I looked at a summary of my TMV posts over the past 2 years and I think I’ve been rehashing some ideas and talking points too often. I also noticed that when I (or other TMV writers) discussed matters of sex, we got the most cross-posts on other blogs and the most reactions from readers. Thus, let’s go back to everyone’s favorite subject: Sex.
I certainly hope deep down (and pray as only a Catholic agnostic can) that some of my dire political, economic and social predictions for the next 2 to 10 years do not occur. It would mean many innocent people would suffer greatly and that is never my wish for any innocent person. Now with those guilty ones, well….that’s a different wish entirely.
However, when it comes to sex – even at age 50 – it’s interesting to speculate on how things may look in a few years or decades. Fortunately I’m happily married to a pretty Latina (who has all her legal papers and who is a decade my junior) and we have a smart and wonderful 11-year-old boy who hasn’t started puberty. Over the past year, I only work part-time and my spouse’s income covers our basic living needs – talk about radical role reversals.
For the past year, barring a client meeting, I can wake up and go to sleep whenever I wish in Phoenix, much to the dismay of U.S. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona who thinks I’m hopelessly lazy. (Sherriff Joe would gladly deport me anywhere where there are lazy socialists collecting public benefits while discussing politics and sipping coffees in liberal cafés except for the fact that I’m a really “white” U.S. citizen. But being short and bearded I could be considered a potential terrorist.) I never qualified for any unemployment benefits having worked the past decade as a consultant (1099 independent contractor) or as an owner/manager of two start-up ventures that paid me in the same manner but financially quite well in the past that I actually paid income taxes. I must stop because I digress again from the most important subject of this post – sex.
Americans and people around the world have noticed major changes in how we view, conduct, and think about sex over the past few decades. Will prior trends continue as they have in the past? Will new trends emerge and what will they be? What current trends will be reversed? What are the unknown sexual unknowns? Or have we finally come to the point in western history that we have done absolutely everything sexual and now it is completely passé?
The relationships between men and women, men and men, women and women, and adults with children have been altered in ways we would not have predicted a few decades ago. This economic mess has produced long-term high levels of unemployment for men of all ages, and for both women and men over 45 and under 25. Women may have held onto jobs better over the past 3 years but the vast majority of them do not pay well since they are principally service sector positions with few benefits. (Many of these jobs were never held by men who arguably could have been significantly overpaid for the same work had they ever done such work.)
Among the bottom 50% of Americans, far more women are now the breadwinners of the households and that strains the relationships, including their sex lives of those still married. Unfortunately almost 50% of Americans pay no income taxes because they collectively earn less than 10% of all incomes paid and they own only 1% of all property and assets in the U.S. – Senator Kyl is fuming even more about all those good-for-nothing lazy Americans.
However, more people remain single or have become single as a result of divorce than at any time in our history. More than 21% of American children are now living below the Federal Poverty Level that was established back in the 1960’s – it would look worse if we used real life numbers from 2010. If we talk about Blacks and Latinos, the numbers are even more depressing. Again, this is all too boring and it really doesn’t directly concern what everyone wants to read about – Sex.
Those entities who have controlled domain names on the Internet since its inception have finally decided to put all the sex and pornographic sites in one place: dot xxx. Perhaps we won’t be just 3 or 4 clicks from explicit porn when typing in “astrophysics,” “entropy,” “environmental degradation,” or “Al Gore.” So now that about 30% of the Internet will be segregated under a new area, what’s left? Even Playboy Enterprises is up for sale and its only money-making division is Internet porn which tells us everything about Print Media in 2010.
I don’t think that the 1996 Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) will be repealed anytime soon but the judicial system might find it unconstitutional. Legalizing same-sex marriage on a state-by-state basis will not change the overriding impact of DOMA. We’re going to be arguing about gay marriage bitterly for another decade as this is great for fundraising among conservative political and religious organizations – even better than abortion.
I would prefer that most of our laws and public benefits – if any are left after the Tea-partiers have their say about them – be based upon an individual’s right to receive them – not because of the existence of any straight or gay marriage. Perhaps arguing for polygamy and polyandry might make one-on-one gay marriages preferable to the majority of opponents – though some conservatives argue that gay marriage will open the floodgates to accepting more extreme relationships. Moderation in sex is beyond most humans.
What people post on Facebook, text and email to each other, and dump all over the Internet, particularly to do with their antics while wearing their birthday suits in various states of inebriation and drug-induced liberty, probably has killed any notion that individuals have any remaining privacy rights. The expansive anti-terrorist and security laws put into place after 9/11/01 have also done their part to reduce individual liberty, autonomy and privacy. Dozens of Federal Regulatory and Security employees all over Washington DC will happily watch a tall, bearded, middle-aged man of Saudi Arabian descent over a period of several years having sex with various women, men and farm animals on the Internet before someone notices that the guy looks a lot like Osama Ben Laden and he’s living and filming his weekly sex-charades from an artificial cave set located in Cleveland, Ohio.
