Essay in English

LAW NO.1 IS TO OBEY NATURAL LAWS…

Ecology and economy, former enemies as a partners?

Environmental pollution is a global issue touching every society on the Earth. Thus, let’s learn a lesson from the approach to this issue in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. We might know that in the 80`s these countries adapted very strict rules to curb pollution. However, law enforcement failed in many cases because of the utopic, un-natural character of such a society. Restriction and financial punishment of those “pollution producers” was rare in practice because of the general excuse that these “publicly owned” factories would fall short of their production quotas. And production was believed to be a law itself pretending to make it good for everybody. In fact, the sustainable managed development of a healthy environment is unimaginable without respecting the natural mechanisms. Each society, which has ignored them and put its anthropomorphic “even so” on the first place, has paid its price – has shown to be unable to survive. Communism, demonstrating a certain good will, had deleted the fact of death and decay in the economic sphere. Non-effective companies had become “immortal” and consequently killed their patron, the communism. It had become unable of concurrence against other economical systems that respect this, at first look a negative, element of natural laws.

Self-saving mechanism

One of the self-saving mechanisms of Nature is auto-regulation and we may also see it in purely human activities. In the seemingly antagonistic relationship of ecology and economy a new important progressive element has shown up in countries that adopted a free-market economy. Ecological thinking had become an important factor in the global market – so-called “environmental friendly products” are nowadays a strong weapon of concurrency. In the near future, disregarding environmental criteria will be fatal for companies. This surely is a welcomed auto-regulating element, the occurrence of which is to be supported in the interest of the sustainable managed environmental development. The question of “corporate greening” became the question of the summit of international leaders at the United Nations in June 1997 when they evaluated progress since the 1992 Earth Summit. However, they had to admit that government and institutional aid has fallen, leaving more responsibility for green innovations to the free market. And such leading companies like Northeast Utilities or even Union Carbide (that is touting new biodegradable industrial detergents for washing grease-stained uniforms) want to be “greenest of the green“. Furthermore, even such a conservative institution like an army is now contributing to new trend by its “green ammunition”. This new approach of the U.S. military means replacement of lead-based bullets by less toxic tungsten. Research has cost $ 12 million so far and the Army will produce first regular series of 50 million rounds of it in this year. “We want to be good stewards of the environment,” said Army spokeswoman Karen Baker.
More examples are on the hand - one of the largest oil firms, British Petroleum, already made a significant step when they joined efforts with The Environmental Defense Fund some years ago. After decades of battle with environmentalists more and more corporate executives are adapting ideas they once ignored. Perhaps we will soon see a new natural law in practice – a symbiosis of business and a healthy environment. Once enemies become partners?

The future in everyone’s hands

Of course not all environmentalists are convinced in such a U-turn. Instead of seeing corporate green, they suspect companies of greenwashing by superficial changes that made merely just to attract consumers. But consumers already realized their power of not-buying (as in the case of the Exxon tanker disaster) and furthermore they recently found the power of their investment in companies who obey an environmentally friendly policy. These habits are still to be adopted by the consumers in post-communist countries. But they already learn a lesson. The lesson from communism is that progress is never made by restrictions. And also, that progress is hard to predict and even harder to plan…

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

Essay in English V

PASSABLE SEX FOR THE THIRD MILLENIUM?

(PART V)

Essay written in 2000

THE NEXT STEP -- INSTANT SEX?

Because the rising demand for these fashionable commodities, we may expect, sooner or later, a race for the artificial orgasm. The aim will be to reach a standard orgasm by technical means. This is only seemingly impossible. There is one not commonly known feature. It is assumed that the human brain contains an organ for the perception and appreciation of pleasure. The Czech psychiatrist Prof. Vondráček in his book, ‘Behavior and Its Failures’ discusses experiments uncovering the sources of erotic stimulation in brain: “When the electrode touches the septum, the animal begins to auto-stimulate until complete exhaustion, 2 000 times an hour, over 24 hours. Auto-stimulation is a greater reward than food... Experiments with auto-stimulation were also made on humans, in connection with brain surgery (predominantly in cases of the Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, but also tumors).”

