Towards my personal Sex-Positive Feminist 101
2011 8 May
There’s an aphorism from the early 1900s literary critic André Maurois: “The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one’s opinion but to know it.” Even though I identify as an activist and genuinely want to make a real impact on the world based on my beliefs … I often think that much of my blogging has been more an attempt to figure out what I believe, than to tell people what I believe. And sometimes, I fall into the trap of wanting to be consistent more than I want to understand what I really believe — or more than I want to empathize with other people — or more than I want to be correct. We all gotta watch out for that.
But I’m getting too philosophical here. (Who, me?) The point is, I am hesitant to write something with a title like “Sex-Positive 101″, because not only does it seem arrogant (who says Clarisse Thorn gets to define Sex-Positive 101?) — it also implies that my thoughts on sex-positivity have come to a coherent, standardized end. Which they haven’t! I’m still figuring things out, just like everyone else.
However, lately I’ve been thinking that I really want to write about some basic ideas that inform my thoughts on sex-positive feminism. I acknowledge that I am incredibly privileged (white, upper-middle-class, heteroflexible, cisgendered etc) and coming mostly from a particular community, the BDSM community; both of these factors inform and limit the principles that underpin my sex-positivity. I welcome ideas for Sex-Positive Feminism 101, links to relevant 101 resources, etc.
This got really long, and I reserve the right to edit for clarity or sensitivity.
Some Central Sex-Positive Feminist Ideas, according to Clarisse Thorn
1) Desire is complicated, and people are different. These ideas both seem basic and obvious to me as I write them, but I wanted to put them out there because I think they’re useful anchors for all the rest.
2) Gender is not a binary, and gender cannot be determined by a person’s outer appearance or behavior. Different people experience and display gender in a galaxy of ways. No woman in the world is perfectly submissive, perfectly hourglass-shaped, perfectly kind, etc, although these are stereotypes commonly associated with women. No man in the world is perfectly dominant, perfectly confident, perfectly muscular, etc. While many people reduce the idea of a person’s gender to whether they have a penis or a vagina, the existence of trans people and intersex people proves that this isn’t a valid approach. Individual people have all kinds of qualities that are attributed to the “other” gender … and the concept of an “other” (or “opposite”) gender is weird in itself, because why does one gender have to be the “other”, and what does that imply?
All this having been said, gender is frequently perceived as a binary, and many people fit themselves into the possibly-arbitrary system of gender that currently exists. There are ideas of “men” and “women” that are culturally understood, widely adopted, and socially enforced. Feminism has its roots in women resisting men’s violent and social dominance, and in women resisting the cultural emphasis on stereotypical men’s desires.
3) Historically, sex has usually been defined in terms of two things: (a) reproduction, and (b) the sexual pleasure of stereotypical men. Cultural sexual standards are based on these things. For example, the sexual “base system” (commonly discussed among USA schoolchildren) describes kissing as “first base”, groping as “second base”, oral sex as “third base” and penis-in-vagina sex as “home base”. Why should this hierarchy exist? It only makes sense if we think of sex as being centered around reproduction. If we think of sex as being about pleasure and open exploration in ways that are different for everyone, then having a “home base” — a standardized goal — makes zero sense.
Another example: penis-in-vagina sex is often seen as “real” sex or “actual” sex, with all other sex considered “less real”. How many arguments have you had over the course of your lifetime about whether oral sex “counts” as sex? (Hint: more than the subject deserves.) For a recent example, there’s the Kink.com virgin shoot, wherein a porn model publicly “lost her virginity” notwithstanding the fact that she’d already had plenty of oral and anal sex on camera for years — she’d just never had vaginal sex.
As for sex being defined by the pleasure of stereotypical men: one example is how people usually think about orgasms. In my experience and that of people I talk to — and in the vast majority of porn — it seems commonly accepted that sexual activity ends with a man’s orgasm, whereas women are commonly expected to continue engaging in sex after having an orgasm … despite the fact that many women seem just as tired and less-interested in sex post-orgasm as many men are. In part, this goes back to defining sex in terms of reproduction: men have to orgasm in order for reproduction to happen, so men’s orgasms must (supposedly) be central to sex. It’s all influenced by these other constructions, like how penis-in-vagina sex is “real” sex, or “home base”: many people are confused by the idea that you’d shift sexual gears to (for example) manual stimulation if you’ve already “made it to home base”. But it also arises from centering stereotypical men’s desires — from a culture that just generally sees them as more important, more driving, and more necessary than women’s. (Note that the majority of women don’t achieve orgasm from penis-in-vagina sex in itself.)
When sex is defined in terms of reproduction and stereotypical male pleasure, the following things result:
+ People who aren’t men have a harder time understanding their sexuality, because there are fewer models (for example: it’s fairly common for women to figure out how to have orgasms much later in life than the average man — like 20s or 30s, if ever — and yes of course I’ve written about it)
+ Men who don’t fit masculine stereotypes have a harder time understanding their sexuality (for example: there’s a great essay by a former men’s magazine editor in Best Sex Writing 2010 in which he talks about how hard it was for him to come to terms with his desire for heavy women)
+ Even men who do fit masculine stereotypes feel limited from other types of exploration, and may derive less pleasure from sex than they would in a less broken world
+ Sex acts or sexual relationships that aren’t reproductive are devalued, are seen as weird, or aren’t even defined as sex (for example: stigma against gay sex, lesbian sex, many fetishes, etc)
4) Women are expected to trade sex to men in exchange for support or romance. Women who don’t get a “good trade” (e.g. women who don’t receive a certain level of financial support or romance “in exchange for” sex) are seen as sluts. Men who don’t get a “good trade” (e.g. men who don’t receive a certain amount of sex “in exchange for” a relationship) are seen as pussies. (Yes, “pussies” … don’t you just love that a word for female genitalia is a commonly used insult against so-called “weak” men?)
What this also means is that many people have trouble examining motivations outside this framework: women are always expected to be looking for more emotional or financial investment from a guy, whereas men are always expected to be looking for more (or more so-called “extreme”) sex. Women who actively seek sex, or men who actively seek intimacy, are shamed and hurt and confused for it — often even within their own heads.
5) Since stereotypical men have historically been much freer to explore their sexuality than people of other genders, the desires of stereotypical men have formed the pattern for “liberated sexuality”. As women have won freedom to act, work and explore outside the home more, we’ve been following patterns created mostly by men, and those patterns might look extremely different if women had created them.
When we talk about sexuality, I think that leads us to examine what “liberated sexuality” looks like. “Liberated sexuality” is often stereotyped as promiscuous, for example. “Liberated sexuality” is also stereotyped as being unromantic, never involving any of those pesky pesky feelings, etc. I write about this cautiously: I have no intention of telling anyone what “real” men do or feel, or what “real” women do or feel. However, it seems conceivable to me that most men are generally more likely to enjoy promiscuity and emotionless sex than most women are — if only for hormonal reasons. Here’s a quotation from the brilliant trans man sex writer Patrick Califia on the effects of testosterone:
It’s harder to track psychological and emotional changes caused by one’s taking testosterone than it is to notice the physical differences. But I think the former actually outweigh the latter. It isn’t that testosterone has made me a different person. I always had a high sex drive, liked porn and casual sex, couldn’t imagine giving up masturbation, was able to express my anger, and showed a pretty high level of autonomy and assertiveness. But all of these things have gotten much more intense since I began hormone treatments. During the first six months on T, every appetite I had was painfully sharp. A friend of mine expressed it this way: “When I had to eat, I had to eat right fucking now. If I was horny, I had to come immediately. If I needed to shit, I couldn’t wait. If I was pissed off, the words came right out of my mouth. If I was bored, I had to leave.” My body and all the physical sensations that spring from it have acquired a piquancy and an immediacy that is both entertaining and occasionally inconvenient. Moving through the world is even more fun, involves more stimulation than it used to; life is more in the here-and-now, more about bodies and objects, less about thoughts and feelings.
… Casual sex has changed. When I want to get off, my priority is to find somebody who will do that as efficiently as possible, and while I certainly would rather have a pleasant interaction with that person, I don’t think a lot about how they were doing before they got down on their knees, and I don’t care very much how they feel after they get up and leave. It’s hard to keep their needs in mind; it’s easier to just assume that if they wanted anything, it was their responsibility to try to get it. I always preferred to take sexual initiative, and that has become even more ego-congruent. (pages 397-398, Speaking Sex To Power)
A trans woman friend once told me that not only did she get turned on more frequently pre-transition; also, she now has to feel more emotionally connected to her partner in order to enjoy sex. And she noted that she has to “take care of herself more” in order to feel turned on now — not just in the moment, but in life, and in the relationship.
If we accept that there is, speaking generally, a difference in sexual desires between men and women (although individuals will always be unique), then it leads to new questions. If women were socially and culturally dominant, what would so-called “liberated sexuality” look like? If people of all genders are following patterns set by stereotypical men, then what does that mean for attempts to think around those patterns?
6) Communicating consent is complicated, but consent is the only thing that makes sex okay, so we have to make every effort to respect it. All sex is completely fine with me as long as it’s consensual. Seriously, I really don’t care what you do — as long as it’s consensual. (Try to find a consensual sex act that shocks me. I dare you.)
Communicating consent can, however, be complicated, and there are lots of different ways to do it. Many BDSMers are eminently familiar with this, as you can tell by the fact that some parts of the BDSM community have developed an extensive array of tactics for discussing consent.
Most people don’t communicate directly about most things, and the stigma and high emotions around sexuality make it even harder for most people to communicate directly about sex. Hence, most sexual communication is highly indirect. Even among people who are accustomed to direct sexual communication — like many BDSMers — a lot of communication ends up being indirect and instinctive anyway; there’s just no way to discuss every possible reaction and every single desire ahead of time. Everyone fucks up sometimes. No one in the world has a perfect track record on creating a pressure-free environment for their partners to express what they want … or asking their partners for what they want … or even knowing what they want in the first place.
So, yes, I acknowledge that communicating about sex and getting what you want consensually can be really hard. However, it’s most important to not violate people’s boundaries. No matter how hard it is, it’s necessary to make a serious and genuine effort to measure and respect a partner’s consent every time sex happens. Feminist ideas of enthusiastic consent are designed to help this process.
(Here’s my attempt at a quick definition of enthusiastic consent:
The basic idea is simple: don’t initiate sex unless you have your partner’s enthusiastic consent. Not a partner who says, “Okay, I guess,” in a bored tone, but doesn’t actively say “no”. Not a partner who is silent and non-reactive, but doesn’t actively stop you when you start having sex with them. Not a partner who seems hesitant, or anxious, or confused. Enthusiastic consent means an enthusiastic partner: one who is responding passionately, kissing you back, saying things like “Yes” or “Oh my God, don’t stop” … or a partner who talks to you ahead of time about what will happen, as many BDSMers and sex workers do, and knows how to safeword or otherwise get out of the situation if you do something they don’t like.)
7) In practice, as long as everyone involved is having consensual fun, criticism is secondary. Practically speaking, consent is the most important thing; from a pragmatic standpoint, the question of whether sexuality arises from biology or culture doesn’t matter nearly as much. (I find the question of whether BDSM can be categorized as a sexual orientation to be more politically and theoretically interesting than practically important.)
Understanding sexual biology or culture may help us grasp some of the complexities of consent. For example, people often have trouble saying “no” to things directly: when was the last time you explicitly said “no” when you didn’t want to do something? Which of the following exchanges is more likely:
Person A: Hey, want to come over tonight?
Person B: You know, I’d love to, but I’m so exhausted from work, I really need to get some sleep.
or
Person A: Hey, want to come over tonight?
Person B: No.
People of all genders really don’t like saying “no” to things directly. Grasping this important cultural concept is one step on the path of learning how to communicate effectively about consent. But in my book, it’s really not as important to understand why people hate saying “no” directly, as it is to understand that people hate saying “no” directly. It’s necessary to understand that because it means that very often, pushing someone until they say “no” can mean pushing them further than they wanted to go.
I believe that the most important role of social criticism — including sex-positive feminism — is not to tell people what to do. If you have sex that appears to be in line with ridiculous and oppressive stereotypes, I really do not care as long as everyone involved is consenting and having fun. I reserve the right to occasionally have consensual sex where a gentleman friend beats me up before fucking me, and I reserve the right to enjoy it.
But I want to offer sex-positive feminist analyses in order to help people understand themselves and their desires … and also understand their partners and their desires. I think that many people have sex they don’t like, sex that’s in line with ridiculous and oppressive stereotypes, because they haven’t been exposed to anything they like better. I think many people have sex they don’t like because they don’t feel like they can look for something different — they think it’s the best they can get. I think many people have sex they don’t like because they think it’s what their partner wants — and I think those people are frequently wrong, and I think most partners would genuinely prefer that everyone be having fun.
Which is why I try to deconstruct sexual norms and stereotypes. Which is why I encourage people to look for what they like. Which is why I always emphasize talking about it.
8) Awesome, respectful, joyful, mutual sex means approaching sex as collaborative rather than adversarial. Aside from solo sex (i.e. masturbation), sex always involves another person. And at its best, it’s about having a good time with other people — understanding their reality, accepting it, playing with it. The best metaphors I’ve ever heard for sex were all about collaborative art, like a musical jam performance. Here’s a bit from Thomas MacAulay Millar‘s totally brilliant essay “Towards a Performance Model of Sex” (please do read the whole thing someday):
The negotiation is the creative process of building something from a set of available elements. Musicians have to choose, explicitly or implicitly, what they are going to play: genre, song, key and interpretation. The palette available to them is their entire skill set — all the instruments they have and know how to play, their entire repertoire, their imagination and their skills — and the product will depend on the pieces each individual brings to the performance. Two musicians steeped in Delta blues will produce very different music from one musician with a love for soul and funk and another with roots in hip-hop or 1980s hardcore. This process involves communication of likes and dislikes and preferences, not a series of proposals that meet with acceptance or rejection.
… Under this model, the sexual interaction should be creative, positive, and respectful even in the most casual of circumstances.
(“Towards a Performance Model of Sex” was first printed in Yes Means Yes, the brilliant sex-positive anti-rape anthology that I want everyone in the entire world to read. It was also reprinted in Best Sex Writing 2010.)
9) All people deserve equal rights, including sexual minorities. As long as people are having consensual sex, they do not deserve to be stigmatized, harassed, or otherwise harmed for their sexuality. Period. No one should be fired for their sexual or gender identity. No one should have their kids taken away for their sexual or gender identity. Rape is still rape, even when it’s perpetrated against a sex worker. I support decriminalizing sex work for a lot of reasons; for example, I’d love it if the law would quit harassing and jailing sex workers for having consensual sex, and I’d love it if sex workers could organize for better workplace safety. (Here’s a wonderful site for Sex Work Activists, Allies and You.) The bottom line is that people — all people — have rights. It’s time to treat them that way.
In terms of actual ways to be sex-positive in everyday life, here are the three ways I usually encourage people to spread the sex-positive love:
A) Avoid re-centering. Sexuality shouldn’t be societally “centered” on any particular norm, idea, or stereotype (except consent). It is frequently tempting to re-center “objective” ideas about sexuality onto ourselves, if we’re different from the norm, or onto people we admire. But the truth is that — on a societal level — queer sex is just as awesome as straight sex; that BDSM sex is equally admirable as vanilla sex; that cisgendered people are not any more or less amazing than trans people. The decision to have sex is no better than the decision to avoid sex, and asexual people are just as great as hypersexual people who are just as great as anyone with any level of sex drive.
In alternative sexuality subcultures, one often encounters a kind of superior attitude, perhaps because we have to push back so hard against the norm. In polyamory, for example, some of us use the sarcastic term “polyvangelist”: a person who insists that polyamory is “better” or “more evolved” or “makes more sense” for everyone, everywhere, than monogamy does. Neither monogamy nor polyamory is better than the other; they’re just different. Polyvangelists are trying to re-center onto polyamory. Not cool.
B) Start conversations. One of the most damaging problems around sexuality is the overwhelming and constant stigma. It hurts people with certain sexual identities, preferences or pasts. It hurts them spiritually. It can hurt them societally, like when LGBTQ folks have difficulty adopting children, or former sex workers are not allowed to work at other jobs. It can even hurt them physically: 40 years after doctors started noticing the HIV pandemic, too many people are still refusing to talk about sex openly, or give healthcare to sexual minorities directly affected by HIV. To say nothing of people who are attacked or killed for their sexual minority status. Sexual stigma kills.
So when someone says something icky about sex and gender, or stereotypes a certain sex or gender identity, it’s so great to challenge them — or at least to question them. (“Really? What makes you think all gay people are abuse survivors?”) And some of the most powerful sex activism out there involves starting discussion groups, creating venues for discussion, hosting sexuality speakers or sex-related art, etc. (Not that I’m biased or anything.)
C) Be “out” or open, without being invasive. This can be tricky, because I don’t want to encourage people to aggressively talk about sex at totally inappropriate times — and again, I’m against re-centering. On the other hand, the most powerful tool for destigmatizing sexuality appears to be coming out of the closet — whether a person is queer, BDSM, or whatever. Openly acknowledging, owning, and discussing your sexual preferences can help others respect those preferences — and can help others who share those preferences respect themselves. (Can you tell that I cried when I saw the movie “Milk”?)
Some relevant links:
* A student once emailed me a bunch of questions about sex-positive feminism, which I then republished (along with my answers) in interview form
* My old post “There Is No ‘Should’” and the Sex-Positive “Agenda”
* My old post Liberal, Sex-Positive Sex Education: What’s Missing
* Some thoughts that came out of a sex-positive 101 discussion over at Feministing
* Why some common complaints about sex-positivity are misguided by Holly Pervocracy
* FAQ: Isn’t the Existence of the Term Sex-Positive Feminism Effectively an Admission that Many Feminists Are Anti-Sex? at Finally!: The Feminism 101 Blog
This was cross-posted at Feministe.
Tags: BDSM, feminism, LGBTQ, literary quotations, manifesto, masculinity, orgasmic dysfunction, polyamory, sex work, stigma
Odd timing. I just started working on a 101 on being a man a few hours ago and then I see this while taking a break.
I’m digging what you’re trying to get going here but I have one minor quibble:Men who don’t get a “good trade” (e.g. men who don’t receive a certain amount of sex “in exchange for” a relationship) are seen as pussies. (Yes, “pussies” … don’t you just love that a word for female genitalia is a commonly used insult against so-called “weak” men?)
