My Sinful Tongue. Talking About Sex

My Sinful Tongue. Talking About Sex
My Sinful Tongue. Talking About Sex
Anonim

Scandals surrounding the introduction of sex education in schools, the attempts of many magazines to find a sex columnist, endless intimate details of the life of celebrities - more and more people began to talk about sex, not even knowing how to correctly name what they are talking about. Evgenia Kuyda, Alexey Munipov and Ekaterina Krongauz sat down at a round table with a poet, linguist, psychologist, sexologist and editor-in-chief of a men's magazine to figure out what was going on here

Text: Evgeniya Kuida, Alexey Munipov, Ekaterina Krongauz

Ekaterina Krongauz: We wanted to talk about this: why is it impossible to have a calm, cultured conversation about sex in Russian? There is no tradition of public conversation, there is no sex columnist, but there are simply no suitable words.

Sergey Agarkov, sexologist, president of the "Culture and Health" Association: Let's define. What is a public conversation? A meeting?

E. Krongauz: What we are doing now is a public conversation.

Agarkov: In press? Well, there are media outlets where it is possible to talk about it. And in the Duma, for example, it is impossible. The legislators are simply afraid of these words. It comes to the ridiculous: it is necessary, for example, to describe what violent sexual acts are punishable by law. We are told - are you out of your mind? So that we write all these nasty words in the Criminal Code - oral sex, anal sex? As a result, it turns out that if on the street a young man kisses a girl on the cheek and runs away, these are violent actions, and they should be punished in the same way as for violent anal sex.

E. Krongauz: It seems to me that nothing happens in the press either. When you read, for example, our sex columns, it becomes either funny or bad. This is hardly the effect that the Sex column should be trying to achieve. In America, for example, there are a large number of different types of sex columnists. For example, I often listen to one podcast - there the presenter simply answers questions. For example, a girl says that she had sadomaso sex with her partner, and he began to strangle her somehow not very correctly. And they are discussing this case with the leader. We cannot even imagine such a thing!

Alexey Munipov: Yes, it's hard to imagine a column in Komsomolskaya Pravda about agreements in BDSM sex.

Agarkov: In the community of sadomasochists, by the way, a very developed language. Because there is an urgent need - you need to negotiate so that sex is safe. By the way, I would not look down on sadomasochists. There are times when a married couple has problems, for some reason they enter this community, accept rituals, rules - and suddenly they have a mutual understanding. They agreed. Not because there was a need to feel pain, they played it - but they had common rules.

Comparative graph of the use of the words "dick" and "civil society" in blogs

Kirill Vishnepolsky, editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine: And what do we generally know how to talk to each other about? That is, are we, in principle, talking to each other about something? We don't have sex talk because there is no partnership culture at all. Sex is a partnership. Look at the Forbes list: there is not a single person who has a partner. Even someone who started a business in a company either killed his colleagues or got divorced, at best.

Anna Varga, Chairman of the Board of the Society of Family Counselors and Psychotherapists: I agree - there is no concept of cooperation in Russia. And plus there is a special mythology of love: those who love must understand each other without words. And if we have to talk about something, it means that we do not understand each other, that is, we do not love each other. It is scary to talk about difference, because the mythology of love presupposes no difference.

Munipov: That is, talking about sex automatically means that you have problems?

Vishnepolsky: Well yes.

Evgeniya Kuyda: I am very worried about the question of the language itself. For example, it seems to me that a man up to 30-40 years old in bed does not know how to do anything at all. And the worst thing is that it is generally impossible to talk to him about technology. But the technique in sex is wildly important! People learn safety precautions before skiing. And there are two problems here. The first is that no one makes contact at all. That is, for example, I ask: “What do you like more?”, And even with these words people fall into a kind of dramatic stupor. And the second is that there is simply no language. Well, here's how to say - move yours to the left … What's yours? NS…? Penis? Horror. There are simply no words. "Fuck" is a terrible word. And others are no better. Therefore, it is impossible to write about this anywhere, neither in a newspaper nor in a magazine.

Agarkov: This problem was once formulated by Igor Semenovich Kon. We really don't have a language for that. There is a language for children, "pussy-miski". There is a medical language, there is an obscene language. And there is a love language - all these "bunnies", "pussies", etc. And, in fact, that's all. Our language, the language of working with a client, is medical. And people at the reception improvise, sometimes very inventively. "Doctor, the lift is gone." Or - "a peer refused." In this case, adults confuse erection and ejaculation. Or they call pollutions collisions.

