Martin Blythe Interview Sexual Fables - Part 3 by Tim Nasson
Updated March 8, 2008
If you've read the famous Russian cult novel "The Master and Margarita," when the Devil comes to Moscow, or you follow Russian politics, you may want to check out the link below:
Do you also fancy yourself as an optimist or a pessimist? Or are you too cynical to care? In this new chapter from the www.sexualfables.com website, you can brush up on your Russian politics and Russian art at the same time.
If you're not familiar with Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita," it's often called the greatest Russian novel of the 20th century but no one had read it until a few decades ago because Bulgakov couldn't publish it (the Soviet Union would have destroyed it - and him).
Tim Nasson: Sexualfables.com is really about literature and art rather than sex. Are you getting blocked from a lot of web searches because they think it's porn?
Martin Blythe: Probably. I have found it blocked on a number of computers I checked because sex is in the title. Yet people are more fascinated than ever about sex, or maybe they are just more desperate, and they will go to extraordinary lengths to protect kids from it instead of treating it as something that they will discover and enjoy for themselves. My own kids thought it was gross and disgusting till they hit puberty. I don't think they're much different from other kids.
Tim Nasson: You have added two new chapters to your site recently and one of them is about Genesis and Adam and Eve. But you give Satan all the best lines!
Martin Blythe: So did Milton in Paradise Lost. Actually, my Satan is talking about Nabokov's Lolita. I have always been struck by the way academics write about Lolita without ever mentioning sex. It seems to be a requirement for academics: never mention sex or you'll get into trouble. Yet we all know that sex is on everybody's mind on university campuses - students and faculty. You can bet it was on Nabokov's mind.
Tim Nasson: Last month I read that high school students were asked whether they knew what Sodom and Gomorrah were and most of them thought Sodom and Gomorrah were people.
Martin Blythe: Last month TIME Magazine suggested it's time to reintroduce the Bible into high schools since it is one of the foundation stones of western culture and now we have a generation of parents who don't know about it and their kids don't know about it either and I think they're missing some great stories, some great sexual fables. As I say in that chapter, Genesis is full of wild sex - polygamy, incest, you name it. But you have to read it to know it's even there! Mark Twain did.
Tim Nasson: Well, I don't want to see the Bible back in schools. What would be gained by that?
Martin Blythe: Like I said, I'm not suggesting that, but I do think Comparative Religion classes should be encouraged in high school, don't you? It might be hard to find teachers who would be fair about Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, because these are all highly sophisticated religions and teachers raised in Western culture generally have no clue about how to present them fairly. But why not Comparative Religion classes?
Tim Nasson: I think they would be abused. There are too many bigots around. But let's get back to your chapter - you called it "The Age of Consent" - do you want to explain why you chose that?
Martin Blythe: I have never been able to understand why the Age of Consent keeps going up when it's quite obvious that kids are having sex at a younger and younger age, for better or for worse. I don't think that's reversible at the moment. So, the net effect, especially with the dangerous concept of statutory rape, is that more and more of the population are potentially at risk of going to prison or of having a criminal record for having sex when they are 15 or 16 or 17, or 25 for that matter if their partner is younger. The U.S. already has the highest percentage of its population in prison (of any country in the Western world) and California is faced with exporting its criminals. In the 19th century Britain shipped its convicts off to Australia; now California is doing the same thing but out of state. My recommendation would be to amend some of these draconian laws. Unfortunately I think it's only going to get worse as citizen power becomes more tyrannical. Interesting paradox huh? Now people see sexual predators everywhere and they want to pass more and more laws. I felt I couldn't address this emotional issue directly so that's why I wrote from the points of view of Adam and Eve, the Serpent and Satan.
Tim Nasson: You suggest that Satan sleeps with Eve and that Adam has a few homosexual moments.
Martin Blythe: Well, it's there in Milton. I'm struck by the fact that no one ever talks about sex in an honest way. You won't hear honesty on radio and TV talkshows, where the hosts never ever say what they really desire. This, of course, is why hypocrisy is the rule. That was also why I wanted to include Mark Foley somewhere in this chapter.
Tim Nasson: I really liked what you said about how "Genesis is a sexual fable of the child becoming an adult and the adult losing the sense of what it means to be a child. That is the real Fall."
Martin Blythe: If it gets anyone to re-read Genesis, I will be happy.
Tim Nasson: In your other chapter, "Women in Trousers," you make some interesting points about how Japanese culture seems less rigid about male and female gender distinctions. Is that something we could learn from in the U.S.?
Martin Blythe: Certainly. The most fascinating thing for me about Japanese culture is the gender-bending, from bishonen guys with handbags and make-up, to yaoi, which is manga about two guys in love, often quite frank, but read by women. In the U.S., we are never confused about whether we are watching girls (The L Word) or guys (Brokeback Mountain), but in Japan, one can never be quite sure. Androgyny is a much bigger deal there. That was certainly the case one night I sat down in a nightclub in Osaka. There were gorgeous women everywhere but it turned out to be a transexual strip club and let's just say that only half of them were technically women. Sometimes it is difficult to tell.