Maybe its me but in this part here it seems like when talking about how men who aren’t getting a “good trade” are perceived you seem to want to put more emphasis on using something that’s associated with women to insult men than the insulting of men in that situation.
I’ve linked to this essay at my live journal.
I enjoy your blog so much. You give me so much to think about and help me clarify my own thoughts. There’s so much respect towards others in your words. I think that’s one of the things I love the most.
I think it’s valid to divide humans primarily into two reproductive sexes and I also think that there’d be no such things as sex or gender without sexual reproduction. I don’t think it is possible to de-centralise those two reproductive sexes as they are what define and delineate sex and gender from other social acts and performances. To make this palatable to people with other sexes or genders an analogy to food could be useful: food can only be defined by it providing nutrients but providing nutrients is not all that describes food.
“3) Historically, sex has usually been defined in terms of two things: (a) reproduction, and (b) the sexual pleasure of stereotypical men.”
Thank you. This is by far my biggest disconnect with sex positive feminism. It proclaims to be about women, and yet the biggest issue is usually made out to be about women catering to male sexuality, mainly sex workers and girls who like to spend a lot of time and energy on appearing pretty.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to do, but linking it to women’s empowerment like that is fucked up. I didn’t realise how fucked up until a geeky message board discussion where people were commenting on a fantasy illustration of a girl in titty-armour, and I and a couple of other female posters remarked that we didn’t like it, to which the response was “I’m sorry you have a problem with female sexuality”. I think everybody who mentions a dislike for exaggerated fanservice are used to being called disgusting ugly prudes, but the expression “female sexuality” really struck a nerve there.
I recently read an interview with Zach Snyder about his movie Sucker Punch, where he explained why he’d chosen to dress the characters like fantasy hookers. Or rather, he made a long speech about how it was the audience who’d chosen to dress them like that, just like the men visiting the brothel chose to dress the girls like they want to see them, and then he ended up saying that while the characters started out like clichés of feminine sexuality, he hoped the girls would be empowered by their sexuality and not exploited. He didn’t at any point make the distinction between “feminine sexuality” and “dressed up like men want to see them”. Truth be told, I found his notion that female sexual empowerment is unrelated to female sexual desire (of which there was nothing in the movie), to be far more offensive than the actual outfits.
So while I’m not sex negative by any means, I’ve never cared much for sex positivism. Not only are many of its members arrogant and condemning, it also doesn’t have anything to offer someone like me who’s trying to find her sexual identity. I tried shaving and using make-up and being skinny and wearing revealing clothes and uncomfortable shoes, and it didn’t give me the empowerment the descriptions always say I ought to get from it. I’m also not a lesbian, I haven’t gotten the hang of enjoying one-night stands, and I don’t think I’d like to be a sex worker. And that’s pretty much what there is to positive feminism (apart from prude-shaming, which never did a lot for me either).
So thank you for taking into account that there’s more to the problem of sexual inequality than how people are marginalised for being sex workers (such as why so many sex workers are only catering to male desire in the first place, or why so many men feel justified defining fanservice made to arouse them as being female sexuality), even if its mostly in the context of the sexual act itself.
@machina – Rather than the food analogy, I prefer to think of sex as performance art. Biological essentialism obscures more than it illuminates, especially around gender and sex.
@AB – I’ve been a part of a vibrant community of sex positive people that spend most of our time and energy on helping women find paths to more enjoyable sex without prescribing specific activities or partners. We are out there – please believe me. Prescriptive “sex-positivity” is easily colonized by male desire, true. The most visible non-conformers (sex workers, casual sex aficionados) get most of the attention, true. Sticking to descriptive sex-positivity, encouraging people to explore and describe the sex they enjoy most, and encouraging them to own their desires without evangelizing (polyvangelist…snort) – these are the backbones of my sex-positive activism. Perhaps you haven’t found us yet? A lot of fandom is othering in ways that make me uncomfortable, so you won’t find me there.
@Clarisse – The “trap of consistency” silenced me for a long time. I was afraid to advance my ideas because they were all contingent or conditional or nebulous. I’m glad you speak, even when you know you have more to learn. It’s wonderful to hear an online voice that doesn’t aim for punditry.
That you value asking open questions and value opportunities for open-ended learning processes is one of the reasons why I like reading your texts so much.
Avoid re-centering.
Re-centering. You’ve taught me a new word. Thank you! I know the phenomenon – who doesn’t – ‘I’m into X. Therefore everyone is really into X.’ or ‘I don’t want to be a minority, I want to be like everyone! Therefore I’m going to pretend everyone is really like me, if only they admitted it.’ I’ve at times called it something like ‘projecting one’s own interests on humanity in general’ or ‘pretending one’s own interests are a default’, but it’s nice that there’s a shorter term available.
Yeah, so-called sex positivity stuff which exclusively relies on preconceptions of women as objects, never subjects of desire just leaves me completely alienated. Asking about and expressing and listening to actual inner sexual desires of women (using desires in the plural here, as they’re varied) is still very much a desideratum. Though thankfully these approaches exist too.
Apropos alienated:
This is more relevant to your past PUA ideology posts than this one, but I hope you forgive me for posting it here instead, as those discussion threads were just far too extremely alienating for me. This stuff from a closed one-night-stand microcosm where sex must absolutely and necessarily happen tonight & on first sight, because exchanging phone numbers and meeting each other again in broad daylight and in one’s usual habitat is apparently impossible or somehow anti-erotic (how strange, it has worked just fine for me and I believe some other people), where women and men never seem to have anything of mutual interest to talk about (well, why would they – conversations about something happen with a fellow human) reminds me of a short story by Neil Gaiman. There’s something in there which might encourage people to rethink relying on preconceived gendered interaction scripts and void conversations which are merely a means to an end, but apart from that it’s also an amusing and well-written story.
Neil Gaiman: How to talk to girls at parties
Wish I had something a little more substantial to say with my first post on your generally rather excellent blog but all I have to say is that this post is fantastic.
@Dena:
I’ve surfed around on various sites, but they’re hard to find (any suggestions?). Most sites are about people promoting their own kink (and whatever kinks are mine, they’re not that easy to find), or about sex workers’ rights and opposing slut-shaming, none of which is terribly relevant to me. The books on the subject I’ve seen have mostly been about giving feminism a face-lift by turning shaving into an act of empowerment. I don’t doubt that many members of sex-positive communities are sympathetic people, but when I see someone identifying as sex-positive commenting on anything outside their communities, all I see is prude-shaming and self-righteousness.
I have to disagree about sex workers being nonconformists though. There are few things as conforming for women as making it their job to arouse men. Prostitution is called the oldest profession for a reason. It’s completely traditional that women made their living, and gained their social status, from the men they slept with. Sex workers had the lowest status because they were perceived as selling most and gaining least (and traditionally, it was often the last resort for women with no other choice), and to some degree because they made obvious what everybody else were already doing, not because they didn’t conform.
That’s not to say sex work is not needlessly stigmatised, but I think it’s in a different category of oppression than the issues many regular women are struggling with, which is first and foremost a lack of representation and an insecurity about their own sexuality. In that aspect, the focus on sex-work actually has a negative effect, because it comes to be representative of female sexuality, and thus again centring it on stereotypical male desire. I’m not even that into S&M (I think), but the people whom I’ve resonated most with on these subjects are Bitchy Jones and Maymay, which is a bit scary.
@Dena
This feels like a reference to Toward a Performance Model of Sex, , from Yes Means Yes which is basically one of my favoritest essays in the whole world. I do have one quibble with it, though: the word “performance”.
I like the idea that sex is like dancing, or playing music. But while both of these things can be performances, they don’t have to be. At least, the performance aspect isn’t necessarily the main aspect for those “performing”. You can dance with someone, and not care about who is watching. You can jam with friends in a basement, and not give a fuck about how you sound. In some sense, you are performing for each other. But the core thing, I think, is more the creativity, and the application of skill, than the performance. Good music, good dancing and good sex all make great performances. But for the participants, there is a whole lot more going on.
I usually shorten the above to “sex is like dancing”, and I think that encompasses all the wonderful frame shifting all by itself, without taking on the baggage of the word “performance”.
Anyway.
@Clarisse
Awesome stuff. I really like the part about the dangers of re-centering. Subcultures, being comprised, after all of humans, just like “mainstream” cultures, tend to pick up a lot of the bad habits of mainstream culture, in miniature.
I think that the sex-as-performance (or just sex-as-dancing) stuff that Dena brought up might belong in the main body of a comprehensive Feminist Sex Positive 101 though. Without it, one is left a little with the impression that this is all about eating ones veggies. Important things, vegetables, but sex is ultimately about fun, intimacy, altered states, religious moments, etc., and offering people a path toward embracing those things which sounds fun, rather than dry and analytical, feels important to me. (At least, I don’t think that I ever really “got”, on a gut level, how awesome “yes means yes” can be until reading the essay I linked above.)
AB,
while Clarisse is correct in pointing out the context of definitions of sex, I don’t think you’re taking into account that “sex positive feminism” also stands in the context of and is a reaction to “sex negative feminism”, second wave feminism/radical feminism, or, basically, feminism at the time – and the strand of feminism most people (rightly AND wrongly) still identify with the term.
So, to me, “sex positive feminism” is a way of dealing with the oppressive nature of what the radical feminist discourse implies about both women, men, and their sexuality. I mean, go and read some of the stuff that’s been published during the “sex wars” and I doubt you won’t see “sex positive feminism” as an important reaction to the “sex is rape”-discourse that dominanted feminism at the time.
See, I have this female friend who’s (not actually self-identifying as feminist and doesn’t have much to say about gender theroy, but that’s even better to illustrate the social impact the general feminist discourse of the last 30 years had even on people who aren’t particulary exposed) been stuck in this feminist double bind – she totally *wanted* to wear high heels, she wanted to feel sexy and feminine *and* appeal to men, but she had internalized how wearing high heels is treason of womankind.
A couple of weeks ago, she finally decided to try. We went out one night, and while she loved them and their effect – she did look great in those shoes – she said she constantly felt both like “a hooker” *and* like she was doing a disservice to all women. Being confronted with the double binds for men (which you don’t really seem to see, I know) I could totally understand how messed up this is for her, when her individual action is put in the context of “the political” and I was very proud of her for saying a) “I’m going to do it anyway” and b) “I own myself, fuck you for telling me this is wrong”. And while I wasn’t in her brain, all the indicators i got seemed to say: “Yes, this is empowering!”
So, sex positive feminism, to me, means to accept choices, first and foremost, and to not be totalitarian about the assumed effects of individual actions for the assumed collective. Otherwise you end up pretty quickly at the point at which German radical feminist Alice Schwarzer ended up and called women like Clarisse “collaborators” in patriarchy, and that’s a very, very dangerous place.
So, well, I get a little uncomfortable when I hear things like “exaggerated fanservice” and how women’s decisions to *want* to appeal to men in the way they think they can achieve it is disrespected. Because just like not performing feminity in this way should be respected and accepted and is possibly a part of female sexuality, performing this kind of femininty can also be a part of feminine sexuality, just not yours, apparently.
Well, I reckon that depends on the definition of “female sexuality”, because I can totally see how women who make me perform masculinity will see my performance as an integral part of male sexuality. And to the extent that sexuality is performative and not just about reproduction, it certainly is. And what the performance will be, is very likely to be decided to a significant degree by the people to whom the performance is supposed to appeal.
I added a Point 8 and quoted “Towards a Performance Model”. Should have done that originally!
This is a nitpick but “valid” is not the right word here. Saying one person is a man because he has a penis *is* a valid way to determine this person’s gender identity because you will be right the majority of the time (80%+). I don’t disagree with your point though.
Ranai,
re the Gaiman story…
Interesting. I suppose making the “girls are aliens” metaphor literal and exposing how that’s not actually the case may have been one of the author’s intentions, but I don’t think it worked out that well, because when it comes to masculinity, it sticks to the common script.
So here’s what i read. “Just talk to girls” isn’t really just talk to girls. Vic is confident and assuming attraction, Enn isn’t. It says, try, play, experiment. And at the same, there’s the cautionary tale: If you actually succeed at playing, you’ll (depending on how you read the story, as rape analogy or as a “The Crying Game”-analogy) end up doing something that will change you and that you will regret, your sexuality will end up hurting either you or other people, or both.
And this, of course, is a confirmation of the alien-hypothesis in itself…
machina:
I see what you’re getting at here, and I think it’s an interesting point. It’s probably true to a certain extent if one is trying to think objectively about sex, or about the broader role of sex in general throughout society. For something to be ‘sex’ it presumably has to be related someway to the raw biological urges of the people involved and generally speaking those biological urges will be related to reproduction.
However if we’re considering a subjective view on sex, the individual doesn’t really experience sex as having a reproductive purpose, they experience it as a complex set of urges and feelings. Importantly some of the urges may be linked to the biological purpose of sex, some may not and some people may experience urges linked to reproduction in a way we might not objectively expect.
In the social context, we then build collaboratively and iterratively on top of these complex set of urges and feelings and may end up with a social understanding far from the original purpose of reproduction. In this context we have to accept that people will define sex based on their experience of these urges and feelings, and not the biological purpose that constructed (some of) these underlying urges in the first place. Thus we have to accept both defintions of sex and consider the one most approprate to the context. When considering sex from a subjective or cultural viewpoint reproduction should not be considered a vital component or central purpose, even if its a theme found widely within many definitions of sex.
To counter your food example: one might accept the primacy of the objective nutrional view of food as we all need nutrion. However that doesn’t follow on to sex, as we don’t all need reproduction.
@Sam:
I didn’t mention that because most people here seem to be feminists, not feminist critics. I agree that a lot of sex positive feminism is about criticising and working against other parts of feminism (rightly and wrongly), not so much about changing anything about mainstream culture, but I’m more interested in what sex positive feminism can contribute with as a part of feminism, because feminist critics are a dime a dozen, while feminists who’re open about sex are much rarer. Unfortunately, many sex positive feminists do define themselves mainly in opposition to feminism in general, which I guess is why so few of them have ever said anything useful to me.
I know the feeling of sticking out from a sub-culture, so I can sympathise. But the key word here is sub-culture. When I look at which kinds of shoes are most numerous (and presumably most sold), high heels are under-represented among practical shoes (clogs, sneakers, slippers), but are in the majority among everyday footwear and completely dominate among the more fancy types.
When I look at commercials for shoes, examples of women’s shoes that don’t have high heels are usually absent, when I look at what women are presented wearing in the media, high heels are the norm, and when I see what they’re wearing in the streets, well, let me put it this way: When a friend of mine saw a statistic over women’s height, he refused to believe they were really that short, because the women he saw in everyday life were always 4-5 centimetres taller.
As I’ve already said, I have a lot of geek friends (I’m probably a geek myself), and they definitely don’t always feel comfortable expressing individuality. I was overjoyed when I a saw an engineer I know have several seasons of Friends on his shelf, because I hadn’t seen a single male geek whose choice of movies weren’t a cliché before that. But that doesn’t mean Friends is this tiny, marginalised show that needs to be promoted. Quite the contrary, only his very specific situation (being a techno geek) made it worth remarking on. When I visit another friend who’s an actor in the same city, I’m not surprised to see her choices differ from what I’m used to with the geeky guys.
I’m inclined to see feminism as being about offering an alternative to mainstream culture, to shake our ideas about what it means to be a woman (and a man for that matter). That doesn’t mean it has to be judgemental about it (in fact, I prefer when it’s not), but if the current culture promotes women wearing high heels (sometimes even to the point of compromising their health, and calling it sloppy and ugly if they don’t), I think it’s a lot more relevant that feminism makes people aware that high heels are not an integral part of being a woman, than it is to help the rest of society promote it.
It’s empowering because she’s in an unusual situation and have personal issues. But in that context, everything can be empowering. Having Mean Girls on my shelf in the face of a disapproving geek, and telling him it was none of his damned business to tell me what to watch and that hating a movie that much for having Lindsay Lohan in it was stupid, was empowering to me. But I’m not going to start claiming that having the majority of all movies about women focus on skinny girls in their teens and 20s acting like stereotypes is an empowering trend just because a small subset of the population look down on them.
Also, I have never said I don’t see that double-bind.
In my experience, sex positivism is first and foremost anti-feminism and defending the mainstream, which is why I find Clarisse such a great exception. Oh, and sex positivism is also frequently about not understanding the difference between the existence and prevalence, like you do here, and refusing to believe that one can accept the former while questioning the latter
Who said anything about disrespect? I think you’re confusing being critical and not praising as disrespecting. Which is kind of my point actually, teachers get criticised all the time, and no one makes the same fuss about it, because people are not supposed to show the same degree of adoration and deference to teachers as they are to sex-workers, because teachers are not supposed to representative of a whole sex the way sex workers are made out to be.
There’s a reason there’s no sexual orientation called “I want to fuck her”. There’s a reason all the things we can call sexual orientations are about what the subjects desire. Homosexuals are attracted to people the same sex, BDSMers are attracted to power discrepancies, pain, and/or restraints of some kind, etc. A woman in a revealing outfit is not a sexual orientation. It’s not a direct representation of a sexuality the way actual consensual sex would be.
To be realistic about it, worldwide the majority of sex workers do not like their job, and an even bigger majority do not represent their sexuality in their job. That doesn’t mean there aren’t sex workers whose sexual preferences align so well with what customers want that they can make money of it, and for some, the act of being a sex worker is in itself a kink, whether it’s the attention, the submission, the money, etc. And that’s fine.
But the idea that a person’s level of perceived attractiveness is the deciding factor in their sexual identity is deeply troubling to me.
There’s a reason I mentioned a movie which is basically about a bunch of girls trying to flee an asylum (which becomes a brothel in their mind) to avoid getting raped any further as an example of what is touted as female sexuality. Their enjoyment, or willing involvement, in the sex they had was completely irrelevant for the director to make comments about their sexuality.
In theory, one of the characters could have been a lesbian, another could have been asexual, one could have been attracted to older men, another could be into group sex, and one could want to save sex until marriage, but it would never show because the girls didn’t at any point in the movie get to express their own sexuality. But because they were revealingly dressed, they now represent female sexuality. Funny how I don’t hear the same claims that the shirtless guys in Twilight are all about male sexuality.
