SEX ACCORDING TO MAÏA
Let’s start with a very simple observation: in the realm of the right move, sexual passivity acts as a foil. The 2022 edition of The Love Code leaves no doubt about this question: good sex is active, akin to fitness, yoga or crossfit depending on personal preference. It is mainly used to strengthen the adductors and burn calories. Productivity requires, participants are asked to count orgasms and regularly update their knowledge.
On the women’s side, the “starfish” (Seestern in German, søstjerne in Danish, estrella de mar in Spanish, cold fish in English) are doomed to loathing. Their generosity (how better to offer themselves than arms and legs in a cross?) won’t earn them any compliments: here they are, for a few decades now, in the aisle of bad coats. A reproach that is all the more unjust because when a woman is “too” enthusiastic (this “too much” being never defined), she often falls into the nymphomaniac category.
On the men’s side, laziness is just as brutally condemned: there is no question of being passive in a society which, precisely, aligns virility with an active role. The penis, however, readily accommodates the opposite presupposition. Before I am accused of wanting to castrate the male readership of Worldknow that my sources are medical: “To get an erection you have to be relaxed, it’s all about your mental state. Bander is not an active phenomenon but a passive one. Letting go does not extinguish the excitement, it accompanies it” (Everything you need to know about men’s sexDr. Marc Galliano and Rica Etienne, Marabout, 2022).
The influence of pornography
How did we come to value a sexuality that is not only active, but willingly hyperactive? In addition to our enthusiasm to put our heart into the work (and in fact, why not), it is undoubtedly necessary to see there the influence of pornography. To make practices more visual and less repetitive in the image, porn performers go to great lengths. The problem is not only that we end up doing the same, but also that by dint of giving ourselves trouble, we are on the verge of forgetting to do ourselves good.
We must also mention the influence of sexual “liberation”: being active in bed proves that we are not prudish, that we are not shy. Finally, I have the intuition that our contempt for passivity rests on a breeding ground of sexism. Sexual receptivity is associated with the feminine, especially in the first works of psychoanalysis (if you feel like hurting yourself this morning, I cannot recommend reading the article “Passivity, masochism and femininity” written in 1935 by Marie Bonaparte).
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