Elena Kostyleva, poet: There is also a separate class of such special words that are worse than mate. Type of "ass". You will hear it once in your life - you will never greet this person again.

Kuyda: Are there normal, neutral expressions? You can say "does not get up", but this is also rude.

Agarkov: Well, today everyone says: "Doctor, I have problems with erection."

Vishnepolsky: Thanks to the TV.

Maxim Krongauz, Director of the Institute of Linguistics, Russian State University for the Humanities: Russian culture is indeed characterized by a lack of neutral vocabulary. For example, we do not have neutral treatment. Foreigners are very complaining. But there are a lot of emotionally colored people: the boss, the mother, and so on. So it is here. There are medical terms because there is a need to go to the doctor and get advice. But there are no neutral ones. And at the same time, we do not complain about their absence, because our culture is arranged that way.

Munipov: Yes, here we are, we are complaining.

M. Krongauz: You are complaining because you are young, you want to remake the world and culture, and culture resists, including language. Language serves our communication. It is not customary for us to discuss sexual problems, just as it is not customary, for example, to discuss how we relieve ourselves - therefore there are no neutral words for either one or the other. There are children, there are abusive ones, but there are no others. Here is a bawdy, obscene conversation about sex is possible, here we have a huge amount of words. And this is a separate and interesting topic - how the grassroots culture understands sex. She understands it primarily as violence. Verbs meaning violence, beating, we often get a second meaning associated with sexual intercourse, usually with the prefix "ot-". A typical example is "tear off". The word "fuck" also has a punch at its base. Conversely, verbs originally associated with sexual intercourse, for example, obscene verbs, very often acquire the meaning of beating or deceiving. In this vocabulary, a man appears as a kind of active instrument, a rapist, and a woman is either humiliated, beaten, or a vessel, and there are, accordingly, a number of verbs - "to blow", say. There are amazing new meanings. Let's say the word choke. Rare, unlike what I called. Do you know what it means?

Kostyleva: What happens during oral sex?

M. Krongauz: No. This is premature ejaculation.

Vishnepolsky: Interesting. I'll have to use it.

M. Krongauz: Euphemisms generally live their own lives. Let's say the word "dick" was once a simple name for the letter "x", it is believed that this is a truncated "cherub". Then it turned into a euphemism for the three-letter word and itself became abusive. For my parents' generation, the euphemism "fuck" was indecent. And for the current generation, and dick is quite decent.

Kuyda: And how is it that some words are physically absent in the Russian language? Here the writer Idov, translating his book from English, discovered that there is no Russian analogue of the word handjob - this is when you do your partner with your hands.

M. Krongauz: Well, this is obviously a rather new word - because it is composed of two. There is a linguistic law: if a concept is important for culture, there is a simple designation for it. Additions are used for less significant concepts.

Munipov: So blowjob is also later? Interesting. Although it would seem, huh?

M. Krongauz: Translation problems are the first thing we encountered at the beginning of perestroika, when such topics first became possible. How to translate Henry Miller? Matom is wrong, there is no such thing in the original. But as? The translator had to get out of it.

Kuyda: But the problem is really in the language! Let's say there is a word "blowjob".

Kostyleva: By the way, do we have such a word? I mean, is it printed?

Agarkov: Printed, of course. Yes, now all the words are printed.

Kuyda: It is not entirely pleasant, but it is there. But when, on the contrary, a man to a woman? There is this monstrous word - "cunnilingus", but who uses it? And how can I tell a man to do this here? Just push on your head?

M. Krongauz: Not ready to give intimate recommendations. But the blow job really, in scientific terms, has negative connotations. Do not tell your beloved woman - do it to me.

Kuyda: How to say? "Suck me"?

M. Krongauz: Here, as in the case of cunnilingus, there is room for creative search.

Kuyda: Do you know why there is no normal word for cunnilingus? Because Russian men believe that cunnilingus is optional. I came across some polls, according to which almost 90% of Russian men consider this to be some kind of terrible perversion. It's just that a man doesn't want to do anything for a woman. "As the fuck I am, so good." Why would he talk?

M. Krongauz: We are to blame.

Vishnepolsky: Forgive us.

Kostyleva: It seems to me that sex is such a separate language. And different things mean different things on it. For a lesbian a blowjob is one thing, for a man it is another. And it happens, you meet a person, and you speak the same language, and sometimes - one chatters, and the other vice versa.

Kuyda: I just came across a forum called the "Club of sex lovers." People who use the services of prostitutes communicate there. Giant, thousands of participants. And they have their own vocabulary. There are awful terms - for example, ZKP, "beer snack", which means a pose with cancer. But there are also cool ones. For example: "digit" and "analogue". "Number" - means "technically very good in bed, but without the mental impact." And "analog" is, accordingly, really, the old fashioned way. Maybe even technically imperfect, but mentally.