Honestly Sam, I don’t get why you bother arguing with me like that. I get that you don’t like me, but is it really worth putting so much energy into harassing me? By constantly bringing up ghosts of long-gone feminists who have nothing to do with me (and who, btw, were more marginalised than you and all your traumatised female friends put together), in order to try to police me into shutting up about my experiences, you’re not convincing me of anything more than that you’re just what I’ve come to expect from sex positive feminists.
Of course, I suspect you’re not doing is as much in order to communicate with me as to marginalise me. And while you’re definitely succeeding in making me upset, probably to the point where I wont contribute with anything constructive here, you’re also contributing to exactly what you claim bothers you so much, feminists getting so angry by being marginalised by people like you that they stop treating people like you as if you had anything positive to contribute with. Which I’m starting to suspect suits you just fine, because then you can continue the same line of aggression with a clear conscience.
What Sam says @ #10.
AB: Yes, sex-positives really should dump this whole sex worker rights thing to avoid offending people like you. Having the feminist mainstream absolutely run the agenda of all other sex and gender justice movements is what’s really important, after all. :-P
And in all seriousness, if sex-positive feminism ever does get decoupled from things like support of sex workers rights, anticensorship, support for the rights sexual minority groups such as poly and kink (and of course I don’t mean “recentering” on any of those groups :), all things the movement was founded on, then I think those of us who do support those things need to drop sex-positive feminism like a bag of hammers. (This sentiment is hardly unique to me, BTW. I that know Furrygirl, a sex worker rights activist, has dropped the label “sex-positive feminist” based on her feeling that it’s too wrapped up in a navel-gazing “feminist” cultural agenda rather than bread-and-butter rights issues.)
Clarisse: In spite of the fact that I’m entering this conversation on a note of disagreement with where some of the conversation has gone, the original post was great.
Sam, AB never said she didn’t see masculine double-binds.
AB, Sam is not trying to harass or police you.
IACB, AB didn’t say that sex-positive feminists should dump the sex workers’ rights thing.
“It proclaims to be about women, and yet the biggest issue is usually made out to be about women catering to male sexuality, mainly sex workers and girls who like to spend a lot of time and energy on appearing pretty.”
She certainly listed it as something that was wrong with sex-positive feminism. And completely lost me at the “sex workers as conformists” nonsense.
Her attitude is hardly unique; I see that kind of negativity all over the feminist blogosphere. Which is why some of us don’t identify as feminists. And, in a way, fine. They can run their feminism the way they see fit, and those of us who are turned off by it deal with sexuality and gender politics outside of the context of *their* movement. And if that’s “antifeminist” in their book, so be it.
But I’ll be damned if somebody with those kind of attitudes is going to badmouth sex worker activism (one of the more important rights-based movements connected with sex-positive feminism, really) in the context of a “constructive” criticism of sex-positive feminism, and have that accepted with a nice silent nod of assent.
I’m trying to be nice about this as possible and don’t plan on any lengthy debate with AB. All I have to say is that if she finds the ideas of some of us in the sex-positive movement to be alienating, rest assured, some of us find attitudes like hers at least as alienating.
Thanks everyone for positive feedback.
@Danny, I was hoping we were at the point where we generally assume positive intent on each others’ part.
@malice, M-W defines the word “valid” as: well-grounded or justifiable : being at once relevant and meaningful. I think I used it reasonably. No one gets to define anyone else, not even if they’re likely to be right. (And note that in the OP I said “reduce” i.e. “define”, not “assume”.)
@Ranai — I can’t take credit for the “re-centering” phrase I’m afraid. Some time after I developed the whole “among consenting adults there is no ‘should’” phrase, I found a really lovely and impassioned blog post in which some guy talked extensively about his whole approach to sex-positivity was to “avoid re-centering”. I can’t find it now and I suspect it’s been taken down (I initially found it through Amber Rhea, a sex-positive writer whose blog also appears to have vanished).
On the sex worker thing:
I wouldn’t go as far as AB did when she said that she doesn’t think sex workers are nonconformists. Sex workers certainly are nonconformists. And I definitely agree with you, IACB, that sex workers’ rights is one of the key sex-positive issues. That having been said, a lot of AB’s critique resonates with me, and while her perspective might be seen as marginalizing sex workers’ rights, I also think that there are sex workers who would agree with a lot of what she says, perhaps including Charlotte Shane.
In figuring out my sexuality and writing about it, I have been attacked both by some feminists and by some non-feminists (and even anti-feminists). And in figuring out my sexuality, I have drawn inspiration and strength and understanding both from feminist critiques that enabled me to avoid “performing” my sexuality for men’s supposed pleasure, and from sex-positive critiques that enabled me not to freak out about being a “collaborator” just because I’m a submissive etc etc. I’ve actually got an article coming up for Good Men Project that’s relevant to this topic … I think they might post it tomorrow.
AB is hardly the only woman who has voiced such a critique of sex-positive feminism, and while I can see the negativity that I think is bothering IACB in her response, I can also understand that negativity, because I too feel the pressures she’s talking about, and I wish more sex-positive activists were reflective about them. I don’t like the fact that lots of sex-positive feminists do a whole bunch of prude-shaming any more than I like the fact that radical feminists do a whole bunch of slut-shaming.
@AB — A woman in a revealing outfit is not a sexual orientation.
“Sexual orientation” is a more slippery concept than we tend to think. I’ve been reading about it off and on for a while, and the more I read about it, the more I feel like it’s … well, slippery. I haven’t parsed out all my thoughts on it yet, but I’m just not sure that attraction of the type you’re describing can honestly be distanced from other types of attractions.
Dena: I agree that some sex and gender can be a performance, but then how do you delineate sex and gender as a performance from performance generally?
desipis: I don’t know if you’re actually disagreeing with me. I agree that subjective experiences as well as actual sexual acts often have nothing to do with reproduction.
As far as requiring food, well we only require food if we are required to live and we only are required to live in some context. Many contexts that require us to live also require us to reproduce. In any of those contexts we can then say that hunger and sex drive are quite similar in being indirect ways of meeting complex requirements and that their indirect nature means that actual urges can diverge completely from meeting requirements.
Sex workers perform sexual acts for money, which in itself often doesn’t conform to mainstream values regarding sex, but the sexual acts they perform often conform to mainstream sexualities in order for them to maximise the money that they get.
A few things bug me about the kind of rhetoric I see coming from AB, though symptomatic of a larger worldview. (I don’t want to single her out, she just happens to be the one bringing it to the conversation here.) Notably the division of the world into patriarchy versus feminists, with feminists being the ultimate in “nonconformists”, speaking truth to power, and smashing the status quo, and others presumably falling short of this exalted state. This is not only vanguardist, it ignores the participation of some feminists in state power structures that I think can legitimately be called oppressive. Somebody like Gunilla Eckberg or Catherine MacKinnon come to mind right away. (And conversely, it is this group of feminists who claim to be the most radical and outside of the power structure.)
And as for the idea of “pressure” on women, it’s an idea that needs to be unpacked, because it’s something that cuts several ways. On one hand, you can say that women (and increasingly men) are under a lot of pressure to live up to standards of appearance and behavior, because mass media, peers, etc put a lot of value on appearance, and many women internalize this excessively. So, negative social pressure that translates into eating disorders, having a lot of sex you don’t really want to be having, etc. (At the same time, I don’t like the assumption that every thin, conventionally attractive young woman is a victim of this.)
But on the other hand, there are also individual choices that absolutely must be accepted. If somebody is what would generally be considered good-looking, if they simply like dressing sexy, if they are particularly good in bed, run a really good scene, or whatever – does that person’s heightened sex appeal suddenly create “pressure” on others who get it into their heads that they have to live up to that? And even if they do, do we have to start policing people to play down their attractiveness so that others don’t feel “pressured”? And, believe me, I’ve seen a lot of feminist conversations about sexy or attractive women that go exactly there. In fact, I can think of several female vloggers on YouTube who get hated on by some women, including some feminists, for little reason other than the way they dress.
When you start limiting other people’s self-expression or telling them that their sexuality is not “authentic” because of your own issues, however legitimate your own issues might be, there’s a problem there. And this is where I see a lot of “you sex positives are sexually pressuring other women” seems to come from. Are any actual sex-positives trying to pressure anybody to go out and fuck around more? If so, I’d like to see some examples.
And as for “prude shaming”, that’s another idea that needs unpacking. Whether there’s something wrong with prude shaming depends on how you define “prude”. If you define somebody as a “prude” because they’re asexual, prefer monogamy, doen’t like watching porn, aren’t pansexual, or not into whatever your favorite kink or sex act, then, yes, “prude shaming” is a problem. There is certainly a such thing as sex-positive monogamy and sex-positive asexuality, something I think many of us sex-pozzie scum have said many times, but perhaps not often enough to be heard.
But I don’t define “prude” that way. To my way of thinking, a prude is somebody who’s just a little too fixated on other people sexuality, and all about limiting what other people can do sexually based on their own unresolved issues. Carol Queen calls them “absexuals”. Donna Hughes, Gail Dines, and Robert Jensen are exemplary absexuals according to that definition. And by that definition, I see nothing wrong with “prude-shaming”, because that kind of prudishness violates other people’s boundaries and hence is shameful behavior.
@Clarisse:
No, he’s succeeding. It’s an easy enough thing to do in a sex-positive (i.e. positive towards a narrow spectrum of human behaviour, of which a lot isn’t even sexual, and completely indifferent towards everything else) sphere, and since Sam has expressed his dislike of me on numerous occasions, I’m not the least bit surprised he’s taking his chance here. I wouldn’t have expected more of him.
The constant mentioning that since he knows a couple of people who had trouble feeling entitled to act in a way which the majority of people already do (and don’t feel repressed about at all) it means the goal of the branch of feminism dealing with sexuality should focus on that, combined with the even more constant mentioning of feminists I’ve never heard off and never had an interest in, just to bully people into compliance, is not arguing in good faith.
The problem is (again typical for sex-positive spaces) that there is a very specific world-view and context prevalent here, which everything else is judged in according to. So even though I directly say that I have no problem with sex workers and have no intention of trying to prevent them from practising their trade, and never says the opposite, that isn’t registered by anyone (except perhaps you), because environments like this one are about dividing people into neat groups of liberated sluts and bitter prudes.
It’s ironic that Iamcuriousblue is showing his tolerance by adding a tiny little sentence that no one of course deserves to be shamed for being asexual or monogamous, and he expects that this will be enough to have it assumed as his default position, whereas you can pretty much do nothing to question the basics of any sex positive theory without being accused of prudery, no matter how much you stretch people’s individual right to do sex work or whatever else they want.
And every time it happens, you get people’s (like Sam’s and Iamcuriousblue’s) extensive load of feminist theory about patriarchy and political lesbianism thrown at you, and have it assumed to be the basis of whatever you say, even though you’ve never read it and have only encountered it on American message boards (where it was of course touted by anti-feminists as being the position of everyone who disagreed with them). A sort of feminist original sin, for which you’re supposed to forever pay the price. And yes, that’s harassment.
My position on sex-positive feminism is pretty simple. 1: If your focus is always on sex workers’ rights anyway, please call yourself sex workers’ rights activists instead, because it’s really alienating to have one’s sexuality narrowed down like that. 2: If women’s sexuality has traditionally been equated with performing and exchanging sex for something else, and sex positivism is about being non-conforming, how come the only alternatives suggested are other ways to perform and exchange sex for something else?
But those positions will not be addressed, except with sneering contempt and prude-shaming, because they’re not relevant to most sex positive feminists, and in my experience, those people are only in it for themselves. It’s ironic that Denmark is considered progressive by American standards (bare breasts in public, gay adoption, legalised prostitution), I’m considered progressive by Danish standards, and yet I find myself often sympathising more with non-progressive Americans, because while they’re as judgemental as everybody else, at least they don’t pretend to represent diversity.
AB, I have to say that I’ve seen few examples of sex-positive feminism which center conventional attractiveness and have the kind of simplistic “more sex = better sex” you are describing. Could you provide some examples? One thing which does come to mind is during Lady Porn Day, where the introductory post included a bunch of images of slim, white women with a serious case of sexyface (as if women are primarily interested in pictures of other women performing for a male gaze… yeah…)
For me, the benefits of sex-positivism stem from stuff like Sam’s friend experienced – it’s a good way out of certain double binds which have to do with gender, because there’s a welcoming attitude that nobody has to perform gender in any certain way. I can go out in heels or a miniskirt or work boots and men’s pants. I can say “I’m up for some casual sex tonight” or “gee, I think I’m just gonna abstain for a couple months unless a really excellent prospect comes along” or “maybe I should try sleeping with women?” because none of those things are inherently feminist or anti-feminist.
Yes, there’s a definite risk of this philosophy drifting off into the land of “everything is empowering!!!! whee!!!!” and I’m not quite sure how to square that circle. But the alternatives seem to be worse, at least for me. I’m not interested in being told by either traditionalists OR feminists that I am not doing my gender, or my sex life, properly.
Also, Clarisse, I really liked this post. Good thoughts.
Even if you didn’t invent the sexuality-related application of the term re-centering, thank you for including it in your text. It’s really helpful to know it.
Re sex-worker’s rights, I live in a country where sex work is legal now, which I’m glad about. Nobody should be denied insurances and have no legal standing vis-à-vis clients because they do sex work. I also worry about the safety of those sex workers who still work walking the curb and get into cars with clients. There are still lots of economic issues, and difficulties changing professions if one wants to. The work of Hydra and other sex worker’s associations has been and is very necessary.
I’m also in a situation where cultural messages like ‘Let’s pay attention to women who are sex workers exclusively! Hey, you should imitate commercial sex work in your personal love life! It’s so attractive in general! You gotta work towards that generalised passive appeal! Your own sexual desires? Who cares!’ are painfully obvious, as I’m into BDSM and dominant and a het woman. These are messages from the culture around me, not from the man I am with; he is not indifferent towards what I desire, and I’m not indifferent towards him. (Stylistically trying my hand at writing with understatement.)
But as ‘How about we ask women too what they happen to want sexually?’ has been formulated very well by Bitchy Jones and would be too long for a comment, I’ll just recommend her texts to anyone who, unlike Clarisse and AB and me and probably lots of other people who are reading here, haven’t read them yet. And later I’ll turn my attention to the completely fictinal story about an extremely exploited male sex worker I’ve been enjoying.
Heh. I thought Neil Gaiman’s story ‘How to talk to girls at parties’ could speak for itself to most readers, but okay. Here’s one interpretation. The whole thing with subjugating oneself to gendered interaction scripts is absurd. ‘Women are aliens!’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Enn and Vic have no intention to socialise with various individual fellow humans, have conversations about something with someone, get to know someone. Their imperative script is: ‘Talking to girls (void talk) –> initiate physical contact. That is all.’
Every individual Enn encounters is fascinating, unique. But he is imprisoned in his script. ‘Girls’ are an amorphous mass. ‘Talk’ is a void means to an end, so no need to pay attention to content. He ‘knows’ that there are lines he must deliver, actions he must propose, things he must accomplish.
Operating imprisoned in their ‘women are aliens’ scripts, even if Enn and Vic had met humans at their party, they would not had got to know any humans.
Why not break free from this absurdity?
Wait. Is Sam from the US? Because speaking of recentering, I have the vague feeling there may be a Western Europe / US dichotomy throwing off this discussion.
@ AB:
It took me a while to figure out what was troubling me about your conception of what sex-positive (s-p for brevity) feminism is, but this clarified it immensely.
On point 1, that is exactly what I do. I am a sex workers’ rights activist (and an occasional contributor to the UK sex workers’ rights blog “Harlots Parlour“). I am also a sex-positive feminist man. I am also a kink-rights activist, in a country where it is still technically illegal to do a lot of types of SM play as a top, or to consent to taking part as a bottom. There is some overlap in these positions, and they have similar principles underlying them. However, they are not identical with each other.
On point 2, I have always understood a key plank of a sex-positive feminist position to be that women can (both as in “are capable of”, and “(should be) permitted to”) want sex for its own sake, and not in exchange for other things. The generalised form of the s-p feminist position, I have always understood to be “a woman’s reasons for choosing to have sex are her own and valid unless there is some pressing concern to say otherwise.” That is, it is both acceptable to choose sex in exchange for money, and sex purely for the pleasure of sex, and a host of other reasons. It is not, however, acceptable to choose to have sex in order to infect as many others as possible with STIs! (That would count as a “pressing concern to say otherwise”, I think.)
That said, I do recognise that a lot of people have adopted the term but not the philosophy, and describe themselves as “sex-positive” because they want more sex (of their particular type) and more sexual displays (by women), and twist the rhetoric to support their own viewpoint.
Practically my first blog post was about a Muslim woman being harassed at her local swimming baths because some racist dude accused her of swimming while fully clothed. She was, in fact, wearing her “burkini”, which allows Muslim women to cover up sufficiently according to their beliefs, to swim while feeling “decently” attired. I wrote, “You’ll find me vociferous in supporting women’s rights to display themselves if they choose to do so, but I think that the opposite right has to be exerted equally fiercely – in this case, the right to cover up.” That, to me, is the s-p feminist angle, and I would at least question (though not necessarily deny) the “sex-positive” self-identification of someone who took a markedly different stance on the matter.
On the “empowerment” issue, I think a huge amount of the discourse talks about acts being “empowering”, when in fact all they are is “empowered”.
2nd wave feminism did a fair amount to even the balance, such that many women now no longer feel obliged to act in certain socially-conforming ways, and therefore feel able to choose to do so (because the choice not to do so is also perceived to be there). Thus, their choice feels empowered when they do things that traditionally are associated with sexuality and with slut-shaming. Some people confuse that sense of being empowered as coming from the act itself (rather than the option to do the act or not do it). I think it is a valid criticism of s-p discourse to say that the term “empowering” is overused, or even wrongly used, in the context of s-p feminism.
AB: All I have to say is that there’s a large segment of the feminist blogosphere that would be very supportive of attitudes like yours, and markedly less diplomatic toward dissenters than I or Sam have been toward you.
“Harassing” you because we disagree? Please.
@ Clarisse:
To a certain extent I agree with this, but I think that there are ways in which “gender” is, in fact, “a person’s outer appearance or behavior”, and that this social aspect is where we get the idea that gender is a social construct.
