Cock-sucking is a private matter when you have the money and power to buy privacy.

If we middle class people really want to destroy the concept of sex-as-a-commodity, it won't be done by moralistic posturing, since such moralistic posturing actually works to bolster the idea that if you can't pay, you shouldn't play. It seems to me that genuinely embracing sex positivity is going to be our best bet for taking back the right to own your own sexuality. And the very first step is embracing that the poor have as much a right to control their own sex lives as the rest of us, meaning that they should have access to privacy, birth control and also be allowed to decide for themselves if they wish to be married or not, have children or not. Free birth control should be a part of everyday life. Whether or not poor women on welfare are married is no more our concern than it is our concern whether or not Jenna Bush is married.

It's a fact of life that the sooner that you realize that everyone, fat or thin, ugly or beautiful, has a right to their own sexuality, the grip of the advertisers over you loosens considerably. I think that principle needs to be firmly applied to class as well. As soon as middle class people can truly comprehend that the poor have as much a right to sex as we do, then it will dawn on us that therefore the rich should be held to the same standards they hold us to.