L'esprit de escalier, Part 1

[vinnie_tesla]

Last week, a co-worker popped into the room where a bunch of us were gathered. "You know what I've noticed?" she announced to the group. "The kind of people who go to nudist colonies or swinger's parties are never actually attractive people." Having fired off her bon mot, she ran off on another errand

Comments

[doomtart]

For unsexy people--fat people, old people, funny-looking people, disabled people--to even feel sexual desire is inappropriate, perverse, disgusting. For them to engage in sexual display is offensive.* For them to have sex...well, there oughta be a law.

I (we) have been getting this attitude in spades since I hit my mid-40's (my husband is in his 50's). While waiting in a coffee shop my husband, who was standing behind me, put his arms around me and kissed the top of my head, a young couple nearby proclaimed that we were disgusting and too old to act like that. Even amongst friends who are in the same general age group we are viewed as an anomaly as we are still quite affectionate and still have (frequent) sex; there is a general 'you should be beyond all that by now' attitude.

Not only that, but it seems that when you get older and you're still actively kinky (as in bdsm, fetish, bi, etc) you are now creepy; young kinky is sexy, old kinky is creepy.

It's funny, the first swingers I ever met was in 1979/80. A co-worker was a member of The Ranch in Chatsworth, CA. She was in her mid-40's, as were the majority of the others; it was the generation who missed the sexual revolution of the 60's and were now making up for lost time.

Youth and beauty does not equate Good in Bed; time and experience makes a good lover.

[vinnie_tesla]

In a coffeeshop, your husband kissed the top of your head, and someone came over and scolded you?? I would be speechless with indignation at that arrogance. Then I would come home and do really pissy postings on my journal. Rinse, repeat.

Your point about age and kink is very true, and part of the same pattern. Pictures of unpretty people having sex (especially kinky sex) are often responded to with comments like "that's just wrong!" I feel like there's even a competitive element--like people vie to be the most disgusted. I suppose repudiating the ugly people is supposed to sort of magically increas your own prettiness. Or something.