Scott will address the society and then take questions from the floor.

Known as a “comedic smart-aleck”, Scott grew to fame in the ‘American Pie’ films and now is a successful screen actor, voice actor and producer.

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By Sarah Grace

Presented to the Bram Stoker Club on the 21st of March 2012

Introduction

For as long as there have been humans, there have been fights. Sometimes these were fights for survival, over food or over territory, with animals or with other humans. Sometimes these were the fights we call war, with individual deaths becoming the measure of success for empires and ideals. And sometimes these were fights just for the sake of fighting.

These last fights and the people who engage in them are the subject of this paper. The first two forms of fighting, for survival and in war, can both be viewed as in some sense necessary. However they are widely seen, today at least, as perhaps unavoidable but always unfortunate. Their brutality is unpleasant to us and their occurrence is to be lamented.

This is not only because of the deaths which are almost inevitably involved. Every violent death is quite properly regarded as a tragedy.

But there is also a sense in which, even if the question of death were to be removed, we feel that we as a species have somehow outgrown bloodshed. We, and by that I mean primarily the Western world, are highly educated, societally complex and technologically advanced. Since the industrial revolution our economy has placed gradually more and more emphasis on intellect as opposed to physical strength, to the extent that today most jobs can be done as well by the weak as by the strong. This trend has been to the advantage of certain groups in society, especially women, and it is hard to dispute that it has been, on the whole, a positive development.

However, this glorification of knowledge and expertise has seen a corresponding decline in our estimation of more traditional virtues such as courage, endurance and strength. There is simply no need for them anymore, outside of our small populations of professional soldiers. And even soldiering has been changed dramatically from what it used to be, with modern technology allowing participants to kill from greater and greater distances. The enemy is dehumanised, with individuals referred to as “targets” and point-and-click weapons giving war the impersonal character of a video game. While a certain amount of face-to-face conflict still exists on the modern battlefield, it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that its days are probably numbered.

Who Is The Fighter?

It is in the context of this prevailing disapproval of violence that we consider the third kind of fight – not the fight for survival or the fight in war, but the fight that is fought simply for the sake of fighting. And if we wish to discuss the fighter – this kind of fighter – as a cultural figure then we need to identify first who we are talking about and, crucially, who we are not talking about. This then allows us to consider the fighter’s personality, history and development before turning to the question of why fighters do what they do and whether they have anything to teach us. This is the task of this paper.

The voluntary fighter is not a modern creation. As early as 216 BC Roman gladiators fought to the death for the entertainment of a crowd, often with elaborate props such as exotic animals or mock pirate ships. And while many of these gladiators were prisoners of war or condemned criminals, a certain proportion of them were professionals; free born men, often of high status, who risked their lives for sport. And the Romans were by no means alone in this enthusiasm for bloodshed.

Perhaps the mere fact that this is such an ancient phenomenon actually encourages us to reject it now; perhaps we see ourselves as engaged in the tide of history, the march of progress. Any change is therefore viewed unquestioningly as an improvement on what went before, as proof of our continuing advancement, but it may in some cases leave us at risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I would suggest that we should re-examine our modern distaste for bloodlust for fear that with it we may lose, not only some very noble principles, but also the ability to understand a very fundamental aspect of our nature as humans.

But this distaste is not entirely whole-hearted, or at least not yet. Today the most obvious vestiges of violent glory are seen in competitive martial arts and other combat sports. The public fascination with it also remains, despite the prevalent disapproval mentioned earlier, as evidenced by the massive popularity of professional mixed martial arts and boxing, to say nothing of action films and violent video games. These devices allow us to engage with violence from a distance; to cheer for it and act it out without having to risk the inconvenient side-effects of pain or injury.

Some people, however, choose to embrace these aspects as well. Martial arts and other fighting styles are popular pastimes, despite the fact that their raison d’etre is unarguably, in one form or another, the pursuit and perfection of violence. But not everyone who participates in them will see it like this, or even particularly enjoy this aspect. Not everyone who learns a fighting style does so because they wish to fight.

Many people take part for the less controversial reasons of keeping fit, making friends, or simply learning impressive technical skills as you might in gymnastics or any other sport. There is also, particularly with the Eastern martial arts, a quasi-philosophical element that emphasises inner peace and the dedication of mind, body and spirit together to a particular way of life. Many martial artists avoid contact sparring entirely and for others it is seen simply as a way to test their technical skill rather than an end in itself.

Conversely, participants in non-fighting sports frequently demonstrate a gladiatorial spirit beyond that of many martial artists; in rugby, for example, the willingness to tackle a six-foot-six guy who weighs 250 pounds quite obviously comes from the same mental place as the willingness to face that guy in a boxing ring. This is not in any sense seeking to imply that martial artists who don’t have this bloodlust are in any way inferior – in many ways in fact they are arguably better at what they do. I draw the distinction only to help us to identify the figure of “the fighter” as it exists in our culture, because it is a distinct character with a distinct personality and associated mythology, and it is this specific figure with which we are concerned.