This may not seem very appealing at first glance, but if we allow ourselves to embark upon a little science-fiction journey, we can come closer to the possibility of a remote-control climax. All we need is a vibrator, a chemical stimulant (perhaps a light drug), and a dose of course Virtual Reality to create the adequate, ideal partner... Does this remind you too much of ‘space sex’ as suggested by Jane Fonda in her memorable role as an intergalactic vixen in the 60´s film, ´Barbarella´? If you remember well, she had genuinely safe sex (together with a refreshing portion of humor) with a quite agreeable partner. Similar scenes were offered in movies ‘Brave New World’ and ‘Cocoon’. Is it too much fantasy? ‘Journey to the Moon’, written in 1865 by Jules Verne, was also originally just a harmless sci-fi. If we so easily gave up the traditional ritual procedure of making coffee, which indisputably produces better taste, for the speed and convenience of making instant coffee, what will prevent us from a gulpy consumption of the above mentioned ‘instant sex’? Do not forget -- a novelty for men, vibrating and pneumatic vaginas, are already at the market...

Current attempts to offer to female customers a “Pink Viagra”, this one with guarantee of standard orgasms seems to fulfill soon above-mentioned ideas. If we assumed that the vibrator is not only safe but hygienic and always on hand without any of those annoying features of real males (snoring after intercourse during the night, for example), we may expect this will very much fitting to feminist aim of self-sufficiency in sex. But men in high-ranking positions will also welcome similar kind of novelty for them for very practical reasons. A ‘virtual woman’ will have at least some of the same advantages. First, she will not demand to arrange another job for her in reward for her intimate oral performances; also, the artificial woman of the future will sure be not to write letters that might be later published in newspaper to discredit those ‘whom it may concern’...

PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE -- ADAM & EVE FOR THIRD MILLENIUM

This hypothetical sex-act of the future may have other practical advantages over classic human intercourse. It saves time and energy, and should not be a threat to health; in fact, it will almost certainly be delivered with a guarantee from the ‘manufacturer’... But above all, human beings the future are bound to be more practical and pragmatic. It is assumed that in developed countries after the year 2000 there will be more 65-year-old people than 15 year old. The significant switch of the demographic curve towards the elder, even pensioner, age groups seems very likely. Let as suppose that in this time the ‘career girl’ will be the prevailing model of a woman... Their personal ambitions nowadays do not totally eradicate their desire to give birth to a child. However, they often delay this to an age when, from the biological point of view, it is too late to have a child. Nevertheless, advanced modes of hormone therapy are already capable of condition the uterus of a 60-year-old woman like of a 16-year-old. Bearing a child at a hazardously old age has become so widespread that People magazine dedicated detailed analysis to this phenomenon, examining several child-births among mothers over their 40´s. This is undoubtedly an interesting topic, but we are more curious about one often-neglected ‘side-effect’. Healthy born children of old parents are often extremely intelligent, occasionally even geniuses (for example the Nobel Prize Laureate Konrad Lorenz). Families with only one child have become general trend anyway, even with normal pregnancies and not only in developed countries. In China birth-control laws have limited the growth of the population to hundreds of thousands of single children. No one doubts their highly developed inherent consciousness of being exceptional, egoistic. Notwithstanding the inevitable portion of simplification, in the future, population waves may expect a significant share, or even prevalence, of highly intelligent, but hypersensitive and emotionally unstable egoists. With all this in mind, it is worth to quoting from an essay by J. Kott, ‘A Short Report on Erotism’, published in the Czech and Slovak edition of Lettre Internationale: “...during masturbation, the partner is the product of one’s own sexual ego...” Drawn your own conclusions.

ASEXUAL OR A SEXUAL SOCIETY?

Babies prefer milk from the bottle to mother’s milk from the breast these days. It's much easier from the bottle. For the mother too, it is easier to buy a warmer with a thermostat, thus creating the illusion of the warmth of mother's milk. For significant amount of spectators, a football game on TV is much more attractive, comfortable, safer, cheaper, and they even see a lot more than if they stood in an x-th row on the stadium. If these principles apply to our civilization in general, why should they not also apply to sex? Are we threatened with substitute sexuality? The famous Polish science-fiction author Stanislav Lem advanced a remarkable idea in his discussions with prominent virologists regarding AIDS. Lem, voicing his fear concerning the fatally effective progress of the so-called ‘slow viruses’ (which include the HIV virus), in combination with overpopulation and a high level of worldwide promiscuity, writes: “Lenteviruses (slow viruses) mostly threaten those species with eradication who live socially and exercise sexual promiscuity”. He compares our civilization with an organization of socially living insects, and speculates that twin-sexed (i.e. male-female couple) living prehistoric insect species were decimated by ‘slow viruses’. The strategic advantage of these viruses lies in the fact that they spread rapidly in a sexually overactive, excessively multiplied population. The delayed effect will be catastrophically manifest at a time when the majority of the population has already been infected and thus becomes incapable of defending itself from the viruses inexorable onslaught. Lem gave as an example of ants, about which the Czech author Jan Werich once said: “An anthill is a miracle, but at the same time, it is a warning, because the ants work there up to a loss of sex. Ants are asexual for to be capable of work with all their might...” If you think about our striving for super-efficiency, if you think about sex-tourism, and the till-now practically uncontrollable spread of AIDS, plus the 100 % fatal slow viruses that are spreading and waiting -- do you still consider the concept of an asexual society so bizarre?


