Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits http://justagwailo.com/node/5031/atom/feed 2007-03-09T21:44:21-08:00 The Evil and Secretly Desperate Hopelessness of the Panic Over Aging and Sex http://justagwailo.com/filter/2006/03/10/desperate-hopelessness 2006-03-10T02:07:31-08:00 2007-03-09T21:44:21-08:00 Richard Lakshmi Chaundry, reviewing Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life by Gail Sheehy: “The book can be silly, earnest and often insightful in turns, but Sheehy's downright scary when it comes to menopause, which she frames as an affliction to be fought by all medical means necessary. It's where she crosses the line between affirming the sexual needs of older women and insisting that they must have sex—lots of it—irrespective of their physical or personal inclinations. While Sheehy throws in some platitudes about platonic soul connections, she spends more time scolding married women who've lost interest in doing the deed.”
James G. Poulos comments on the article: “Chaudry is merely suggesting that the natural course of human life ought not be overthrown by the ideological enforcement of psychological and somatic scientific "remedies." "I think we can beat this thing called death," say the denizens of Posthuman Science. And on the way? Beating sexual death, of course, the worse kind. That Chaudry -- who has written for Ms., The Village Voice, Mother Jones, and Bitch, and co-authored The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq -- grasps the evil and secretly desperate hopelessness of the panic over aging and sex gives a glimmer of hope: that sane people of otherwise ardent difference can muster the rock-bottom appreciation for the fixed structures of civilizational order that will prevent our culture from continuing to lose its mind.”

]]> Lakshmi Chaundry, reviewing Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life by Gail Sheehy: “The book can be silly, earnest and often insightful in turns, but Sheehy's downright scary when it comes to menopause, which she frames as an affliction to be fought by all medical means necessary. It's where she crosses the line between affirming the sexual needs of older women and insisting that they must have sex—lots of it—irrespective of their physical or personal inclinations. While Sheehy throws in some platitudes about platonic soul connections, she spends more time scolding married women who've lost interest in doing the deed.”

James G. Poulos comments on the article: “Chaudry is merely suggesting that the natural course of human life ought not be overthrown by the ideological enforcement of psychological and somatic scientific "remedies." "I think we can beat this thing called death," say the denizens of Posthuman Science. And on the way? Beating sexual death, of course, the worse kind. That Chaudry -- who has written for Ms., The Village Voice, Mother Jones, and Bitch, and co-authored The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us about Iraq -- grasps the evil and secretly desperate hopelessness of the panic over aging and sex gives a glimmer of hope: that sane people of otherwise ardent difference can muster the rock-bottom appreciation for the fixed structures of civilizational order that will prevent our culture from continuing to lose its mind.”

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