I think a lot of people would agree that Dan Savage is a modern Kinsey of sorts: He's a contested public figure drawing conclusions about sex and love by listening to people's personal stories.
In fact, I think Savage would welcome the comparison, as he frequently alludes to Kinsey in his widely syndicated sex column "Savage Love."
Perhaps most notably, Savage started the Rick Santorum smear campaign "Spreading Santorum" and is a co-founder of the It Gets Better Project, an effort to support LGBTIQ teens with stories and YouTube videos from queer adults. He's also buddies with Ira Glass—that's right, from NPR.
An anecdote from Savage's work relates to an interesting (and fine, probably fake) question I received in my SU box. Savage said that the strangest question he'd ever gotten was from a man who married his horse.
It got stranger when the man explained himself: Sure, a horse can't say "yes" or "I do"—but he assures Savage that a "no" from a horse (presumably a kick in the face) is unmistakable.
Happy "Consent is Sexy" week, I guess. In the end, Savage innocently asks, "What gender is the horse?" and the man is deeply offended. The man is not, he assures everyone, "a homosexual."
Obvious craziness aside, I want to think honestly about what makes us (almost all of us) incredibly uncomfortable with this stuff—with animals even getting awkardly near our sex lives. So here's the much tamer question I got:
Dear Dr. Kinsey,
I've been sleeping with someone for a while, and my problem with the relationship is that my cat likes to watch us have sex. And we don't like it. What should we do?
Cats Are Turn-offs
Sincere thanks for your creative question, CAT, but I'm sorry I don't have a great deal to offer you in the way of advice. I think you should have sex elsewhere. I mean, that seems easier than getting rid of your cat, right? Seriously, that's all I've got.
What's really strange is how universal your experience and aversion is. Obviously your cat isn't a creepy voyeur: it's probably spacing out, or genuinely fascinated and baffled by what you're doing with your clothes off.
If a pet catches you in flagrante delicto, or (more complicatedly) a child walks into your bedroom and sees something he or she shouldn't, what's behind our almost unanimous revulsion to this near cliché of "getting walked in on"?
Sexuality, we tell ourselves, is reserved for (consenting) adults, but is our private world of sex really as private as we hope? CAT, your cat doesn't know what you're doing, but when someone or something violates our ideal of "privacy," we imagine we see some judgment or voyeuristic pleasure in its invasive gaze.
Even when another adult walks in on us—having sex, being naked, masturbating—our reaction is usually a feeling of violation.
I'm saying this is probably projection: that maybe we project our own shame or pleasure (or probably both) into those prying eyes.
To be specific: they're our emotions, not our cats' emotions. A strange way to prove the point is to note that a lot of people are incredibly turned-on by public sex (maybe you've seen them).
They've found and harnessed real pleasure in the complicated emotions—revulsion, shame, excitement—that "getting caught" confers.
But getting away from theory and back to your problem, CAT, what seems most frustrating about interrupted sex is that (we think) it loses its "sexiness."
Here, the deeper problem is discomfort—that nervous feeling that sex absolutely requires "the right mood" (read: no cats).
Maybe it does, and everyone probably feels this way at some point or another. But sex is frequently awkward and interrupted—and sometimes not incredibly sexy to begin with—and the sooner and more deftly we deal with it the better.
This issue of "killing the mood" becomes much more serious when the perceived "interruption" is the act of getting consent.
Frankly that's why I sometimes have a problem with the "Consent is Sexy" campaign.
Consent can be sexy, of course, but it's not required to be sexy—it's just required.
If you need to interrupt the mood to get on the same page, interrupt it. Get past the moment—if it's weird—with a laugh.
Whether you ask for or give consent with sexiness and poise, or whether you might as well have put a stray cat in the room, consent is just part of sex.
Sex is sexy, and consent is its necessary, sometimes awkward and unsexy starting point. In fact, consent (sexy or not) is part of sex—just as much as awkwardness can be.