It all depends on how one draws the distinction between sex and gender, and social interaction. I tend to look at sex as being pretty much XY or XX, and everything else being gender, and there being many different dimensions of gender (that post identifies at least seven – labelled “axioms” in the post). Only some of those dimensions are about behaviour or appearance, and I suspect that were I to write a similar post today I would qualify the conclusion about “communicative” gender somewhat more than I did there.
(It follows that there are at least 128 distinct gender identifications possible, if each dimension is taken as a pure binary, and many many more if various positions in the middle are allowed.)
Strong agreement here. It brought to mind (if only for the word “collaborative”!) Staci Newmahr’s discussion of “feminist edgework”, and my suspicion that the emotional edgework she describes could be considered as covering all dating and/or consensual sex.
And on sex workers rights vs sex-positive feminism, yes, I have long recognized that those are in fact two different movements that nevertheless overlap. It is certainly the case that many sex workers rights activists are coming from perspectives other than sex-positive feminism.
Still, the fact that there is heavy overlap between the two is undeniable. And as I said, a sex-positive feminism that severed its ties to things like sex worker rights, anticensorship, or sexual freedom activism, or even played down those ties to be more “respectable”, is not a “sex-positive feminism” I’d want to have anything to do with.
AB,
I don’t think it is appropriate to discuss your ad hominem attacks here, so I will only say this.
I have, on numerous occasions, declared that I don’t like the way you say things more than the things you say. I have also repeatedly stated (implicitly and explicitly) my disagreeing with you on various matters as well as my agreeing with you on others. If you got the impression that I don’t like you personlly, that’s too bad, but nothing I can change. I have continously attempted to have a friendly discussion, to argue with you as a consequence of taking you seriously. I have repeatedly stated that I believe you’re arguing in good faith and that we’re merely misunderstanding each other. But that last comment of yours is passive aggressive to a degree that I’m not sure that assessment is (still?) correct.
To wrap this up – if you’re ever interested in a discussion that is not based on the axiom that other experiences don’t count because you have decided they don’t count, let me know.
Ranai,
it did speak to me, I just heard something you probably didn’t hear because we interpreted what we heard according to individual reference frames and interpretation schemes… ;)
I wish it were that easy. Sadly, it’ not. Here’s why I believe that it will very likely not work.
http://www.realadultsex.com/content/shorter-no-sex-class-paradigm#comment-17675
Maybe the solution is realizing individually what Albert Camus realized about the absurd through Sysiphus – “The struggle itself…is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
I hope, as awareness of the practical relevance of human diversity increases, more individual people will allow themselves to truly be themselves, and be honest and attractive to very the specific people who are attracted to them specifically.
Here’s why I believe that it will very likely not work.
Being honest rather than following some gendered script has worked for me and my partner when I got to know him at an ordinary party (not a kink party – neither of us had a consciously a clue yet that we were into BDSM). I asked him if he wanted to go somewhere more quiet where we could talk, I asked him if we could perhaps exchange phone numbers, I called him and said I’d like to meet him again. When we had met some more times and found out we really liked each other, I was the person who asked if I could kiss him. He contributed, for example, his interesting personality, his interesting conversation about many topics, the fact that he was attractive to me physically, his reciprocated honest personal interest in me. It’s one possibility among many of how getting to know someone can happen.
Someone who tells me ‘it will very likely not work’ tells me that our experiences as well as our human preferences very likely don’t exist.
As mentioned above, I posted this fun story by Neil Gaiman here and not in any PUA ideology thread for a reason: those comment discussions were too alienating. Sam, this was certainly not your work alone, but with various others you actively contributed to it. I am not willing to participate in the sort of discussion that repelled me.
Thank you again Clarisse for the excellent post, and I’m looking forward to more interesting developments of these concepts.
Ranai,
no need to reply if you don’t feel like you’d like to, but you brought this up here, and I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.
Btw, glad it worked out that well for you.
Sadly, it didn’t in my case. I reckon that’s why we have different perspectives on some things.
Please note comment #25 from k, which was just approved — sorry it got caught in mod for a while.
DERAIL ONTO MOD TOPIC:
One of the PUA threads Ranai is referring to is here:
http://clarissethorn.com/blog/2011/04/18/guest-post-detrimental-attitudes-of-the-pickup-artist-community/
Heh, it’s sort of ironic, k also just linked to me elsewhere and said:
Clarisse also has the most diverse yet functional commenter community I’ve ever seen, though this is a tribute to some INTENSE moderation on her part. Feminists and PUA’s talking quite casually and cordially to one another about sex? Yes. It can happen.
I’m not sure these conversations are always “casual” and “cordial”. The problem of a comment thread feeling like a hostile and alienating environment for some people is even harder than trying to be nice to everyone and convince everyone to be nice to each other. (I’m not always nice to everyone either. There are definitely MRA/PUA perspectives that I’ve smacked down.) These are, in fact, The Problems with diversity, in most contexts where I have experienced diversity … you get more perspectives, but it’s also way more stressful for everyone.
I just sat here for about 15 minutes trying to figure out what to type, but I failed. I’m not sure what else to say. I’ll try to contribute some non-mod thoughts to this thread later. I guess for now, I still think everyone can get along, but I am asking, please try to take a positive tone when you comment.
You caught me, Clarisse! I also have another comment stuck in moderation, wondering whether part of the issue between AB & Sam might be due to the different cultural contexts of Denmark and the US. Sam, are you from the US?
As for things going off the rails at the moment, eh. Sometimes people get overly personal, no matter where they gather to converse or how one tries to moderate them. Occasionally I’ve had to throw people out of the bar where I work just because they cannot. leave. each. other. alone!
At least you work really hard at diversity. And I do feel like that pays dividends, even if not everyone can get along all the time.
k,
no, I’m from Germany.
Hmm, Sam, it was just a guess based upon your friend’s discomfort with wearing heels and feeling “like a hooker” in them, plus a couple of other things you mentioned. Sex negativity is far more entrenched in the US (I’m from there, and currently live in Europe) so I was reminded more of the American women I know when I read about her situation. Just a wrong hunch…
@SnowdropExplodes:
Agreed. I don’t know if you recall when I gave an example of a guy posting in the Creep thread talking about how hard it was to be a man in this culture and develop a sense of masculine sexuality, while at the same time running a blog presented as being for everybody who liked sex, but only including material about porn for straight men. That’s pretty much how it feels when someone uses a name like sex-positive feminist (with the implication that others are sex-negative) and then only focus on sex workers.
But there is a huge difference between questioning an individual woman’s choice and questioning what our culture tells (and shows) us about sex and women. No human choice is made in a vacuum, there’s a fine line between accepting an individual woman’s choice, and adopting a sort of cultural laissez-faire attitude (in the behavioural more than the financial sense of the word) where no assumption can be questioned or opposed because someone will read a criticism into it (see for example me saying that I long for more alternatives that aren’t following the same script of equating sex with men’s attraction to women, and being assumed to want sex positive feminists stop working for sex worker’s rights because I’m an offended prude).
It’s funny, I was actually thinking about that very issue, because I’ve seen, and heard about, quite a few western girls and women who aren’t very comfortable in their own bodies and, for instance, are afraid to be seen without make-up, feel disgusted if they miss a single shower, and consider their body-hair gross. Some of those girls take just as many and as extensive precautions in order to appear ‘decent’ before leaving the house as the Muslim women do.
And yet, politicians here are considering banning the Muslim niqāb with the argument that it is oppressive to women. We get to hear again and again how being afraid to show your face is sick, but I have not heard any similar argument when it comes to people covering their face with make-up rather than a veil, even when they’re just as ashamed. If a Muslim woman expressed the same anxiety about her body as certain ‘empowered’ Danish women, it would be considered proof that Islam was oppressive, but as long as the fear and disgust is expressed within the accepted cultural context, it becomes invisible.
@k:
As I’ve already said, most of my experiences with sex positive feminists are individuals outside sex positive spaces, because the sex-positive spaces I’ve stumbled across have focussed mostly on sex workers, or most recently, kink (though I’m not sure they’re actually sex positive in the traditional sense of the word). I also experience that even when sex positive feminists aren’t directly endorsing the attitude you mentioned, they also really don’t like it to be questioned or criticised. And this means that there are few places to discuss it, save from more radical feminist spaces which I’m not interested in.
I think the main issue for me is every debate I’ve seen or been involved in in regards to feminism tend to end up being about feminism. Even debates that are just about sex or gender, but where someone expresses a view that could be considered feminist, have a tendency to end up revolving around feminism, especially what it does wrong.
Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, since the feminist movement in Denmark has traditionally been a subset of the workers’ movement rather than a power on its own. But I didn’t grow up with a lot of feminist rhetoric (I didn’t learn the word ‘feminism’ until I was around 12, and only because I read it on the back of an American book), so I constantly experience having my words and opinions put into a feminist context that I’m unfamiliar with.
It seems to me that even in the most generous sense of the word, feminism doesn’t dominate mainstream society. Sam’s friend might have a different individual experience than me in regards to her ideological stand about high heels, but I reckon both of us are likely to frequent shoe stores where high heels are the norm for most of women’s footwear. But many people in feminist debates, even when professing to discuss footwear, are not interested in what kind of shoes are the norm for women, they’re interested only in making sure feminism doesn’t say anything about it, because the slightest amount of scepticism is immediately taken to be a criticism of individual choices.
I’m interested in feminism because I have found out that I often share experiences and opinions with people who identify as feminist, and I appreciate their perspective. But I usually don’t get it, because most people in places like here are mainly interested in what feminism has done (wrong) in the past, and they appear to want to sit in a vacuum and discuss the validity of theoretical constructs like privilege, patriarchy, and sex negativity without any references to what takes place in the world (or just their own culture) at large.
Tempting… ;)
K,
That’s where I went with that too, but for what it’s worth it seems like Europe’s got a much more uneven distribution of sex-negativity than the US (and even the US’ isn’t terribly regular).
Ranai, Sam –
(bolding mine)
A lot of these conversations seem to begin with “Me and my partner represent everybody! / “No, you don’t!” / “If you’re not agreeing that we represent everybody, then you’re saying we don’t exist!” [leaves in a huff]
I’m not sure that’s a really useful framework. What works for me doesn’t necessarily work for anybody else. I mean, what works for me sure as hell doesn’t work for Sam, right? But none of us gets to be everyone.
Clarisse, regarding point 4 I’m not feeling as a man as much pressure to be sex-oriented as you suggest.
Regarding sex work, I think the conversation over the ethics of sex work should be by and large lead by sex workers.
Norms of acceptable and unacceptable gender performance come from a wide variety of subcultural sources, including religious culture, “lad” culture, political movements of left and right, various kinds of feminism, men’s-rights activism, government, media, and everywhere else. All of these like to play the game of claiming that they have far less effect than they actually do, that they are relatively powerless in the great struggle or whatever. Any of these can be hurtful, or helpful for that matter. How much one is going to feel constrained by which ones is going to depend on which parts of society one is most in contact with.
@ AB:
That’s a very good point. I try to walk that fine line as best I can in my bloggery and activism, but “errare humanum est”, as the old Romans used to say.
I do think questioning culture is quite different from shaming individuals through questioning, however.
Quoted for so much agreement it makes my heart sing! (Is it okay if I put this on my tumblr?)
Machina@21, I think I was meaning to disagree with you, however reading my comment it appears I missed the mark and went off on a tangent. I’ll try to figure out what my disagreement was…
Re: western standards vs niqab,
I think there’s a few key differences, in that while the ‘obligaion’ of western standards might be oppressive, it’s the very nature of the niqab that is more oppressive. Western standards don’t prevent women from doing things or interacting with people. A niqab does stop a certain level of personal interaction. Wearing heals might be an exception to this, and something I think it’d be justifiable to take action on. While makeup does in someway dehumanise its wearer, I think dehumanising element of a niqub is far greater. The consequences faced by oppressed Isamic women is also far greater (e.g. they face beatings or family exclusion vs less significant professional or social implications).
“Since stereotypical men have historically been much freer to explore their sexuality than people of other genders, the desires of stereotypical men have formed the pattern for ‘liberated sexuality.’”
To the extent “sex positive” is confused with “desires of stereotypical men” it’s pretty much going to go the same way every other instance of “desires of stereotypical men” has gone. That doesn’t mean the usual stupid, knee-jerk critiques of “fun feminists” have any merit. But it does mean you’re going to see a lot of justified wariness, especially to the extent that what’s most heavily advocated by adherents tends to be those elements (such as access to transactional sex) that are most closely associated with the desires of stereotypical men.
For instance is FurryGirl really heavily invested in sex work? Sure, but then she’s centered on being a sex worker! Is IACB heavily invested in sex work? Absolutely, he’s centered on being a sex-worker customer. And so it’s in both of their interest to attempt to re-center the meaning of sex-positivity onto sex-work acceptance. That doesn’t mean destigmatizing and legalizing sex work (for both providers and consumers) isn’t important, just that it’s no more legitimate to re-center sex-positivity for the benefit of the sex industry than it would be to re-center it on enema play at the behest of the Fleet brand’s sales reps. There’s nothing at all wrong with enema play (quite the opposite I’m sure) but the interests of enema-products vendors don’t make it more important than any other aspect of positive sexuality.
Or, to put it another way, I think a really excellent metric of sex positivity is the extent to which you see
Speaking of “sex negative,” While chatting with Heather Corinna over coffee a few years ago I suggested someone or other was sex negative. She rolled her eyes and said, approximately, that in her (obviously extremely extensive) experience it’s a useless term because pretty much everybody’s positive about having sex
Again, that doesn’t invalidate sex positivity, not at all at all, but it does hint that to the extent people feel pressure to participate in sexuality they’re not emotionally or physically comfortable with, don’t feel safe with, or else aren’t aroused by, are really tired of, or are actively squicked by the pressures they’re experiencing are not themselves sex positive.
And so in my (informed) opinion another excellent metric of sex positivity is the extent to which people are tolerated for having the (consensual, obviously, adult obviously) sex they enjoy but also to the extent to which they’re absolutely tolerated for declining to participate when invited by others.
Anyway, I love this post, Clarisse. You’re kind of completely awesome.
figleaf
figleaf,
not in my world. Think religious shame for a lot (feminist shame for some) and I’m sure there’s a lot more shame tainting sexuality, and on top of everything, there’s social discourse about pleasure that’s merely centered on investment and deferred gratification and not on balancing “investment phases” and enjoyment phases. So no, not pretty much everybody’s positive about having sex. I suppose among these people holding such beliefs/people affected by this kind of shame, some are secretly/internally more positive about sex than externally, but there are, I belive, also quite a lot of people to whom sexuality and the idea thereof will not be pleasurable, but unpleasant. Why wouldn’t you describe that as sex-negativity?
“because most people in places like here are mainly interested in what feminism has done (wrong) in the past, and they appear to want to sit in a vacuum and discuss the validity of theoretical constructs like privilege, patriarchy, and sex negativity without any references to what takes place in the world (or just their own culture) at large.”
In the past? Actually, the issues that brought sex-positive feminism and sex worker rights are very much in play currently if you’re at all paying attention (and, yes, in Europe too, in fact, especially there). Probably more in the last 5 years than in any time since the 1980s, in fact.
And as for “sitting in a vacuum” discussing “theoretical constructs…..without any references to what takes place in the world” – Just, wow! No need to dignify that with further response.
Agreed with Sam @ #49.
I see sex-negativity kind of like racism. Its usually best spoken of as a cultural problem, rather than pointing at individual people and making “you are….” statements. Usually, that is, because there are some people and groups that are overtly and strongly racist, even above and beyond the “background” racism of the larger society. In terms of sex negativity, I think many strong religious conservatives, or somebody like Sheila Jeffreys certainly qualify. In most other people, a varying mix of sex-negative and sex-positive attitudes.
@Motley:
Yeah, it’s almost like Europe is made out of many different countries!
Nooooo! Major typo alert.
In my earlier comment I wrong
“She rolled her eyes and said, approximately, that in her (obviously extremely extensive) experience it’s a useless term because pretty much everybody’s positive about having sex”
Which somehow is missing a really, really important clause. That should be
She rolled her eyes and said, approximately, that in her (obviously extremely extensive) experience it’s a useless term because pretty much everybody’s positive about having sex on their terms.
Kind of a big omission since it 100% reverses Heather’s meaning! Apologies all around.
There’s more missing, possibly one or two paragraphs, that I’ll have to reconstruct from memory. (Sigh.)
Basically those terms can be pretty limiting. But in most cases they impose their limits to protect themselves or others from real or perceived discomfort or risk that — for them — make it difficult or impossible to enjoy sex any other way. Those discomforts can be as abstract as fear of going to Hell to as concrete as PTSD triggers from sexual assault to as elemental as concern about unsupported pregnancy, injury, transmission of illness, or else the imposition and/or boredom and/or frustration that results when Clarisse’s point #5 defines the extent of “sex” in one or more partner’s experience.
There was a bit more but that should be enough to fill in the blank between
pretty much everybody’s positive about having sex
and
Again, that doesn’t invalidate sex positivity, not at all at all, but it does hint that to the extent people feel pressure to participate in sexuality they’re not emotionally or physically comfortable with, don’t feel safe with, or else aren’t aroused by, are really tired of, or are actively squicked by the pressures they’re experiencing are not themselves sex positive.
and the point in the last sentence that I’d been sort of building to.
Uggh. Post in haste, repent at leisure.
figleaf
It seems some people are reacting to the idea that sex-positives are somehow saying “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” Is anybody actually saying that? Of course not.
@ desipis (#47):
I don’t think you can make that generalisation (or rather, I think it’s inaccurate to do so). I have heard many voices of Muslim women feeling thankful for the hijab or niqab as liberating from the pressures of Western (sexualising) society. It’s interesting that this liberation was also something that was noted by women who stayed in a nunnery for a month, in a documentary on Channel 4 a few years back.
Equally, there are plenty of Muslim women who find it oppressive too, because of living in societies with highly Patriarchal norms (you’ll get a different understanding based on a woman’s experiences in Saudi Arabia as compared to in the UK!) What makes it oppressive is not its “very nature”, but the role it plays in a person’s life. Same as anything else, really.
