The Re-enchantment of Sex:
reappraisal of a “rapist” erotic myth
and a world of animal delight
How did sex ever get so unsexy?
A collection of dreary “dating books” from the beginning of the new
century inspired a heartfelt protest from at least one
reviewer1–a
plea that we “allow magic to reign lest we color the world gray,” along
with a cry for “intelligent reappraisals of romantic love” and a lament
that the “dearth of commanding commentary gives audience to
idiots.” Bold words!
I applaud them . . . but wonder if it isn’t time for reappraisal of a more
suspect and yet more magical realm: the mine-laden intersection of
love and lust, i.e., of civilization and savagery (and I think we need them both.)
This site takes a shot at it; thus,
I explore through power-laden ballads of erotic encounter a
myth of magically strong lovemaking, the celebration not of rape but
of rapture. My starting point is the ballad of the lady and the lusty
smith or “The Twa Magicians” (no typo here, “twa” is simply Scots for
“two”) -- a ballad sometimes seen as “rapist,” though on both sides
of its applauded action, and in ballads sharing much the same erotic
assumptions, women of extraordinary energy and wilfulness play
starring roles. In these ballads, the celebration of masterful male
force and female “defeat” as part of a core sexual mystery does not
appear to be in any way a celebration of female degradation, but of
something more interesting and altogether more life-affirming.
The larger context for my project is an erotically heightened
world of spontaneous animal delight (the so-called “pastoral”) which
polite society has long taken for man's domain, woman
entering it only as hapless object-of-desire. Its special focus is the
cocky virgin, whose contradictory sexual feelings (betrayed in flaunted
sexual resistance) seem to me both natural and a vital part of the
applauded erotic narrative.
In realistic terms, my defense of this animal world and its
warrior values doesn’t mean that I dismiss rape or the anguish of real
rape victims (and any man who thinks I am encouraging “pushiness”
should skip to my “Pastoral Misadventure” for a sobering reality
check). It’s just that I see both sexes normally having good
reason to avoid any such ugly conflict—that, as balladry suggests and
my own unsought field experience confirms, the pastoral “power
problem” is sometimes a problem of sexual theatre which an
image-conscious age mistakes for (and may well convert to)
oppressive reality.
It’s also a problem, historically and in polite literature, of
pastoral “enclosure”—a myth of sexual enchantment turning indeed
to the shape of oppression as the “feminine” is both elevated and
enervated. Privileged polite “femininity” has thus come to mean
something more fragile, more fearful and naturally more prone to
victimhood than its folk counterpart. Moreover, in the grip of this
misconstrued and much enfeebled myth, radical cultural feminism
invests an act most women want to approve with a
meaning—sex-as-rape—they cannot possibly approve. For
heterosexual women of an ideological bent it cannot be a happy
state of affairs.
Click here for a personal introduction to the project, or to
jump right into the ballads, go to:
This site is under perpetual reconstruction.
Click here to comment. Or for a less scholarly site, with the
roots of both "misadventure" and "magic" pages embedded in footloose
foreign travel which I'd like to think I undertook in the spirit of my favorite
ballad heroines,click here. I
call it Leavetaking