Carl Kinsella | Senior Staff Writer
Between Catholic guilt, the Catholic Church, and Catholic priests, sex was never likely to be ‘our thing’ in Ireland. From the very moment that Eamon De Valera and Fr. John Charles McQuaid got together to codify the ‘special position’ of The Vatican in the heart of Hibernia, it was destined to be a ‘lights-off job’ for fear we’d catch a glimpse of The Archbishop at the foot of our collective bed. There he’d be with his white collar and his white knuckles, clutching the rosary in one hand and Bunreacht na hEireann in the other, pushpins in his pocket ready to poke holes in our prophylactics.
After all, this is a country where Roy Keane has been around for longer than legal same-sex activity, a nation of such proud piety that when Rod Stewart’s ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy’ came out, couples couldn’t even use protection to commit the only act that song was designed to provoke – embarrassing seventies sex. So I feel safe in sticking by my initial assessment; Ireland is more than a little late to the sex party, and even now that we’re here, we aren’t really sure where to leave our bag and coat.
But come on, College Times, even we can do better than this.
On August 6th, collegetimes.ie lifted a piece from Canadian website premierlife.ca that they rebranded ‘One Night Stand Guide- For Him’. The morning after (no pun intended), the article, in its CollegeTimes form, had amassed 710 likes and 84 re-tweets, which isn’t too shabby a return, but it’s hard to imagine every one of those re-tweets had glowing things to say about the piece, and here’s why:
“Letting her stay the night once she’s sobered enough to comprehend her mistakes is a huge dagger in the one-night-stand code of ethics”
– this sentence alone carries more than the implication that the girl in question is too drunk to make a rational choice regarding consent to sex, and it goes one step further, telling the reader to get her the hell out of his life before the alcohol leaves her system and she’s in a fit state of mind to realize what’s just happened. The article goes on to suggest that the smartest way to proceed about one’s business is to withhold one’s mobile number and last name…
Oftentimes, when articles such as this one come under fire, the suggestion of satire is enough to cool off a lot of the criticism, but this is no satire. What ‘The Guide’ gives us is a mirror image of exactly the way more than enough people operate on nights out, and doesn’t describe anything even remotely outlandish or unexpected. It illustrates in forthright detail a disturbing reality. Satire can come in many forms, but it can’t really come in the form of a completely unexaggerated, accurate appraisal of something that happens every night with no sub-current of criticism permeating the piece. Satire is meant to stone the monster square between its eyes, not feed young misogynists enough sexual pseudo-psychology that they think throwing a drunk girl out of their apartment at five a.m., post-coitus, is the modern day equivalent of the Jedi mind trick.
Sometimes we read or see something that opens up a can of worms, ushers us towards asking questions we never even knew we wanted answers to. An article like this smashes in windows and kicks down doors. Is this piece really representative of the way we, as men and women, feel about sex and the pursuit thereof?
Are we really so “emotionally vacant and physically charged” that the endgame of a night in Coppers is an awkward orgasm beside a girl with “unjustified self-esteem issues”.
If we aren’t in it for the company, and we aren’t in it to feel good about ourselves, and we most absolutely, positively aren’t in it for the love – then why is there the compulsion to drag somebody else down with us? Is it so we can add another notch to our bedposts? Is it because we’re scared enough that we can’t think of anything else to do? Could it be that we are neither emotionally vacant nor physically charged, but emotionally stunted and physically bored?
The last thing we should ever do is judge somebody for their sexual habits (as long as they’re legal), but if you’re using a one-night stand as a multivitamin for a validation deficiency, to put an end to your fear that there’s no way anyone will ever love you, so you don’t have to spend another night alone, or even for physical pleasure – you may as well be painting your fence with a sledgehammer. Excuse the imagery, but in so many cases sex ends up as a square peg for a round hole. Especially if you’re immersed in the kind of College Times thinking like so many. A forceful hand on the small of a back, unnatural smiles, as few words as possible and a taxi-ride home in last night’s clothes. That is how it will be until we realize that sex isn’t the goal, but the bonus prize, ideally an offshoot of confidence, being comfortable in your own skin and maybe even having a partner who cares about you.
Abstinence, promiscuity, how many people we sleep with and how we act in the midst of the act itself – all of these things have very little to do with the motivation behind the article posted on College Times, and less to do with the article you’re reading right now. At the very heart of this issue is one idea that begs many questions – what is it that motivates you, personally, to seek out sex of a given night? Is that motivation worth putting yourself, or worse, somebody else, through extreme discomfort to achieve the goal of sex? There’s no one right answer to questions like these, they bear great thought, in fact, they bear repeating over and over. Nobody can tell you how to form your own answer, or how to establish your own attitude towards sexual relationships. Just do me a favour and don’t ask collegetimes.ie.
The article published by The College Times has been taken down, but the majority of the content in the article can be found here.
