Desire Digest 005
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, the condom aisle and an in-person event next week!
Hello and welcome to Many Such Cases.
I don’t have much of an intro to deliver this week — I have actually been doing a lot of writing, and my head feels a little empty on the pleasantries I usually like to deliver. I’ve also been doing more in-person events, something I hope to continue! If you’re reading this on Friday, September 27th, I will also be doing a reading tonight in Williamsburg with a real stacked list of names. Partiful here and Eventbrite here.
I’d probably love to be invited to speak/read at whatever else you might have coming up :-)
An Event Next Week
On Thursday, December 3rd, I’m participating in an event hosted by Substack and
where I’ll be debating with cosmetic gynecologist Dr. Michael Reed on the merits of labiaplasty. The event is already sold-out (!), but you can sign up for the waitlist here.
What’s the Deal with the Family Planning Section at CVS?
Or Target, or Walmart, or Walgreens, or wherever else you can buy both condoms and Tums. Maybe they’ve been like this for some time now, but it seems like a relatively recent phenomenon (maybe over the last eight years or so?) that one could purchase vibrators alongside condoms and personal lubricant. Obviously, I spent most of my childhood and teen years averting my eyes from this section entirely, so I don’t know for certain how new any of this really is. Regardless, some people seem to be disturbed by it, seeing it as an embodiment of how permissive we’ve become toward sexuality. “You used to have to go to a sex shop to buy these things,” many say.
I’m always out here critiquing sexual permissiveness and the consequences of sex positivity. And yet, I don’t think vibrators in the condom section are an issue at all, or even really an example of this. While I have indeed seen photos of aisles that seem to have a surprisingly wide selection, it’s not as though these products look anything like the ones you’d see in an actual sex shop. There is nothing pornographic or even outwardly sexual about their packaging. Most importantly, I’d venture to guess that the people buying these sorts of things from their local drugstore are not hyper-online compulsive masturbators. They have probably never even heard the word “gooning.” They are, instead, the type of people for whom the drugstore presents a safe and comfortable foray into these products — older couples, for example, who neither wish to shop online nor venture off to a truck stop sex shop.
Of course, I am also suspicious of the complete medicalization of sexuality and its consequences for sexiness. Going to that truck stop sex shop is actually a fun practice. But the bottom line is: those vibrators at Target are for most likely for people who are actually having sex. And if for some reason that bothers you, well, you can continue getting all your groceries delivered by InstaCart and tweeting about it.
I’m Ready for Secret Lives of Mormon Wives Season Two
Something drew me in to The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives that I can not immediately identify. I think it was mainly due to the fact that the women on the show are generally my age and live a lifestyle rather different from my own. I knew a bit about what to expect: I’d heard of the “Momtok” TikTok scandal in which a group of young Mormon women had allegedly engaged in “soft swinging,” which I guess essentially involves making out with each other’s spouses. Despite this background, I still anticipated a bit more religious conservatism among members of the show. They are all Mormon on paper, but as with most other religious affiliations, the extent to which they all practice varies. All but one denies participating in the swining. About half of the women (again, all around my age, with the oldest being 31 or so) have been divorced, all have children (one was pregnant out of wedlock throughout the season) and many of them occasionally consume alcohol. And all of them, of course, are TikTok influencers.
While the Mormonism and the previous scandal shape the pretense for the show, all of this only partially defined the character of the season overall. Most of the girls were all around normal. And they should be! There’s nothing unusual about being 28 and married with children unless you live in New York City like I do. There are brief moments where they bristle around sexuality: in one episode, one of the influencer married moms debates accepting a paid sponsorship from a sex toy company, wanting to de-stigmatize female pleasure within her community. One of her co-stars, its frequently said, has never had an orgasm. In other scene, there is contention over one of the women sharing vague details of her sex life with her friend, who then makes a joke about it. It’s all very minor, resulting in the woman explaining that her fiancé reasonably does not want to be self-conscious about their sex lives becoming a matter of public discussion. These are problems that do not seem exclusive to the Mormon community.
Maybe what this show most successfully demonstrates, then, is how banal some of these themes have become for everyone, and the tension of trying to keep any of it discreet. It’s a tension that has emerged specifically from social media: what these women and their partners are all trying to navigate is how much to share. Online, oversharing has brought them followers, financial gain and even this very Hulu show. If it weren’t for the “swinging scandal” (which, for the record, I’m suspicious was ever even real), none of them would be here. The boundaries of family, relationships, their culture, religion and the simple value of privacy are all a challenge to that. That’s what makes it all so enthralling to watch.
And Lastly, Some Recommended Reading
I love
’s work on sexuality, and I’m thrilled she’s launched her newsletter here this week. You should subscribe!I am also consistently amazed by
’s output. She has been publishing daily and putting the rest of us to shame. I am super excited to read what she just put out today, wherein she asked millennial men about their pre-Internet porn habits.