I haven’t responded to the Santa Barbara killing spree because, tragic as it is, what is there to say? This stuff is non-news. Projections are that next year there will be more people killed by guns in the United States than are killed by auto accidents. The perpetrator suffered from Asperger syndrome, which in part is about a lack of empathy. So we have mental illness and weapons coming together again in a poisonous cocktail that left 7 dead and 13 wounded. And the reaction of the only people who matter (the NRA): see it wasn’t just guns; the kid used knives. Cliff Schecter destroys such arguments, “Of course, to the family of a victim, one stabbing death is too many. But clearly knives can’t kill as impersonally, as many, as fast or as at far a distance. Which might be why there haven’t been presidents knifed from book depositories (or grassy knolls, whatever your preference), there aren’t drive-by knifings, and we didn’t storm Omaha Beach throwing knives.”
So really, I’m not all that interested in the subject. Some time back, Jason Jones did a great segment on The Daily Show where he went to Colorado to find out why state representatives were thrown out of office for voting for highly popular and minor gun regulations. What it showed was that the people who want to make public carry of bazookas legal all went to the polls to vote these popular representatives out. The people who supported the representatives didn’t show up to vote. That’s not just a problem with gun rights; that’s a problem with everything in this country. If everyone voted, we would have a far better, more just, and richer country. But they don’t so what are we going to do?
But Jaclyn Friedman wrote an interesting take on the situation over at Time, What’s Desperately Needed in Sex Education Today. While quite aware of all of the other issues involved in the Santa Barbara tragedy, she noted that our screwed up sex education programs exacerbated the situation and also do so in much less lethal ways. She says that when we teach kids about sex, we try to downplay the most important aspect of it: it is pleasurable. She noted, “When we don’t expect sex to be a mutually satisfying experience shared by two people, it leaves us vulnerable to some truly poisonous alternative ideas, including the stubborn myth that sex is a precious commodity that men acquire from women.”
I was especially impressed with this sentence, “What if instead young men like [the murderer] could grow up learning that sex is about communication, not consumption, and that being a man has nothing to do with your number.” It reminds me of a discussion I had with a woman a very long time ago about kinky sex. She dismissed my insights into it because I had had only a handful of lovers and she had had something like a hundred. But I pointed out that people only get really creative about sex after they’ve been having sex with the same person for a while. One night stands are almost always very straightforward affairs. She yielded the question, because she saw from her own life that that was true.
Yes, we really do have screwed up ideas about sex. I don’t know a man who doesn’t know with fair accuracy exactly how many lovers he has had. But no one knows how many times they’ve had sex. This is because men see a woman allowing them to have sex with them as a vote that they are worthy. It’s actually a silly idea. In my experience, if you want to have sex with a lot of women, you don’t need to be Don Juan; you just need to come on to a lot of different women and be okay with being turned down. In the novel Reuben, Reuben, Gowan McGland discusses how he determined that if he made a pass at pretty much every woman, one in three would lead to sex. It’s like cold calling: you make the calls and a certain percentage will accept your offer.
I don’t offhand know how many women I’ve slept with, but I can figure it out by just going through my life. There haven’t been that many. But I do remember certain sexual experiences. None of what I remember is coitus or any of the other aspects of sex. What I remember are the feelings that I had being with that woman. Most of those are very pleasant memories, but some are unpleasant memories of alienation. But it is a dance and it can make you feel close or very alone.
This isn’t to say that I was or am some kind of great lover. From my many conversations with men, I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds. There are guys who make the sex all about themselves and guys who make it all about the woman. (I don’t know if this is an issue for homosexual couples.) When I was younger, I was certainly in the second camp. But over time, I came to see it as extremely narcissistic. I always felt like I was playing a fine violin, and as a result, I didn’t allow her to give back to me as much as the best women wanted to. There’s also a control aspect of it that is not pretty.
But I think it is better to start with the idea that a woman is a fine musical instrument that you would like to make sing than to think of her as a sexual device for your pleasure. But either approach could lead to mature sexual relationships. In the case of this murderer, he was 22. Why are they always around this age? It is the age that psychosis comes on. He wasn’t diagnosed with it, but I wonder. Regardless, as Friedman put it:
As someone who spends a lot of time with college students discussing their sexual attitudes, none of that surprises me. It’s just an extension of the constant message men receive that they’re only men if they can “get some,” and equally ubiquitous warnings to women about the dangers of “giving it up” without a real commitment, because (we’re told) our sexual purity is the most valuable thing we have.
And it isn’t. Sex itself isn’t. There’s a good article in Forbes that quotes the best data available indicating that only 13% of internet searches are for porn. Other than for brief periods of my life, I can’t imagine spending 13% of my life on sex. But that probably doesn’t speak well of me. Sex in its best forms is something that should be a major part of one’s life. But for our murderer, I don’t think sex was so much about “getting it” as “getting off.” And that strikes me as a rather easy thing to do all by yourself. No one knows your body like you do.
And that brings us back to mental illness and easy availability of weapons, especially guns. Because this murderer was focused on sex, but it could have been anything. It could have been Obama’s birth certificate. What makes one go from obsession to murder? I agree with Friedman: we need better sex education and as a culture we need to be able to talk about it like adults. But my thinking about the issue of murder sprees has not changed in the last year and a half, Guns Cheap, Mental Health Expensive.
Afterword
Those thoughts of wanting sex to be about you or about her are really one step away. I think the total focus on the woman is just saying, “You let me possess you, now let me show that you were right to do so!” And of course, for the young lover, regardless his intentions, the execution is usually lacking. My point is (if it isn’t clear above) that both are sexually immature.