HAVING
SEX FOR COLUMBINE
By Dr. Pega Ren
As Michael
Moore’s sensational new movie Bowling for
Columbine wows theatre-goers and reminds Canadians
how wise and lucky we are to be on this side of the
border, we can easily translate the movie’s
topic of America’s love affair with guns to
our own attitudes about sex. Moore suggests that fear
keeps our southerly neighbours in a constant state
of insecurity and over-reaction. Does fear similarly
cause us to resist pleasure and demonize sexual expression?
Can we link our conservative censorship (both governmental
and personal) to historical factors that we’ve
long forgotten?
We certainly have our own sexual Columbines. There
was the Montreal Massacre, which resonated with fear
and hatred of the female gender. We have the Pig Farm
murders. Ditto. We have continuing gay bashings in the
West End which seem to go curiously under-investigated
and rarely resolved. Are we witnessing another expression
of the confusion between sex and violence? Or is Canada
swept away with the same kind of blinkered adherence
to an unexamined social more of denial of pleasure as
the United States is to the insanity of violence as
an end as well as a means to capturing a sense of security?
Is it this fear that causes our attempts to silence
information about sex? Why does pleasure frighten us
so? What are we afraid will happen if we revel in sensual
delight, if we talk openly and approvingly of loving
connections, if we educate our population (young and
old alike) to the joys as well as the consequences of
sex? Michael Moore discovered no solutions, but his
perceptive view of the problem may encourage critical
and creative thinking regarding what seems to be a silly
obsession with violence. If we look at sex and sensuality
with that same kind of clear perspective, might we see
better and kinder solutions ourselves?
© 2003. Pega Ren, Ed.D. All Rights
Reserved.
