Transformation of Intimacy 5, 6, and 7

Chapters 5, 6, and 7 all seem to deal with Giddens notion of addition with a majority of the addiction arguments expressed in chapter 5.

Immediately, in regards to sexual addiction, I’m hesitant to take Giddens at his word. I think that my image of him was skewed so much during chapter 5 that I was unable to attack his writing throughout the rest of the other two chapters.

Sexual addiction is a highly debated thing. Giddens acknowledges some of the issues involved in defining “excessive sex” as an addiction, but tries to emphasize the possibility of an addiction in light of how addiction is defined; this especially evident in his comparison of sexual addiction to food addiction on page 77.

I’ll do my best not to focus entirely on this chapter, but based on my personal conflict with it and the importance of seeing potential for sexual addiction found within the following chapters, I’m more inclined to talk about it here and make passing comments on the others.

Defining someone as addicted to sex has inherent flaws. Where Giddens supposes that the existence of an intrinsic desire to have sex does not presuppose an inability to become addicted to it (77), I feel he is also insisting that, for one to be addicted to sex, they must have a larger appetite for it than the norm. As of now, and probably forever, there can be no system that explains the “normal” sexual appetite. As such, is there no position from which to argue that someone is having too much sex, or as it follows, become addicted.

The crux of Giddens argument seems to be that sexual addiction is a behavior that represents his 7 descriptive parts of addiction (the high, fix, time out, giving up one’s self, sense of loss, perception of ‘special’ nature of the event, and self-disgust—pp. 72-3). Most notably the self-disgust, or the persistent feelings of shame accompanying the action (77), appear to indicate when the activity constitutes addiction rather than compulsion.

Still, here, I have trouble with his hypothesis. Surely, participating in an action that you feel compelled to do and regret afterward is a sign of addiction, but I think that when we take addiction outside the realm of chemical dependency (alcohol, etc.) we need to alter some of the defining characteristics of addictions. In class we’ve seen many reasons why a woman may feel ashamed of her sexuality. Doesn’t it make sense that someone, more specifically a woman, who indulges in her sexuality, is likely to encounter social pressures that tell her to feel badly about it? Gidden’s argument is limited by the narrow scope of his statement. I may even go so far as to acknowledge a “sex addiction” (which I won’t at this time), but that doesn’t impede my goal of recognizing the social influences that may have contributed to the behavior. Furthermore, we see in this chapter Giddens’ focus on women as sexual addicts because of the social perception of men as having differing sexual compulsions (79). I think that is assertion that, socially, allowable sexuality changes between the sexes should also conjure questions about the validity of his own arguments about the female addict’s process of remorse after a sexual encounter.

I wonder after all of the comparisons to Alcoholic’s Anonymous when we should start to consider how to “correct” unhealthy sexuality. It seems to me that the 12-step programs lend themselves to interpretations that leave out the possibility of still practicing the habits that they’ve demonized. For alcohol, this means that one tries to acquire sobriety by means of no longer drinking. Ever. Should the same be applied to sex? Can it? What does the abandonment of sexuality do to cure a person? It seems to me that a person would, after the program, need to find a way to start behaving in a sexually “healthy” way. This begs the question: what is a healthy sexuality? As a class we’ve seen some of the dangers of trying to define any sort of normalcy regarding sexual desires. Even if we did know what sort of sex was normal, based on the way that we dissected Levy and CAKE, I’d say that what appears normal is not necessarily the most healthy and conversely what is the most healthy may not be considered normal.

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Well, I seem to have failed to bring in the other chapters in my arguments. I’ll do my best to sum the chapters up now.

The beginning of chapter 6 seems like a lesson in stereotypical romance novels when describe the “female roles” which he wisely puts into quotation marks. Giddens quickly starts talking about codependency using the addiction language introduced in the previous chapter. The trouble is, for me, that I haven’t accepted the language in the previous chapter as true and, therefore, cannot take what he says at face value—this is more of a personal reflection than an actual critique of his work.

Giddens makes a distinction between the codependent relationship and a fixed relationship. The former represented by an individual being tied (psychologically) to another person and the latter as represented by someone who is addicted to the relationship itself (89).

His argument then strays toward feelings of intimacy and the loss of self that occurs within an addictive relationship (92) and then moves quickly to the Freudian examination of self as defined through childhood. This is where I get a little lost with his argument. Not only do I think that he’s swinging a little too far out of the bounds of his discussion, but I’ve been lead to believe, and indeed believe myself, that many of Freud’s assertions are errant, or at least need major revision.

Within chapter 7, I’m mostly drawn to Giddens claim of male sexuality as episodic. More specifically, I’m interested in Giddens argument about pornography as representing the episodic nature of men’s sexuality. He says “the images of women in soft pornographic magazines... re objects of desire, but never love”(119). He continues “they excite and stimulate and, of course, they are quintessentially episodic” (119). Does this explain male sexuality even in a general way? Was this an attempt to explain the use of pornography as being useful, or at least mildly complimentary, to men’s sexuality? I’m not sure how I take it, or even if those are any of the ways for it to be taken. Furthermore, and this I won’t talk about, does this episodic sexual tendency lead to the violence that Giddens describes in the rest of the chapter?