Simply put, not everyone who learns to fight is a fighter, and not every fighter has studied a fighting system. The concept of the fighter is quite a mercurial one and part of the challenge of this paper is to delineate it in a clear enough way as to allow for its discussion. I will focus on the fighter as found in the fighting sports, and by fighting sports I mean everything from traditional contact martial arts to fencing to MMA. The reason for this is that it will hopefully lead us to the archetypal expression of a somewhat amorphous concept, which in turn will hopefully facilitate a more in-depth consideration of the issues. I would also specifically exclude thugs and street fighters, as these are for the most part bullies, hot-heads and sadists rather than true fighters. Violence can exist separate of cruelty and this separate existence is what I want to consider. So what, then, is our definition of a “true” fighter?

A fighter is someone who voluntarily participates in heavy physical conflict. They enjoy testing their strength against others, they glory in the theatre of aggression and they get a thrill from hitting and being hit. Injury is not a deterrent to them, and one of the defining features of the fighting spirit is a refusal to give up under any circumstances. The fighter is stubborn to the point of idiocy. Pain is ignored and fear is irrelevant, if present at all.

And we see this image time and time again. In Rocky, for example, the triumph is not in winning but in lasting the full fifteen rounds against an unbeatable opponent. More recent films like The Fighter, Warrior and Million Dollar Baby all find heroes in competitors who don’t know when they’re beaten and who would rather die than let common sense overrule their pride. These stories are the modern reflections of an ageless icon, one just as easily found in Homer’s epics or the in words of Rudyard Kipling’s “If”; for example:

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’”

This fighting spirit is familiar to us all, even in a day and age when violence is dismissed as brutish. We may even see something to admire in it, but few if any of us would seek to do it ourselves. Pain, after all, is the body’s way of telling us that we’re doing something stupid. The idea that this should be courted, rather than avoided, is alien to most of us.

The Desire to Fight

What is it, then, that gives some people this desire to fight? While we can make any number of psychological generalisations, saying that fighters tend to be stubborn, or prideful, or tend to prefer individual activities to team activities – and all of these things are true – the single most obvious recurring characteristic is gender.

Fighters, by and large, are men. This has been true throughout history and it remains true today. While female fighters do exist, they are very rare. Furthermore, their rarity does not really seem to be related to historical male dominance. In the past, of course, women often simply did not have the opportunity to become fighters in the first place, and where they did have this opportunity, as for example with the open recruitment of fighter pilots in Stalinist Russia, the tiny number who availed of this opportunity proved themselves the equals of male fighters. But this tiny number does not really seem to have grown in tandem with female emancipation.

In modern times the proportion of women who would qualify as fighters by our definition is still far smaller than the corresponding proportion of men. This is neatly illustrated by the fact that while new recruits to the fighting sports tend to be split roughly 50/50 in terms of gender, women have a much higher drop-out rate. Thus the black belts – or equivalent rank – in any fighting sport are disproportionately male. And from there it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to assume that a group of black belts is likely to include more fighters than a group of white belts.

This, I would argue, is because the identity of the fighter and the desire which drives the fighter are very closely connected with notions of masculinity. It may be that if we ever manage to abolish gender norms entirely this will cease to be the case, but first I would suggest that if this ever happens it will be so far in the future as to be irrelevant to our present discussion, and secondly I would question whether fighting’s close association with masculinity is necessarily problematic.

Violence initially came to be associated with masculinity because men were the breadwinners. Breadwinning required physical strength, as outlined earlier, and women, ordained by biology to be the bearers of children, were at an obvious disadvantage in this regard. Killing a mammoth is not something you can do while pregnant, and from there it was natural for early humans to conclude that the weaker sex was best occupied with child-rearing as well as child-bearing, leaving the physically strenuous work to the men. Once physical strength is associated with masculinity the association with fighting is so obviously contingent as to require no further explanation.

Women’s early role as homemakers thus established, men were free to dominate and influence our culture as we gradually developed civilisation. Thus almost all the mythologies in the world are told from the male point of view. The archetypal hero’s quest, as described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is a journey that only a man would have been in a position to undertake:

“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Again, this is not something you can do while pregnant.

The only exceptions to this male domination of mythology are found in fairy tales, which were stories told by women to their children. These are peopled with female protagonists and have markedly different values and perspectives. In particular, they put little or no emphasis on fighting and military glory.

Obviously, a culture and its stories are so closely interwoven that each will serve to reinforce the stereotypes of the other. But stories last and accumulate over time in a way that any particular culture does not. So while every child is a creature of whatever culture he happens to be born in, he is also the creature of several centuries worth, if not millennia, of story-telling. This renders the image of the male warrior-hero almost inescapable, so central is it to the collective, accumulated imagination of humankind.