Translation Peter Duba, edited by Jerry Weir and Tom Reynolds

Essay in English IV

PASSABLE SEX FOR THE THIRD MILLENIUM?

(PART IV)

Essay written in 2000

SUBSTITUTE SEX?

The Starr Report (which Rebecca Johnson, a contributing editor at Vogue, described in The New York Times Magazine as valuable for the present American public as the Kinsey reports in 1940’s and Masters and Johnson in the 1960’s) is in fact all about substitute sex. The only problem of the two protagonists there is that their sex was not substitutional enough.

Sex, meanwhile, has become a product on the market, and as such it is subject to the rules of mass consumption. It is remarkable that, in general, the sexual revolution endowed the sexual market with an explosion of sex-substitutional services. The erotic service industry is switching to the sphere of untouching sexual contacts. Massive offers of services directed exclusively at voyeurism and masturbation have emerged -- a phenomenon unseen up to that time. Currently, men are offered -- besides the obligatory striptease -- porn-video booths, peep shows and live shows, with three contemporary novelties for auto-erotic satisfaction: the so-called massage parlors offering hand-jobs, rubber dolls, and phone sex. Even President Clinton discovered the attractiveness of phone sex sooner than he should gain an elementary theory from a novel about phone sex entitled ‘Vox’, given to him as a gift from that very person he used to call and ask not only for it. Communication by phone (with an anonymous person as a therapeutic technique to overcome frustration and loneliness) was first recommended thirty years ago by the Russian psychiatrist Vladimir Levi in his book ‘The Art of Dealing with People’. He wrote: “Why not use the virtually divine opportunity to set off into the world without actually leaving home. You are invisible, and you are holding a shield in front of yourself. You may cut off the communication at any time....” According to a very precise testimony President cut off one of his phone sex excursions by fallen asleep in the middle of the sentence. But that doesn’t mean that Levi wasn’t right. Newly emerging ‘hot phone’ and ‘chat’ services on the Internet indicate that we do want to be invisible and hold a shield in front of us. Even in sex...

Women have not been forgotten by these new services. This includes male striptease and porn-magazines for women. And according the reportage of Katie Monagle in magazine Mademoiselle in 1995 “feminist-friendly sex stores” already created a network. In first one in New York, the “Eve’s Garden”, dildos were top-seller. And from these it just a small step to the most revolutionary worth the HI-TECH civilization -- the vibrator. Saying that the vibrator gives women freedom sounds like a cliché. However, the truth is probably that it fulfills women’s erotic dreams more instantly and efficiently than anything before. Older practices (developed for example in women's jails with an empty mustard bottle, or a broom handle) are like dinosaur eggs compared to the space technology of the vibrators -- the choice of sizes, the color fluorescent models, up to special effects, such as the simulated ejection of semen. Significant is the statement by Dr. D. C. Renshaw that “A vibrator stimulates much more than what can be achieved by hand, oral stimulation, or through intercourse. For some women, this may mean an orgasmic breakthrough”. The personal testimonies of some women, as well as statistics, confirm this observation. Betty Dodson, a prominent sexologist, has reported that “a couple of times, I was not far from falling in love with my vibrator”. This is not hard to understand if we take the example of one of her patients, who had the first really intense orgasm of her life with a vibrator. Dodson reckons that this woman will for perhaps months, or even years only reach an orgasm in this way, but “this is not as bad as the fact that she would never have had it”. Elsewhere, Dodson discusses a married woman who had her first orgasm at the age of 48. She touched her clitoris with her new vibrator, and after two hours exploded with a climax so powerful that she almost fell off the bed, and she weighed more than 120 kilos... “Neither she, nor her husband, were ever quite as lavish as the vibrator”, concluded Dodson. The Annual Statistics of Sexual Behavior, based on the response of 720 college and university-educated American women, reports that “a repeated orgasm was experienced in 47.8 per cent cases by stimulation. In the majority of occurrences (26.3 per cent) by masturbation, and 18.3 per cent by a partner's contact with the genitals”. Matilda Fernandez Saez as the Spanish Minister of Social Affairs recommended masturbation in a sexual education handbook for adolescents that provoked outrage of members of the Spanish Parliament. Humankind knows masturbation for thousand of years, but the vibrator has changed it from a laborious hiking tour into a pleasant drive in a shiny limousine. The objection that it is just an impersonal piece of plastic can be partly eradicated by attempts to form the sizes of vibrators similar to the instruments of well-known male porn-stars. The German author, Gert Heidenreich, in the first story of his collection of stories, ‘Der Geliebte des dritten Tages’ (DVA, Stuttgart, 1997) envisages husbands ordering wooden moulds made of their penises so as to be at least partly “present” in their marriage bed during long business trips.

