You quickly clicked on this article. You looked at that question and answered some questions related to gender, feminism, sexuality, biological essentialism, and you were about to write a brutal comment, weren’t you?
This is not a question I ask, however. In fact, that’s the first question Ms. Caroline Bradshaw asks in the pilot episode, which is a bit dated and widely criticized, but somehow remains the bible of all popular TV shows, books, and articles about relationships: Sex and The City. And I’ve been nominated by Vogue – very Carrie – to re-answer this group of divine Question because today, I’m on the phone with my editor, 24 years after the show premiered, and after a particularly odd date, I can’t help but wonder: Has anything changed? It doesn’t feel that different. We are all still obsessed with love, sex and relationships. We still have the boundaries of total insanity (well, my date does). We are still spending money like water.
so. Let’s start from scratch. Should women have sex like men? The problem is, in 1998, is a synonym for a late third wave mentality where sex means “power” and “man” means “lack of feeling, affection, and care” . In a 2022 world, sex and gender look very different. Conversations around sex and gender are more about pleasure and equality – about how women deserve pleasure , and how men have emotions. The basic categories of gender have also changed, and with the increasing presence of knowledge and queerness in mainstream culture, plus all of us they/they are knocking on doors, it seems the answer is impossible , because the question doesn’t apply at all.
So the question – with gender removed and cultural context applied – becomes “Should we have emotionless sex for power? “
This question is hard to ask, to answer. There’s nothing wrong with having unsentimental sex as a power deal, as long as everyone involved is as actively as possible to agree, And both parties know what they’re dealing with. Absolute sex money! Decriminalize it. The power of sex: If it works, and everyone knows it, why not? But, for the most part, in Me After Too, we try to disengage sex from some kind of professional power by rightly disempowering those who exploit it.
