Good Sex Illustrated by Tony Duvert

Author:Tony Duvert
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Gay Studies, Essays, Social Science
ISBN: 9781584350439
Publisher: Semiotext(e)
Published: 2007-11-14T13:00:00+00:00

I admit that this photo disturbed me the first time I saw it in the handbook for 10–13-year-olds. No matter how well I knew that neither decorated doctors, parents of schoolchildren nor homosexuals-who-want-to-marry-before-God have little liking for pedophiles (who do so much harm to these three worthy social categories), I never would have expected that in 1973 we’d dig up such an old scarecrow, a boogeyman so moth-eaten and pathetic. Maybe it will become a sign of the endearing period that produced the mentality of those who are reviving it, for the edification of today’s children. But of course, Dad believes in it.

In any case, if this image doesn’t represent any real human being, it still has some reality in the “collective unconscious” of the middle class: because it personifies Evil, Sex and the Other. I’d believed that this trinity of a god-demon was dead—but yet again, what the priests have abandoned, medicine hangs on to.

We are at the end of the book, at the moment of the great putting on guard that follows all lessons in French liberty. Immediately after the condemnation of the masturbatory 0%, and before the book concludes with the happiness of the family (running wildly in the fields, a double-page photo): They have put down the book, and all four have gone to feel the cool grass under their bare feet. Turn the page and see their joy! In passing, we will make note of this eulogy to an elitist pleasure: for middle class people who have some grass in the country are the same ones who prohibit less lucky children with or without shoes who don’t leave the city from walking on the lawns of public parks. Can’t they understand that happiness isn’t trampling the grass that you find but working well and obeying well so that you can buy some for yourself and surround it with a lovely picket fence?

I had the feeling that this succession of images, the-horrible-man-in-the-park-tragedy and the well-neutered-family-happiness had something tendentious about it. It resembled the other complex of information: contraception-nasty-condom preceding the avalancheof lovely babies and the long dialogues about pregnancy-reward. All in all, it seemed as if it were proving a bit too well, and even a little too much, that sex education doesn’t exactly have the intentions it claims to, but rather those I was saying it has. The text that accompanies the horrible photo, and which I will barely comment upon, passes onto some full confessions. See for yourself:

Dad searches the two young faces as if he were trying to guess something. Then he quietly asks a burning question:

“Have you already encountered any exhibitionists?”

“Any what?”

“Men who hang around primary schools and high schools, for example, and show their penis by sneakily and a bit shamefully opening their coat.” Jean nods:

“I saw one in the park. I got scared and looked away. I was all alone and he hid himself before showing his open fly. Is it a sickness?”

“These men aren’t dangerous. They obviously had some problems when they were children.

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