@SnowdropExplodes:
For me, it’s even more concrete in that. There are many people experiencing condemnations and feelings of disgust for not fitting the sex positive model of femininity (often because of an individual choice), and they’re often silenced with accusations of prudery and sex negative attitudes when they object. Wanting individual choices to be respected, and at the same time condemning those who speak up about pressure and cultural expectations, just doesn’t fit in my mind, which is why I’m so often getting turned off by people claiming to represent a sex positive view.
You can do whatever you want with it, as long as you don’t rephrase it and ascribe the new meaning to me :-)
@desipis:
A niqāb limits personal interaction, but if the wearer isn’t interested in personal interaction, that’s their choice. High heels limit physical movement, but if the wearer isn’t interested in physical movement, that’s their choice. Even makeup puts some limitations on the wearer (there’s a scene from Ally McBeal where the titular character repeatedly fills her hands with water, lifts them to her face, and releases it in the last moment, explaining that she wants to splash water on her face but can’t because of her makeup), but if the wearer is willing to live with them, it’s their choice.
I agree that for some, there is a real threat of violence which usually isn’t present when western women feel pressured to appear sexy, but if we were forbidding everything that someone does wrong, we should ban prostitution, since there are probably just as many (and in non-Muslim countries, even more) women forced into prostitution than there are women forced to cover their face. It’s the force, and in more mild cases, the pressure and condemnation, that’s problematic, not the clothing itself.
@IACB: “It seems some people are reacting to the idea that sex-positives are somehow saying ‘Everything not forbidden is compulsory.’ Is anybody actually saying that? Of course not.”
I don’t think that’s quite accurate. Instead what I think is encountered is an implication that you’re free not to support this that or the other activity but you’re narrow-minded or inhibited or “sex negative” if you don’t.
Back in the old, old days variations on that line were used NAMBLA, for instance, when arguing for inclusion in gay-rights umbrella groups. The term “sex positive” hadn’t been introduced back then so they used the word “sexually liberated” instead. But it was the same argument. (Note: before “sexually liberated” it was sometimes called “being cool with it” and “being a good sport.”)
I’m not even sure NAMBLA is still around, and obviously they’re a problematic example because they were advocating sex with non-adults. But the same basic argument is used as a bit of a hammer for other, far more ordinary but possibly also more, um, unilaterally pleasurable activities.
figleaf
figleaf,
the whole problem is acceptance of agency and the categorical imperative, ie, assumptions about individual responsibility for the collective good.
And in that respect, sex-positivity and sex-negativity do come down on different sides. Sex positivity requires axiomatic agency (as in: consent) and in feminism, women aren’t necessarily given that agency (as in: brainwashed by patriarchy). There’s no logical merit to that argument, but certainly evidence of cultural effects. And that’s the second aspect: Even if you assume individual agency and ability to consent, you’ll end up with differing opinions with respect to how much of an effect individual behaviour has on what is collectively seen as a desired structure for embedding sexual activity.
So, while it’s true that “everything is possible” and “all sex is rape” are logically similar to the extent that the concepts confront someone adhering to the other position with a radically different position as desired policy, the difference is that, thinking of possible in-between positions in a Venn-diagram, “everything is possible” is a subset of a lot more positions on sexuality than “all sex is rape”. It even allows the inclusion of “all sex is rape” as a private position, which is not possible vice-versa.
The trick is that “everything is possible” is turning sexuality into a largely private variable, pretty much like it was done with religion in the Peace of Augsburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Augsburg), and thus allowed for multiple religions to coexist.
And as opposed to the effort you expend on explaining why sex positivity is not requiring submission to some standard, sex negativity will usually be about precisely that, because if you’re living a subset-position in this matter, and you’re believing that only your approach is correct (which is sort of a given since you probably wouldn’t accept the limitations imposed), accepting other people’s positions as valid, even if diametrically opposed, will be much harder.
“all sex is rape”
Yeah, but who in the real world says that?
You have to search pretty far and wide just to find anyone who consistently says “all sex is sin!”
If that’s your bar for genuine sex negativity you’re pretty much acknowledging it’s descriptively meaningless.
Meanwhile my definition would be any failure to respect another individual’s decisions regarding their own sexuality (and as long as that individual is in turn respecting their own current or prospective partner’s competent decisions related to their own sexuality.)
figleaf
figleaf,
how is that different from I’ve said in the last paragraph? If that’s your definition then the only difference between our positions seems to be the perceived prevalence of such attitudes, which you seem to believe are much rarer than I do.
“All sex is rape” or “all sex is sin” may be extreme, but I’d say that these extremes are both consciously and subconsciously informing an important subset of less radial positions.
Then again, as a disclaimer, these two propositions are jointly responsible for delaying my personal psycho-sexual development by about 10-15 years, so I may be less inclined to cut those positions slack than others.
@Sam:
But it’s really not as simple. What if all religions are legal, but members of some religions harass and discriminate the others? What if all religions are legal, but the tenets of some of them are so stressful and hard to live by that followers often end up with various anxiety disorders, including children who had no say in the matter? What if all religions are legal, but some of them have more effect on what is taught in schools? What if all religions are legal, but some of them have more effect on what is acceptable to say in public? What if all religions are legal, but some of them have requirements which are physically unhealthy?
If sex positive feminists want to be the ones representing tolerance, they must also be the ones to speak out against discrimination based on sexual attractiveness and willingness to perform femininity, even if many of the people getting discriminated don’t fit the typical sex positive model of femininity. They must distinguish between remarks such as “There is a serious problem with D-vitamin deficiency among Muslim women in the Nordic countries who cover themselves up completely even in the summer” and “Women should not be allowed to dress as they want”. And apply the same distinction when the health issue discussed is one that concerns women performing a more mainstream sex-positive femininity.
Well, that is exactly what I recognise as the sex-positive feminist position, and what I see sex-positive feminists arguing. Some people seem to claim the sex-positive label without being feminist, that is true. And some people even claim both labels without being either! But mostly, I have seen people saying “sex-positive feminists say X” but not seen any sex-positive feminists saying X. I do tend to call people out when they claim sex-positive ideals but make errors on these principles, too.
If your experience has been different, then of course I acknowledge your input. On the other hand, I think Clarisse’s OP also expresses the principles you say s-p feminism should display, and reflects what I see elsewhere in sex-positive feminism.
As for the vitamin D story: I do identify that as racist, because there is in general a vitamin D deficiency observed in the UK. There just seems to be not enough of it in the diet for some reason. Note also that in that story, the online report says that rickets is, “generally most common among the white population”. So, yeah, I think the observation about vitamin D deficiency is, in fact, about (racially-motivated) policing what women wear more than it is about genuine health issues.
““all sex is rape”
Yeah, but who in the real world says that?”
Sheila Jeffreys has come close, on a few occasions.
Um, a lot of vitriol here directed at what might be called the “sexual libertarians” in the sex-positive movement. Yes, there are those of us who don’t identify as feminist, not so much out of rejection of feminist principles per se, but out of not wanting to be bound by the rules and norms of the current feminist movement, much of which comes across as wrong-headed, authoritarian, and too oriented to the expectations of women of a particular social class and ideological leaning. I understand that for some sex-positive feminists who are devout feminists first and foremost, that is utter heresy, and I really don’t expect to be allies to those people, nor them to me, except on a few issues of noxious legislation we seem to agree should be opposed.
While there’s a lot to be said about cultural expectations that many women have internalized, and the need to stand against the idea that one is “required” or present themselves or be sexual in any particular way, quite honestly, a lot of this sounds a lot like the kind of “your choices are oppressing me” and “you need to EXAMINE your desires” that I hear from the usual idiots, and simply have no patience for. Note Gail Dines just this week:
If “sex-positive feminism” has come to circa 2011 has become just a slightly modified version of this, then that is just sad. I’ve been following Susie Bright’s talks about her autobiography and I’m reminded about what I found so inspiring about this movement to begin with. Something I think the more “politically correct” turn in the sex-positive feminism has lost, quite honestly.
@IACB: “Gail Dines… somethings… something… If ‘sex-positive feminism’ has come to circa 2011 has become just a slightly modified version of this, then that is just sad.”
Yes, and if “single-payer healthcare” has come to circa 2011 as a slightly modified version of [the following rant by ‘Senator’ Rand Paul: http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/88175/rand-paul-really-crazy then that too would be just sad.
I mean seriously? Gail Dines? On what conceivable planet does anyone honest consider Gail Dines a “sex-positive feminist?”
And meanwhile who have been some of the biggest voices condemning Dines’ tin-eared asnininity and otherwise calling her out for being the idiot she is? Oh, how about Amanda Marcotte, Lindsay Beyerstein, Amanda Hess, Hugo Schwyzer (Hugo Schwyzer!), figleaf (hey that’s me!), Jaclyn Friedman, feminist Guardian.uk blogger Reni Eddo-Lodge, and so on. There’s even a post shaking its head about Dines over at Shakesville!
Meanwhile, @Clarisse: I noticed this was cross-posted at Feministe (don’t tell IACB but it’s the world’s second-largest feminist blog.) And at least so far the comments have been pretty… well… positive!
figleaf
I clearly did not mean to list Gail Dines as an example of sex-positive anything, though my abbreviated writing in that post may have obscured it. I did say it would be unfortunate if “sex-positive” feminism started pushing only a slightly modified version of this.
I was pointing to it as an example of radfems saying “The way you dress/act/fuck makes it harder on vulnerable girls.” And the way some of the rhetoric I’m seeing here being all blamey about some people who’s “conformist” sexual expression puts “cultural pressure” on other women looks just a tad too similar to me.
I suppose one could say it is “prude-shaming” to shame someone for their shaming of “conformist” sexual expression. And then one could then respond that they feel oppressed for being shamed for this! That line of argument sinks into infinite regression really fast, actually.
Some thoughts:
AB said,
And yet, politicians here are considering banning the Muslim niqāb with the argument that it is oppressive to women. We get to hear again and again how being afraid to show your face is sick, but I have not heard any similar argument when it comes to people covering their face with make-up rather than a veil, even when they’re just as ashamed. If a Muslim woman expressed the same anxiety about her body as certain ‘empowered’ Danish women, it would be considered proof that Islam was oppressive, but as long as the fear and disgust is expressed within the accepted cultural context, it becomes invisible.
I’ve rarely seen or heard an argument against Islamic markers that are “oppressive to women” that didn’t strike me as more of an excuse to attack Islam than an attempt to help the women in question. When you’re actually trying to help someone, you ask them what they want and allow them space and tools to create that reality. You don’t tell them what to do.
And when it’s convenient for the dominant culture, the dominant culture will use the “cultural” defense to defend men’s “right” to subjugate women just as much. There’s an excellent book I read when I was in Africa called Is Multiculturalism Bad For Women? that goes into some of those positions more. I don’t have it here, but I especially recall a passage at the beginning where it talks about how some American immigrant men have gotten away with physical abuse, etc. on the defense that it was part of their home culture. Of course, they wouldn’t get away with, say, failure to pay off a credit card on the defense that their home culture knew nothing of credit cards.
But I didn’t grow up with a lot of feminist rhetoric … so I constantly experience having my words and opinions put into a feminist context that I’m unfamiliar with.
Yeah … my parents are fairly feminist (though interestingly, my mother pretty much rejects identifying as part of the feminist movement, for a lot of extremely valid critical reasons), but I’ve had this experience as well. I pretty much have gotten more and more into feminism as I realized that many concepts I came up with on my own as I attempted to describe my experience and the world around me had already been articulated by feminism. For example (and I’m hardly unique in this), when I first encountered the phrase “rape culture”, it was like “ding! Ah yes, that is EXACTLY what it is! I can’t believe someone already had a word for this!!”
At the same time though, AB, my experience of sex-positive spaces has not been like yours. I’ve generally found them quite welcoming to a variety of identities, and willing to address different concerns of different people, and willing to avoid re-centering. Nothing is perfect, of course, and I’ve met plenty of people who irritate or bemuse me, and I have a tendency to pretty much automatically seek out / attract the most theoretically oriented and feminist-friendly people in these spaces, so that’s a big factor.
@Sagredo — Norms of acceptable and unacceptable gender performance come from a wide variety of subcultural sources, including religious culture, “lad” culture, political movements of left and right, various kinds of feminism, men’s-rights activism, government, media, and everywhere else. All of these like to play the game of claiming that they have far less effect than they actually do, that they are relatively powerless in the great struggle or whatever. Any of these can be hurtful, or helpful for that matter. How much one is going to feel constrained by which ones is going to depend on which parts of society one is most in contact with.
Quoted for agreement, and well said.
@Motley — I’m not sure that’s a really useful framework. What works for me doesn’t necessarily work for anybody else. I mean, what works for me sure as hell doesn’t work for Sam, right? But none of us gets to be everyone.
Obviously, I am informed by my experiences with culture shock. But I often see conversations among different subcultures about gender as culture shock.
I can understand why Ranai feels that the PUA stuff is so hostile. I feel it that way too, and as it’s gotten easier for me to understand PUA perspectives and read their message boards and talk to PUAs and stuff, I occasionally feel as though I’m losing track of my values and my ideals about well-communicated and egalitarian-structured relationships. It’s really alienating and disconcerting and frankly, painful. I think that I’m only able to do it in the first place because I’ve always had a somewhat pragmatic and cynical perspective on relationships. But it feels like egalitarian feminist, S&M, polyamory ideas about gender and sexuality move me away from being cynical and misanthropic, whereas PUA stuff moves me towards being cynical and misanthropic. Being so fascinated by it feels perversely, intellectually masochistic. But maybe I’m giving it too much credit.
@IACB — I was pointing to it as an example of radfems saying “The way you dress/act/fuck makes it harder on vulnerable girls.” And the way some of the rhetoric I’m seeing here being all blamey about some people who’s “conformist” sexual expression puts “cultural pressure” on other women looks just a tad too similar to me.
I suppose one could say it is “prude-shaming” to shame someone for their shaming of “conformist” sexual expression. And then one could then respond that they feel oppressed for being shamed for this! That line of argument sinks into infinite regression really fast, actually.
While I try to avoid being blamey about people’s sexual choices (obviously), I do think it’s worth considering how sex-positive writing can affect vulnerable people. It’s usually not the fault of the sex-positive writer — I mean really, even I have been attacked because I was perceived as telling other people how they should be having sex, or how my way is so much better than theirs. I struggle with the problem of how to write about sexuality without feeling like I encourage people to do things for the wrong reasons.
My best female friend right now is a few years younger than me. When we were just getting to know each other, I remember that she started getting into some mild SM with her boyfriend, and at one point she shows me a bruise and goes “Look! It’s my first bruise!” This really flipped me the hell out, and I’ve never forgotten it. She made it clear that of course she didn’t feel pressured to be like me, etc, that she was doing it because she wanted to, etc. Hey, she probably partly became friends with me in the first place because she liked my attitudes and knowledge. And her boyfriend has agency too, of course. But still, I remember her telling me that like she was looking for my approval, and I shiver.
Another thought on sex workers: many of the sex workers I know don’t especially conform to mainstream standards of beauty, at least not when you go by body type. Many of them aren’t nearly as scrawny as I am, for example. Sure, they wear makeup and they put on slutty clothes when clients ask them to, but I’ve often actually drawn comfort from the fact that women who are older and curvier than me can charge hundreds of dollars for male attention :P
The interesting thing with banning various kinds of Islamic head wear in public places is that it’s importing a policy from Islamic countries. Turkey has had this policy for a few decades supported by a strongly secularist government. There it followed laws regarding men’s dress going back to the 1920′s and 30′s which promoted western dress as synonymous with enlightenment. It’s funny how these things turn out.
Comments specifically on pickup artistry have been moved to the most recent PUA thread.
Clarisse:
Indeed.
Imagine how most men feel their whole lives, knowing* that no woman would pay to sleep with men even more attractive than themselves…
* Of course that is not strictly true, but it is what most people believe.
The reason I mentioned my reaction to older, curvier female sex workers is that it’s outside the norm. Most women aren’t comforted by the existence of female sex workers. In fact, the existence of female sex workers is (a) often used to call all women sluts, whores, and gold-diggers and (b) often feels like a reminder that all women’s sexuality is commonly viewed as a commodity, to be traded as best we can with little regard for our own preferences.
* edited for clarity
Sure, sure. I was not trying to derail your point. Rather, it seemed like a convenient opening to point out a possible additional avenue of empathy for the male side of things.
Of course, you already have a grasp on toxic male sexuality. But… dunno. I find it useful when I can have a gut-level reaction to other people’s problems, rather than just an intellectual understanding. So I was just trying to point out that, perhaps, some (not all) of your fears about getting older are actually not that different from the world a lot of guys live in.
@Clarisse:
I think there’s a huge difference between being attracted and being attractive, and I think it’s problematic that female sexuality is so often identified with the latter when sexuality in general is defined by the former. There are ways in which they can overlap, such as when people get turned on by being admired, looked at, and lusted after, but I still think the distinction is worth making. And I think the way it’s almost always made in regards to men (and general sexuality), but much less frequently in regards to women, is an issue that people in general, and sex-positive feminists especially, are prone to overlooking.
@SnowdropExplodes:
My general experience with sex positive feminism have been very aptly illustrated by IACB here “This or that feminist which you may or may not have heard of once said something which is was bad, especially when taken in the context I choose to present it in, and we don’t want to end up like the bad feminist, do we?” As Sam said, it’s often a reaction against feminism more than a part of it.
But I think the reason I’m more likely to encounter this sort of sex-positive feminism is that I encounter it more outside sex-positive spaces. Sex-positive spaces are usually about sex and/or appearance, whereas my biggest problem is the way perceptions of my sex, sexuality, and appearance interferes with non-sexual aspects of my life (I’d also like to find places which could help me define my sexuality and enjoy sex more, but since these places don’t seem to exist, it’s a moot point).
So I naturally seek out places where the aspects I’m most interested in are debated, and naturally, sex-positive feminists show up almost only to defend all the sex the rest of us would like to be without, because that’s what sex-positive feminists do. They define themselves as sex-positive after all, which indicates that they perceive themselves as separate from other feminists by virtue of not being negative about sex. It stands to reason that if another type of feminist brings up the problem of women being judged too much on their appearance in non-sexual situations, it’s the job of sex-positive feminists to disagree and frame the judgement as something positive instead. Which they frequently do.
