From:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/29/britain-shares-sexual-fantasies-neil-bartlett

by Neil Bartlett

“Far from being something best left to priests, pornographers or politicians, sex is something people want to think about for themselves.”

Every week I meet someone new who embodies the statement above. Sometimes more than one person. Usually it is women who after years, often decades of their adult lives have thrown off the constriction of sex being “owned” by priests, pornographers, and politicians (and a disapproving “public”). They come to me for many reasons, but mostly because I let them think about sex for themselves. Let them participate in sex any way they want, without judgment. This is no small thing, because sex and more correctly our sexuality is not something that we can push down and repress without consequence to ourselves and those around us.

So I like Bartlett’s statement above. It is an accurate summary of how I and most of my clients think and feel.

“My own advice to my younger self, now that so many strangers have told me what they are really up to, would be simple: when we have sex, we’re not looking for plumbing – but for meaning.”

This is of course Bartlett’s own personal message to himself. But it is also the closing statement of the article and I think that it misses the point that he made directly before it (which I quoted first). Sex is about what you want and need it to be for you, right now. Sometimes that may be a search for meaning for someone (although I don’t think many people come to me for that). Usually it’s about plain simple pleasure, or personal growth, empowerment, healing, even survival.

So I don’t think that Bartlett is fair to characterise sex as being only about “plumbing”, or “meaning”. That sells it so very short. We want to think about sex for ourselves. Discover what it means for ourselves. Not be told by an artist, or anyone else what it’s about. We want to do it, we want to enjoy it, Sometimes we want to film it. Sometimes we want to share it. Sometimes we want to watch it. The list is almost endless.

However, more often than not we find that the world is set against us in some way when we think “gee I would really love to…”. Social convention, marriage, laws, friends, family all say “no” tacitly, or explicitly. So the thoughts stay in our heads most often. And there they breed conflict within ourselves as we weigh them against the values that the rest of the world – the priests, the pornographers, and the politicians – say we should have. We wonder who we really are and we doubt ourselves, instead of experiencing, rejecting, accepting, and ultimately learning.

I am glad that Neil Bartlett learned something from his exhibition and the feedback that he received. But lets not allow his personal insights to narrow the discussion once again. Lets keep it completely open. Especially for young people, who’s sexuality will ultimately be shaped by the society that we create, and they live in.

John.