The Star Wars universe has always felt kind of sexless to me, and I've always found that aspect of it rather jarring and artificial. Oh, sure, the girls will dress sexy here and there, people will kiss, get married, children and pregnancy just sort of... appear, but I can't remember sex itself ever being mentioned even in a round about way, and the few occasions in which the act itself could be argued to be implied are always stealthy enough to maintain plausible deniability.
To be fair, I did hear about a pretty obvious sexual encounter taking place in one of the recent comic books, but the fact that it stood out kind of proves my point.
Where am I going with this? Well, let's think about why the franchise takes the stance it does. In all likelihood, it comes down to that old ideal of being "Family Friendly"; Star Wars probably depends on little ones to make a lot of doe, and we can't have their parents forbidding them from buying it's products.
After all, these parents are well within reason; I mean, if a small child were to see, read, or play through a story in which someone has sex they might... suddenly know that sex exists? Which would hurt or otherwise inconvenience them... somehow.
This argument doesn't really hold up to scrutiny does it? But it does do a fine job of elegantly dismantling the point I'm opposing.
When it comes to issues surrounding homosexuality, "Values" are always brought up. "Think about what kind of values this instills in our kids; it's an attack on our traditions".
Let's define that last word; all a "Tradition" really means is a practice or belief that is transmitted from one generation to another. The merit or use of the tradition itself has nothing to do with the word; the content is irrelevant, if you learned it from mom and pop, it's a tradition.
With that in mind, consider the term "Attacking traditional values", often used as a form of accusation. What jumps out at me, is the lack of adjectives; adjectives like "Reasonable" or "Healthy". There is nothing in this defense that even speaks of the nature of the values in question, as though the fact that they are "Traditions" is itself evidence of why they must be protected.
But tradition on it's own isn't worth jack shit, because literally almost ANYTHING can be a tradition. The knowledge and practice of how to run a lucrative slave plantation was traditional in this country not so long ago.
So in the absence of description, what can we infer is meant by this term of phrase when it refers to the LGBT community and the depiction of sexuality in family friendly media in general? Well, we can infer by way of inverse; what values would a story be communicating if it was meant for children and included elements of unmistakable sexuality?
Let's try to set up an example as close to home as we can: What if in Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo and Leia Organa were at some point shown lying together in a bunk aboard the Millennium Falcon embracing and quite obviously nude? There doesn't even need to be direct nudity, we can throw in a conveniently placed blanket and some careful camera angles and it would still be pretty obvious that these two just knocked boots.
Ignoring for the moment whether this scene would have fit naturally into the film's pacing, what real effect would it have? Are we implying that sexually mature people sometimes elect to engage in sex? I don't think so; that requires no implication. Are we implying that it's okay for them to do so? I would certainly hope so; the human race depends on it. Are we implying that it's okay to have sex outside of marriage? Well, I can't imagine we are, because no child without knowledge of sex or our hangups around it would ever come to a conclusion as ridiculous as an act being unhealthy or evil until the church, the united states government, or any given ship captain approves of it.
We tried that whole "Religious authority + depraved violations of human rights" equation before, with the crusades, and found that, crazy as it sounds, the answer was not "= Righteous and totally okay violations of human rights". Somehow, the act of butchering innocent people doesn't become more palatable in the context of approval via men in stupid hats.
Getting back on topic, let's just say that there are some kids who see this scene, and never having heard about sex before, ask mom and dad what Han and Leia just did.
Now, I'm sure plenty of parents might feel uncomfortable or blind sided by this situation, but isn't that in itself worthy of note? We're talking about the act that literally keeps the human race going, which does not by default involve any violence, unpleasantness, or moral ambiguity, and the physical process of which is literally simple enough for a dog to understand. How on earth could anyone be unprepared to explain it? It is at LEAST tied for the position for the most natural thing in the world.
We know why, of course; sex is accompanied by all kinds of other shit. There's consent, STD's, protection, the issues of religion, shame, and self image; the list goes on and on. Now it's obvious why so many people are unable to explain sex simply; they've gotten into their heads that they don't really understand it. Odds are, you will struggle with one of these myriad issues at some point in your life, and it's similarly possible that you may never actually come to terms with it.
Some people never get over the shame in their sexuality instilled into them at a young age; some people never feel like they're attractive; some people go through traumatic sexual encounters that they never truly escape from.
It's interesting that the adults being asked by their child to explain how sex does and/or should work are so often themselves still trying to answer that question.
Maybe we could all use a talk from mom and dad about the birds and the bees.
That would certainly explain why so many of us are holding on so desperately to our collective "Don't ask, don't tell" rule.
"Don't make me explain to my kid how sex works, I have no idea!"
If we were comfortable with how we and our society viewed the subject we wouldn't be so worried about kids getting the wrong idea from media; it's pretty fucking easy to explain to your kids why you shouldn't dismember your children or Force choke the shit out of your pregnant wife; it's easy to explain why telekinesis, Lightsabers, and Yoda don't exist; it's easy to explain why Jar-Jar Binks is the physical manifestation of sin.
Now, it's a tad more difficult to explain why the Dark and Light sides of the force could be described as both opposing each other and enabling each other's existence, and how both the Jedi and Sith are actually dangerous extremes on the scale of pragmatism and idealism, or how Darth Nihilus is an elaborate metaphor for post traumatic stress disorder and satirizes the underlying Sith ideal of power above all else by painting a figure who has lost everything else- and this is quickly getting out of hand.
But if we're to believe that all that is okay, that all of it can be rationalized and explained away if necessary, then we must infer that the idea of two adults engaging in consensual sex outstrips ALL of that in implication and complexity... But I don't buy that an act that is required knowledge for even the most moronic dipshits on the planet could possibly be that goddamn complicated, if we're doing it right (Otherwise there wouldn't be so fucking many of them).
My theory is that we're living in a world that works so hard to cut us off from our instincts that we have to navigate an elaborate web of lies, half truths, understatements and exaggerations just to find them again.
But is ignoring and maintaining that web of lies the value that we're defending? I suspect it might be. Usually, complex social pathology acts a lot like any other disease; ignoring it just makes it worse. But ignoring it is exactly what we're doing if we interpret any attempt to to draw attention to it as a personal attack.
If the "Value" we're transmitting through generations is that we should all just ignore our sex hangups, make up some bullshit about a stork, and hope everything just gets better, it's no wonder we've managed to make such a mess of things.