Kostyleva: It seems to me that it is created in chats, this new language. People have been chatting about sex in chats and forums for 15 years.

Munipov: Oh yes, we saw this new language. "Pelotki", "pulp" and "pussy".

Vishnepolsky: I recently received a spam: "Fuck my oven."

Agarkov: The Internet has all the prerequisites: there is impersonal, relaxed communication.

Vishnepolsky: By the way, yes. My wife and I can only discuss serious things on ICQ. There is an opportunity to think, you can take a time out …

M. Krongauz: For some reason, we proceed from the fact that there is progress in this area. But this is completely optional. Why is it better when there is neutral vocabulary? Why is it good when people know how to talk about it? Is it easier to negotiate? But there are wonderful cultures where men and women don't agree. There is even a feminine and masculine language in Japanese - that is, words that some people use and never others. Can we say that our society is better because there is no such division in it?

Agarkov: There is certainly progress in this area, and a woman benefits from it. Previously, three quarters of women did not experience an orgasm at all, but now it is a maximum of one quarter.

Vishnepolsky: Did you know that in Russia, according to surveys, 70% of the population does not brush their teeth?

Varga: Of course, there is progress. Look, when Freud started, it was customary to even close the legs of the chair with frills, so that they did not hint at anything. This conspiracy of silence gave rise to an endless number of neuroses, which Freud dealt with. Where are these neuroses now? You won't see them. There is no diagnosis of hysteria. The level of neurotization has objectively decreased. Because the legs are open. That's why you need to talk.

Agarkov: I don’t know, it’s very difficult to say whether the number of neuroses has decreased. Classical neurasthenia in the form in which it was invented 100 years ago is not in today's diagnostic reference books. But now there is depression instead. Previously, patients' arms and legs were taken away, speech, they were blind. And now neuroses are somatizing - my heart hurts, my stomach hurts.

Comparative graph of the use of the words "depression" and "erection" in blogs

Munipov: So sex education is not needed at all? Neuroses do not disappear, society does not want to, children also somehow grow up.

Agarkov: It is necessary, very necessary! What happens now? Parents do not want to talk about sex with their child. The school doesn't want to. The teenage environment will not teach him anything either. And when entering into marriage, a person does not possess not only the skills of conversation - even thinking about this topic. You cited the example of Western columnism, the culture of calm discussion - but in the West, as early as the 70s, sex education was introduced in schools without exception. From 12 years old. And of course, this very liberated both the language and society. We still have nothing of the kind.

E. Krongauz: Like they are going to introduce?

Agarkov: Yes, what is there! In 1993-1994 there was a famous initiative to introduce sexuality education. Five institutes started to work. Note that they did not make a textbook, but simply made up a program - which, generally speaking, should be discussed with schoolchildren. It all ended in a terrible scandal in the State Duma. The developers were accused of lecherous actions in relation to minors. In general, the genocide of the Russian people: they want to turn us all into prostitutes, corrupt and take us to the West. A criminal case has been opened! Thanks for closing. So talking about sex in Russia is a matter of jurisdiction. Since then, all experiments in this area have been discontinued. In private schools, in the soft version - it is still possible.

E. Krongauz: Well, in private, what language do they speak with children?

Agarkov: On medical, there is no other. Penis, phallus, vagina.

Vishnepolsky: And how is the penis different from the phallus?

Agarkov: The phallus is a tense penis. And the penis is a soft phallus.

All present: Seriously?!

Kuyda: I lived in the dark.

Agarkov: I'll tell you one more thing. For some time, the sexological literature actively discussed the question of why almost all the main researchers and educators in world sexology are Jews.

E. Krongauz: Well, we came here too.

Agarkov: Well, that's curious. It's just that in Judaism, unlike in Christian culture, there was never a ban on talking about sex - and this process itself was not condemned either. That is, there was a cultural tradition to discuss these problems.

E. Krongauz: And who is it easier to talk about their problems, men or women?

Varga: It's easier for women. They are less offended. Somehow it happened historically. A man hears behind women's claims not only the subject of conversation, but also that he, a man, is no good. A second layer of feelings arises, associated with self-esteem: it turns out that he was always bad, and she deceived him for so many years, was silent.

Vishnepolsky: I can tell where it came from. In Europe, since the time of the Roman Empire, there was a so-called social contract, when the vassal depended on the sovereign, and the sovereign on the vassal. Everyone collaborated. And we have always had a vertical society - a boss and a subordinate. And this relationship moved on to the relationship between men and women. A man is a boss, and a woman is a subordinate. Why negotiate with a subordinate?