ADAM AND EVE OF THE YEAR 2020

In 1990 the journal Cosmopolitan published an article “Marriage without Sex”, where it pointed out married couples that voluntarily decided on partial, and in some cases, complete sexual abstinence. Reasons for this were predominantly sexual over-satiation, however, objections among the higher educated couples to aggressive sex propaganda is also a common reason.
Will they be standard couples for next millennium? In fact here are three possible models. As Alvin Toffler written in his famous book “Future Shock”, among first is the “social family” where the parents will be fully engaged on upbringing of large number of children. Mostly in role not a biological parents. Another model of “carrier couple” expecting partnership of two singles who will be fully occupied with their work and individual preferences. And third way already appeared - the family, which start to look for the baby when time of professional career is over. Current advanced medical technology is capable by hormone therapy to prepare an uterus of an 80-year-old woman into a condition of an 18-year-old and thus fulfill a dreams of elderly parents. Is evident that nobody would prefer such way if there will be not valuable reasons. For example general change of life-style in the third millennium.

(To be continued)

Translation Peter Duba, edited by Jerry Weir and Tom Reynolds

Essay in English III

PASSABLE SEX FOR THE THIRD MILLENIUM?

(PART III)

Essay written in 2000

SIDE-EFFECT OF FEMINISM

Betty Friedan admits that the advance of the male movement, led by Robert Bly, may partly be a reaction to feminism. However, she adds that at the same time, “man's need to break through the heavy burden of the virility myth, to overcome the strain of being macho”. Alfred Gringold reveals something about the source of this heavy strain: “Man's fear of a serious relationship grows with the rising demands of post-feminist women... We must respect the aspirations of the contemporary independent, competent, qualified, and respectable women - especially if we ever want to meet them in bed.” The real fear from sexual-harassment leads to other unsolvable situation. In extremis the sexual-harassment can be practically everything between man and woman if woman find it unpleasant for her. Even joke! Result was truthfully shown in one cartoon of magazine Details; the man who like to deal with nice woman thinking so hard what approach to her can be allowed that finally he find a best solution - escape.

THE POISON APPLE IN ARTIFICIAL PARADISE

Of course, there are places when you can address a woman without dilemma. But results of an investigation by the Social-Pedagogical Institute in Berlin show that an average of 16 % of the customers of prostitutes rejects the use of a condom, which is a lot, if you consider approximately the 300,000 German prostitutes and their roughly 1.6 million sexual contacts per week... In other hand professional prostitutes can learn that the condoms protected not only customers, but themselves too. The amateur prostitution is worse. Especially when (as in other professions) here the effective age is declining rapidly. In Vancouver, Canada, are 13-14 years old prostitutes on every disposal.

THE EFFECT OF BABYLON

According to the official WHO figures and a very moderate predictions a total of 15 to 20 million HIV positive adults, and out of this number in 5 to 6 million cases of AIDS are expected to develop after the year 2000. It is also true that deaths from AIDS in the United States fell 29 percent in 1996 and 47 percent last year due to new drugs treatments, but the rate of new infections remains steady at about 40,000 cases every year. The dramatic spread of this disease can be practically manifested on prostitution, which as ‘professional adultery’ is linked to promiscuity, and is best documented at the same time all over the world.

