I want to tap that. I totally scored last night. Yeah, we banged.
Any of these sound familiar? Over the past few weeks, this collegiette has been meditating over the kinds of metaphorical speech that we use to reference sex, something that is supposed to be an intimate experience shared between two people with an emotional bond. And yet, the beauty of what sex is—and what sex can mean– is seriously reduced by the language we use to describe it. Bone? Bang? Slam? Score? Blow? Eat Out? It seems to me that there is something wrong with the often violent, war and food-oriented champs lexical that surrounds intimacy today.
Furthermore, why is that we can’t seem to speak about sex except through metaphor? Is there something inaccessible or unattainable about it? Is there a taboo surrounding sex? Are we not really allowed to do it? Indeed, the ‘unattainability’ of sex in lexical terms points to a seriously flawed mentality of relationship. If men and women are in fact sexually liberated, shouldn’t we be able to talk about it? Would it be that egregious to say “I gave her an orgasm”, as opposed to “I ate her?”
As a self-identified feminist, I have to acknowledge the latent sexism embedded in this kind of discourse. Take, for example, “I tapped that.” Seriously, America? Are women nothing more than objects to be referenced by a sexual deictic? And what about a guy saying “I scored.” Are women, then, nothing more than a game? Do we have basketball hoops instead of breasts? Are our vaginas equivalent to goal posts?
This is not to say that women are totally blameless. We contribute to the dissemination of this type of language, by either endorsing it (saying it ourselves, and objectifying men) or by doing nothing (i.e., letting a guy say to us that we ‘were great’. Is there a way to suck at sex? Are we constantly striving to please our partners through our own performance? Is there a caliber of ‘greatness’ to be achieved that our bodies can’t naturally perform without concerted effort?) In order to affect change, we have to say something. Acknowledge our own power by taking language into our own hands.
I acknowledge that at college—and particularly at Brown University—sex isn’t always about an emotional connection. Often, sex can be a celebration of independence. I don’t really care about this person, but why shouldn’t we still have a good time? Don’t get me wrong. I find it empowering to be able to hook up with guys without forcing some kind of psycho-emotional attachment. (If that happens naturally, which, let’s face it, it most often does for women—then it’s time to re-evaluate.) But why on earth would we condone the language that men and women use to describe one-night stands: That elusive Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma’am? The phrase ‘Wham Bam’ elicits violent associations, bordering on rapacious thought. Why would we ever want to propagate the idea that ‘rape’ and ‘sex’ may be intrinsically linked (or even, God forbid, one and the same)? The politics of consent may be at play here. Sure, you signed on for physical intimacy. But did you sign on to be referenced as an item of play?
I’m taking a Linguistic Anthropology class this semester, which has taught me that language is power. In order to have control over a situation, we have to be able to own our speech. If we want to react against sexism, then we need to pay closer attention to what we say. The literary theorist J.L. Austin once wrote that speech acts are performative utterances. So next time you say ‘we screwed’ or ‘we banged’ or ‘he said I was great’, consider how you may be performing sex to the broader social audience. There are always implications to what we say, even in the most informal, colloquial settings.