Secret Sex

In the beginning of Part II the fascinating development that is Julia takes place. She represents, to me, a completely unexpected direction of plot development. We had been hoping for O'Brien to somehow make an appearance, or for Winston to discover some resistance faction on his own; instead, we are taken on a roller coaster of Winston's emotions as we uncover through Julia an entirely new method of secret opposition to the Oceanic regime - secret sexual liberation. However, is it fair to phrase it that way - that is, that secret sexual activity is a method of opposition? Couldn't we see secretly opposing the Oceanic regime as a means to pursue sex? Certainly, for Julia, this lens may be more accurate. She has clearly developed a wealth of experience in surreptitiously alerting men to her motives and meeting with them secretly. Most of the steps in between noticing a man who "doesn't belong" and having sex with him involve repeated and serious violations of rules meant to promote chastity and ignorance, but all such rule violations clearly funnel into the singular goal of sex. 

(I say sex and not relationships with men in general because Julia seems to not actually value the latter much - take the example of her first affair, where she nonchalantly explained that the man committed suicide not long after. Of course, it's a possibility that she'll be different with Winston, but I'm not sure how much she would mind if he ended up dying, as long as she weren't implicated and could go on finding misfits to bang.)

We see rule-breaking for the purpose of surreptitious sexual activity in our world among oppressed sexual minorities. There has existed a long-standing underground culture of gay men searching for "anonymous, casual, one-time" sex, which gave birth to various slang terms and methods for finding and meeting up with other gay men. These generally clandestine activities like cruising and cottaging scaled in popularity in accordance with the proportion of gay men who had very few options for meeting other gay men, due to social stigma, laws, or other reasons. For instance, take the 1970s song "YMCA," which hints to the then popularity of YMCAs as hookup spots for gay men and reflects the nature of homosexual relationships during the time as being dominated by secretive sexual encounters. Nowadays, men who wish to have sex with other men but have very few options to do so tend to be deeply closeted and restricted by their own self-hatred. 

This scaling of surreptitious sexual activity in accordance with stigma and the development of a culture of secret sex may possibly be occurring in 1984 as well. Why are we to assume that Winston and Julia's case is isolated? Well, one reason is that we are yet to see standardized methods of signalling intent to connect, like the foot tapping signals that occur with cottaging (and that purportedly occurred in that one scandal involving that one US senator in that one airport, should you want another comparison). Julia faked a whole scene to hand Winston a slip of paper! But of course, how would Winston know about any special signals? He lacks Julia's skill of spotting people who don't belong.

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