The situation is even worse with those who prefer anal sex, which poses the highest risk. Anal sex without a condom was practiced with prostitutes in ten per cent of occurrences; an additional 14 per cent use a condom only occasionally. The ACSF report based on 20,687 questionnaires filled out by French men and women, however indicates that the use of condoms has been increasing in France. On the other hand it also shows that one-third of heterosexual men, half of heterosexual women, and one-quarter of homosexual/ bisexual men never use condoms. Even in orderly Switzerland, only 52 per cent of young men have said they use a condom. In Great Britain, as in 1992 Dr. G. Gardner reported in the British Medical Journal, it was discovered that among married couples where one of the partners is HIV positive, in 17 per cent of the cases the other partner was infected despite the use of condoms.

The rise in worldwide ‘sex tourism’ has aggravated this disaster. The paradox of our time is that for Europeans, there is no great need to travel far for an exotic sex. Among 197 prostitutes in the Graz Municipal Venereal Disease Clinic was in 1992 unintentionally disclosed that only 96 had come from Austria – a central European country. Another 55 prostitutes had come from Santo Domingo, 22 from Thailand, nine from Yugoslavia, and the remaining 15 from other countries. The BBC has reported several times on the ‘sex industry’ in the Philippines and Thailand. The last story was in connection with the estimated 1.5 million HIV positive people in Thailand due to ‘sex tourism’. Some ‘sex tourism’ fans naively believe that sex with children (which is also offered there) will protect them against the HIV virus. However, this is no longer the case with exotic countries only. For example, in the early 90’s, the number of HIV-positive children among 13 to 19 year old in Washington increased by 500 per cent. Within a discussion in the prestigious scientific journal Nature about AIDS Education Policy of the New York City Board of Education, an opinion was presented that “emphasis on the use of condoms in the school-child population will cause more AIDS than it will prevent”. Author of the statement, Dr. E. Stim gives three reasons for his assumption: “First, a contraceptive experience has shown, condoms have at least 2 per cent failure rate (as barrier to semen), because of breakage or slippage. Second, as students of teenage sexuality have shown, the consistent use of condoms with consecutive coituses is extremely low in the teenage population. Third, emphasis on the use of condoms alone ignores the fact that AIDS is a disease spread by all body secretions and excretions, and not just by semen. Condoms do not protect against AIDS risks in open mouth-to-mouth kissing, body biting and much oral sex play”. Well, it seems that the journal Nature is not the President’s favorable reading. As we can learn from the currently hot-selling ‘The Starr Report’ even he is in favor of meeting young people for being informed about normal life, he doesn’t hear them properly. Ms. Lewinsky for example was very concern about ”e-mail describing the effect of chewing Altoid mints before performing oral sex”. But neither the President nor Ms. Lewinsky, it seems, were aware that oral sex with a condom is according the law obligatory even in low quality porn-movies, not to mention professionals performing oral sex. If on the one hand vice-president’s best advice against HIV-infection is no-sex, who else than President should obey at least minimal health-care rules? And if this is not true what we can expect from others?

Dr. E. Stim furthermore warns that even the more responsible adepts of sexual intercourse have no guarantee that they will avoid infection. As Dr. E. Stim later wrote in his book ‘Physician’s Notebook’: “So just because a potential sexual partner shows you his very recent negative HIV test, don't think you can't catch AIDS from him. You might end up the most surprised person in the cemetery!” The explanation is cruelly simple: The AIDS blood test becomes positive from one to three months after acquiring HIV. This means, that “against what you might think, you may run a higher risk by having sex with a high-risk AIDS blood test negative person than with an AIDS blood test positive person...”

Dan Savage, according to his own by-line ‘America’s Most Popular Sex Columnist’, says in The New York Magazine: ”The gay response to AIDS forced everybody to start talking about what they were physically doing in bed. It forced the newspapers to write honestly about sex.” Unfortunately, while almost all newspapers are now writing broadly about sex, that original topic -- AIDS -- is vanishing from the headlines, as if this chapter is over forever. But it is not.

(To be continued)

Translation Peter Duba, edited by Jerry Weir and Tom Reynolds

Essay in English II

PASSABLE SEX FOR THE THIRD MILLENIUM?

