Oscar Wilde wrote (and I used to believe) that everything in the world is about sex, except sex; sex is about power.
It’s a very testosterone-ed vision of sexuality— valid, somewhat, but incomplete— and it’s worth remembering that Wilde lived in a world in which sexual secrecy and shame likely infused the act with an even more demented power. Famously, he was imprisoned for sodomy.
We don’t live in a moment where sodomy is criminalized (not anymore, and not yet again) but it seems the more anyone believes this aphorism, the more they will live it into truth.
Power, seen one way, is the obligation to trust that which is empowered. Sex, wildly simplified, is an exchange of trust. What Wilde’s quip misses is the humility inherent in desiring someone; it’s easy to overlook if you’re more focused on the power of being desired.
The above essay is 144 words, a part of a series explained over here.
Nice piece and good shout out to the humility of true sexual presence. The magic trick of aphorisms is that they seem to rise above subjectivity and speak absolutely. This is why Tolstoy always speaks of always and says all happy families are the same, but there is is always a secret lever, a trap door, a hidden chamber, where the bigger, more chaotic truths are hidden.
You are wright. It is a source of power in the moment that you decide to use it like that.
SEX, no making love...
Sorry for my school English.