Sexidemic by Samuel Lawrence R.;

Author:Samuel, Lawrence R.; [Samuel, Lawrence R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

5

Indecent Proposal

Think of it. A million dollars. A lifetime of security . . . for one night.

—John Gage (Robert Redford) offering $1 million to sleep with David Murphy’s (Woody Harrelson’s) wife in the 1993 film Indecent Proposal

In February 1993, the National Center for Men, a Brooklyn-based organization, issued a “Consensual Sex Contract” for men to protect themselves against false accusations of rape. “Whereas, the parties to this agreement want to be sexually intimate, but also want to avoid the misunderstandings that sometimes occur after sex,” the contract (titled “Agreement before Lovemaking”) began, followed by a number of declarations for a couple to check off. “By signing this contract, we acknowledge that the anticipated sexual experience will be of mutual consent,” the agreement (which was included in a press release to the media) concluded, after the terms of the forthcoming act were laid out clearly as a preventative measure.1 Administrators at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, meanwhile, were especially concerned about sexual encounters that one party considered to be unwanted or inappropriate. “All sexual contact and conduct between any two people must be consensual,” the college’s “Sexual Offense Prevention and Survivors’ Advocacy Program” began, with the act requiring a series of verbal consents as it became more intimate. “If one person wants to initiate moving to a higher level of sexual intimacy in an interaction, that person is responsible for getting the verbal consent of the other person(s) involved before moving to that level,” the rule specified; a student almost had to be a prelaw major to understand the required sequence of the act.2

As the title of Indecent Proposal, a movie that came out precisely when consensual sex agreements were first making the rounds, suggested, sexuality in America had become an area of society fraught with moral and possibly legal hazards. The sexual revolution of a generation earlier seemed like a distant memory as an array of social and political events reshaped the landscape of sex in America. AIDS had much to do with this new, more defensive view of sex, of course, as the death of thousands of Americans from the disease over the past decade imbued sexuality with a palpable sense of danger. The 1990s would clearly demonstrate Americans’ ambiguous feelings toward sex as many struggled with how to negotiate desire within a climate of fear and distrust. A series of sex scandals in the late nineties, one involving the most powerful man in the world, illustrated that the rich and powerful were hardly immune to this struggle. The battle over sex education also would show how contentious the issue of sexuality was, especially with regard to young people. Sexual dysfunction would rise from already high levels to what some experts considered to be a “pandemic,” making the introduction of a little blue pill nothing short of revolutionary. Another revolution was redrawing the contours of sex, as the personal computer and Internet brought every kind of fantasy imaginable into the privacy and comfort of one’s own home. As

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