by Eurydice (c) 2002

Sex and the War on Terror

     What is sexy? To this fundamental question about what can help you score, this SexFiles column has been devoted from its inception, even though we all basically know, from experience, the answers: danger is sexy, risk is sexy, trouble is sexy, change is sexy, exposure is sexy, breaking taboos is sexy, the dark night of the soul is sexy. And so, by extension, are tragedy, trauma, war and pestilence. Catastrophe is an aphrodisiac. A natural disaster, a terrorist attack, a brush with death, all have the unexpected, balancing effect of turning us on. When disaster falls, we hit the sack.
    The human organism (the body-mind-psyche fusion) is full of resilience and resourcefulness. Our body defines health as balance, and through all its endeavors and symptoms, seeks to maintain or restore equilibrium. When you turn left, it tends to turn right afterward; when you're overworked, you get a rush of adrenaline, when you're bitten by a shark, you get a rush of endorphines, and when you're being hanged, you get a hard-on. Everything the body does is an intricate balancing act between its myriad, still unfathomable functions, and its ultimate aim is to endure.
     Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of death-especially the prospect of sudden, random murder. When the realization isn't paralyzing, it makes the blood quicken. In the big arc of history, September 11 ought to have reminded us that anything has always been possible at any time. Osama bin Laden simply gave the angel of death a human face and the imbecilic purpose of ending modernity and ushering in medievalism. In the face of sociopathic theology, sexuality is not only a political subversion, it's a relief: it's the way that our bodies, under extreme conditions, defy the powers amassed against life. It may not be a public statement, like going to restaurants or airports, but sex is our best way of insisting on carrying on in the face of irrational violence. At the least, sex lowers blood pressure; at its best, sex achieves the illusion of intimacy and safety; and it's intimacy with other human beings that enables us to feel less vulnerable to mayhem and chance. Sex is optimistic, life-affirming. In times of terror, people gather to eliminate their differences, to forget their pettiness, in favor of something greater than the  individual. The passion of patriotism to a crowd is the passion of sex to a couple.
     I was never hornier than when I was protesting government actions in the streets of Europe. When we heard an explosion and felt the ground shake and watched the blast, we embraced someone. Americans who came of age in the 60s have told me that sex was never better, nor were lovers ever more available, than after the anti-war riots. Part of the commitment against the Vietnam War involved violating all cultural expectations of the war-making society, which meant using sex as a political subversion, and creating a subculture. Thus the slogan: MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR. The attack of 9/11 has had the same effect on American consciousness that televised images of napalmed Vietnamese children had. The difference is, this time, we are the ones being, in effect, napalmed-so our motto has become MAKE LOVE AND WAR.            
      But the hard evidence everyone looks for to confirm this national erotic shift is a post-war surge in births, as if everyone who has lots of sex has to have babies to show for it. Birth surges have always been expected after blackouts (like NY's great blackout of 1965), earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, even strikes.
     There is no doubt the shock of 9/11 caused many Americans to rethink their priorities. On June 3, Newsweek published an article on the expected "9/11 Baby Boomlet"-and on our so-called "Post-traumatic Sex Syndrome"-and quoted couples across America who had decided to procreate after the WTC attack; publishers and bookstores reporting a huge increase in sales of pregnancy books; and doctors who expected up to 40% more deliveries. The article quoted psychologist Catherine Cohan, who analyzed S. Carolina births before and after Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and found that in the hardest-hit disaster areas birth rates went up, confirming that "trauma can kick-start the libido."
     "Baby Boom?"--a New York Times article printed on the nine-month anniversary of 9/11-questioned this evidence. It mentioned the anecdotal testimony of women who are giving birth because Sept. 11 refueled their mating instincts. It confirmed that some hospitals reported an unusual abundance of forthcoming deliveries, as did some operators of Lamaze classes. The article quoted an obstetrician in Brooklyn who anticipated twice as many births in July and August as last year, and the head of the obstetrics and gynecology department at New York University Downtown Hospital who was expecting a 25 percent increase in deliveries over the summer. "I think the nature of this event is likely to add to the population," he'd said.  It also quoted John Haaga, of the Population Reference Bureau in DC, who'd said, "There is a tendency to rebound after a really big disaster. What we haven't seen is a reaction to a one-day event. There's been a trend toward delayed marriage and delayed first birth. It wouldn't surprise me if that trend slowed down."
     In New York City, the Department of Health will not have the tally of this year's births until the end of next year. In my opinion, 9/11 could lead people to reconsider having children in this climate. Fear could as easily depress fertility rates as patriotism could increase them. But that doesn't mean fear doesn't accelerate our sex drives.
     So let's get down to the meat of all this: Disaster is on the side of meaningless sex. Wars and whores, as Aldous Huxley put it, break all the rules. War is how rigid cultures regenerate. Periods of crisis, like the current one, when our myths of self-sufficiency, goodness, and safety are shattered, climax in unpredictable ways. Sometimes war is our only way out of repression. The rules for dating post-9/11 are men-friendly: you can be more forthright, crude even, in your advances, so long as you blame it on the war on terror, following the example of our President.

     At a time when we've been overworked and compelled to achieve even on our vacations, when even sex has become a rigorous exercise in willpower meant to test our limits or train our bodies or clean out our toxins or elevate us to a higher level of consciousness, war helps us rediscover our capacity for self-indulgent, thoughtless fun that has no objective and needs no excuse.
On the other hand, nobody fucks when the economy is bad.