Another recycled blog, brought to you by the Easter Holiday Period. This article was originally intended for some VUWSA publication or other which may or may not have appeared but I don’t know cos I tend to avoid campus as much as possible.
When someone asked me to write an article on “ecosex,” my mind was filled with images of people trying to recycle condoms... Yuck! Not a very appealing prospect. I thought the article sounded pretty crazy, but I’ll try anything once (except incest, and folk dancing) so I decided to give it a go.
I started doing some research on the internet. I didn’t find any Condom Recycling Schemes, but I did find some sobering statistics. In the west we dispose of more than 300 million condoms a year. Most get flushed down the toilet, and eventually end up in the oceans. They float around choking fish, and massing together in dense reefs (due to a phenomenon called “like aggregation”). A few years ago a huge condom reef, two miles long, was discovered drifting in the direction of Antarctica.
Ecosex Rule Number 1: think of the poor dolphins, and be careful how you dispose of used condoms. What’s more, vegans beware, many condoms contain animal products! In fact, many forms of contraception involve animal products or animal testing, and most seem to have a negative impact on the environment. Birth control pills lead to increased hormones being flushed down the toilet and ending up in streams (causing sex changes in fish) and in water supplies (this may be contributing to declining fertility in men). But surely contraception is the lesser evil? The world is overpopulated as it is, and the last thing the environment needs is more babies growing up to be resource hungry consumers.
Perhaps we should all join VHEMT, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Members feel that humans are a threat to the health of the planet, and the species should be phased out. “When every human chooses to stop breeding, Earth's biosphere will be allowed to return to its former glory." Unfortunately, the idea doesn’t seem to be catching on very fast. I still cling to the idea that people are part of nature, and there must be some way we can coexist with the rest of it. And anyway, VHEMT don’t seem to be against sex, just breeding, so we’d still need to find somewhere to throw our condoms in the meantime. Those reefs could be floating around long after the extinction of humans.
I decided to seek advice from other sources. Greenpeace have put together a guide to “Getting it on for the good of the planet.” Suggestions include using accessories made from natural, sustainable substances (rather than PVC and vinyl), and making sure any fruit used for intimate purposes is GE free. All good stuff, but the ideas seem somewhat superficial. They are token gestures that don’t require a radical change in our behaviour. I wanted to uncover the radical politics of ecosex.
Ah, politics. Surely the Green Party must have a policy on sex? Well, I couldn’t find anything about the actual deed. But the Greens support Prostitution Law Reform, and they have a Sexual Orientation Policy – Celebrating a Rainbow Nation. Green sex seems to be a glorious celebration of diversity and freedom from discrimination. (I hope, in between being empowered, developed and adequately resourced, we still have time to shag).
Ecofeminists also celebrate the diversity of our sexualities, but they take it a step further. At least I think they do. I got a bit lost halfway through an essay. I think this particular ecofeminist was saying that we should all be in tune with the sacred cycles of life. Sex must be a part of the sacred cycle. If we misuse it, sex can cause destruction, but used with due reverence, it can bring increased energy and unity with all other forms of life. Sex is an important need, a way of bonding within a group and finding harmony with nature. We should all have sacred ritualised sex with lots of people at exactly the right moment in the lunar cycle. Or something like that...
I was starting to get confused, so I decided to take a different approach to my research. I wanted to find out the distinctive characteristics of Sex With Environmentalists. After extensive interviews, and hours of, ahem, Research, I drew the following conclusions. Environmentalists tend to be more hairy. They don’t recycle condoms, but they do seem to be into celebrating diversity and grooving with lunar cycles. And is the sex better? Well, it seems to be more deep and meaningful. And many Environmentalists don’t eat animal products. What’s that got to do with sex, you ask? Take it from me. Vegans taste better.
Posted by Fionnaigh at April 19, 2003 10:39 AM