The ideal of the warrior-hero appeals to a part of our spirit that Plato refers to as thymos. This is a desire for glory which certain people feel more strongly than others. These people, Plato says, are both dangerous and valuable. They need praise when they fight well because material rewards mean nothing to them; they fight for pride and to prove their own worth. They also need something to occupy them when there is no war. We are told that sports are the perfect substitute in this regard, and presumably fighting sports would be even more so, pursuing as they do the cause of individual honour with an accompanying theatre of war.

But in a culture which still espouses this warlike image of manhood in its stories, the modern man can face something of a crisis. Because outside of the stories he is told that physical strength is useless. He is told that war is a tragedy and not a triumph. And he is told that there is nothing that he can do which a woman cannot also do.

This last factor is particularly important. Obviously, again, from a more general point of view this is excellent and entirely commendable. This paper does not seek to suggest that these new female freedoms should be regretted. But from the point of view of individual male identity it can be problematic, because what now prevails is a situation in which a woman can do everything a man can do, or at least we want that to be the case – but a man cannot do everything a woman can do.

Women still have possession of certain things to the exclusion of men. For example, a man cannot be a stay-at-home parent, or a dancer, or a nurse without being seen, at least to some extent, as somehow compromising his identity as a man. There is an undeniable stigma at work here. In contrast, every modern woman has the power to make her female identity pretty much anything she wants it to be, and by power I mean not that there are no glass ceilings but that society in general supports her in that endeavour. No matter what she does or doesn’t do, her identity and integrity as a woman are still intact. When a woman does a man’s job she is celebrated; when a man does a woman’s job he is ridiculed.

This is probably due in large part to the fact that society spent so long actively limiting women’s horizons that it is no longer comfortable being seen to be doing it at all. Limiting horizons is bad, so this is a good thing. This in turn, however, again leads to something of a crisis for men. Because men have traditionally defined maleness by reference to things women couldn’t or shouldn’t do; be it working, acting as a protector or growing a beard. But in an age where women can and do do everything there remains very little that can be categorically defined as “manly” or “masculine”; indeed these words have become almost taboo in themselves. Eventually it is likely that men will have to give up this metric of definition by exclusion in favour of some other method, but in the mean time the few things that remain unquestionably “masculine” can act as incredibly potent symbols for the individual; they can become, if you like, the peg on which to hang your manliness hat.

Fighting is one of these last havens of masculinity. The fact that women have succeeded in this arena too is irrelevant, at least thus far, serving only perhaps to make those women involved seem more manly, if anything, rather than making the activity itself seem less so.

The film Fight Club (and the book too, come to that) provide us with a good illustration of how powerful these symbols can be. The male characters are empowered through fighting and they use it reclaim their identity. How sensible their actions are is arguable, but it is hard to gainsay their effectiveness in terms of pure empowerment.

Obviously not every modern man needs to fight to prove to himself that he’s a man and not every fighter is undergoing a crisis of masculinity, but this does perhaps go some way towards explaining why fighters are usually men and the association between fighting and masculinity more generally.

On the other side of the coin it might be suggested that this masculine ethos is off-putting to women and may be the reason for the lower rate of female participation in fighting sports. This will always be difficult to prove, but I would suggest that the act of fighting simply appeals more to men, and the ethos is derived from that, rather than that there are legions of women who want to fight but are put off by the masculine ethos; the former just seems more plausible to me.

Certainly female fighters themselves, at least in my experience, seem to have little issue with any perceptions of their activities as masculine. An admittedly rather unscientific straw poll of martial artists of my acquaintance found that the female respondents were adamant that there is no room for gentlemanly behaviour in training and that no account whatsoever should be taken of gender, beyond registering a difference in the size and strength of an opponent where it exists, just as you would with a male opponent. And while the men generally agreed with this, it was interesting that in general their opinions on the subject were far less strident and much more equivocal.

Because the crucial thing here is that we speak in terms of masculinity and femininity, rather than male and female. To say a trait is “male” is to say that only men can ever possess it, whereas to say a trait is “masculine” is to say only that it is more common among men, without excluding the possibility that some women can also possess it. As long as we maintain this distinction the pursuit of an entirely gender-neutral ideology is unnecessary, both in fighting and, in my opinion at least, in society more generally.

Fighter as Role Model

But even if we now have a better understanding of why fighters choose to fight, the question still remains as to whether they should fight. Is the fighter a valuable role model or is society correct to label him pig-headed, brutal and even dangerous?

For the fighter themselves, of course, this is an irrelevant question. Some people are born with the fighting spirit and simply know no other way to live. But in most cases, fighters are made, at least to some extent. Even the most prideful, thymos-filled person is not usually a fighter without training. Training not only teaches the actual skills necessary to be a fighter in the context of any particular sport but it also continuously breaks and reforms the student – or at least it should. Becoming a fighter requires you to constantly come up against your own limits – physical, mental, emotional – and to push through them. Eventually the fighter can do this on their own, but they learn to do it through training – and from their coach in particular.

And it requires a particular toughness from a coach to train a real fighter, a toughness bordering on heartlessness. There can be no sympathy. The only time an injury can be allowed to stop training is if it is serious enough to throw all training into jeopardy. Pain and fear and exhaustion all become enemies to be defeated, but no one can do that on their own – or not the first time, at least.

