Essay in English VI

PASSABLE SEX FOR THE THIRD MILLENIUM?

(PART VI)

Essay written in 2000

ALONE TOGETHER?

Everything that we have said up to now does not necessarily mean that the institution of the human couple will to vanish. Only the character of it will change. In these days the term ‘social parenthood’ is increasingly used instead of the original term; ‘biological parenthood’. This is based on the hypothesis that new reproduction techniques have a tendency to eliminate the natural sex-roles of men and women. We already know something about the loss of the biological role of the father due to artificial insemination, which may become massively used in the future for variety of reasons. One is expectable even now - do you think that a man of the third millennium, in case of the continual fatal threat of AIDS, will be willing to stop using a condom for attempts (that often last for weeks) to make his spouse pregnant by authentic sexual intercourse and risk a deadly infection? Will a woman of the next millennium be willing during these attempts to let her vagina exposed to possible tiny wounds open to the infection that may lead to a certain death? In a view of all this, wouldn't the artificial insemination be more acceptable also for those human couples who currently are not interested in it? Some authors even speak about a complete change of the role of women. Thanks to the future technology of an artificial uterus, women may not have to bear children at all. Perhaps this vision is a very distant one, but today, social parenthood is already a fact. What other name can one give to lesbian couples (like Oscar laureate actress Jodie Foster and her partner Sydney Bertrand) who legally raise a ‘test tube baby’ to bypass the nature for completing an incomplete family?

Today no one doubts that the future belongs to ‘the information society’. The sexual revolution is associated with this concept as an explosion of sexual symbols and ever more provoking sexual challenges. During our every day professional and family routines, we are unable to respond appropriately to these new challenges. The disproportion between theoretical, verbal, virtual and practical sexuality is steadily widening. Emancipation has bound women to an endless man-propelled mill of accelerating human civilization. We are confronted with the hard reality of time and psychological stress. Under these conditions, a human couple strives, in an ambitious competition with the video-ideals of porn-stars, to achieve marvelous gymnastic beats of sex. But the possibility of failure is in real life always present, so pitfalls and disappointments. And even a couple which despite this succeeds is still facing fatal threat. On the threshold of sex with a partner, the invisible, patient, and slowly working, four-letter death -- AIDS -- is waiting. Too many obstacles, if you imagine the cheap optimal satisfaction provided by surrogate partners and artificial stimulants. Temptation switches to the sphere of intimate technology...

WHAT SEX IN THE THIRD MILLENIUM?

Everything we have talked about until now is directed at one point. The human couple cohabitation will probably survive. However, sex with a partner appears on the blacklist of the threatened human activities. If every misfortune seems to have a good side, it is very probable that at least the politics after Clinton Era will certainly welcome this new version of their adventures.

The End

Translation Peter Duba, edited by Jerry Weir and Tom Reynolds