(PART II)

Essay written in 2000

THE ILLUSION OF MARVELOUS SEX

This is not a task to be neglected. Indeed it concerns a vast portion of society, or that part which is characterized by a cohabiting couple, economic activity, and child-rearing. Take for example, a standard couple (Adam and Eve of the year 2 000) let them run through their week of work duties and family stress; the desired moment finally arrives for them to meet in bed. However, here the next hurdle called “successful life” awaits them. The information boom has done its job. Nowadays, couples making love are subject to a demand for a race of orgasms accompanied by complicated sexual gymnastics. The higher education of women understandingly increases their requirements for sexual satisfaction. On the other hand, “many women want nothing else in bed but close their eyes and be served,” as one man complained in a recent opinion poll. A husband in this type of relationship gets unintentionally assumes the role of “sexual maintenance worker”. Even if this were not the case, the man's responsibility for a woman’s satisfaction in intercourse has risen exceedingly.

Cynthia and Samuel Janusov based their ‘A Report on Sexual Behavior’, a 430 page book, on eight thousand forms filled out by American men and women. As much as 30 per cent of the respondents stated that they have no objections to watching porno-films with their partner. However, this congenial diversion unconsciously creates a need to imitate and compete. Who are the ones with whom we want a regular orgasmic competition? If Jurika, a 29-year-old Belgian porno-star, in an interview for POPO magazine declares that she really feels everything that is in the movie, we may believe her. Nevertheless, in the same interview, we find that between foreplay and the actual sexual act, she leaves for a break and drinks coffee. The 40-year-old German porn-star, a Polish immigrant Teresa Orlowski (bust volume well over 100 cm, due to mama-plastic surgery) is more sincere. She says: “it is a truly hard work... It is not only sex, a lot of distress is involved. Believe me, being an actress in porno films is more demanding than especially women think....” The truth is that when two (or more) play a role, even though not a theater role this time, they are subject to the rules of a dramatic performance. It is a tiny step from performing to pretending. A sexual act, which is rehearsed at first, then filmed, and later skillfully edited for the final version has very little in common with genuine sexual intercourse. Needless to say, we are all different, and in the course of a normal coitus, everyone faces the dangers of failure, pain, illness, unwanted pregnancy, even disappointment. When Karel Čapek, the famous classic Czech novelist wrote that pornography is immoral, he did not have in mind the fact that it is displays human nakedness, but that it hides the complexity and fragility of erotic behavior. The role of a sexual hunter might be challenging. On the other hand, a survey of 18,876 men and women in Great Britain discloses that 13.7% of men who had more than five female partners in the past five years had to seek medical assistance, compared to 0.7% of those men who are contented with just one partner. Even if the loving couple can successfully avoid all this, the subconscious and ever reappearing comparison still persists. The final result resembles a race between a male gazelle and a jeep, which added ironical spirit to a commentary in one of those films about African nature. Yes, it is true. Technology (video, in this case) will defeat every animal. Also a human.

SEX, A BOOK OR A HOT BATH?

Can it surprise you, after all, that as much as 45 per cent of men responded in anonymous survey by Esquire magazine prefer a good novel over a glance under the blouse of a well-shaped woman? Remember how many British women in the survey mentioned already prefer a hot bath or a drink to having sex. The cohabitation of couples passed through a truly dramatic development in the course 20-th century. The time that elapsed between "the bond what God joined let no man sunder” to mass divorce was too short. Nevertheless, it gives us an opportunity to ask why the human couple emerged in evolution. Why did, the human species convert from a herd copulation of the type ‘everyone with everyone’ to a strictly isolated human couple? This was evidently due more to biological reasons, rather than social. The human baby, because of the dramatic evolution of brain capacity (enabled by so-called neoteny) became ever more fragile, whose maturing is prolonged to a length of time unseen in other species. Even after this time, parent supervision over their offsprings is not completely interrupted. This human being inevitably needs concentrated care; even a parent couple selfishly attached to him. In the stone-age herd he would never get this sort of attention. However, parent-couple’s scheme could work safely at the times of William Shakespeare, when life expectancy of his nearest family and himself was 36.3 years. But how can a delicate construction of couple cohabitation persist if life expectancy, for example in New Mexico in 1989, was already twice as high as that of Shakespeare's family, approaching 79.7 years? In the same year, the anticipated life expectancy of Japanese women was 81.8 years! There can be no doubt that these facts bring a major revision in the meaning and duration of the human couple. In the light of these developments, the words of M. Scott Peck, author of the bestselling ‘The Unexplored Way,’ gain a completely new tone:

“One of the most widespread myths is that we should be entirely happy with one man or one woman, that one man or one woman should give us the sense of life, and that fidelity should not be a problem... This is nonsense.”