And this type of education is useful, even if the student never entirely embraces the fighting identity, because it becomes a prototype for everything in life which is lonely and demanding and genuinely difficult. It teaches the individual that they are stronger than they ever would have thought, and this knowledge can be itself a source of strength. And it teaches how to recover from failure, which is a useful life-skill if ever there was one.

But even aside from training which specifically fosters the fighting spirit, combat sports in general have been proven multiple time to improve confidence, discipline, ability to deal with stress and independence, as well as making people far less likely to lose their temper in everyday life.

This last benefit is what puts combat sports ahead of other sports in terms of personal improvement, in my opinion at least. Sports can generally bring out both the best and worst in people. Athletes can be restrained and honourable, but they can also be vindictive. For bullies, sports encourage and indulge aggression. They learn to take pleasure in humiliating others, and the lines between game and reality blur.

The reason combat sports are different is because the violence itself is the game. It is made technical and it is bound by rules. If the competitor wants to win, he must obey these rules and this requires control. He cannot simply unleash his anger. Therefore if he is used to controlling his aggression in the game, because he has to, he will naturally tend to control his aggression in real life as well. In other sports, aggression is something to be channelled rather than controlled and it is then easy to channel that aggression into other things off the field of play. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. In most sports, you can lose your temper and still win – it may even help, as long as you avoid fouling anyone. In combat sports, the moment anger enters the picture you have lost. There are exceptions to this obviously, Mike Tyson being an obvious one, but in general the statistics seem to support it.

The other important benefit that combat sports give is they teach you to take a hit. This, on first appraisal, probably doesn’t seem like a very important skill. After all, if combat sports are meant primarily for self-defence, surely they should be teaching you to avoid getting hit.

First, combat sports are not particularly aimed at teaching self-defence. This is a common misconception. Self-defence and fighting for sport are different things. Self-defence is useful, yes, but the situations in which it can be used are actually quite rare. Beyond making the individual feel more confident, most people who learn it will never use it. If you do need it, however, knowing how to take a hit is crucial. Most people freeze up if someone hits them. They panic, meaning that if they react at all it tends not to be in a particularly sensible way. But if you’re used to getting hurt, and used to mastering your pain, it won’t phase you – or at least it will phase you a lot less. Learning to take a hit without crumbling is not only crucial to being a great fighter, it also bestows a confidence and an inner strength beyond that given by almost anything else. It’s a mixed blessing, but a valuable one.

So on this analysis, fighting sports generally can probably be seen as positive. The final question is whether we should consider fighters themselves to be heroes or idiots.

This ultimately comes down to a question of sacrifice. The very essence of the fighting spirit quite literally involves the risking of life and limb. Brain damage, paralysis and other life-altering injuries are all very real risks for someone who refuses to give in to their body’s frailties. Certainly such a person defies everything our Health and Safety culture stands for and we, by and large, accept this culture as common sense. We fail to see how damage limitation could be anything other than positive. Why would anyone risk their quality of life if they didn’t have to?

But we should question the underlying assumption in this, the unquestioning acceptance of risk minimisation as our highest goal. If we look at this on a larger scale, it begs the question of whether, for instance, there can ever be anything worth dying for. I’d ask you to consider, on a personal level, what your answer to that question would be. Maybe you would sacrifice your life for a loved one. Maybe you would willingly fight in a war like World War II. Maybe you would die if it meant a number of others would live.

But what if we remove the element of empathy? Is there anything, apart from other humans, that you would die for? Would you die for your country? Would you die for an ideal? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t, but most of us can see something admirable in these causes.

And what about yourself? Would you die for yourself? This may seem an odd question, but that is essentially the cause of the fighter. They fight for their honour, their pride, their glory. They fight, and risk everything, for themselves. Their own reputation is their ideal – a reputation squarely based in the age-old virtue of courage. Courage is almost unfashionable now, but it lives on in our stories. We still rally around Harry Potter, for example, a modern character who voluntarily risks death countless times. If we still, as a people, believe in courage for the sake of the greater good, we should perhaps be more open to the idea of valuing for its own sake also. And if courage is a worthwhile virtue in and of itself then the fighters, even those with no cause beyond themselves, are worthy heroes and paragons of virtue, and should be recognised as such.

It is possible that if humanity ever outgrows war that we will no longer have a need for courage. Certainly this seems to be the objective of a certain section of liberal society, which hopes that if we can take the glory away from violence and make people look down on soldiers then this will somehow translate into the extinction of war itself.

First, I don’t think this will succeed for the simple reason that lack of willing soldiers won’t stop any government from going to war. There will always be people who will do anything for money and there will probably also always be the option of conscription as well. Second, it is a fallacy to think that soldiers would rather fight a pointless war than no war at all – this misunderstands the whole nature of courage, which necessitates a belief in the honour of what you’re doing. Thirdly, this denies the possibility that there can ever be a just war, because even if such events are rare justice will still requires courageous people to fight in its defence. And finally, even if we could eradicate war altogether in this way I think we would have lost something even in doing that.

