How To Make Sex Better

Sex, on its own, in the wild, natural and unadorned, is still complicated. Don’t believe me? Look at a peacock or a bird of paradise. Salmon die after they procreate. Sea slugs penis joust. Now throw in evolved human biology, history, culture, technology, and science and you have a real disaster on your hands.

But sex isn’t alone in being affected by these things. But for everything that isn’t sex, we apply “lifehacks” to increase our productivity, organization, mood, and leisure time. We read monthly manuals on what to eat to lose weight, how to stay fashionable, what entertainment we might like, and news about our favorite hobbies. Yet we constantly mystify sex. Our culture treats it as this untouchable, morally ambiguous, thing-that-is-not-mentioned that EVERYONE talks and thinks about. We are at the beginnings of an era wherein sex and sexuality will become both more liberated and more complex than any previous era by orders of magnitude.

Transhumanism, as a philosophy and the technologies it embraces, may offer us a chance to finally take some of the stress and mystery, and hence create more enjoyment, over this taboo part of our lives. When Ben Goertzel and I had our little exchange on sex (he mostly ignorned my critique and tsk tsked me), I said “If sex is messy and imperfect, we need to improve it, not get rid of it.” here are my suggestions on how to do it.

1. Better matches: It is always impossible to guess what discoveries will occur in the future, but science has been confirming over the past century that both sexuality and gender are more of a spectrum than a binary. You know how politics is better plotted on a grid than a line? Well, sexuality is best plotted in a kind of hypercube. Sexuality is more like taste in music than it is an either/or situation, with thousands of combinations and often very eclectic interests. Now consider this: imagine a Facebook app that takes the voluminous knowledge of OK cupid, Match, or E-Harmony, combined with psychological research and an enormously powerful algorithm that is designed to help you understand your sexuality. In short: a Pandora or Netflix or Amazon “you might like this” of dating and relationships. It might even suggest a whole genre shift: “you like partners that bite, pinch, and slap, you should try: Bondage!” Instead of worrying about whether or not your profile picture is right, you can focus on being yourself.

2. Safer: There is already a vaccine available for HPV, it isn’t impossible that other strains of both viral and bacterial STIs could be vaccinated against. The stigma that protection oneself against STIs means one is sexually reckless (a paradox, given that a person taking preventative measures is likely to be a good decision maker in general) is going the way of the dodo. A combination of vaccinations, regular testing, antibiotics and barrier methods, if used in large enough numbers, could effectively create a herd immunity. We eliminated small pox, measles, mumps, and polio, we can get rid of STIs.

3. Reproductive Choice: To make something a choice, it has to reasonably something you control. Reproduction, as it stands, is hard to control, despite all the options.  The Today sponge, which went of the market temporarily, is available again in the US. Lots of different forms of long term hormonal birth control are available. IUDs are now far safer and better designed. Condoms are cheap and prolific. There is some truly great news on the horizon, however: the male pill. Despite the clamor of men’s magazines and the apparently hilarious joke that men are reckless morons, every guy I’ve talked to would love to be able to take a male pill. Why? Because most of my friends are smart and realize the awful consequences of accidentally getting someone pregnant. The male pill lets men take a much bigger role in pregnancy prevention and ads a huge aspect of redundancy to birth control. And better control means fewer accidental pregnancies, the central goal of both the pro-choice and pro-life movement.

4. Science Knowledge: A common complaint is that porn causes unrealistic attitudes about sex. A common joke is that young boys look at naked natives in National Geographic to get their jollies. Perhaps the undiscussed middle ground – TLC and Discovery Channel shows on human sexuality – could provide a fruitful place of learning. I know a lot of people (myself included) who learned how all the plumbing and hardware worked, while satisfying their curiosity and need for titilation, by watching science shows. Having the birds and the bees narrated to you by David Attenbourough is a glorious thing (it also makes Planet Earth even more erotic). Knowledge is sexy.

5. More Intentional: I posted about “tinkering with libido” some time ago, but it’s really an astonishing idea that bears repeating. Presuming well-made, low side-effect drugs, one could actively control one’s libido. Long day at work? Pop a libido suppressor and keep saucy thoughts from distracting you. Finally heading home? Take a libido enhancer and be very excited to see your significant other by the time you come in the front door. As Megan McArdle pointed out in a brave post on pedophilia, there are some sexual desires that are taboo, but still natural and uncontrollable. Schizophrenics, the mentally disabled, severe autistics, and a range of other conditions would be greatly eased by a reduced sex drive. Alternatively, those on anti-depressants or social anxiety drugs often lose sex drive, canceling out one of the major benefits of their medication. Libido control, and many of these drugs are in the works, would do wonders for many.

These are just a few ideas working with what we have and what we could accomplish in the near future. In the long term, ideas are absolutely mind bending. Synthetic skin could allow a person to amplify nerve endings all over the body, making every sexual experience otherworldly. Anti-aging might radically alter just how long our “hedonistic” youth is while simultaneously letting us have long term monogamous relationships that don’t have to suffer from the libido dampening effect of aging. Telepresence and virtual reality could help make long distance relationships easier and less taxing. Radical but safe and effective body modifications might allow for entirely new forms of sex and sexuality and gender to emerge.

As with everything transhuman, the goal is not to reduce the very things that make us human, like our sexual drive, but to open them to new and exciting possibilities. The goal isn’t to guide sex and sexuality towards some version of perfection, but instead to create orders of magnitude more options, to allow better control and safer conditions. Transhumanism is about diversity and choice, why not bring that to sex? Sex can be mystical and is perhaps ultimately ineffable, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make it better with technology, knowledge, and freedom.

Dating While Racist

Robin Hanson, as is his wont, finds a third-rail and grabs it with both hands. I’m posting most of it because it is hard to take any one of these paragraphs out of context:

So dating is our last refuge of overt racism because … preferring people based on race isn’t racism if its for dating, especially if minorities do it?!