This is particularly true of couples in United States. ”Sexual boredom is most pandemic dysfunction in this country,” says for The New York Times Magazine Judith Seifer, a sex-therapist and advice columnist.

It seems that even without Dr. Peck's advice American men and women were at the past looking for ways to, at least for a moment, escape the ‘lifetime marriage’. Sexual investigations as early as 1975 confirmed that only 48 per cent put their permanent partner on the first place as a lover. According to the already mentioned Cynthia and Samuel Janusov report a temporary fear of the AIDS pandemic of the early 90’s gained back 87 per cent of those who preferred their permanent partners. This led authors of the report to state that the “incidental love affair is now out of fashion”. Nevertheless, AIDS is no longer in the headlines, and the passion for adultery seems to be back. Or better said -- adultery was probably never out of fashion, although certainly there have been periods in the recent past where it was out of a fashion to confess it even anonymously.

(To be continued)

Translation by Peter Duba, edited by Jerry Weir and Tom Reynolds

Essay in English I

PASSABLE SEX FOR THE THIRD MILLENIUM?

(PART I)

Essay written in 2000

Andy Warhol said the best thing to do about sex is not to do it. Seemingly, Bill Clinton didn’t hear this wise advice, but he is definitely not the only one running occasionally into trouble because of the shifting barriers between our cultural limits and biological instincts. But what future presumptions or prognosis can we learn from the bubbling discussion about the position of sex in our culture and society?

If we accept that we are in literature already deeply in the post-modern period, and that in the social sciences we recognize even a post-feminist era, isn’t that over-typed Clinton-Lewinsky affair an example of the post-sexual revolution age?

In the fifties, humankind learned to have sex without children. In the seventies, people began to learn to have children without sex. The nineties indicate, that soon we will get used to sex without a partner.

THE EYES SAY ”YES, BUT...”

We live in a peculiar time. We are surrounded by erotic challenges, but not everybody has his extra study (or say, hallway to the bathroom, neither not very romantic places) behind one’s official workroom and secretary who is confidentially slipping one attractive visitor by another. On the contrary, the majority of the population has no time even to sigh for sexual adventures. It is no wonder then of British women-mothers that asked about their preferences to relieve stress, 60 per cent put a hot bath in the first place, while one out of four said a drink is the best cure, and sex ranked surprisingly third. Exhaustion of potential sexual partners caused by the every-day marathon of tasks is evident.

We are familiar with portrait of over-exhausted husband, who is always away from home. Also an emancipated woman is now coming to play this role. Will these two ever find the time and the power to enjoy a truly genuine sexual act? Let them run through their week of work duties and family stresses, the desired moment arrives for them to finally meet in bed. Here the next section of the hurdle track called “successful life” waits for them. The information boom has done its job and nowadays, couples making love are subject to a demand for a race of orgasms accompanied by complicated sexual gymnastics. The sex came to another stress in long list of another already appeared.

Already in 1991 The British Daily Mail published an article under the headline ‘Women at War’. The article was illustrated with two controversial photos of the same young woman. In one of the photos, she was in the role of a ‘career girl’, in the other; she was portrayed in the traditional female role or homemaker. Nowadays, the first girl apparently prevails. The fact that she has no time to bear and bring up children could have been expected. Statistic figures in the above-mentioned article show that four-out-of-five educated working women aged from 18 to 24 say they refuse to bear the responsibility for a family.

The sexual revolution of the 60‘s eradicated the first taboo of human culture, made nakedness a common-place, and turned the mystery of sex into a commercial that fills shops. Subsequently, feminists began an assault to free women of the burden of their traditional role, Betty Friedan says. But before the envisioned ideal could be reached, a problem appeared how to combine a professional career with the fact, that according to Friedan that “women are humans that give birth to children”. It has been shown, for example, that drug abuse among children rises with decreasing time they spend under their parents' watchful sight. This makes latch-key kids high-ranking candidates for narcotics use. A woman struggling for a career and at the same time, for a harmonious home, is subject to an inevitable series of problems. Along with her ever over-exhausted husband, she too became harnessed by that man-propelled mill of accelerating human civilization. Will these two ever find the time and the power to adorn with a truly genuine sexual act their cohabitation, which was established so long ago by the mythical prototype for human couples, Adam and Eve?

(To be continued)

Translation by Peter Duba, edited by Jerry Weir and Tom Reynolds