But as time has passed since my visit, I've been sitting here and I keep going back to thoughts about the museum.
I finally pin-pointed why I kept thinking about it.
The Museum of Sex isn't about sex, which is probably what made the visit so damn great. While the gift shop was all fun and good and sexy, the museum itself was exactly what it markets itself as: a museum that catalogs history, evolution and cultural significance of sexuality.And it wasn't what it was about so much as how it handled itself. Planet Fitness could learn a few things about a judgement-free zone from this place. Gay, straight, transgender, asexual, prudish, kinkish - everything was represented in a way that allowed discussion, not hate.
Maybe it's because it's a museum.
But it got me thinking about the YA community and how we handle topics like sex. I've talked about slut-shaming and there have been a few posts on sexual orientation (or lack thereof) floating around the blogosphere. But for the most part, it's something that's heavily avoided talking about in both the blogosphere and stories itself.
For the stories, it's because sex and sexuality in stories is a hard selling point. People claim LBGT stories don't sell as well or that there's a smaller market. People can claim asexual stories won't sell because the audience 'needs' romance. (Asexual doesn't mean aromantic, but hey, ignorance is ignorance.) Bloggers don't talk about sex because... it's taboo? Because they don't want people to... I don't know.
Like it or not, it's a topic that isn't discussed in the YA community often, partly because it IS so taboo in the YA community.
And that leads to a question: why?
It's the question that the Museum of Sex leads to in every exhibit. Why is sex, in our culture, the way it is? Why do proclamations of Heterosexual White Men from A Hundred Years Ago still affect how we think today? Why does internet culture hide behind anonymous searches to fulfill kinks? Why do people refuse to acknowledge sex and yet have it on a daily basis?
Why does the YA community not acknowledge that teenagers can be sexual creatures? Or cannot be sexual creatures? That the culture in a fantasy world can be different than one in our contemporary setting when it comes to what is normal and what isn't? Why do we avoid mentioning it as a whole, unless it's to shame a character for having sex or for calling a character a prude when they don't kiss the boy?
Why are we so afraid of our own bodies, thoughts, minds?
Why?
I do not apologize for this controversial post, nor do I apologize for visiting such an awesome museum. In fact, I recommend visiting if you're ever in NYC. Just remember that you have to be over 18. (And if you're a student, you get a discount!)
I think this is largely an American issue. Just north of our border you can find full frontal on cable TV. Over in Europe nudity is par for the course. I went to the sex museum in Amsterdam. You can imagine how that worked out! We probably had to very different sex museum experiences. But Americans are absolutely taught that sex is a shameful thing. Pre-marital sex is something to hide, masturbation is a no-no, ABSTINENCE ONLY! We are also a heavily Christian nation which I think plays a major role in sexuality. On the whole, we're a bunch of prudes. I don't consider myself prudish but I was shocked by how open sexuality is in Europe and the things that I saw, not because I was offended but because it's their normal. They're not ashamed of themselves.
ReplyDeleteI think this is buried in our Puritan roots (I mean, c'mon, CT JUST got rid of their blue laws a few weeks ago, literally) and because religion is so prominent it's going to play a role in our society. Hollywood sexualized everything but everything else shames it. Talk about conflicting messages. We need to get over it. The more people know about their bodies, the SAFER they are, not more at risk.
Ditto ditto ditto!
DeleteSex in YA is a tricky thing, no doubt. But we do wish more authors would tackle it with maturity and courage.
On the flipside, Americans seem to tolerate -- or heck, ENJOY -- violence in fiction, even fiction for young people. That's something the rest of the world doesn't really understand either. (We did a post on sex vs. violence in YA a while back... http://www.weheartya.com/2012/06/discussion-and-poll-on-sex-vs-violence.html)
The topic sex comes up a lot in my YA Book Club on goodreads. Is sex good in a book, bad? Should we just avoid talking about it. Very interesting. Plus I have always wanted to go to that museum!
ReplyDeleteAngie
I think a lot of the problem, at least in terms of writing different sexual orientations, is that straight main characters are the "default" and it's hard to write about a non-default orientation without it looking like that's a major part of what your book is about. So if you don't want your main character's sexual orientation to play a major part in the story, it's a lot easier to write a straight main character. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately, because I would love to write about an asexual character, with a romantic subplot from the perspective of a character who doesn't want or need sex, but don't want to write a book ABOUT asexuality. I know there must be a way to do it, but I haven't figured it out yet.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of cultural... twitchiness, for lack of a better word... involved, too. I read a book recently that I thought stuck much closer to modern values than made sense for the book's world (the main characters were fighting for a return to the modern world's sexual values, when that didn't make any sense for the world the book took place in), and when I went to see if this was mentioned in the Amazon reviews, I found a bunch of reviewers who were offended because the book didn't stick closely ENOUGH to modern sexual values.
I do want to thank you for including asexuality in this discussion; most of the time when this topic comes up, at least from what I've seen, it's mainly about how characters in YA aren't sexual enough and this doesn't reflect the way real teenagers are. It's not as simple as that. Some teenagers are a lot more sexual than your average YA heroine, some are a lot less sexual, some have fetishes, some would like the sexy mysterious boy to be a sexy mysterious girl instead... but authors tend to stick to the defaults, because it's safer and easier that way. (And I'm guilty of this too. It's why I've been trying to figure out how to move beyond the defaults without turning those aspects into the focus of the book.)