Varga: What are you talking about! For 400 years now, we have not had anything like it.

Vishnepolsky: In Russia?

Varga: In Russia.

Vishnepolsky: Yes? Where is there at least one public party created by unpaid grandmothers? Where is the horizontal cooperation of citizens? Where is civil society?

E. Krongauz: That is, the lack of talk about sex is due to the lack of civil society?

Vishnepolsky: Quite right.

Munipov: Yes, what is it. And you can't talk about sex without turning to civil society.

Vishnepolsky: Tell me - why? Why Talk About Sex?

Munipov: Wait, I can't believe my ears. Is this the editor-in-chief of Men’s Health speaking?

Vishnepolsky: Well, this is me, rhetorically, on behalf of the embarrassed subconscious, I speak. Here we have reprinted the advice of American sexologists. Here we open it, read: “Ask what she wants you to call her vagina. Tell me what you want her to call your penis. Suggest several options, from funny to obscene. That is, this is their normal position: sit down at the negotiating table, discuss. And here I am the editor-in-chief of this magazine, who published this advice. I cannot ask my wife about it. She'll think I'm an idiot. She gave birth to three children, and after that I ask her how she wants me to call her vagina? How? Maryivanna?

Varga: Well, not bad.

M. Krongauz: There was such a term - Dunka Kulakova.

Kuyda: What's this? Fisting?

E. Krongauz: No, we have come up with a translation for fisting - dispossession.

M. Krongauz: And Dunka Kulakova is, of course, masturbation.

Varga: You ask, why talk? Because people do not talk about it, they cannot test their fantasies with reality. Why did this ugly sex education story come about? Because these women-deputies in the Duma imagined how they would react to all this as children - but they are adult aunts, and sexy pictures appear in their heads, and then they impose them on the child. It is clear that it turns out that horror. When there is no normal conversation, this fantasy ball arises.

Comparative graph of the use of the words "penis" and "phallus" in blogs

Kostyleva: I have long wanted to write a book with sex recipes. Our colleagues are writing about food, why can't we write about sex in the same spirit? Therefore, this conversation about the language excites me very much.

Vishnepolsky: Wait 200 years, all words will appear.

Kuyda: I think everything will be faster. There is an amazing online course called, I think, Purple Haze Blowjob. Very popular among girls, I have three friends signed up. You pay 15 dollars a month, and they explain everything to you in a very accessible language. No, really, there is somehow everything in order with the language. In principle, this is an analogue of cooking courses: you pay money so that your husband is happy as a result. Well, you also get some benefits from family life - happiness there, peace of mind.

Vishnepolsky: And is there confidence that the partner will indeed provide it in exchange for the purple haze?

Munipov: We have some kind of sad conversation. A man cannot talk to a woman in our country, this conversation itself is a terrible problem, all words about sex are associated with dark violence.

M. Krongauz: Well, what to do? Culture has been developing over the centuries. We cannot put together a round table and decide that from now on we will be good. We will not rape anyone, we will not hurt anyone. But believe me, we have come a long way. Twenty years ago, we could not have said anything like that aloud and up close. Even the seemingly innocent word “choke” I could not utter when I met with strangers.

Munipov: I can't either now.

Vishnepolsky: I know when everything will change. When will we finally learn to ride the roads respecting each other? When, finally, we will jointly oppose the actions of the authorities. When we learn to negotiate with each other in everyday life, then we will be able to negotiate in bed.

E. Krongauz: So we NEVER talk about sex?

Vishnepolsky: Please note: the roundtable was divided by gender. The girls say: "Well, why aren't you talking?" And the boys: "Yes, the time has not come, society is not ready, where to hurry." That's all, and we will not take other roles.

Kostyleva: If the problem is that men and women just have their own languages, maybe make a female-male dictionary?

Vishnepolsky: If there was a need, they would have made it long ago.

Varga: By the way, psychotherapy in the West has evolved this way. In the 70s and 80s, so-called men's and women's groups were organized: men talked about their masculine, women - about their feminine. And then psychotherapists came up with the idea of doing same-sex groups surrounded by the opposite sex. That is, the men's group works in the aquarium, and the women cannot participate, but they see and hear everything. And then vice versa. It turned out to be incredibly effective and, by the way, very unified language.

Kuyda: So everything ended well?

Vishnepolsky: That helped.

Kuyda: In general, I am doing the right thing that I read his text messages.

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