Federico Sanchez: Sex for the war effort

You might not have noticed it yet, but if media reports are to be believed, New Yorkers and Americans across the country have been getting laid more often in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Kathleen Kelleher from The Los Angeles Times has referred to this phenomenon as End of the World sex, and she explains that "disasters and tragedies are situations of novelty, danger and fear, all of which can stimulate the sex drive."

With the terrorist threat now hitting much closer to home -- now in the form of anxiety over the contents of our normally innocuous mailboxes -- I can only assume that the basis for EOTW sex must be on the rise. But what exactly are the causes of this intriguing phenomenon?

The Reuters news agency reports that, according to University of Washington sociologist Pepper Schwartz, people resort to sex in times of crisis as an escape mechanism intended to block out the dire environment around them. In the words of Schwartz, in periods of anxiety people want to "stop thinking... and get down to those basic emotions."

Furthermore, by engaging in EOTW sex, Americans might be inadvertently following the advice of both intellectuals and average people who have advocated a revalorization of the pleasures in life as an effective retort to Osama bin Laden's fundamentalist offensive. The proponents of pleasure argue that safeguarding and furthering the Western joie de vivre and love of pleasure constitutes a defiant statement against bin Laden's fundamentalist philosophy -- a philosophy that bans drinking, forbids music, despises art and persecutes other forms of fun and pleasure.

Because of his own chilling experiences in dealing with Islamic fundamentalists, Salman Rushdie is highly qualified to sound off on America's current war against the al-Qaeda network. The much-celebrated novelist -- who has had to live under 24-hour Scotland Yard protection ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa for his death following the publication of The Satanic Verses -- wrote in The Washington Post that Americans should engage in high pleasures such as "kissing in public places" and "cutting-edge fashion." Rushdie argues that actively pursuing these activities represents the best strategy to follow in order to flounder the terrorist's fundamentalist agenda.

However, Rushdie's epicurean ideas are not limited to intellectual circles. This is obvious in a recent column by love-advice guru Dan Savage, in which he lauded the hedonistic agenda of one of his readers -- who claimed to speak for the U.S.A., or the United Sensualists of America -- as a powerful retort to the terrorists' ideals of oppressive obscurantism.

The anti-fundamentalist hedonism advocated by both Rushdie and the "U.S.A." shed much needed light on an essential part of the American war on terror -- one that has not been specifically tackled by President Bush or the Washington intelligentsia. Nevertheless, this omission should not be construed as a failure of the Bush administration, since it is not the role of the president to urge Americans to take part in pleasurable and hedonistic activities. After all, Bush wouldn't sound particularly presidential by urging people to don some "cutting-edge" fashions or join in the EOTW sex fad.

If the war on terrorism will be won in part by the country's ability to return to its hedonistic normalcy -- a normalcy that includes shameless spending, compulsive consumption of Ben & Jerry's and active involvement in a long list of other pleasurable activities -- then all of us at Penn should take pride in the important role we're playing to advance the ideals of liberty and justice.

Some might argue, quite correctly, that certain state schools -- the top party colleges in the nation -- might be ahead of the relatively studious Penn populace in the pursuit of fiestas, fun and freedom. But Penn has demonstrated in recent years its uncanny ability to move up and forward in several prestigious rankings.

There's nothing stopping us, then, from moving up several slots in the top party-schools rankings. Especially when it's in an effort to be ahead of the pack in winning the war against the terrorists' anti-pleasure agenda.

Although I have no data to assess the occurrence of EOTW sex in the Penn campus, prospective and current followers of this trend should exercise caution, since experts have also predicted the occurrence of a "baby boomlet" nine months after the attacks.

Not only that, but should Savage's predictions prove truthful, many future newborns might be named "Rudy" by their history-conscious, New York-loving parents.

Hedonism might be one thing, but that's one sacrifice you may want to reconsider.

Frederico Sanchez is a sophomore International Relations major from Guadalajara, Mexico.

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