Of course its racism, if anything is.  But is it good racism?  The obvious reason to allow mate racism is that people better enjoy mating when they better like their mates, and people think they care about the race of their mates.  But this same reason suggests allowing racism by firms, schools, and clubs.  Firms are full of people, including employees, customers, suppliers, and investors, any of which might care about the race of folks they must deal, mingle, associate, etc. with.  At schools, the teachers, students, and ultimate employers of those students may also care about race.

Yes people may be mistaken about how much they care about the race of their associates, and perhaps this justifies government policies forbidding overt racism at firms, schools, or clubs.  But why doesn’t this apply just as well to mating?  Sure it is impossible to legislate away all racism in dating, but the same is true for hiring etc.  Why don’t we at least forbid overt mating racism, such as race-based searches?  We could even collect stats on the race of folks that people contact at dating sites, just as we check now on rates rates in hiring at firms, etc.

One explanation is that we naively think that imposing rules on firms only hurts those abstract entities, not the people associated with them.  Or we think such rules only hurt investors and managers, who we don’t care about.   Perhaps we only dislike racism that changes incomes, not happiness — yet mates often change income a lot.  Another explanation is that we only don’t care about racism in the “personal” sphere, though this just changes the question to what exactly is “personal” and why do we care differently about such things.  What do you think?

This phenomenon has always troubled me. It is far to complex a topic to try to answer Hanson’s question in a blog post, but if I had to try, I would guess that it is a result of not race, but culture built around race. That word “ethnicity” is an effort to get at that idea. The debate over Obama’s “whiteness” or “blackness” was not about his race, it was about his ethnicity. I suspect that the issues Hanson is exploring here are those of ethnicity, where culture maps so closely onto race that what appears to be racism is, in fact, ethnic identities that have a difficult time relating to one another. As dating is so personal and the dating pool is so vast, we are attracted to similar ethnic groups, because that sets up foundational similarities on which a relationship can be built. Whether or not that assumption is correct is another issue entirely. Clearly, this deserves a lot more thought.

The New Model Husband

I like the sound of this trend:

The good news first: Betsey Stevenson, a professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania, predicts the rise of the “hedonic marriage,” in which people pair up based on “similar preferences and desires for balancing work, fun, and family.” It’s all about having shared goals, priorities and interests — all of which sounds pretty damn good, if you ask me. She explains, ”This new model of marriage thrives when households have the resources to enjoy their lives. Not surprisingly then, marital happiness is much higher among the college-educated and divorce has fallen most sharply for them.”

Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage,” suggests men will start to step it up more at home. “Today, more men than women report feeling work-family conflict, suggesting that men are internalizing an identity based on their ability to nurture, not just earn money,” she continues. “Conversely, most women now say that having a husband who is capable of intimacy and who shares housework and childcare is more important than having a partner who earns more money.”

A Kept Man

Ask yourself this question: What is the masculine form of the word “mistress?”

Can you think of an answer? I couldn’t.

Technically, there isn’t one. A male, extra-marital, long-term lover doesn’t have a specific term. There is, however, a kindred spirit to “mistress” that is more gender adaptable: the kept woman. The “kept” part of the kept woman is that she is largely provided for and supported by her lover, who is by definition of superior wealth. Until very recently the reverse situation was nearly impossible (Catherine the Great and Queen Elizabeth being notable exceptions). The closest male equivalent to a “mistress” would be a “pool boy.” The implicit social and age difference, as well as the extra-marital connotation, is about as close as I can get.

A pool boy, however, does not get much of a benefit besides sexual satisfaction. A kept woman, in addition, by definition receives more material favors, such as an apartment, clothes, an allowance, and/or trips. Not too shabby.*

So what we are confronted with are busy women with disposable income, frustrated with dating needy men, with errands and chores piling up, and no intention of settling down. Sounds like a perfect recipe for a kept man.

A kept man lives somewhere at the intersection of maid, mistress, and husband. The important thing, of course, is that he is supported by his woman (or women). The transition from simple lover to kept woman/man occurs at the moment the relationship moves from one of merely emotional and physical pleasure to one in which material gain and financial stability are added to the mix. For both people involved, the advantages are clear. In fact, the development of a culture in which a “kept man” is acceptable would help to remove the stigma around kept women and mistresses present in puritanical America. For the record, I would like to note that a “kept person” need not be extra-marital nor monogamous. Nor is it for everyone. I’m just saying it sounds like a good idea for some people.

As a final point, I’d like to say that this idea is not entirely my own. On at least three separate occasions I have had female friends – who are either currently or soon will be far more successful than me (they don’t have to list “blogger” on their resume) – have brought up the appeal of such a relationship. They have nice apartments with too much space and no one to clean them, nice kitchens with no one to cook in them, huge bank accounts with nothing to spend it on, and other more, ahem, personal needs that need to be met without the hassle of dating. A husband is too big a commitment, a boyfriend might have a job of his own, but a kept man is there to do your bidding – for a nominal cost.

Any takers?

*Before anyone gets in a huff, let me state for the record that I am aware that the whole construction of concubine/mistress/kept woman is a result of the severe power imbalance between men and women, be it a result of aristocratic or capitalist wealth. I am aware that it is not always  some sort of idealized situation where the woman gets everything she wants and is still treated well. I’m not babbling about how unfair it is that women get these opportunities and men don’t. That is the opposite of what I’m trying to get at. Also this is just a goofy thought experiment, so chill out on the feminist critique for a second.

**I’m aware I’m assuming the heterosexual (not heteronormative) perspective here. Cut me some slack. GLBT relationships are outside my realm of analysis, cause I have no idea on what the norms are.