The Celibates, the Gooners and the Moralists
A reflection on the last few months — plus, some notes on Urbit Assembly
The last few months have felt aggressive. This is something I’ve felt in my own life, but in the broader culture, too. I’m still deep in the process of finishing my book proposal (I’m almost there) and have therefore centered much of the mental focus on my day to day life on being in touch with our sexual culture. The problem is that it’s entirely a culture of conflict, of hypocrisy, of contradiction, and it provides a sense of tension that seeps into all of us. People are very mean to each other. It’s a challenge to not let it all trick you into being mean back.
On top of the writing, I’ve also been traveling. Last month, I went to Lisbon for Urbit Assembly, an esoteric tech conference with myriad fringe political followings. I was invited to speak on a panel about the culture industry, navigating writing and publishing in a world dominated by gatekeepers who do not often like to entertain ideas outside of the orthodox. My work tends to bridge the gap: I write for mainstream publications, even about sex, but still relegate much of the grittier work for here. I had a great time and made many new friends. I am deeply grateful to have been invited. People in these types of communities like Urbit tend to be wary of writers (especially those who might be described as “journalists”), fearing that I might publish some kind of feature that draws too much attention to them as individuals, maybe even doxxing them. I have no interest in doing that primarily because it’s boring. It doesn’t get at much of a broader truth. Instead, I’m more interested in what sort of collective trends can be gleaned that lead us to a better understanding of how people are collectively shaping our sexual culture.
Lots of people these days are calling themselves “celibate.” They mean to imply that they aren’t having sex by choice, that this is some loftier decision made for the betterment of themselves, their health, their work, their relationship with God. In many cases, they don’t even really mean it: it’s not as though they’re actually involuntarily celibate (which, some likely are) but rather that they are not consciously celibate at all.
The most specific thing I will say about Urbit Assembly is that it was filled with this type of guy. Guys who have positioned themselves as above the fray of what they (perhaps rightly) perceive to be the depravity of our sexual culture. By declaring themselves celibate, they are neither victim of nor contributors toward this culture, but rather conscientious objectors. And so to answer a question many people asked me while I was at the conference — yes, much of the Urbit community does indeed “fuck” in a spiritual or even literal sense, but just as many intentionally do not.
This type of celibacy is not at all anything specific to Urbit, though. It’s a trend I’ve been witnessing more and more lately, across politics and gender and interest. Many, many straight, young, liberal-ish women, for example, are declaring themselves celibate. As Elle, Business Insider, Huck and Dazed have all reported over the last year, this is largely in response to women feeling disrespected by the men they date and hookup culture writ large.
Of course, to decide to be celibate is itself a contribution to the sexual culture, one that further highlights its divisiveness. What I find most compelling about the trend, though, is that it’s not necessarily the truth. As poet Gabi Abrão aka Sigh Swoon, whom I met at the conference, tweeted in Lisbon, “I met a handful of self-proclaimed celibate men at this tech conference and every single one of them worked into the conversation how much they love eating pussy.”
Another friend at the conference mentioned that he’s met several women on dating apps who similarly call themselves celibate but, ultimately, prove themselves not to be. He told me it was often a sign of narcissism, citing the work of Dr. Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited. Vaknin posited that for narcissists, celibacy functions as a recuperative measure to repair the ego. In a 2016 blog post, Vaknin wrote that “By denying myself sex, my grandiose and glorified celibacy serves both to taunt and torment women around me, to defang and disempower them, and to buttress my conviction that I am superior and unique. Only supreme beings do not succumb to the irresistible allure of sex.”
For those who call themselves celibate and actually aren’t, it moreover embodies a sort of delusion that a word like “celibate” has meaning simply because you tell yourself it does. It employs the idea that whatever the circumstances may be wherein one of these types has sex doesn’t actually count and therefore, that having sex does not actually disqualify you from being celibate. Celibacy, in these cases, has almost nothing to do with sex at all.
This isn’t to imply that all of the celibates of Urbit or the young women who have embraced the celibacy label are lying. Plenty of people are genuinely celibate, and that’s a perfectly fine decision to make. But it nevertheless points to the conflicted, rather torturous relationship many of us have with sexuality. There is a rising desire to divest entirely, without the acknowledgement that this divestment a. requires real action and b. is still a contribution to the sexual culture. Am I saying that I’d rather all of these people be having sex? I’m not so sure. Instead, I think I’d rather we had a sexual culture that did not necessitate its public renunciation, nor make such a renunciation desirable.
But there remain plenty of reasons why this would be desirable, not least of all because the hookup culture conditions inspiring the celibacy trend are, in fact, often pretty bleak. We’ve reached a point where “gooning” is now common lingo. Even Norman Finkelstein knows what gooning is, a fact I am responsible for. Last year, I read my essay about gooncaves at a Mars Review of Books event that Finkelstein also read it. Afterward, he went on a podcast to lament the ambiance of the event writ large, but also his new knowledge of gooning. Somehow, he interpreted my very critical essay on the topic as an endorsement, by mere virtue of its sexual nature. It seems he was also upset with the crowd overall, and conflated the audience and my essay together.
“It struck me that even though this crowd considered itself bohemian, and even though this crowd considered itself anti-establishment, it struck me — this is exactly the crowd that would go over for fascism,” he said.
What’s funny is that I agree with Norman Finkelstein, in a way: gooning is reminiscent of Weimar decadence. People who are overly absorbed in the world of porn consumption probably would go for fascism. That’s why I’m talking about it! Because it’s bad!
But Norm seems to be ascribing to a similar line of thinking as the faux-celibates: that simply saying something, talking about something, makes it more true.
I even tend toward this thought process myself, at times. That gooning is now such a popular term concerns me. I constantly see TikTok comments joking about edging from what I have to assume are teenagers. KnowYourMeme even published an explainer on edging because of how popular it’s become as “slang.” It seems like our world is increasingly engrossed in the language of pornography. It may all be a joke, yes, but I fear it lends to its normalization. There’s little subtext to these jokes that any of this could be problematic. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that people would want to be celibate in a goon-centric culture.
Meanwhile, critiquing porn is fraught in its own ways: over the weekend, for example, the popular debate seemed to be whether selfies were worse than porn. Most of us are unable to argue for anything other than complete acceptance or complete prohibition. As I’ve written before, my preference would be for something in between. As selfies prove, there are countless things that are spiritually pornographic (nihilistic, exhibitionistic, voyeuristic, the flattening of something into a consumable object, etc) that do not contain pornography was we know it today. Most anything has the potential to become profane. Removing all pornography is an impossibility, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still merit to more nuanced conversations about it. Rather than making any real argument for, say, reconsidering the American relationship with sites like PornHub, we’re wrapped up in making sweeping moralizations, instead. We use it as an opportunity to be mean. We accuse the people talking about it of either being fascists or porn addicts. In reality, some are probably both. We’re all still contributing to this sexual culture in one form or another.
In any case, each day I’m working to untangle these knots a little bit further. New threads emerge, new lines to follow. The tension persists. Above all, I’m just trying not to be mean, myself.