Once More, without Feeling

Love used to be thought important. Lovers, seeing themselves as individuals, loved the uniqueness they revealed to one another and were convinced that only one person could still their longing. Their conviction made it come true.

Sex was felt to be an expression of love, the physical confirmation of an emotional and social bond. But sex can be detached from this context. When it is, the objects of desire become fungible. Any bunny can stimulate and gratify a purely sexual craving, an appetite for sensation independent of emotion. So can a prostitute. (Women too can detach sex from sentiment, although historically they may have been more reluctant to do so than men.) Sex, after all, starts as a sensation, and is linked with feeling only as we grow up—if we do.

EH

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Ernest van den Haag

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Love used to be thought important. Lovers, seeing themselves as individuals, loved the uniqueness they revealed to one another and were convinced that only one person could still their longing. Their conviction made it come true.

Sex was felt to be an expression of love, the physical confirmation of an emotional and social bond. But sex can be detached from this context. When it is, the objects of desire become fungible. Any bunny can stimulate and gratify a purely sexual craving, an appetite for sensation independent of emotion. So can a prostitute. (Women too can detach sex from sentiment, although historically they may have been more reluctant to do so than men.) Sex, after all, starts as a sensation, and is linked with feeling only as we grow up—if we do.