More and more people of all sexual persuasions will move quickly through intimate sex relations, multiple relations, and give little thought to others beyond their own selfish needs. Due to ever-widening gaps in wealth and income, certain people will become celibate at the bottom end of the economic system since they bring no economic value to any relationship and they are undesirable on many levels as sex partners.
Those at the top end of the economic spectrum will see more and more available and willing sexual partners due to their immense economic power and the desperate living needs of former middle-class Americans joining the ranks of the poor. I again bring up one of my favorite persons in 2009 – Tiger Woods – as a perfect example of the likely future normative sex life for many members of our completely corrupt oligarchy.
We will see more de-facto harems with both wealthy men and women having multiple sex and companionship partners because they can simply support more people’s basic needs for food, shelter and bathroom facilities. And as our economy continues to collapse, deflation will set in, and the price for sex will also decline at all levels.
Most people will not have precious metals, farm products or other goods and services that will carry much value – and there is a limit of what you can sexually with a bar of gold. As a result, sex might become the new “bartered” currency for large numbers of Americans who have no incomes or assets. Instead of joking about it, getting upset about it, or discussing it anymore, sex for goods and services might become a normal part of life – probably returning humans beings to our origins.
We’re all going to have to abandon our restrictive and silly feelings of jealousy and desires for monogamy in the future unless the two people are too ugly and poor for anyone else. Senator Kyl and other conservatives might agree to legalize and tax sex only if lazy poor people will principally pay those taxes – and as a precondition for such support, sex for the wealthy will become a simple business deduction that would reduce taxable income. Thus a new tax cut for the wealthy would be partially paid offset by a corresponding tax increase on the poor – though you really don’t need such offsets to provide tax cuts for the wealthy.
Marriage will become a rarified institution – as it has been moving towards that state for several decades. Very few people will engage in the ritual or be covered by it – mainly due to economic considerations but also due in part to pervasive selfishness, narcissism, greed, ignorance, laziness, and short-sightedness that will run rampant throughout society for the foreseeable future. TV series such as swapping spouses and a wealthy single person choosing a partner will finally become real and include sex with all the participants – including the production crew.
More and more people will realize they are bi-sexual, not only for genetic, hormonal, social and personal entertainment reasons, but for basic economic considerations as well. Contemporaneously every sexual encounter between individuals will have less and less meaning and become more and more just passing diversions because sex will be completely uncoupled from all the silly old notions of love, romance, courtship, marriage and having children.
“Rape” will exist as a criminal or civil charge only if the opposite-sex perpetrator refuses to pay for the sexual component. Much of American life has degenerated into “It’s just business in that I f**ked you before you could f**k me.”
Video Games will become more and more realistic and include group sex among adults and all sorts of imaginative furry creatures with multiple new orifices – and you can bet teenagers will engage in the same computerized role playing when their parents are away from home. The disturbing trend of dehumanizing people and mixing excessive violence with simulated sex will continue unabated in all our forms of Media.
We won’t need Japanese robots for sex since real human beings will be far cheaper and act just the same way in most cases. Many of the wealthiest 2% of Americans consider the other 98% in the U.S. as completely disposable. They have billions of Chinese, Indians and third-world people to exploit without any minimum wages or adequate legal protections to stop them.
We may see more blended families of say 4 to 8 adults and a similar number of children, all living in suburban McMansions they bought at foreclosure prices. With 25% of Americans now having completely trashed credit ratings (and millions more to join them in a few years) and banks requiring higher down payments and credit scores to get loans and mortgages, more and more people will have to combine households just to survive. If those new households also include friendships with sexual benefits among all the adults in these new groupings – that might be the necessary “glue” to keep them all together for the long haul.
Our very wealthy demigods might be issued “Romin’ Roman” cards entitling each of them to 3 free sexual assaults or rapes with both minors and adults. Those who don’t use them could sell them to other demigods who happen to exceed their limits – and another form of profitable derivative trading will emerge on Wall Street. These cards would only be available to the wealthy – not to just any plebian or mere mortals.
Alternatively, we might just lower the age of consent to 13 and then as a society just forget about the consequences as we are in complete denial of most everything wrong in our country. All teenagers have to eat and they need cell phones – and most of their parents won’t have meaningful incomes to support them anyway. (The wonderful invisible hand of the free market will ultimately take care of all of them.)
I’m sure TMV readers and other TMV contributors might have other interesting ideas on where sex will be going over the next few years. Just as the economy plays out, it won’t be very pretty.
Submitted by Marc Pascal, happily ranting in Phoenix, AZ. I’m actually happy that it is finally raining in central Phoenix as I write this post. I did NOT vote to re-elect the complete imbecile Jon Kyl to the U.S. Senate in 2006 and I might just run against him in 2012 as a flaming moderate independent with absolutely no financial support whatsoever. What have I got to lose?