Because glorifying bravery and the fighter isn’t only useful in a warzone – it is also the thing that encourages a stranger to step in to stop a gang rape against overwhelming odds, or a single person to speak out against an oppressive regime, or a child to stand up to their schoolyard bully. Courage is an important value to keep hold of in our society because it reminds us that there are things worth fighting for, and I think allowing ourselves to admire fighters for their sheer nerve and stubbornness can help us remember this.

They are the rightful heirs to Hercules and Hector and the power of their stories can help to keep the spirit of the warrior-hero alive in an age when it might otherwise be forgotten. We should never lose our admiration for the hero, for the one person who will stand against the world, because that spirit is immensely important to the preservation of all that we hold dear. We need to know that, if we needed to, if something important was at risk, that we could fight and we would fight and that would be right to fight.

Conclusion

In the end, the question really is whether violence can ever be a positive thing. I think that cruelty is always going to be negative, and to that extent violence for violence sake can be problematic. People who pick fights on the street or who use violence to dominate others are no more than bullies, and if the fighter as a cultural figure tends to encourage this behaviour then that might be a reason not to celebrate it. But I think the equation of the fighter with the thug in the first place is based on a fundamental misunderstanding. They are entirely different, because the fighter is fighting a consenting opponent. This means it’s not cruelty, it’s not bullying and it’s not a power trip – it’s just one individual testing their limits and willpower against another, and for all the reasons discussed earlier I think that can has the power to be a very positive thing.

Sarah Grace

Download it here:Bravery and Brutality- The Heroism of Fighting by Sarah Grace

THW Reunite Ireland

This week for the final debate of the session the Phil revisits the topic of the status of the Northern Irish state. With the stagnation of political devolution and the economies on both sides of the border facing further downturn – the question must be asked as to whether the sense of nationalism which would seek to reunite the Republic and the North is not only moral but in the general interest of this island’s population. Speakers will include political representatives from a range of Northern Irish parties.

Proposition:
Dolores Kelly, Deputy Leader of the SDLP
Tommy McKearney, Irish republican, socialist, and former hunger striker and volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Opposition:
David McNarry, Unionist MLA, former Chief Whip of the UUP, member of the Orange Order
Jim Allister QC, Leader of Traditional Unionist Voice and former MEP

Manifestos for each position are below.

President

Dave Byrne

Lorcan Clarke

Secretary

Rosalind Ní Shúilleabháin

Brendan O’Nolan

Treasurer

Jamie Donnelly

Brian Higgins

Registrar

Anna Harrington

Owen Murphy

Debates Convenor

Ben Butler

Librarian

Andrew Murphy

Steward

Patrick Cremen

The most prestigious event in The Phil calendar, this event is guaranteed to be thought-provoking and unforgettable.

The keynote speech is to be given by United States Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, one of the longest-standing and highest ranking female politicians in the United States and the world. Leader Pelosi is to make an address entitled “E Pluribus Unum – Out of Many, One” and discuss the shared democratic ideal between Ireland the US. A number of responses will follow, with 8 further members of Congress and leaders in politics and business in attendance.

The reaming tickets are available from the council room in the GMB Monday the 12th from 11am onwards. Phil card or €6 for membership required.
The event is black-tie.

 Presented to the Bram Stoker Club on the 22nd of February 2012

By Derwin Brennan

“The glittering lights on Manhattan that served as backdrops for Edith Wharton’s bodice-heaving trysts are still glowing – but the stage is empty. No one has breakfast at Tiffany’s and no one has affairs to remember. Instead we have breakfast at 7am and affairs we try to forget as quickly as possible. How did we get into this mess?” – Carrie Bradshaw (1:1)

In this paper I want to look at the television series Sex and the City and how it looks at sex and relationships in the 21^st century. I hope to explore it as a reflection of our relationship with sex, the idea of modern romance and how it’s normalisation of public sexual discourse.

Sex and the City broke new ground when it was launched in 1998 on HBO. It became an instant hit with global appeal and even graced the cover of Time magazine in 2000 under the headline “Who needs a husband?” In 2001 it became the first cable comedy to win an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. Through its six series and two movie run it has brought frank discussions of sexual adventure into the homes of people around the world posing questions such as “Can women have sex like a man?”, “Are twenty-something men the new designer drug?” and “Are threesomes the next sexual frontier?” Despite protestations and condescension from commentators both male and female such as Charlotte Raven, a Guardian columnist who warned her friends not to write about the show because she “couldn’t bear the idea of anyone believing (or affecting to believe) that this worthless pile of swill was culturally relevant” Sex and the City has left its mark on television and perhaps on wider society as well.