I agree that the article you quoted had a racist angle, but the issue of not getting enough sunlight is real enough, especially in the north. But people are much more prone to discussing it than other potentially problematic outfits, as long as those outfits make the wearer look more fuckable. In my opinion, all should be up for debate, the trick, as we already seem to agree, is to find the balance between addressing the potential problems while still respecting people’s individual right to choose to put up with said problems.
So I naturally seek out places where the aspects I’m most interested in are debated, and naturally, sex-positive feminists show up almost only to defend all the sex the rest of us would like to be without, because that’s what sex-positive feminists do.
I’m not sure I understand what phenomenon you’re referring to. Do you have any links to discussions like this?
@Clarisse:
Agreed, to some extent. But I have spoken with several people who really seemed to believe in the oppressive nature of the veil. They’re rather similar to the people who believe prostitution is inherently abusive and oppressive, and I don’t think they’re merely out for Islam. What I’m most interested in, however, is the way it’s accepted. It doesn’t matter that a politician talking about banning the niqāb is just trying to marginalise Islam, the interesting part of it is how commonly accepted it is.
My parents are feminist too, especially my father (my mother burned her bras in the 70s, but she’s pretty mainstream now), but it didn’t have a lot of political effect on my. I got practical clothes, shoes, and haircuts when I was little, my father tumbled and played ball with me, and I owned a lot of LEGO, but that’s about it. When it was brought up later, it was ‘kvindekampen’ (the woman’s fight) and ‘rødstrømperne’ (the red stockings, but of a somewhat different variety than the Americans), not feminism.
I’m very impressed with sheer amount of American feminist terms and former American feminists that American guys are familiar with (on a surface level at least), but the vast majority of it quickly devolves into simple name-dropping. And the spoilt and entitled attitude that I have to spend hours searching out and reading a bunch of material about a movement I have little connection to only to be able to defend a bunch of statements that I didn’t make to a bunch of people who aren’t satisfied just relating to what I actually say, continuously baffles me. I don’t care about privilege at all, but my experience with male Americans have, ironically, all but convinced me that the concept is valid and that Americans men have it in spades.
That’s because all the first stuff is about trying to give people the best tools possibly to make informed choices, and to create spaces (and eventually make those spaces into the norm) which enables this is a much as possible, even when it goes wrong. The Seduction Community is about working within the (very patriarchal interpretation of the) status quo, even if this means heavily strengthening it and making it harder to those who fall outside the norm.
I don’t think it’s just about vulnerable people. I see a lot of talk about vulnerable women as if they’re a special group of disabled individuals who’re making demands on people around them. There’s a nasty undercurrent of “I’m strong because I don’t have any problems and don’t feel any pressure, and everybody else is just limiting my empowerment”. I suspect this attitude might be indirectly responsible for why Denmark risks introducing the Swedish model after the next election.
There are always people who will be feeling good, but they’re rarely responsible for the big changes. The reason today’s empowered sluts can even attempt to be empowered in their slutitude is because women in the past felt troubled and discontent. But today, victim has all but become a dirty word, and people are treating troubled people as if there was something wrong with them. Not that you do specifically, I just see this attitude a lot.
Anyway, I think part of the issue is that on the surface, a lot of sex positive feminism is closer to the mainstream/traditional/patriarchal view of women than practically any other branch of feminism, and quite a few non-feminists movements. There’s a whole lot in it about women being fuckable, whether it’s about their right to dress as fuckable as they want to, or their right to make money off their fuckability, and that’s pretty much the same thing mainstream culture is currently focussing on (i.e. has always focussed on) in regards to women. It’s no wonder if it comes to be seen as an extension of mainstream culture by both supporters and detractors.
I also think that prostitutes can be perceived as selling out cheap (i.e. requiring only money, instead of love and social positions), and if men decide to buy, other women have a lot less to offer. At least if you go by the conventional wisdom that women have a lot less going for them than men in every area that isn’t about sex or parenthood.
AB -
While I want to have a civil conversation, I’m not sure I see the point in it. You clearly have your mind made up about sex-positivity and sex worker rights especially being a very bad thing for women in general, and I’m certainly not going to change your mind about it. You’re basically dumping the same load of crap that I’ve been hearing for years from the radfems, and your rhetoric sounds exactly like theirs from where I’m sitting, as much as you claim that this is just some kind of ill-founded guilt-by-association on my part.
You know what AB, maybe I am the “wrong” kind of “sex-positive”, and for that I’m glad. I certainly would not want to be part of any movement that would have to get the approval of somebody like you, or other feminists of your ilk.
I could continue to debate these points in more depth, but what’s the point? AB will continue to spout her aggressive and insulting rhetoric, and play the put-upon victim anytime somebody raises a word of disagreement. And, naturally, I’ll get put in the role of uncivil bad guy for defending my position.
AB –
I just want to add that if you think your shit-slinging here is going to in any way shut me up, you are absolutely mistaken.
@Clarisse:
I hadn’t discussed feminism for years before coming here, so I don’t have any concrete links. From what I recall, it was often the case in discussions of sexualised media images of women, and mainstream sexualisation in general, which makes sense considering that many feminists are opposed to it per definition, so sex-positive feminists usually stand out as representing the other side of it. My experience is that people identifying as sex-positive, empowered, or something similar sometimes have a certain rhetoric which basically goes “I’m strong and empowered and not bothered by it at all. If anyone has any problem, it’s only because they’re offended and can’t handle it”.
I also think it’s related to the way people, especially Americans, tend to make everything into a question about censorship. Somehow, it’s getting harder and harder for people to comprehend that you can disagree with something without wanting to forbid it. It’s no wonder different religions and political fractions have a harder and harder time coexisting if they all share this attitude.
One discussion I remember specifically (though no one identified as feminist there) was about prostitution. I originally didn’t intend to participate, but then some of the people in favour of it started to talk about how all the problems related to prostitution were absent in places were it was legal. Being one of the few people, possibly the only one, coming from such a place, I mentioned that this wasn’t true. I was immediately informed that (apart from being a conservative American prude) I was basing it only on theory and had no idea how it was to live in a place where prostitution was legal.
I eventually established that I actually lived where I lived (and what Denmark was), and the conversation started to be about said problems. I mentioned former prostitutes here coming forward and telling about how the job had affected them negatively, and how they’d been completely unprepared for the harsh reality because of the way prostitution is usually glamorised. The answers were predictable: It was their own fault, it had nothing to do with the profession, they just weren’t strong enough and they shouldn’t try to make their personal issues anyone else’s business.
I finally got some of them to acknowledge that prostitution might actually be a pretty hard job which was not for everyone (I usually compare it to the military: It can be the right job for some, but when it’s not the right job, the consequences are usually harsher, so treating it like any other profession is unethical), but at that time, the other side of the discussion started to realise that I didn’t actually advocate forbidding prostitution, and started to attack me for it. Most of the pro-prostitution side never noticed, so I found myself in the peculiar situation of being attacked by both sides of a discussion for allegedly agreeing with the other side.
At that point, I realised that the old saying about politics also holds true for ethics: it doesn’t matter on which side you’re on, when a position becomes extreme enough, all sides are similar. The pro-prostitution side wasn’t any more tolerant or open-minded than the anti-prostitution side, they just felt entitled to present themselves that way because the people they disagreed with happened to include religious conservatives, making them progressives per default, even if none of the people they were currently arguing appeared to be religious conservatives, or agree with religious conservatives.
I tend to disagree a lot with ‘sex-negative’ (I really wish I had a better word, since this one is basically a slur) feminists, but most of the time, I at least feel like I can talk to them (sometimes not, but it helps to avoid the more radical sites). The people who label them sex-negative, however, just annoy me in their self-righteousness. They’ve found the holy grail of empowerment, and the only thing standing in their way are those pesky complainers who’ve not been good enough at finding their own grail, or mistakenly think that they can only have it if other people change their behaviour.
But when it comes to these types of people, it’s hard to distinguish between sex-positive feminists, people calling themselves sex-positive, and people who’re just generally empowered, so I readily admit I don’t have the experience to make an estimation of the entire sex-positive community. It is, as I’ve already said, just my experiences.
AB:
All I have to say to that is that there is such thing as false moderation. I think some of the “anti-sex” rhetoric has gotten so extreme now a lot of people who are basically peddling a milder version of it now set themselves up as advocating for a moderate “middle” way. Except that this “middle” doesn’t look so moderate if one happens to have a sexuality that includes aspects of “sex that the rest of us would like to be without”.
And, yes, I do have a problem with a lowest common denominator moralism that says if some people can’t do something or don’t feel empowered by it then no one can. But I guess that’s just my “spoilt entitled attitude”.
@Iamcuriousblue:
Really? “Yes, sex-positives really should dump this whole sex worker rights thing to avoid offending people like you.” That’s your definition of a civil conversation? Claiming that because I think equating sexuality at large with some specific subset of it is alienating, it somehow means I don’t think that said specific subset should be addressed at all?
Actually, those two are among the issues I’m most on the fence about. I don’t know whether to support them or ignore them. But since you have already made up your mind that everybody who disagrees with you sufficiently must all be the exact same caricature, it makes sense to say that I’ve made up my mind, because the one thing I am sure about, is that the attitude “female sexuality” = “(heterosexual) male sexuality and the women who cater to it” is not OK. And that seems to be all you judge people in comparison to.
If you equate thinking what I’m thinking with thinking that prostitution is inherently bad, then it’s no wonder so many people sound exactly alike to you. But consider that I do not have your background, so I don’t know which buttons of your not to push. All I can do is to state my opinion and hope for the best. Since I didn’t state that I thought sex work should be completely ignored, or forbidden, I have to count on people not ascribing that to me.
If your background doesn’t give you any precedent for that kind of opinion, then that’s unfortunate for both of us. But it does not give you the right to assign me some membership of a group with which I have very little experience. If what I say is really as oppressive as what you claim, you should be able to argue based on that itself, not a perceived similarity to a group of women which I don’t know and you don’t like.
AB:
Well, you’ve certainly made a point of bashing sex work and “conformist” sex workers every chance you get, so what is one supposed to gather about your position? And your constant digs at everybody who doesn’t tow your line and playing the victim when they respond negatively is quite clear to see. The contempt oozes from your writing like a ruptured cyst.
You could certainly critique a certain superficial kind of sex positivity without the kind of sex worker-bashing I’ve seen from you so far (if anything, sex worker activists are often way more on the ball about class and intersectionality issues than sex-positive feminists or feminists more generally). You could take the high road in that part of the conversation, but the clear stick up your ass about women who you perceive as too deferential toward male sexuality I guess prevents that.
And I have to question whether it’s merely the idea that “catering to male sexuality” is the whole of female sexuality (since nobody here is saying that) or whether it’s anybody who’s sexuality happens to fall into what you perceive to be that category that you really have a problem with. I suppose sex-positivity needs to throw that kind of “mainstream: sexuality under the bus to be respectable to someone like you. I’m saying that is absolutely not on because I think *everybody* gets to have their sexuality (or asexuality), and I could really care less how much that makes you or any other “feminist” here hate me.
@Iamcuriousblue:
I tried repeatedly to answer your last post directed at me, but I couldn’t come up with a suitable reply because I kept trying to figure out what exactly I was answering, and whatever you were arguing against, I couldn’t see the references to my original post in your answer.
I try to stick by the rule that if someone has repeatedly misunderstood me in a remarkably specific way, chances are they’re not so much arguing against me as against what I represent to them personally, and when then happens, it’s usually better to back down. So I think I’ll try that for now, and I hope you’ll do the same.
Peace
OK. If I debate you further on this, it will be about direct statements you’ve made. I will try not to attribute other people’s views to yours, but do realize the points of difference on sex-positivity, feminism, etc. you raise do not exist in a vacuum. And they are far from just some “American” thing.
@ AB:
The sad fact is that sex-positive feminists probably wouldn’t feel the need to do that if “the sex the rest of us would like to be without” didn’t need defending.
Technically speaking, under the law in my country (the UK), the sex I like to have can land me in jail for committing Assault Occasioning Actual Bodily Harm (though there are indications that could be changing in the way that decisions are made on charging). I have been told by some feminists that I should do everyone a favour and commit suicide. I have had to bite back my tongue and listen to employers talk abusively about my sexuality. I have grown up seeing most portrayals of my sexuality as either unspeakably evil, or else a joke.
When someone makes an ideological argument against being a sadomasochist (or being gay, or lesbian, or trans or whatever) and that sort of social background has been presented, it can be very hard not to feel a need to defend oneself and one’s sexuality. Maybe in your experience it has been, “I, personally, don’t enjoy sex activity X” to which someone says, “Hah, it’s totally cool to enjoy activity X, stop trying to ban it!” but in mine it has tended to be stated explicitly, “Nobody should do activity X, and if they do they are sick/evil/oppressors/deluded.”
There is a problem of “all-or-nothing-ism” in a lot of the debates around sexuality in general, such that it is hard to take a nuanced view. Your example of legalised prostitution is a good case in point. (BTW, in Denmark, is it legalised, meaning government-regulated, or decriminalised meaning that there are no penalties for engaging in it? My understanding is that most sex workers’ self-advocacy organisations favour decriminalisation rather than legalisation.) I still argue for decriminalisation, but I am well aware and accept the evidence that there are a number of ways in which economic pressures, and/or coercion, and/or being poorly prepared for the realities of the work, can lead to sex workers being harmed quite badly by it. I would reason that those harms still exist where prostitution is illegal, but that additional harms are piled on top of them. The problem comes when one tries to engage in a debate on those terms. Simply admitting that it can be harmful is taken as a “gotcha!” moment by those who favour criminalisation, and after that they treat any nuanced argument as being unworthy of attention because they claim that “you admitted it was harmful, therefore, it has to be illegal!”
It sounds to me as though you may have encountered the same thing but drawing fire from the pro-sex work side of the debate instead. I haven’t actually picked up what your position is on the legal status of sex work, and it doesn’t actually matter for this point (even those who are pro-decriminalisation can draw fire from their own side if they try to take the evidence you mentioned into account).
From my side of the fence, it’s the people who are sex-negative who come across as self-righteous, “holier-than-thou”, demanding “examine your desires! Conform to OUR version of sexuality, or you are Bad People!”
As I think I already mentioned, I am sick of the “empowering” angle on sex-positive feminist theory; it seems like a very small piece of the jigsaw, and is mostly a misreading. And, it seems to me that it tends to chase away rather than persuade potential allies (as I think you’re suggesting is the case with you?) But I do recognise the particular type of sex-positive arguer that you describe (I don’t think they are representative, but they seem to be the ones who attract most attention, and therefore get the biggest voices – possibly because they are so easy to debunk, which makes them less of a threat both to mainstream feminism and to Patriarchy).
Snowdrop:
Even as somebody who would probably lean most strongly in the direction of “sexual libertarianism” in this conversation, I certainly recognize that there is way more to the sex work debate than the “empowerment vs exploitation” dichotomy provides for. Audacia Ray has made a good point some time ago that that argument ultimately goes in circles, and doesn’t really deal with the realities of most sex workers’ lives. I still fall very much on the “pro-sex worker” side based in no small part on the fact that I see so many voices on the sex worker rights side even from developing countries, poor backgrounds, and other circumstances that would not be considered ideal. In other words, it’s not just a few relatively well-off “happy hookers” who are saying this. (There are a bunch of other reasons that I’m very supportive of the sex worker movement, notably because I think as a legal issue it has implications for other sexual freedoms, and because it’s a basic labor rights issue. And just straight-up liking for many of the sex worker bloggers and writers I have read, who are certainly some of the more down-to-earth people I’ve encountered anywhere around gender politics.)
And, yep, having the admission of any downside to sex work or a sexual practice treated as a “gotcha” certainly does push one into a more defensive position on such issues.
I think where the empowerment angle gets confused is that a lot of people get mixed up between “this has been empowering for me” and “this is inherently empowering”. Now as it stands, I am very pro-individualist, and I’m happy for anybody’s personal sexual empowerment, even if isn’t something that’s good for “all women” or “all people”, like some detractors go on about. At the same time, I’d never treat any one thing as an “ought”. For some, being celibate may be as empowering as choosing to have a lot of sex without attachments. Or either might be disempowering to somebody under different circumstances.
@SnowdropExplodes:
For me, it’s more about what IACB exemplified, that there doesn’t seem to be a way to simultaneously acknowledge pressure and alienation, and being opposed to censorship. If you think that sex work is being presented too much as the core of female sexual identity, and find this alienating, you can’t also believe that sex work should be legal and that sex worker’s rights is an area that merits attention, you have to be completely opposed to it.
I personally can’t see why, but that’s what I’ve come to understand is the norm where sex is concerned. So when I take the stand that prostitution should be legalised and that sex workers aren’t sluts (at least not in the bad sense of the word), I get attacked from one side. When I take the stand that talking about ‘female sexuality’ as defined women who’re looking and acting like they do because men want them to is fucked up, I get attacked from the other.
It’s just that there aren’t many places, outside highly conservative or (certain) marginal feminist groups which I avoid, where taking the first stand is controversial, so I usually get attacked from the other side, because disputing the idea that both male and female sexuality is primarily defined by male desire goes against most of our core beliefs about sexuality.
I honestly don’t know, I’ve never delved into the specifics (I’m not even sure we distinguish in Danish). I believe it would count as legalized, since prostitutes have to pay tax like everybody else (and apparently, silicone breasts count as a work expense for the purpose of tax reduction, whereas stage makeup and clothing for singers do not).
Unlike places like Nevada, pimping is still forbidden though. It created a problem once when a magazine promised gift certificates to a brothel as the prize in a competition, because they were technically making money off someone else’s prostitution and thus breaking the law. It’s a clumsy way of handling things, but seeing the way pimps in Nevada have chosen to go about it, I think I prefer the Danish system.
I have. And I think they’re doing themselves a disservice when they don’t want sex, sex work, and appearance to be discussed like all other regular aspects of human behaviour are discussed. It’s especially ironic that so many of the guys I’ve debated with, here and in other places, are completely obsessed with how feminism doesn’t do enough to criticise feminism, and constantly talk about how they can’t be expected to take feminism seriously when feminism doesn’t do a good enough job policing feminism. And yet, when it comes to the sex industry and the so-called sexually progressive side, it’s suddenly not their job to talk about the bad things, and they’re not even willing to allow others to talk about them.
