WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
For a long time our problems with sex and our views on it have revolved around trying to extract meaning from it. Depending on your school of thought, sex can be either some kind of sacred experience to be shared between you, your partner and your deity or a way to get that person on Tinder to like you more. In a general sense sex, like life, means whatever you want it to mean. It can be nothing or everything depending on the people involved. That said it is 2018 and nothing has a point if opinions aren’t shared and inferences are not drawn — even if that makes everybody mad.
As much as certain sectors of the population cringe at the idea of bringing it into conversations (unless they want to make questionable jokes) race is so ubiquitous that it even filters into what we do with our happy bits.
The fact that such a large number of South Africans have never had interracial sex because “they haven’t had a chance to” smells suspiciously like it has to do with the spaces we inhabit and the unspoken messages they convey. It boggles the mind that in a country that is so overwhelmingly black, there are still spaces where the majority of the guests will be white and that the white people who patronise those spaces tend to flee to new ones as soon as the ratio gets a little too dark.
Conversely, it’s interesting that Indian/Asian and coloured people seem to mix so readily. Groups that regularly interact with one another invariably end up rubbing their genitals against one another. That’s why interracial dating and sex among middle and working class Brits is so commonplace whereas the aristocracy tend to get their knickers in a bunch about it.
Sex and one’s ability to explore sexuality has as much to do with socioeconomics as it does with genitals. Are black people really just more closed off to the idea of sex toys than white people because of genetics? No. The answer probably has much more to do with access to information, cost and acclimatisation than anything else.
As for our conservatism, one thing that popped up again and again was how straight people and men tend to err on the side of conservatism. You’d imagine that a smart person can or has already written an academic piece on patriarchy and why it tends towards conservatism rather than progressiveness.
The most important takeaway from this year’s survey, however, is that we are a curious bunch. South Africans are not as closed-minded as we would have ourselves believe and may be much closer to a sexual revolution than we think. For the most part our hearts, and parts, are in the right place. Its our environmentally induced skaam that isn’t. So to all those who did this survey and wondered about sex toys, go buy one. To those who “never got the chance”, remember that fortune favours the bold and to all of those who need a bit more nastiness in their sex lives, go visit Club Poison or download Kink’D and discover exactly what it is that you like. Sex is far too much fun for us to walk around unfulfilled. Go get you some of that good good!