ABSTRACT
During my younger years, everywhere I went someone would ask me about or tell me news of my sex life. I would often joke that if I was having as much sex as the gossips reported, I would be spending too much time lying down to sit upright and write anything. When asked whether I was straight or gay, I would share that I was a sex radical. As I approached the age of fifty, the curiosity about my sex life all but disappeared. The only folks who wanted to know if I was doing it, and with whom, were women like myself: middle aged, mostly professional, feminists, women who considered each other “hot.” We are a small minority. After many years of self-chosen celibacy, I still see myself as a sex radical. In the introduction to Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex, Pat Califia explains that being a sex radical means “being defiant as well as deviant.” Furthermore, she explains:
It means being aware that there is something unsatisfying and dishonest about the way sex is talked about (or 178hidden) in daily life. It also means questioning the way our society assigns privilege based on adherence to its moral code, and in fact makes every choice a matter of morality. If you believe that these inequities can be addressed only through extreme social change, then you qualify as a sex radical.
