Can Sex Bridge the Political Divide?

In the end, it’s about who we believe deserves pleasure, and what our personal means of deriving that pleasure is. In my case, I would find it hard to have sex with a conservative for two reasons: The first, because I believe pleasure is a gift, to be enjoyed and to be shared generously. But I find it hard to give gifts to people who, say, don’t believe in my fundamental human rights as a queer, trans person. Second, the kind of sex and pleasure I enjoy is only attainable through an ability to explore, to have an imagination, and my pleasure, with a partner, is achieved ultimately by the joint pursuit of imagination. And imagination of something elsewhere, some sort of freedom—from self judgment, from insecurity, from distrust of others, for example. Someone with politics far different to mine however doesn’t understand nor wish for freedom in the ways that I do. This isn’t to say that sex is always like this. Sometimes it’s a fuck-and-go-don’t-know-your-name kind of vibe. Do politics matter then? Who can say. In a sense, I guess there is an aligned value there that sex can be as easy and as free as drinking a glass of water (to quote the chic, eventually problematic Alexandra Kollontai). 

So the question becomes not “should you have sex with someone with different political views to you?”—perhaps yes, if you’re a masochist—and becomes “is it possible to have good sex with someone who has different political views to you?” When I ask my friends, I can’t find one who says yes. One says it’s possible, as a very political person, to have sex with men who are apolitical, or just haven’t thought about it. Another trans friend says she doesn’t mind it when men she’s casually sleeping with aren’t super clued up on, say, pronouns or the political climate for trans people right now. But that kind of sex thrives on its future impossibility—the kind of sex we know can only happen once, three times at most—and so it keeps you in the present moment. 

Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to build relationships—sexual or romantic—with someone who has vastly different politics to you. Perhaps behind closed doors, perhaps if you believe there’s a possibility of changing the other person. But that isn’t a relationship. For me sex has always been a space of possibility, of some sort of hope: for escape, for pleasure, for more good sex in the future. I just don’t know if it’s possible to go to the places where you might glimpse these horizons with someone who wants to see different things there.