L. S. de Camp/WorldCon
Tim Maroney
message. Concerning L. Sprague de Camp's justification for his Time letter,
saying that the sexual revolution was about a change to a
polygamous/hedonistic mating pattern: nothing could be further from the
truth. First, as I have already stated, the sexual revolution was about
sexual freedom and sexual privacy regardless of orientation, monogamous or
polygamous, gay or straight (not that there's any real difference, but
people think there is, so...). Second, hedonism and polygamy are not
related. A person who feels stifled by years of a single monogamous
relationship, suppressing all sexual feelings outside the relationship, will
find his or her sexual desires tending more and more toward the suppressed
forms of sex, and so will tend to link pleasure-seeking with polygamy; but
in fact there is just as much pleasure to be had in one partner over a
thousand nights as in a thousand partners each for one night. Pleasure is
what hedonism is about; it has nothing to do with multiple partners.
That de Camp is one such frustrated monogamist is made clear by his remarks
at a recent convention that he wishes now he had taken advantage of more of
the sexual opportunities of his youth. (My companion of five years, Pam
Troy, works for Locus, so I get to hear all this juicy gossip.) This is
classic in its demonstration of dogmatic monogamy leading eventually to a
feeling that much greater pleasure could be had with multiple partners, and
a wistful longing that one had indulged in this much greater pleasure.
Note that I am not advocating sexual promiscuity for everyone. I am almost
entirely monogamous myself. What I am saying is that the suppression of
non-monogamous sexual desires doesn't work; pushing energy into the
subconscious only makes it stronger at a later date. These desires, even if
they are never acted on, should be treated as natural and good, a part of
life, and then the fatal suppression into the subconscious mind will not
take place; so sexual desire will not become warped as it obviously has in
de Camp's case.
--
Tim Maroney, Electronic Village Idiot and Damn Proud of It
{ihnp4,sun,well,ptsfa,lll-crg,frog}!hoptoad!tim (uucp)
hoptoad!tim@lll-crg (arpa)
Warning! Dogmatic responses will be ignored, or, more likely, insulted.