Inching toward transparency

I wonder if there isn't another sexual revolution in the offing.

N's post about James Deen and the GQ article that inspired it got me thinking. Sure, there have been mainstream profiles of porn stars for years, but as has been repeatedly pointed out, James Deen ain't your grandma's porn cake. He's accessible, seemingly genuine, and in spite of the screen name, pretty wholly himself (and what is a porn star without a porn star name? I'm not sure that rose would smell as sweet, just sayin').  He's real.  And not creepy.  So maybe his actions are real, and not creepy too.  And not so far away from the rest of us.

The uninhibited popularity of "Fifty Shades" (witness the many subway readers hardly bothering to hide the book's cover; the announcements and comments about it that periodically flood my Facebook stream; the suggestion that book groups read it (?!)), points, I think, to a new, more inclusive relationship to sexuality on the whole.

In the airport bookstore...

Throw in cool stuff like the many states, including my own, legalizing gay marriage, the popularity and agreed upon wisdom of Dan Savage, and the swelling (ahem) numbers of thoughtful, articulate sex bloggers the world over and I smell a change in the weather.

Maybe it's me, (I am the center of my universe after all) and my age... (as I hurtle headlong toward a significant birthday...) But it seems like a lot of us are reconsidering our relationships to sex, marriage, friendship, and each other.  And discovering that there are, well, many shades of grey- or better yet- a spectrum of colors, and that it's in fact producing a richer, more liberated, and deeply personal experience within our relationships, albeit a more complicated one.

I like my Lizzie persona, but the line between Lizzie and her alter ego is ever more blurry. Admittedly, I'm not doing much these days that stretches the lines of societal propriety, but still...

I suppose my argument is entirely circumstantial, and yet..

And it's possible that all almost-40-year-olds have felt their way through these waters for generations, and like many things that are only revealed to you as you get there, I'm just getting there, so it feels new and enlightening to me...

My husband has often called me "The Demographic" by which he means that when I'm interested in a particular thing it seems suddenly more prominent or visible- that I tend to pick up on trends early- including things not always as flighty as fashion.

So I wonder, is it just me, or are we developing a more inclusive and holistic approach to sex overall? Are we coming closer, culturally, to owning our desires, and accepting them?