Talking Sex

Honey, you have to let it go. If I worried what every bitch in New York was saying about me, I’d never leave the house. – Samantha Jones

What made Sex and the City ground-breaking for its time was its characterisation of sex (specifically female sex) not just as an incidental feature to relationships and adventure but as the driving force behind such. It was an activity with its own arena of adventures and a human experience full of intricacy and nuance. In relationships it was just the signifier that something had become significant but an important aspect of that relationship that often affected its very survival. Before Sex and the City the role of sex in television and movie stories was to culminate a romantic or erotic chase and to demonstrate the ultimate success of the pursuers’ endeavour, a trophy, without any attention paid to the intricacies and consequences of the act itself.

The girls in the show are portrayed as empowered single women how exert control over their lives by talking frankly about sex, their experiences and their expectations. This sexual dialogue and its ability to empower can and does apply to all of us. We can all become sexual citizens, by which I mean able to identify based on our sexuality by being able to talk about sex openly and denying others innate control over our sexual identities by silencing ourselves when the social sexual narrative is constructed. As Foucault put it:

The person who holds forth on intimate sexual affairs places themselves to a certain extent outside the reach of power… upsets established law and somehow anticipates the coming freedom.

I believe we can all understand how as growing up we took control of our sexual selves and gained confidence in being that person by being able to talk about it, being able to stand over ones desires and be identified by them. What we get in Sex and the City is an openness to a multitude of various sexual experiences and a normalisation about being able to discuss sex frankly amongst friends. While we may not all have the frankness of a Samantha who is able to caution a woman considering purchasing a particular massager for use as a sex toy: “No, absolutely not. That will burn your clit off”, the show helps normalise talking about our sex lives and being able to own our experiences in the sexual sphere, that is despite the characters horror at some particular indulgences as has been noted earlier. We learn from TV, in a way that we don’t from our immediate environment, that sex isn’t uncomplicated and it may not be that easy. We are given a language to use and role models to attach ourselves to. It is becoming increasingly acceptable for us to criticise sex and to become more willing to demand what we want, not just what we’re sold. If you don’t think sex is complicated I might direct you to the wise words of Samantha Jones who notes:

“Teeth placement and jaw stress and suction and gag reflexs, and all the while bobbing up and down, moaning and trying to breathe through our noses. Easy? Honey, they don’t call it a job for nothing.” (Easy Come, Easy Go – Episode 9, Series 3)

La Douleur Exquise

The exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable – Carrie Bradshaw

Despite its reputation as portraying the Sex and the City girls above such things as relationships sex is portrayed in an old-fashioned manner on the show. It broke ground in its portrayal of sex it as central to the relationship and a deal-breaker in many of them (many burgeoning romances ended due to unexpected sexual peccadillos such as the budding relationship between Charlotte and investment banker Alexander Lindley (Are We Sluts? Episode 6, Season 3) ended because of his involuntary shouting of expletives during coitus or Carrie’s rejection of potential paramour Bill Kelley because of his request that she pee on him during sex) but even all of this sex, while portraying a liberated woman, tends to feature largely (except for Samantha) as a tool to further an emotional relationship. It is often not treated by the majority of major female characters (Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte) as an end in itself but another step in the formation of a traditional relationship. In The Man, The Myth, The Viagra (Series 2) Carrie notes that from that night, in reference to Miranda hooking up with Steve, the eventual father of her child, that “from that night women everywhere will tell the tale of the one night stand that turned into a relationship.”

Despite our insistence on being able to decouple sex from love it is untrue to say we can wantonly check our feelings at the door when we sleep with somebody. Sex and the City reveals the complicated politics of promiscuous sex and our expectations in a way that is so underexplored in other areas of television media (though often a main fare of women’s magazines.) This does not reveal an underlying conservative or neediness within the women but exposes to us that sex is in reality complicated. Even if we have moved from the domain of sex as the exclusive preserve of those in traditional, socially privileged relationships e.g. marriage to a de-essentialisation of the link between sex and romance in reality we cannot so easily cut our romantic selves off from our sexual selves.

Do we now rush too quickly into sex? Sex and the City makes us ask, are we driven to the unattainable, that exquisite pain of uncertainty of whether or not the sex will come. In the episode “Are We Sluts?” Carrie frets that she has been dating her latest beau, Aidan Shaw, for a week and he has refused to have sex with her. Without considering that he may have a different approach to sex Carrie instantly translates his forbearance as rejection and levies her sex appeal as a measure of her attractiveness to a partner. As it transpires Aidan has held back from sleeping with Carrie because of a previous failed relationship that he felt he had rushed in to too quickly. Nowadays we tend to view sex as a sine qua non of relationships, if we haven’t had it quickly there is something odd about us and possibly something wrong with them. Have we come from an age where no one had sex to an age where everyone has having sex? From a time where it was romantic to not have sex until a certain point had been reached we now tend to value romance based on quickly they have sex with us. There is something sexy about the pleasure in being made wait and when watching Sex and the City we may have to ask whether or not we’ve lost our appreciation for the long seduction. To paraphrase Carrie “have we become so jaded that we don’t even recognise romance when it kisses us on the lips?”

