Dear Editors

Time and time again, feminist talk about sex betrays the influence of homophobic and sexist assumptions that cling to us and of which we're not aware. Ruth Hubbard's “There Is No ‘Natural' Human Sexuality” (April, 1985) betrays this process. After quite accurately describing the biases of contemporary “sex” education, she proceeds to a surprisingly destructive series of inaccuracies and illogic.

First, to erase any distinction between sexual desire and affection serves nothing but an anti-sexual attitude already far too prevalent. In our cultural tradition women have been taught for centuries (or have retreated into the idea as an illusory protection against male sexual exploitation) that sex is love – or ought to be – and that sexual appetite uncontrolled by love is, by its very nature, exploitative, cruel, mechanical, or debased. In such a situation the simple observation that sexual arousal is a basic biological appetite, varying in strength in people and varying in what can evoke it but still not interchangeable with affection, emotional intimacy or “sensuality” like having one's back rubbed or hair stroked, still seems to send many of us into a flurry of defense. Some women insist that emotional intimacy is the only permissible cue for desire, some argue that “long-term relationships” are morally privileged, and some – like Ruth Hubbard – simply use the terms “love”, “sexuality,” and “affectional relationship” as if they were interchangeable.

Those who can honor both desire and affection may satisfy their sexual appetites inside a love relationship or outside, or do both, but they know that the different hungers, sometimes mingling (in some people, at some time) and sometimes separate (in some people, at some time) are capable of all sorts of combinations, and are not identical or necessarily fused. Nor, excluding coercion and violence, is one form of sexual satisfaction morally privileged over others.

And what on earth is so wrong with that?

It seems that for many of us it's so wrong it still mustn't be perceived even when it falsifies the facts. For example, Hubbard's citation of Kinsey is totally incorrect. Kinsey never said, in his research, that we can love people of either sex. In fact, his restricting his research to genital acts leading to orgasm (not “love”) was used by many critics of the day to pronounce his statistics invalid.