Strip Tisdale

One woman's trip to the sex zone

Just as we can thank Hollywood for teaching us about killing but nothing about death, so too can we thank the sexual "revolution" of the 60s for teaching us everything about screwing but very little about sex. What is it? Why do people get into such a state over it? And how come so many people chose to do it with Jack Nicholson? One thing that's for sure is that the hippies were way off when they declared that getting your kit off and getting it on was in some way revolutionary; on the contrary, sex has become just another industry, a sleazy way for cheesy businessmen to make easy money.

The sex industry is the one issue which divides feminists. No sister, no matter how playfully postmodern, is against equal pay or day care. But get below the belt and we're back at nyah-nyah grade school: the flirts against the nerds, the rah-rahs against the no-nos. Men have always loved a catfight, and the new, "sexy" postfeminism certainly makes sure they have a ringside seat: see Pugilist Paglia pound Sexy Shere Hite, watch Catty Katie Roiphe cream Cool Cathy MacKinnon.

Sal lie Tisdale's new book, Talk Dirty to Me (Doubleday) —great title, like a Barry White concept album—lines up squarely, if not altogether fairly, with the strident pro-sex contingent; her philosophy, like Paglia's, is hippie-with-ahaircut. Make love, not war! Love the one you're with! It is the remixed, long-playing version of an essay of the same name which apparently caused a real stir when published in Harper's Magazine two years ago; in it, Miss Tisdale admitted to using pornography when the moon was full and the cupboard (or something) was bare, and thus caused a great wringing of hands and canceling of subscriptions (well, 30) all across America. This wanton woman, it transpired, had begun to read books such as Story of O in her late 20s. I'm afraid at this point I too was shocked quite speechless— where I come from, we'd all done O at 12.

Like the Puritan nation she comes from, and whose sexual attitudes she roundly condemns, Tisdale is exceedingly earnest and evangelical throughout her whistle-stop tour of the shallow end of the sex industry (if it's Monday, it must be Massage Parlor). Similarly, despite her excursions to sex clubs, pom emporiums, and "sex toy" shops, any putative fiance need not fret over Tisdale's paucity of inner purity; any woman who can state,

hopefully, that "the center will not hold ... if radical sexuality works" is as inherently innocent as a newborn babe. Tisdale enters each desolate sex-industry scenario with all the gung-ho positivism of an Avon Lady bent on seeing the best side of a leper colony, while H.I.V. rages through the great cities of America like a forest fire made flesh, but you have to acknowledge, if not admire, her nerve and eccentricity.

But ultimately this is a sad book, for all its look-at-me libertarianism. The pioneers of sexual freedom dreamed of a world where pleasure was exchanged for the sake of pleasure between consenting adults; pro-sex-industry "feminists" speak with an older, fatalistic voice, which opines that "decent" women do not do interesting sex but that a certain subclass of women can be paid to endure it. They are not pro-sex at all, but pro-everything that keeps men and women sexual strangers, that privatizes and profits from their loneliness.

The increasing acceptability of commercial sex has brought with it not sexual happiness but rather increasing numbers of men who just do not need complicated, time-consuming relationships with real women when they can get a no-sweat handjob, be it from their hand or someone else's. Pornography certainly isn't the cause of women's disadvantage and dismay; Tisdale is right about that. But pornography's smug, oppressive presence crosses the t's and dots the Vs of their vulnerability and fatigue. Escaping it by embracing it seems defeatist in the extreme, not to mention aesthetically grotesque—a nation of haggard masturbators, stuck forever in adolescence even as their bodies wither and rot. Is this really what women want? "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" was always a dubious rule to live by; "If you can't beat 'em, beat off" seems even sadder.

JULIE BURCHILL