When it comes to prostitution, I’m in favour of decriminalisation but against extensive normalisation, if that makes any sense. Currently, many countries go the opposite way in both directions (with women being heavily defined by their sexual value to men and expected to use it as their primary tool, while actual prostitution is outlawed), while others, like my own, at least are trying to get one half of it right. It just bothers me that I think we used to get more of the other half right too.
The way I see it, a lot of people on the sex-negative side at least acknowledge that they’re judgemental in some way. As my father once said (when I expressed as to how much I was allowed to judge and be concerned about my cousin because of the way she dressed) “Sometimes you can become so tolerant that you end up indifferent”.
The sex-positive side, on the other hand, might not be any worse in that regard, but they’re much more prone to presenting themselves as progressive and tolerant even as they pass judgements that are every bit as harsh as those from the sex-negative side. The sex-negative side is also, in my experience, much more prone to getting what I say right, even when they disagree with it.
Yeah, I’ve given up on the whole empowering business. A heterosexual and conventionally attractive popstar decides to kiss a girl in order to draw attention to herself and she’s praised as liberated and empowered, but an actual lesbian woman doesn’t react positively to the way men hit on her and she’s labelled a bitter man-hater. Really, if I needed to be told the key to my personal liberation lay in how I appealed to a male audience, I could just consult the nearest misogynist for the same reaction.
Here’s the GMP piece I mentioned:
http://goodmenproject.com/sex-relationships/myth-sex-crazy-nympho-dream-girl/
As seems to usually happen with my writing, some people think I’m awesome, and then there are others who are calling me incoherent or saying they don’t get what I’m trying to do. My theory of coherence is no longer a theory, it’s a fact.
The not swallowing part is interesting. An ex-girlfriend said she swallowed because she thought it must feel terrible to lay there after orgasm while someone runs off to spit it out. On the other hand the attraction to swallowing and facials, by either party, can be because it’s gross or degrading, whether that’s simply as an act of degradation as in BDSM or as in a bunch of porn, or as act of love or devotion.
Oh, the swallowing thing isn’t because of degradation. It’s because it actually makes me physically sick to my stomach. I get the impression that this reaction is worse for me than it is for most women, many of whom feel somewhat physically sick. Every once in a while someone tries to convince me that it’s because I’ve got “issues” and if I just get over it then the physical reaction will go away, which is incredibly annoying.
[calmevenvoice] I’m not judging you or trying to change you. Honestly though, I think bodily fluids generally elicit a that kind of (psychosomatic?) response. If I swallow a bunch of blood, say from a bleeding nose, my stomach sometimes feels a bit weird in my stomach but I figure that’s mostly psychological.
Anyway I thought it was a good article. I think shells can be useful, which you go into a bit. A PUA shell can be useful to practice approaching people. A dreamgirl shell can be useful for sex workers. A shell can be useful if for people in a relationship who’re just not feeling great for a while. I think people do prefer authenticity (whatever that is…) and people are often feel that shells are deceptive. There’s a lot of anger at people who use them.
@machina:
Well, one thing to keep in mind is that the digestive system is an immensely complicated one (although the focus is ostensibly on the enteric nervous system, Gershon’s _The Second Brain_ provides a great deal of additional background), and that’s not even touching on the various components of the seminal mix, plus the possible role played by immune responses. Nor is it to touch on the fact that the mechanisms of psychosomatic responses are far from understood, and might themselves have physiological bases (cf. Wilson’s _Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body_), which blurs the boundary between the two areas.
All things considered, there’s substantial reason to credit a physiological cause.
Hmm I need to proofread.
But yeah, it’s possible it’s physiological.
Semen is mainly mainly albumin, much like egg white or blood serum. And a large volume of raw protein in itself will cause gastric upset in some people, especially if they have an even mildly allergic response to that protein, which while unusual, is entirely possible. And of course there are a lot of other antigens in semen which can trigger such a reaction, including ones that can be present in some individuals and not others, or from food that person might have been eating.
So, yeah, someone having a bad reaction to swallowing cum isn’t necessarily just psychosomatic.
The cum swallowing thing is a weird thing for me. It’s not that I actually give a fuck what happens to my cum after it’s out of me (well as long as it doesn’t lead to procreation) – it’s just that the fairly vigorous motions that lead to it being available to someone for swallowing feels really awesome if someone is making a motion that is condusive to swallowing right to the end of that process.
I’ve been thinking a bit lately about the taboo nature of bodily fluid exchange. Moving from a long duration primarily closed relationship where unprotected sex couldn’t lead to procreation, through to much less closed multiple relationships with people who could concievably have children if contraception fails – has reminded me that Condoms just aren’t as much fun as bareback.
I mean I still love sex regardless of who’s wearing what on their where. But it’s the difference between well spirits and top shelf. And I’m far more averse to kids and/or clamydia than I am to a condom. But finishing a sexual act in a way where a condom isn’t required – be it oral sex with a partner who’s close enough for that to be ok unprotected, or on some entertaining body part that doesn’t contain reproductive organs is fucking HOT. The taboo nature of bodily fluid exchange and the sense that there is some kind of risk and trust exchange is an erotic thing. It pushes buttons and it feels like the lush premium experience.
As a guy, and as a dominant top who likes degrading consenting partners – the degradation experience certainly ins’t something I’d do without prior negotiation. It’s one of those forms of play that has enough edge in there that I think there’s an explicit enthusiastic consent requirement – seperate to the base kink and sex negotiations. Like breath play or marks that show when your partner goes to the beach.
As a guy, I also really wish there was something I could do about the taste beyond the relatively minimal impact of diet. I’ve been curious enough to experiment – and ych. Very much not something I’d want in my mouth. And no matter what they say about a high pineapple diet – I can’t see the taste magically becoming part of fine dining. I’ve always WANTED to believe in the spam that I get that claims a daily supplement can make it taste like apples – and I’ve joked about the power I could have if it could taste like chocolate – but to date, nothing in my spam folder seems plausible.
I sort of give a fuck about what happens to my cum. Or at least people’s attitude towards it. But then I don’t really like oral sex so it’s not really an issue. I figured that semen would taste awful but I accidentally came in my mouth (as you do) and it just tasted sweet. Beer and junk food are clearly the answer.
I really identify with that. I think that is true of many, many bloggers out there. In general, I think your readership will be pretty understanding of the ebb and flow of your thoughts. If people read every post on D/s on my blog over 3 years, they’d think I was a bipolar girl who had no idea what I wanted… but generally, I find the comments I get are very understanding about the journey I’m taking and how it can be confusing to always know exactly what you want and believe!
It’s been hypothesized that I might be able to swallow some guys’ come more easily, but it’s never been important to any of my partners (or they haven’t made it clear to me that it was). If it was super important to a long-term partner, I’d experiment with him on it, but the process can be unpleasant enough that I don’t want to deal with the experiment unless I’m really motivated.
On the “sexy dreamgirl shell” topic, I actually used to swallow anyway, even though it made me sick, because I knew it was expected. The catalyst for stopping was a boyfriend who noticed that I always felt like shit after I gave head, asked me why, discovered that I’d been basically consistently making myself sick because I felt like I had to swallow, and yelled at me.
Thanks for not responding angrily Clarisse. I think that regardless of why it has a sickening effect you shouldn’t feel pressured to do things that sicken you. So yeah I agree with that boyfriend .
I thought it was interesting that you wrote:
…while Amanda Marcotte wrote on the GMP a couple of weeks back:
yeah, well …. I do think that reaction is a useful and fun thing to do … useful because it helps your partner know what to do if you react with obvious pleasure to stuff you like. [At the end of my sexy dreamgirl article I wrote, I get that many women genuinely enjoy reclaiming the sexy dreamgirl image, and making it their own; hell, I do it myself sometimes. (Yes, I do it myself sometimes. Sex is complicated, okay?)]
So I can see where she’s coming from, but she’s a bit prescriptive for my tastes (as AM often is). I would also say that if I’ve got a partner who’s being very quiet or non-reactive, my first concern is about his consent and enjoyment. I’ve hooked up with guys who were very non-reactive, and they usually became more reactive after I explained to them that I had a hard time figuring out what to do unless they reacted. interestingly, I’m tempted to say that men who were more non-reactive were also more likely to be sole-dominants (as opposed to switches) … I think that’s true. (but I don’t have a lot of data points)
also the [calmevenvoice] was hilarious.
This amused me, because I had formed the impression that one of the commonly-cited aesthetic strikes against porn as viewed by women, was, “all that unattractive moaning and groaning”.
(It also amused me a lot more because “moaning and groaning” is not “verbal”, it’s “vocal”; verbal means formed of words. **flashes Grammar Cop badge**)
Now I have this weird “performance anxiety” issue because I don’t really know whether I am “naturally” “verbally appreciative” enough! (I think I make little grunts and snarls when doing straight-forward fucking; with SM or D/s scenes, there’s a much wider range of responses, and a lot of it actually is verbal instead of vocal ;-) )
@machina:
I’ve never even considered spitting it out. Either I swallow or I don’t take it in my mouth at all. To me, the taste is the worst, so once it’s gotten in, it doesn’t really matter if it leaves my mouth by going into the sink or into my belly, and it’s usually easier to avoid the taste if you swallow fast, because the guy can squirt it directly into the back of my throat.
I was actually beginning to feel very abnormal reading the article, because I’ve always taken “I don’t swallow” to mean “I don’t want it in my mouth”, so the idea that getting it into your mouth was the standard, and that it was just a matter of whether you should spit it out afterwards was very discouraging. And I personally don’t want to spend time looking lovingly at my partner after swallowing, I’ll be headed for the nearest source of water or soft drink, or asking him to get me some.
But I think you have a point about somethings being appealing because of the degradation aspect. I once had a boyfriend who described the appeal of fascials as “the idea that she has no choice but to take it”, and after doing it with me a couple of times, he just lost interest and tried getting me to swallow. No matter how I tried, I just couldn’t get myself to feel that facials were anything but a convenient way for me to avoid the taste of sperm, and I think that came across to him no matter how much I wanted to make him like it.
AB:
Call me odd but to me the idea of a woman letting me give her a facial is just that, the fact that she would choose to let me do that. I just think there’s some trust going on there in whole contact with bodily fluids thing (especially on her face, must more personal than on her back or stomach). She could very well refuse to come in contact with it and want me to ejaculate into a towel or something instead. Seems like that would dampen the mood but I can’t exactly cum on someone when they explicitly don’t want me to can I?
Disclaimer – I don’t exactly have a lot of experience with sexual partners (to be exact the one and only sexual encounter with another person I’ve ever had was performing oral sex on a woman about 6-8 months ago) so I can’t expect my thoughts on this to be taken as gospel.
@AB -
Yeah, but I think that’s equally applicable to any sexual position where the guy has a strength/leverage benefit from position too. I mean if my partner is a third of my size and we’re doing it missionary or some variation therof – she doesn’t have a lot of choice but to take it… if I’m some kind of asshole/a rapist.
But since I’m not that kind of asshole – she pretty much has the choice to say ‘lets not do this any more’ regardless of the position or sexual act that we’re currently engaged in and she doesn’t have to take it any more because I’ll stop.
In mutually consenting, negotiated dynamics – sometimes I use position or act as a ‘no choice but to take it’ facillitator – it can be really fun to throw someone around, hold them down, use their body and cum on their face or in their hair as part of a role play dynamic where we’re both enjoying what’s going on – but the reality is that if my partner at any point indicates that they don’t want to do this – I’d immediately stop, because I don’t want a nonconsensual sexual interaction on any level, and because even if I was the kind of asshole who wanted that – I wouldn’t want to be up on rape charges.
@Danny:
I think it’s the passivity. The woman is basically just lying there letting the man do what he wants, while he’s subjecting her to something many people find both very intimate and very humiliating. I guess it gives a feeling of control, of using the other person more as a piece of equipment than it would if she actively participated.
To me, it’s exactly what you said, I’m choosing to let him cum there, and I have yet to experience any fluid I find more humiliating and intimate in my face than my mouth or other body openings, so it’s not even a boundary-pushing choice. Sure, having something thrown at you in public is more embarrassing, but taking it inside you is more intimate, and having it injected into you against your will is by far the bigger violation.
Many of Figleaf’s observations in “They Might Wish “Yes Means Anal” But Not As Much As They Hope Yes Really Means No” are spot on in my mind. For something to be an accomplishment, or in the case of my boyfriend, for something to give him a feeling of power and control, it must be extreme and difficult to obtain. When the thought of doing it doesn’t have the same psychological pull over me as is expected for a girl, it also loses meaning for him. At least that’s my theory.
Clarisse: I don’t know if I’m solely dominant but I’ve only done the d in d/s. And while I’m open minded, or try to be, even the above mentioned blowjobs are ambiguous enough as to who is in control to turn me off usually. Because I’m usually quiet and non-reactive I’m ambiguous enough that women will often continue with things that turn me off, and as those things are often things where they’re trying to show their appreciation for me it can be difficult to convince them to stop. I’ve unsurprisingly been asked to be more vocal during sex, and the connection between your and AM’s quotes to me is that that can lead to a shell of, well, performative masculinity. Which is an answer to Snowdrop Explodes too, I think.
AB: I think that appeal, of not having a choice but to take it, is ones of the reasons for hating “sluts” because they don’t mind taking it at all. There’s nothing that deflates masculinity more than casual indifference.
I added a point 9 about sexual minority rights. It’s not very comprehensive, but I guess this post is designed to be a 101, not comprehensive.
machina, I’d say that as always, if you want to act in a noncommunicative way during sex, the solution is to talk about it ahead of time. It’s the same principle as me wanting to scream “no” and fight back during S&M sex, right?
AB:
I think it’s the passivity. The woman is basically just lying there letting the man do what he wants, while he’s subjecting her to something many people find both very intimate and very humiliating. I guess it gives a feeling of control, of using the other person more as a piece of equipment than it would if she actively participated.
Me being odd again but to me if a partner were to let me ejaculate on them then that tells me that they are either into it themselves or really don’t care one way or the other (as in they want you to cum on them or they don’t care if you cum on them or where it goes). The thought of it being humiliating just doesn’t register to me. (I’m not trying to say that someone who feels it is humiliating is wrong, just that I myself don’t see it.)
Actually now that I think it maybe I do. In that one sexual experience I mentioned above I was really liking that fact that, despite it all being consensual, she was holding my by the sides of my head (I had an afro at the time) kinda keeping my face in place. I don’t know if she was just bracing herself or if she was thinking “Take it!” but it got me going.
(I put this all here just to show my thought process instead of typing the first paragraph, deleting it, then posting just the second.)
Clarisse,
Yeah… but a lot of women aren’t Clarisse Thorn and they are generally be less interested in communication.
Ok, that seems a bit dismissive. Sorry Clarisse.
I think it’s similar to asking for a kiss compared to asking for anal sex, there are differences in severity if not kind. It seems silly to say, oh by the way I don’t make much noise during sex. Especially because most women don’t seem worried about consent and enjoyment.
@ machina:
I’m guessing one way to do it would be to make it about her, first, and then relate her answer to oneself. For example, as things start to get steamy:
M – “Are you much of a screamer in bed?”
F – “Yeah, I bring the house down – hope we don’t disturb your neighbours!”
M – “Cool! I’m a bit quieter, me – conducting the orchestra, not leading it.”
Or something (the “orchestra” bit obviously could be any remark that would be interpreted as sexy by the woman; my “orchestra” example pretty much comes from my D/s background and the concept of taking control sexually). And if she says she’s quiet, use a “me too!” type of statement. I suppose in the example above, the remark about the neighbours might also be asking permission to be noisy as well.
I’m guessing here because my sexual encounters have gone the way Clarisse suggests, but this is how I imagine it could pan out and satisfy the need or desire to communicate about these things without making it a big deal or breaking off the sexytimes to negotiate.
Snowdrop, well the problem is that is usually goes more like this:
M: Oh you’re making a bunch of noise, that might wake up the neighbours.
F: Yeah maybe.
M: So do you want to be a little less noisy?
F: Not really.
M: I think it would be good if you were a little more quiet.
F: Make me.
At which point there is much fighty sex.
@ machina:
Well, that’s a different sort of “making it about her”. That’s “you do this (and it’s a problem)” rather than “what do you like to do?” (which is what I was talking about).
It also sounds as though your scene takes place once sex has already started, and it is not about negotiation but pressure.
Given that the problem was, “How can a guy communicate that he is not very vocal himself, and thus defuse the expectations of that?” I thought I had a good answer.
Then again, maybe I am too used to the acceptance of negotiation and prior communication that we find in BDSM, to be able to see how ‘nilla folks see it.
Yeah, that’s true. It was just an actual anecdote that came to mind.
Well that was from a past six year long relationship, and there was plenty of talking about things. But… I think that a lot of relatively minor conflicts are instigated in order to propagate certain desired power dynamics.
But… I think that a lot of relatively minor conflicts are instigated in order to propagate certain desired power dynamics.
Agreed. I did this a hell of a lot more before I got into S&M “officially”. I still do it occasionally, too, although I’ve developed a much better eye for when it’s out of hand.
In terms of 114 and 115, I’ve been thinking about it because I’ve had conversations that look like both of those, and I’ve also had conversations that look like the more extensive communication frameworks that I often write about.
http://clarissethorn.com/blog/2009/01/26/communication-screwup-post-1-isnt-tickling-cuuute/
was a post that I wrote about how I once had a really unpleasant situation arise around tickling, where a partner ignored my safeword because he thought tickling “couldn’t possibly be that bad”. It seems relevant here. I feel like if I’m having a conversation where my partner is saying “I wish you would be quieter” and I’m like, “Make me,” then I’ll be watching for signs that he’s not actually okay with me making noise, and I’ll try to moderate my noise or find some other workaround if I feel sure that he’s not actually okay with it. One way for him to communicate that he’s not actually okay with it would be to safeword. I guess that’s sort of a strong way to do it, but it’s there.
I’m really ticklish myself so I get the frustration. This seems different though. I don’t want to be tickled. Really. Even though I’m laughing. It’s not happy laughter. Don’t tickle me. But I do want to provoked into fighty sex. I love fighty sex. And that’s the difference, you know, I guess, perhaps, between regret and nostalgia.
