Kinky Salon has never just been about getting laid. If you look at the bigger picture, at our place in history, it’s fascinating to realize that we are part of a lineage of people, events, protests, and celebrations which have been going on for centuries. Each generation thinks they discover sex, that they are more outrageous or more daring than their forebears. I had that delusion myself- I think it’s a natural part of growing up. Realizing my place in history was a wake up call for me. It made me reassess, and take a closer look at what makes this era unique. It’s not just a hedonistic freefall into the apocalypse- there are deeper motivations going on here.

 

Indulge me.

I believe that our culture is under the influence of a massive Jungian shadow which has blocked out our true perception of what it is to be ‘human’ for thousands of years. When humans stopped roaming, and plowed the land for food instead of hunting and gathering, our worldview shifted. It was such a dramatic change, we’ve been recovering ever since, like a baby whose mothers breast is taken away too young. So, what came first? The repression of the Great Mother archetype or that universal feeling of separation and scarcity?

We are complicated monkeys, it’s true, but for many thousands of years maybe it was simple. We roamed around in tribes hunting and gathering in a gigantic underpopulated planet filled with a never ending smorgasboard of fruit, salad, nuts and occasionally a delicious wooly mammoth. Humans love the story that Homo Sapiens started out as greedy, warring gangs of violent apes, because it justifies our current behavior so neatly. But what if the Hobbesian idea about our pre history being ‘nasty, brutish and short’ is wrong? We are overdue in re-examining these universal preconceptions which were first proposed in the 1600s!

Once we started farming and stopped moving, and there was an explosion in population, all of a sudden there wasn’t enough to go around anymore. Rather than being grateful to a Goddess for her never ending abundance, we became fearful of a wrathful God who rained his anger down upon us and punished the wicked.

When we got scared, we started hoarding, we got obsessed with quid pro quo, and we started counting. Two for me and one for you. It would be a natural reaction.

The part about this story that I’m getting to is where this shift in culture starts to change how we view sex. It might have gone a bit like this: “This land belongs to me. My son will own this land after me. And the only way I can guarantee that my son is truly my son, is to control my wife’s sexuality.”

I’m talking about pre-history here, so there are no absolute answers. Just to be transparent, these conclusions aren’t really mine. Scientists talk about this stuff.

Next, women, and their wombs, became valuable property along with the land and the animals. But don’t get me wrong- I don’t think that women have been subjugated by men. Rather we have all been subjugated by this cultural shadow. The roles that men are forced to play are just as unpleasant. They have had to fight and die in wars, they’ve been responsible for taking care of women, providing for children. Men have suffered too, in a different way.

Needless to say, we all miss that great global tit which kept us fed and safe and took care of us. But the temper tantrum of a toddler doesn’t last forever, and hopefully the child will grow up and become self aware before it totally trashes its playroom.

And what does that have to do with us now? The twenty first century is the first time since man plowed the field, that women have experienced being owners of their own sexuality. When I look at the sexually liberated people who surround me, I see a million battles fought and won- progress, change, evolution. I have an opportunity, as a woman, to explore my sexuality in a way that is utterly modern and completely on my own terms, and I see it as a basic human right. Previous generations have only dreamed of this possibility- we are the first to really experience it first hand. My right to be the master of own my sexuality isn’t something I fight for- I actually take it for granted.

I know that I live in a bubble. My history, my place in society, the cities I have lived in. I understand that this is by no means a universal experience for women. But could this be the tail end of a hundred year tipping point which started with the suffragette movement? Am I, and women like me, the first to experience what will soon become universal?