How Far Left to Go?

I will wear whatever and blow whomever I want as long as I can breathe and kneel!- Samantha Jones

Even in our relatively liberal approach to sex we are still shown how our prudishness shows through. I have already touched upon Carrie’s revulsion at particular niche sexual practices e.g. water sports. In Samantha however we are shown how future relationship to sex might manifest itself. Samantha is a true sexual libertine, unwilling to accept traditional social mores and alien to connotations of the invalidity of female sexual promiscuity. When confronted with Charlotte’s worries about having slept with a man too early in a relationship Samantha reassures her by commenting “Oh please, if you’re a whore, what does that make me?” Despite our worries about the reaction of others to our sex lives Samantha shows us that it is possible to be highly sexually active and self-confident. When confronted by Carrie who falls temporarily out with Samantha after walking in on her performing fellatio on a delivery man she proudly declares that “I will wear whatever and blow whomever I want as long as I can breathe and kneel!” In Samantha we get a role model and a foil to the hypocrisies of the other girls and of a society that still marginalises perceived sexual misdemeanours despite our proudly declared break with a puritanical past. In this Sex and the City serves not as a result but as a way-post to society’s sexual liberation.

Michel Foucault notes that society faces a dilemma in talking about sex because “repression is so firmly anchored, having solid roots and reasons, and weighs so heavily on sex that more than one denunciation will be required to free ourselves from it.” Sex and the City may be a denunciation of the status quo in this regard it is evidenced by Samantha, who so often functions as a denunciation within a denunciation, shows that we are still on our way to true sexual freedom. Sex and the City should be congratulated for taking the sexual, and the mystery of female sex and making it normal. Sex and the City does not show us desperate women using sex as a tool to ensnare unwitting men but as a real aspect of their lives. It is an aspect alive with the possibility of romance and even if the girls want Mr Right at the end of the day they are not opposed to getting to know Mr Right Now on the journey.

Paucity of Male Discourse

Do Men Fuck Like Men?

I might close by noting that Sex and the City reveals a shortcoming in the media to provide a narrative around the male sexual experience. While many series involve sexual male characters engaged in the chase for a good woman and good sex the content of that sex is never deeply explored. Male dialogue tends to be confined to horror stories involving women or loud whoops of congratulations. We’re not exposed to the particular kinks that male heterosexual characters may be interested in. In that regard it presents the desires of male heterosexuals as vanilla and uncomplex which undervalue the straight male experience in my own opinion.

There is a disappointing lack of discourse where men talk about the relationship between their one night stands, sex and relationships. Presumably heterosexual men aren’t just fuck machines valuing sex not by its quality but sheer quantity. The discourse is often presented as a display of one-upmanship as opposed to sharing experiences for the sake of bettering oneself and having that validated. Sharing in this context is always to belittle someone else’s experience by either beating the number or belittle their sexual prowess.

Sex and the City exposes us to some alternate male sexual experience for example cunnilingus which is never treated as a male sexual desire in male-centric television shows but even this is limited, often served as a foil which scuppers a potential relationship for one of the girls conveniently close to the episode’s close. While the female sexual sphere and the complexities of female sexual life have been opened up in the televised universe we are still waiting for the male equivalent, a narrative built around male sex lives involving their quest for good sex and not just sex for the sake of it, the discover of their sexual kinks and the complex web that forms between even fleeting sexual encounters and the human heart.

Derwin Brennan

Download this Paper here:Sex in the 21st Century -Derwin Brennan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e0mFFiZDzM

Champions League winning manager Rafael Benitez will speak to the Phil Society this coming Monday at 7pm in the Edmund Burke Theatre in the Arts Block.

Mr. Benitez is to accept the Gold Medal of Honorary Patronage from The Phil for his outstanding contribution to sport. Benitez, one of Europe’s most successful and celebrated football managers, will make an address entitled, “Belief, Determination and Success” and then take questions from the floor.

A lavish reception will follow in the GMB. As always, this event is free for all members.

After a nice long Christmas break (or lack thereof in my case and anyone else going for the scholarships), the second half of the year is underway with a new line-up of fun and shiny things to distract you in the evening time. You can look forward to a load of debates and if you’re hungry for guests, you’ll have the opportunity to see the likes of  Whoopi Goldberg, Nancy Pelosi and more (though unfortunately for you, not all at once). Also, we have our annual debating competition, Trinity Inter-varsity, which we co-host with our friendly neighbours from the Hist (we won’t fight this time, we promise). They say it’s the easiest competition to win in Ireland. Why’s that you ask? Because the Trinity teams aren’t competing, of course!

