http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html

We might have Baudrillard’s “successive phases of the image” of sex:

1. Marital sex, “the reflection of a basic reality” – sacrament;

2. Contraception (safe / clean sex), would appear to fit within what Baudrillard calls “an evil appearance: of the order of malefice”.

We might speculate on what comes next:

3. (Masturbation?), “mark[ing] the absence of a basic reality”; and

4. (Pornography / pornovision?), “bear[ing] no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum”.

Although, there would appear to be some overlap between masturbation and pornography, and I might be too unimaginative to think of what might count as a pure simulacrum in this context.

II. Safe sex / clean sex “…the very thing which causes damage should already be the medicine”.

This made me think of Dante and contrapasso: the very thing which causes the error will be the remedy (eschatological doom chords).

- JH