Clarisse:
It is good that he noticed. These things are not always at all obvious.
I do not personally understand the appeal of a woman swallowing my semen (or facials for that matter, to touch on the other topic). I mean, it can be slightly more convenient if she swallows than to have to think ahead to have tissues at hand. But it really is not a big deal for me.
It is fascinating to me that you actually felt ill from swallowing. I wonder how common that is.
I have ingested my own semen before, just out of curiosity, and never had any problems. If I were sexually attracted to men, I cannot imagine having much of a problem with swallowing (besides which, I already have to swallow a lot of fluids when giving oral to women anyway).
As an aside, I wonder if there are men who similarly get ill from vaginal fluid. I had one experience where I had a severe gag reflex and had to stop, but the circumstances were weird (for reasons I will not go into, her taste was extremely intense compared to how she normally was, and was also a bit off in flavor).
Here from Feministe re: asexuality and sex-positivity. I thought there was a post of yours that gets into the issue of enthusiastic consent in a more nuanced way than you give here, and I thought this was it, but if it’s happpened in the comments, I can’t find it.
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The basic idea is simple: don’t initiate sex unless you have your partner’s enthusiastic consent. Not a partner who says, “Okay, I guess,” in a bored tone, but doesn’t actively say “no”. Not a partner who is silent and non-reactive, but doesn’t actively stop you when you start having sex with them. Not a partner who seems hesitant, or anxious, or confused. Enthusiastic consent means an enthusiastic partner: one who is responding passionately, kissing you back, saying things like “Yes” or “Oh my God, don’t stop”
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Enthusiastic consent, as you describe, is something that some? many? asexuals who are willing to have sex cannot or will not do, and it’s disturbing to be told that you don’t have the agency to consent to sex. “Oh my God, don’t stop” is a pretty high bar, frankly, and implies that everyone will be equally into the sex at the beginning– which probably itself sounds kind of troubling, so let me unpack. Not everyone is instantly turned on/aroused enough to start going “Oh my God, don’t stop” or repeating “yes” at the beginning of every sexual encounter, yet it’s clearly important to have consent right from the beginning, so the bar should be… less enthusiastic. The bar should be about active consent, or involved consent, or whatever. You don’t have to be saying “Oh my God, don’t stop” in order to differentiate being “silent and non-reactive” from active consent; presumably, saying “OK, yeah, let’s have sex” in a neutral or positive tone would suffice. If I were in a relationship in which I were interested in sex, and I had sufficient reason to have sex (it felt good/was emotionally good/I liked getting my partner off/some combination thereof or of other things I’ve forgotten), and my partner approached me as I was, say, writing a blog comment and said, “Hey, want to have sex?” my response would not be to start snogging the living daylights out of them. My response would probably be more like “Yeah, hang on, just a sec.”
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I feel like I’m going off the rails here, but I guess my point is, enjoying sex /= being enthusiastic about it, especially given the narrow ways in which enthusiasm is defined in sex-positive spaces– and the equally narrow ways people think it’s expressed.
Aydan — Thanks for commenting. I’m frustrated by how few people seem to be interested in trying to build a more practical dialogue about this.
You may be thinking of the Feministe mirror version of this post. There was a debate similar to what you describe in those comments. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. There was another debate about this in the comments on one of Jaclyn Friedman’s posts about enthusiastic consent; you can see my comments starting here. As you can see, we also discussed ideas like “active” consent etc, but then we started getting into pitfalls. Jaclyn wrote:
I understand now the nuance you’re getting at here, and it’s an important conversation. I’m all in favor of “active” consent, which I like also because it gets to my whole “consent is not a lightswitch” bandwagon — active consent suggests strongly that consent is an ongoing state in which everyone must continually participate. And it’s true that “enthusiasm” can be a mushy thing for another to judge. But I think it’s dangerous to remove the emotional state from the equation, because it leaves greater room for coercion. If you harangue and terrify me until I say “yes” to some sexual interaction, even though I’ve said no a hundred times already, I could see the argument that that’s still “active” consent.
Clarisse– I’m kind of surprised that you’re frustrated, honestly, insofar because that frustration implies (to me) surprise. In the asexual community, a number of people are repulsed enough that they don’t care about issues surrounding sex– and the stereotype that people who like sex can’t be ace is still quite prevalent, so repulsed aces make up a fairly large proportion of the community. Of those of us who aren’t repulsed, many of us have had bad experiences with the feminist community and with sex-positive feminism. There’s been some pretty nasty stuff on Feministe and Feministing about asexuality, and also a lot of people do seem to think that sex-positivity means sex is inherently a positive act. So for one reason or another improving models of enthusiastic consent aren’t on a lot of people’s radars in the asexual community.
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Anyway, both of those posts look pretty familiar, but it seems like the consensus has been to stop at “Well, enthusiastic consent is flawed, and we’ve had some other suggestions, but…” and not really do anything more. It seems like there are some fairly easy fixes; even if the term “enthusiastic consent” continues to be used, stop using language that portrays enthusiasm as shaking-the-walls-and-screaming levels of excitement about the sex. Not only is this a concern for aces, for obvious reasons, but I imagine that people who don’t routinely get into sex to that extent may feel that there’s something wrong with them. Talking more broadly about the different ways enthusiasm can be expressed might also be helpful.
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I found these two posts on enthusiastic consent as it relates to asexuality from a link in the comments to the Feministe version of this post; you may have seen them. They take conflicting viewpoints. One’s from metapianycist, and one’s from Sciatrix, who is more coherent about this stuff than I ever am.
There seems to have been some productive exchanges in the comments to the Friedman piece, but I’m not sure what I want to say about them or where I want to say it. I’ll have another look tomorrow.
I’ll read your links — not sure if I’ve seen them before. I think the problem with trying to redefine “enthusiasm” or rewrite the standard or whatever is that the whole point of enthusiastic consent is that sex ideally takes place out of genuine sexual desire … out of lust on both sides. I can see the place where this becomes problematic for sex workers and asexuals and probably others — as you can see, I’ve commented on this before — but part of the problem is that this particular distinction as it is articulated now is so useful for so many women in other groups, including myself, and is mostly useful because it aims for genuine lust. Do you see what I’m saying?
So writing around that is very tricky, and to me and Jaclyn, it seems like it’s leaving tons of space for coercion, and for ignoring people’s genuine lust, when lust was, you know, what we were trying to encourage in the first place.
Yes, I see what you’re saying, though I’ve seen definitions of enthusiastic consent– I think it was Jaclyn’s, actually– that don’t necessitate lust.
And the problem with this definition is that, under this models, asexuals can never consent to sex. Any sexual encounter we have is, under this model, a rape. I don’t think that’s an acceptable model. Surely there’s room between a no-means-no model and a totally lust-based model for something that’s neither– not just for asexuals, but for people who choose and consent to engage in sex for reasons other than lust.
I DEFINITELY agree that there’s space for those other reasons to consent! I’m just trying to explain why it’s tricky to write around it. My problem right now is less the philosophy than communicating the philosophy in a way that’s clear and doesn’t lose readers with ten million caveats.
Hmm, yeah, I think I see what you’re saying– the challenges of addressing the problems with the enthusiastic consent model without undermining its strengths? I don’t know if that’s something the ace community can be really helpful in addressing, though, because we tend not to experience lust and sexual desire, and we’re usually more aware of the negatives of the enthusiastic consent model. I’m trying to think of ways to tweak the model to make it stronger, and yet, since so many of these ideas– sexual attraction, desire, lust– are just words to me, I have no idea how to do that in a productive way.
I want to take issue with something you said above, that “sex ideally takes place out of genuine sexual desire … out of lust on both sides.” I agree that most people prefer to have sex, and enjoy sex more, when it is motivated by “lust on both sides,” but I’m uncomfortable labeling that as “ideal.” For example, when two asexuals have sex with each other, is the sex they are having still somehow less “ideal” than most other sex, even though they have no way of knowing the difference? I don’t think constructing a hierarchy of sex as ideal and less ideal– except, perhaps, around consent issues– is beneficial, because it privileges some people’s preferences over others. I also don’t think it’s necessary– you don’t gain anything from saying “ideally, sex is _______” that you don’t get from saying “most people like it when sex is _________.”
Also– this post on sex-positivity in the asexual community popped up on Tumblr today. I don’t precisely agree with it– I don’t really know what I think about it– but I recognize that a lot of people in the ace community feel the same way as the author. You may find it interesting, if not helpful. I think it reflects where a lot of people in the community are coming from with regard to not being sex-positive.
So, I read through the links that you directed me to. And I’m trying to find a way to say something that may be taken as offensive, but I swear, I am really trying not to be offensive …
As a case study, I’ll use a comment that was left on my Off Our Chests article “A Unified Theory of Orgasm“. Here’s the comment:
Thanks for sharing that. Might as well have been readin my own life story, right down to not finding masturbation interesting for years because of control issues, to experimenting with girls looking for the right thing, to struggling with communicating what I wanted to partners & always feeling like I had to look after their needs, pushing my own aside & never let it show how much it hurt that they weren’t looking after mine, to impossible conversations with men I loved – and who I think loved me – trying to explain what I needed & ending up in tears feeling rejected and judged for my desires. Took me ’till I was 30 to figure out how to orgasm, and then all thanks to a man who was willing to grab the reins & take me to depths of depravity I had hardly dared dreamed of. It’s changed my life. I used to say sex wasn’t important, but only because I’d never had great sex!
The going to doctors to find out “what was wrong with me” because I didn’t orgasm & didn’t want sex with a long term partner was also pretty damaging. I don’t know how we both ended up with the belief that I was faulty, rather than our relationship. When we had sex I would go out of my way to make sure he enjoyed it, while getting no pleasure myself, and somehow it was a mystery why I had no sex drive & wasn’t interest in repeating this experience several times a week. I cried when the doctor said, after some examinations & blood tests, that there was nothing physically wrong that could be fixed with a tablet or an operation, & went on to have therapy, trying to “fix” what was “broken”. Looking back I can’t believe I was so stupid!
So, this person says that ze didn’t enjoy sex for a long time, and that ze even used to say that “sex isn’t important”. This person then goes on to say that ze currently has orgasms and great sex and that it’s mostly due to “depths of depravity”, which I think can reasonably be interpreted as kink.
In one of the links you gave, the writer says that ze feels that there’s lots of “concern trolling” in sex-positive spaces. But a lot of us in sex-positive spaces have had very similar experiences to the person whose comment I offer above. And I think there is probably concern in sex-positive spaces that if we just leave people alone who say they’re not into sex, we could be basically letting them down, because what if they’re like the above person? And I’m trying to figure out how to negotiate that middle ground. If a person tells me that ze is asexual, I have no interest in disrespecting hir self-identification or telling hir that ze doesn’t know hirself. But if a person just tells me “I have no interest in sex,” … have any asexuals written about how I would talk to that person in a way that respects both potential asexuality and potential buried desires?
@Clarisse #129
If someone just mentions they have no interest in sex You could
1) look if they’re fine with this or bothered by it. It may not be evident, in which case you could ask. The comment you showed, that person was obviously hugely bothered by it and wanted to find a way to orgasm and such.
2) Figure out if they want advice / a talk (again, you can ask if it’s not apparent). If they do not, giving advice in any direction just seems condescending: it’s unlikely they haven’t done any examination of their situation. Giving advice and such unasked can also be incredibly condescending. (thinking of disability situation here too: lots and lots of unasked-for and/or silly advice)
3) If they want advice, you could suggest asexuality AND other things they might not have tried yet that might help them figure out what is going on with them (like if they have buried desires or haven’t found the right technique yet that works for them).
Shockingly, on asexual forums there’s often people who wonder if they’re asexual or repressed or if there’s something medically wrong. These people are (again, shocking I know), not just told they’re asexual without further thought or examination. Just that they might be or might not be). Also there is quite a bit of advice on other stuff they could try to figure things out. (Not that there aren’t people who give really bad advice too, the insistence on compromise of a certain kind comes to mind).
(Also, asexual =/= someone who cannot orgasm. There can be an overlap, obviously. Someone can be both. It’s not in the definition though. I can have orgasms and great sex too! Not necessarily at the same time either! I’m asexual! Sex still doesn’t register as important! It means about as much to me as putting my socks on! Someone figuring out how to orgasm and liking it, they could still have been asexual too!
Really I’m not trying to be mean, but from what you’re posting I wonder how informed you are. Asexual spaces and our discussions on many topics aren’t something you’d checked out on your own either, from what I can tell anyway.)
I’ve checked out some asexual spaces. I’ve checked out quite a lot of other sources on various types of sexuality too, but I still get my ignorance routinely corrected on a number of topics. No one can be an expert on everything, and everyone has to start somewhere; I wonder how many BDSM sources you’ve examined before talking to me, for example?
I appreciate it when I get the chance to talk to people in other communities who generously assume good intent on my part.
I would say that if the person evinces distress, then it’s appropriate to offer suggestions. If not, then it’s probably going to come across as concern-trolling and condescending– even if the person in question is not asexual.
(Clarisse, did you get my e-mail?)
Agreeing with Norah on everything.
In fact, I know that there are sexual people who’ve had trouble with their sexuality who had great experiences in asexual spaces or identifying as ace/questioning-ace for a while. Here’s one and Venus of Willendork talks about this in depth. There’s actually a lot of talk about sexuality in ace spaces, a lot of encouraging to figure out what you want and how, without the pressure to be sexual (in opposition to asexual) or assumptions that that sexuality needs to take a certain form. I think that this means that even someone who mistakenly blunders into identifying as asexual because their past experiences with sex have been so awful can often get a lot from the community.
And re: concern trolling in the sex-positive community, I’m pretty sure whoever said that was thinking of something like the comments on this Feministing post, in which someone who went “uh, I think I’m asexual?” was deluged in “omg have you been to see a doctor? have you had your hormones checked? you might have DIABETES! you might have a DEADLY DISEASE!”
Some of the other annoyances of the concern trolling thing:
- it’s telling ace people that sexual people know our wants and desires better than we do, and that even if we feel totally fine with our sexuality *now* that doesn’t count for anything and if we are somehow capable of making ourselves sexual we have an obligation to do that. Which frames being asexual as an inherently inferior state one has to remedy. In the comment you quote, I don’t see the problem as being that the commentator thought they had no sexual desire when they actually did and needed X to make them realise that, I see the problem as being that they were miserable not having worked that out.
- generally asexual people will have heard it before, frequently, in great detail, from people they are much closer to. (Ask me how my coming out experiences have gone.) A random stranger on the internet sticking their oar in is probably going to make them swear and drag out their asexual bingo cards, not go “oh my god, you’re right!”
Re: the enthusiastic consent thing…
I hear you on how important enthusiastic consent is for many people, and I think that has to be acknowledged. And, hell, if the mainstream view on what consent was went more along the lines of enthusiastic consent there’s an unwanted and traumatising sexual encounter I could have avoided. I think enthusiastic consent is an excellent tool for situations like first-time sex between people who haven’t talked about it much.
That said, I think the part where a lot of us take issue is that enthusiastic consent, although obviously an excellent tool for a lot of people and a lot of situations, doesn’t work for everyone. That may be asexual/asexual spectrum people, but it may include e.g. autistic people who may not be able to read nonverbal signals of enthusiasm well enough and/or whose own body language is different enough from NT that their partners may not be able to read theirs, or people with certain types of disabilities, etc. etc. And because enthusiastic consent is frequently presented as the only valid way of consenting, this leaves those people out in the cold.
Instead of going “okay, let’s toss out enthusiastic consent entirely”, I think it’d be great if we had alternative models of consent in *addition* to enthusiastic consent, where people could work out which worked best for them and their experiences. I’d love it if there were one that placed more of an emphasis on communication and checking in. I mean, I don’t think anyone wants to argue that if someone said “yes” to sex but is just lying there looking bored during it that should be assumed okay. But if before sex a conversation about how this isn’t a bad sign for them and doesn’t mean the other person ought to stop, and what signs do mean the other person ought to stop, and talking about how they don’t feel pressured to have sex, etc., took place, that’s a different story. (A thought: such a model could quite possibly draw heavily on BDSM consent models, since as far as I understand it that’s also one where the partners are not necessarily going to be screaming “oh god yes! yes!” during the act, but on that front you’d definitely know more than I would!)
And… a reason that this is important, I think, is because at least in the asexual community we vitally need a model of consent that works for most of us. I think we do have a problem with rape culture, with people inside and outside the community pushing compromise and telling ace people that they have to have sex with their partners or else they’ll never be able to have a significant relationship and die miserable and alone and have their body eaten by cats etc. etc. Mixed in with the ace people who have sex and are, genuinely, consenting, and don’t mind this state of affairs at all, are the ace people who are being hurt by having sex they don’t want because they think they have to. We need a good way to tell one from the other, a good way to tell the latter group that no, this isn’t how things should be, that this is happening to you isn’t okay. Enthusiastic consent just doesn’t do the job for a lot of us.
I’ve checked out some BDSM stuff because of things you write in various spaces, actually :D.
But I also did a little bit of research a few times before out of interest, first when I was fairly young because of general interest and later because of a friend who is into it.
Anyway, I had more to say but it turned out to be so much that it would be rude to put it in a comment because it would be one gigantic wall of text, so is it ok if I e-mail that instead or make a blog post out of it and link you to it?
Also wanted you to know that I read quite a lot of what you write and never assumed anything other than good intent. But there is stuff I wanted to say regarding that too but it became part of the gigantic wall of text, so…
Sorry about the delay, folks. I had some complications this week with my neck injury. I have been thinking about this; it’s just that it’s a really hard question and I’m not sure how to solve it. But I promise it’s on my mind.
Kaz, thanks for mentioning the email in these comments; I would have missed it otherwise, because it went to spam! EVERYONE ELSE: LET THAT BE A LESSON TO YOU! I do answer all my email eventually, so if I’m not responding, I probably didn’t get it.
Norah, I’d love it if you could make your text wall into a post. I’m planning an upcoming post on asexuality and it’d be great to have more stuff to link back to that isn’t in my inbox, or my comments sections.
Ok, so this was a very unproductive time for me and also I needed to look the post over a few times and make edits.
But here it is: http://norah-liath.dreamwidth.org/10411.html
Thanks, Norah. I’ll link to it in the upcoming asexuality post.