Over the break, we sent a few teams halfway around the world to compete at the World University Debating Championships in Manila. This gruelling challenge consists of spending nine one-hour sessions arguing passionately…about topics whose positions they were arbitrarily assigned fifteen minutes before the debate begins. Hey, no one said you had to actually to believe what you were saying! On new year’s eve, the teams reaching the octo-finals were announced – there were two Trinity teams here, Dave Byrne and Ricky McCormack representing the Phil and John Engle and Catherine Murphy representing the Hist. Trinity’s other two teams weren’t far behind, with Derwin Brennan and Orfhlaith Sheehy staying right in the fight until the final round for the Phil and Kate Oliver and Sally Rooney missing out on speaker points for the Hist. Unfortunately, neither Trinity team got to the quarter finals, but one of the UCD teams reached the semi-finals (students from UCD debating – how absurd! Whatever next, dividing by zero?). Well done to all, which included the two Trinity judges, Fletch Williams for the Phil and Ian Curran of the Hist, the former of which broke to judge the octo-finals.

Our first Bram paper of term saw an old friend of the Phil, former Hist Auditor and all round nice guy Liam Ó Néill deliver an essay on euthanasia – Dignity in Dying. Most fittingly, Liam is a medicine student. What we learn from the paper is that euthanasia is not a question of an isolated individual deciding to commit suicide within an n-dimensional ball, but rather one with moral implications for society; death is like entropy – it is irreversible and where there is the option to die voluntarily, it brings with it the feeling that being alive is a burden to the family. There is no doubt that there are certain circumstances where not being able to die is inhumane, such as where a person is undergoing unbearable physical pain and their death is inevitable anyway; the debate is about whether it is ever justifiable to give someone the choice to die when you have proper healthcare available to them. The bottom line of Liam’s paper was that rather than writing off life as not worth living after a life-changing accident, we should focus more on palliative care and making that person’s life as normal as possible – then there is dignity in living.

On Thursday The Phil played host to a debate on the motion that This House Would Keep The Baby. An excellent debate was had with guest speakers on both sides of the motion. Abortion was discussed alongside adoption which made for an interesting angle, not usual in debates on such topics. After everyone had their say the motion was ultimately narrowly defeated, an indication of the moral ambiguity that so often surrounds debates on abortion and the unborn child.

Saturday saw the third annual Queen Elizabeth Debating Competition (the title of whose origins we sadly do not know), organised by Ruth Keating and Seán McKiernan, a pro-am event; a competition where novices are paired with more experienced speakers and learn from debating with them. Previous years saw teams formed prior to the competition, but this led to head-hunting for the best freshers, which is obviously less beneficial to those still finding the ropes – so this time, novices and experienced speakers were paired randomly to level out the playing field. It worked well, with the novices all learning a lot from the whole experience. The final was won by Orfhlaith Sheehy and Charlie Ward. Motions included foreign aid, violent protest and spanking – the exact wording being, “That This House Would Use the Wooden Spoon”. The latter of these motions was wonderfully parodied by Eoin O’Liatháin, who opposed the cruelty of this “Pavlovan Punishment”, although if you put it that way, maybe the kids would enjoy the baking…

The Wizard

The year kicked off with a busy Freshers’ Week to say hello to Trinity College’s young recruits – and hopefully a little more…I mean debating of course, what did you think I meant, you creep? Indeed, we got a large haul of first years (and second years pretending they’re still eighteen) to fight it out for the grand prize of an iPad (and debating pride, which is much more important anyway). After a series of gruelling tasks, demanding obstacle courses and debating rounds, we had eight finalists to battle it out. The winner, Michael Coleman, was declared after a long fight between the judges, who spent two hours debating who had the best bow tie before they began to decide on the actual winner.

We like guests very much. So much so, that we invited them every other week – Dominic West, Christopher Lee, Courtney Love, Terry Pratchett and others. Dominic even stayed behind afterwards for a little chat with his legion of admirers. Of course, it’s not all just big names and famous faces, we also stay true to our roots. Keep your eyes peeled for next term’s honourary members’ debate, where old Phil hacks come back from the murky depths of the real world to try and convince everyone that they’re still young, even if their bodies say otherwise. It’ll be a blast!

Speaking of debates, we’ve had quite a few of those. Artificial intelligence, euthanasia, overpopulation, civil partnerships and pornography have all come up this term. Of course, let’s not forget the most important question of all, whether it’s better to be a science student rather than an arts student. We all know that science wins here (even if the audience pretended to think otherwise on the night). If you want to hear a lively discussion (or just a student go on an angry rant), come along some Thursday evening – who knows, you may become part of the action!*

*consent not required.

We don’t just organise debates, we take part in them too, both in the chamber and competitively. This year started slowly, but we hit our stride. The first two, SOAS and UCD Intervarsities (IVs), yielded no success. The next IV, however, we hit it – two Phil teams broke to the finals at Cork for an epic face-off against the Hist. Unfortunately, the Hist won, but fear not, we’ll get revenge whenever they least expect it. Just don’t tell the Hist, OK?

Paper readings at the Bram Stoker continued this year, with an essay a week on such topics as copyright, arts funding, blasphemy legislation, China, black holes, misanthropy, sport and mental health. If you want to hear some opinions (or just escape from that lunchtime lecture you’re dreading, stop on by the conversation room at 1pm on a Wednesday.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,

The Wizard