Free Good Sex Illustrated by Tony Duvert

it eroticizes the phenomena being referred to, whereas scientific language freezes it. In the same way, we also have “accurate” sexualities (fittingly medico-genital) and “inaccurate” sexualities (hedonistic, selfish, vulgar, perverse, etc.). Medical language affords sexuality a decency that allows it to be introduced, properly lubricated, into the conduit of middle class talk.
    Moreover, a sexual initiation can’t be done within the family and in slang at the same time. Slang is the secret language adopted by desire to express itself in the face of repression, whereas the family is the first of the repressive authorities. Sex education exists to prevent the acts, to hinder and position them. The child is perfectly aware of the prohibitions he’s enduring; he knows very well why he knows nothing, and whose fault it is. He’ll sense that the sex education information being dispensed by his parents or the school, far from allaying his frustrations, is burrowing into them, rummaging through them, checking them, watering them down, setting up a system of language in them that will end up estranging his desire.
    Compelling the child to say “my penis is getting an erection” instead of “my cock is getting hard” is dispossessing him of his sex, transforming an intimate, pleasant occurrence, which carries its share of embarrassment, pleasure and expectation into an anonymous, strange phenomenon, subject to a medical explanation that recuperates it and invalidates it.
    But if Dad, like friends in class, said “cock” to his son, a kind of incestuous violation would be added to the linguistic violation. In fact, in a sexual initiation tacked by the parents onto the frustration that they are inflicting upon the children, all the words sound false, too near or too far away, always prying and always repressive—because these are the castrators who are saying them.
    Undoubtedly, the child would be more sensitive to such aggression if Dad would use familiar language. Instead we stay suavely medical and won’t pronounce obscene words except in the case of certain delicate open-heart operations. In the work I’m discussing, the father only resorts to them three times: get hard, jerk off, have sex. These are words that, we are told, his children know; as secrets, they create an embryonic private life for them. Therefore, their appeal must be defused and the libidinal void must be re-established (you’ve got those words for hiding your desire, I’m taking them back); we must rout these pretty serpents from their hole and slap over them a lousy Latin word that stigmatizes them. Gliding from scientific heights to slimy familiarities, Dad castrates, castrates and castrates; the information on sexuality that he so generously deals out comes down to a loathsome expurgation of the desire that is brewing and growing in secret in his children.
    In the end, we see that if Dad says “jerk off” is “inaccurate” and “masturbate” is “accurate,” it’s because the first verb is party to the thing, and it’s “inaccurate” for it to merit being party to it; whereas “masturbate” is a cold, lame, off-putting verb that makes the word being referred to appear ugly—therefore it alone is “accurate.” When you jerk off, you do something whose real name I know: here it is, the thing that will make public the filthiness of the pleasures in which you indulge.
    Misappropriation goes even further when the scientific discourse downright misrepresents the given data. Examples abound page after page with the sexologists, who handle all the subtle falsification like master quacks. Here, specifically, is the part following the passage I was citing, concerning erection:
    “…completely limp…”
    “Because you’re still too young! At your age, erections come during sleep. But you can also be excited by a strenuous game, sports, or even a feeling that brings you pleasure. With adults, it’s desire that causes an