Motto: Sexuality is generative
Pet owners meet and talk while their pets meet in the body. Pet owners basically negotiate what conditions should be met so that they also get sexual. Pets do not discuss it but just go at it to the degree called for by the present situation. Sexuality is being with the body - one's own and another's. It presents a special challenge for us, humans, because we are clearly enslaved by language. We will talk about going outside language to negotiate access to sexuality.
This is not an academic paper but let me make a note about my method which is in its core phenomenological. This means developing a deep insight into the material of human experience. I draw my insight from current and past practices of dance, theater, performance art and sex. From this vantage point I see varieties of dance practice offering a laboratory-like setup allowing us to look at sexuality. To be sure most dance practices have a very definite and sometimes extensive social content, which, once understood and filtered out, can be bypassed to inspect the sexual reality wrapped underneath. In addition to dance, I have experienced sexuality in varieties of social settings and personal arrangements - some of them fairly elaborate and some rather minimally separating us from the experience of sexual arousal and intercourse. Our society has rather strong rules for individuals engaging in sex - basically prescribing the establishment a social relationship beforehand. It also prescribes privacy for the couple. My insights come from experience that goes beyond those formulas. For this reason and from this perspective I can say that dance is an extension or elaboration of sexual practice. The interested should be referred to literature on swingers sex, BDSM, polyamory and generally sex-positive practices.
What is the nature of the experience of the body? Is the body merely a physical object like other objects in the world? Do we see other bodies - of living humans and animals - as mere objects or as things we can empathize with - that is as things that share a certain commonality of the experience of living with ourselves? For example, is another human being seen as a structure supported by two legs and looking out with two eyes embedded in his head? I think we relate to that other human in various other ways and not only on the level of physical structure. Likewise, when another person is touched and is experiencing a sensation of touch we do not see it as merely a pleasure or pain but an experience that is interpreted by that person into the totality of their experience of living.
Our body is for us the basis of living experience. We have the commanding sense of the body being an anchor of our connection with Being as such even though the body is perishable and over time degenerates - becoming a dead body. This makes the Body the anchor of Value. Its destruction is the ultimate loss for us - even though many religions make a great effort to convince us that it is not the body but an intangible soul that is our hook into Being. We empathize with other living beings projecting this abiding sense of value of the body onto them and generally abhor the destruction of the body.
Sex is the totality of the experience of the body. Being with the body in a maximal way is the sexual way of being. It is not about pleasure or displeasure - it is about taking in the whole thing. This occurs in sexual intercourse as well as in celibate being - provided the experience of being with the body is taken in unfiltered and unfragmented. Sexual experience is the one in which the body is given to us and received in its totality.
When is the body being filtered and fragmented? In most situations of ordinary life. When we work - either mentally at a desk or manually cleaning a room for example, the body is used only in a fragment of its capacity and other capacities are deactivated - are supposed and expected to be inactive. In sports the body is taken in its capacity of being an instrument achieving a certain goal - for example running 400 meters faster than others. That is the physical aspect of the body that is put to use here while other aspects are inactive. Even in the case of dance the body is often used in a reduced capacity of an object out of which something else is constructed - for example a seductive display or an attractive arrangement on stage. Such fragmenting uses of the body are the consequence of our world being organized around formal, symbolic principles which call for partial use of the body. Handshake but not a hug are acceptable among business people, hugging but not mutual caressing is expected in family relations.
Sensation is the awareness of something happening to the body. There is some movement, some sensory information coming in, there may be involuntary reactions that cause additional inputs to arrive. For example, crackling sounds and warmth can be felt, which could cause our eyes to open and receive visual input - of an approaching flame. Much is happening in the space of sensation even before any understanding of what is happening takes place. Development of the understanding is a matter of learning and natural development. Both the social environment, mostly implemented in childhood by the adults fulfilling parenting functions, and natural processes play a role. In addition to understanding, we also develop skills in dealing with sensory inputs which do not really involve knowledge, but intelligence lodged in perception only - for example the skill of bouncing a ball.
As our mental capacities are filled with the faculties of understanding we are eager to query and interpret sensation and confront that result with our accumulated knowledge supporting understanding. We are very eager to apply those functions because they are highly valued due to our upbringing. We value being able to discern what is happening and how. We judge what is there. As the sexual experience is immanent in our body then sensation offers an exit leading toward transcendence. Transcendence means interest in answering questions about what is happening and whether it is valuable. Sensation, even though it is rooted in the body, yet because of the presence of our other mental faculties, sets us on a path of departure from itself. Transcendence, knowledge and values, always tempt us to depart from the immanence of sensation. The immanent side of sensation always tends to get lost. At the same time, because the depth of the body gets lost through the exit into the transcendent function of our mind we can appreciate the depth of sexual experience which offers us immanence.
The practices of sensuality focus on the exits from the depths of the body into the field of interpretation of the data received by the senses.
In a way practices staying at the edge of sensation are similar to science-based practices such as medical procedures. The patient is the object there - the practitioner may have to contend with arousal and emotional states, often resulting from pain and fear of pain, which are in this case only a byproduct of the activity. The sensation is treated as an object because it must be dealt with if the medical procedure is to succeed.
Dance is a practice where the body is imagined in its sexuality. As it is imagined it can be approached safely only using a system of symbols - a language of varying richness. Sometimes it is a thick layer of language - including not only verbal but also gestural expressions endowed with social context - like asking someone to partner in dance. Sometimes it is just a minor amount of language very thinly spread over the layer of sensation - like a barely conscious turn of the hips toward someone you like. Sometimes, there is an interplay between language and imagination where each fights the other for dominance. Sometimes, one of them totally wins.
Dance is an approach to sex and sexuality and has its own methods of keeping distance from it. Dance uses its imaginary and symbolic qualities to stay away from sex which draws us into the embrace of reality. Keeping distance from but staying within reach of reality is the main value of dance.
Sexual act, the chief example of which is heterosexual intercourse, moves beyond the imaginary level into the reality of the body, into the flesh. In sexual act the body reaches reality, becomes real.
In a purely sexual act we are not something for someone - we just are. And that is why we want sex - because it affords the depth of intimacy that other life experiences do not. Because practically all the other life acts entangle us in production and consumption of some good, of some transcendent good that lives above the level of sensation. Sex involves us solely with life and death.
Sex puts us in contact both with life and death. Because the production and consumption of goods stops we no longer care if the intensity of life experienced in sex leads to more life or to death. Under ordinary non-sexual conditions production and consumption of transcendent goods creates a measure of our progress toward death. The measure answers the question about the value of our life. Yet in sex we have death in our arms and yet survive back into life.
It is apparent and clear that I favor dance as a manner of safe of approach to sexuality rather than sensual explorations. Dance, being based on imaginary sex, allows us to more easily formulate and postulate our unconscious desires with a partner. Sensuality explorations typically go into the direction of examination and knowledge gathering about varieties of stimuli and responses. However, we humans, are amazingly inventive and the sensual approach can be combined with dance in pursuit of sexual experience. Of course, as creatures of language we also make verbal expression and gesture a successful path to sexuality.