In Defense of Degeneracy
Currents
Salman Rushdie’s 1995 novel, The Moor’s Last Sigh, relates a legend about the protagonist’s great uncle, Aires da Gama. On his wedding night in 1921, Aires, a gay man, majestically dons his wife’s wedding dress and absconds through a back door to meet his male lover, who sails them away across the waters of the Cochin coast as Aires’s wife looks on from the window. Moraes “Moor” Zogoiby, our eponymous narrator, later wonders whether his mother’s famous painting of this scene “[W]as a domesticating fantasy, only conventionally outrageous: that the story, as told and painted, put Aires’s secret wildness into a pretty frock, hiding away the cock and arse and blood and spunk of it, the brave determined fear of the runt-sized dandy soliciting hefty companions among the harbour-rats…”
But ultimately, the Moor concludes, “No, sir. The painting’s authority will not be denied… The nakedness beneath the borrowed wedding outfit, the bridegroom’s face beneath the bridal veil, is what connects my heart to this strange man’s memory. There is much about him that I do not care for; but in the image of his queenliness, where many back home (and not only back home) would see degradation, I see his courage, his capacity, yes, for glory.”
So, can there, as this passage suggests, be beauty and even transcendence in what many would describe as degeneracy?
I believe that there can be and that there often is.
Why should casual, even anonymous sex not be a thing of beauty? Yes, there is the “blood and spunk of it”, and there can be great dangers as well as great pleasures in such things, but who is to say that a fumbling suck or fuck in some forlorn cruising spot cannot involve a moment of deep human connection? And even if it does not, when people meet in such circumstances and simply enjoy each other: is that not enough?
Degenerate transcendence is not limited to gay men, of course. Heterosexual dalliances, bisexual one-night stands, and lesbian flings can inspire it, too. However, due to the nature of male sexuality, promiscuity, and casual sex seem to be much more common among same-sex attracted men than anyone else. In his 1979 classic The Evolution of Human Sexuality, Donald Symons argues that the most licentious gay men almost certainly have “had more partners in a single evening than most lesbians and heterosexual men have in a lifetime.” This is not because gay or bi men are more sexual than their straight brothers:
“[H]eterosexual men would be as likely as homosexual men to have sex most often with strangers, to participate in anonymous orgies in public baths, and to stop off in public restrooms for five minutes of fellatio on the way home from work if women were interested in these activities. But women are not interested.”
The experience of bi men, who substantially outnumber gay men, carries an added layer of complexity, as they tend to be somewhat more influenced by women, with whom most bi men tend to end up, likely due to sheer availability. This experience with and, to a degree, ability to see both sides, as it were, impacts how they relate to everyone, including other men.
Graph shows the average number of sexual partners by sex and sexuality. Source: American Sociological Association
In his 1997 book How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker adduces this as evidence of male/female sex differences:
“Every heterosexual relationship is a compromise between the wants of a man and the wants of a woman, so differences between the sexes tend to be minimized… It’s not that gay men are oversexed; they are simply men whose male desires bounce off other male desires rather than off female desires.”
This is not a review of the scientific literature; it is a subjective account, but I suspect that Symons and Pinker are right. They certainly attest to a particular aspect of same-sex male culture. And if Symons and Pinker are broadly correct, then is that culture a shallow one? Is the conservative view that gay hypersexuality is a pointless dead-end correct? Do all those morally disapproving synonyms of “promiscuous” — “debauched”, “lax”, “dissolute” and so on — have some validity?
Some conservative gay men would agree that they do. But my own answer is an emphatic no. I do not believe that there are any objective grounds for dismissing a sexual culture that has brought pleasure and happiness to millions as any less meaningful to its participants than any other form of sexual expression.
Of course, these are generalizations. There are gay or bi men for whom the sweet songs of the cruising spot and the Grindr hook-up hold no charms. And there are women of all sexualities every bit as promiscuous and sex-crazed as the horniest men. This is perfectly fine: how one finds beauty and pleasure is entirely personal.
There has recently been something of a backlash against sexual libertarianism, epitomized by writers such as Louise Perry and Mary Harrington. For them, sexual emancipation was a false promise that has hurt women far more than it has helped them. Perry and Harrington make some good points (of course, there very often is pressure on women to conform to male sexual appetites) but they go too far in their almost wholesale rejection of the sexual revolution. Just because male desires are often imposed on women does not mean that there are not many women who enjoy, for example, being choked during intercourse. Just because Perry and company cannot understand such practices does not make them wrong, let alone coercive. Women are not so beholden to and helpless in the face of men that they can never express their own desires. There are women whose sexual palettes would make many a man blanch.
Ultimately, Perry and Harrington’s perspectives are just as subjective as anyone else’s. There is no final, all-encompassing answer to most questions of sexual morality. As Ralph Leonard writes in a review of Perry’s The Case Against the Sexual Revolution (2022):
“The search for a sexual ethical concrete [the phrase ‘ethical concrete’ is Kenan Malik’s] is an understandable endeavour, but it is doomed to fail because the condition of modern men and women is an inherently fragile, rootless one. There is no moral safety net to protect the individual in his or her quest for love and self-realisation. No divine or scientific law can protect us from the dangers that come with life itself. It is only through living that we can understand what our boundaries are. It is only by understanding humans as rational agents that we can begin to develop any kind of sexual ethics, and hope to overcome our perennial alienation from our sexuality. This is a disconcerting state of affairs: freedom is dangerous — but it is precisely this freedom that makes sex so exhilarating.”
Of course, Perry and co are primarily concerned with the plight of women and transcendent degeneracy is a phenomenon most closely associated with gay or bi men. But their search for an absolutist sexual morality is doomed because — average sex (drive) differences aside — they cannot presume to know the mind of every person. Sexuality is too complex. We all make our own sexual choices. When it comes to consensual sex between adults, there is no ultimate grounding in morality. There is only freedom, which comes with risks as well as responsibility. What makes sense for one person, at a given point in their life may not make sense for another, or at a different point in their life. This is why a paternalistic one-size-fits-all view of sex will always be unsatisfying.
If you dislike casual sex, do not engage in it. If you do, and especially if you can find transcendence in it, more power to you. There can be delight in degeneracy, and there can be profound beauty and intense connection in promiscuity and perversity. As Moraes “Moor” Zogoiby’s brilliant and provocative artist mother, Aurora, puts it, “Human perversity is greater than human heroism… or cowardice… or art… For there are limits to these things, there are points to which we will not go in their name; but to perversity there is no limit set, no frontier that anyone has found. Whatever today’s excess, tomorrow’s will [exceed] it.”
Long may it be so!
Published Aug 23, 2023
