Feminist Current

The Nation and Tom Dispatch published an epic, historical look at the successes of the feminist movement over the past fifty-odd years and the long road ahead by Ruth Rosen yesterday.

In the article, Rosen points to various male “behaviours” like rape that, while once were viewed simply as “custom” were redefined, thanks to the feminist movement, as crimes.

Not so long ago, you may or may not recall that there was no such thing as rape in marriage. Husbands were entitled to sex, with or without the consent of their wives. Not so long ago, date rape was a common and unspoken experience for women. There were no conversations about consent when it came to sex. It simply wasn’t relevant.

Rape still happens far more than most would like to acknowledge or imagine and we still have a long way to go towards ending violence against women, but things have changed and things must continue to change.

Lately the issue of banning pornography has been a hot(ter) topic of debate due to the fact that Iceland is considering banning online pornography. Tracy McVeigh noted, in her article for The Observer, that Iceland, one of the most progressive countries in the world, ranking in first place in Global Gender Gap Report 2012, that the ban is widely supported among police, health professionals, educators and lawyers.

In anticipation of the typically silly and ignorant responses from libertarians and pro-sex industry types claiming critics of sexualized violence against women are simply prudish, conservative, freedom-haters, McVeigh quotes Halla Gunnarsdóttir, adviser to the interior minister Ögmundur Jónasson, who says, about the prospective ban:

We are a progressive, liberal society when it comes to nudity, to sexual relations, so our approach is not anti-sex but anti-violence. This is about children and gender equality, not about limiting free speech

In other words, this is a feminist initiative.

Now, talk of bans or of criminalization of things like pornography often lead to people to say things like: “FREE SPEECH!” “RIGHTS!” “CENSORSHIP!” But these people are stupid.

We live in what is commonly known as “a society”. Within said “society” we tend to rely on things we call “laws” in order to help us function in a way that is conducive to living in said “society”. This isn’t to say that all laws are necessarily good laws and, often, criminalization targets the marginalized in disgusting and oppressive ways.

This is not the case for feminist laws that prevent men from abusing women.

Much of the work the feminist movement has done in terms of making the world a more equitable one, has been with regard to legislation. Without changes to legislation, women would still be owned by their husbands and wouldn’t be able to do things like vote or have jobs or get a university education or say no to sex. Laws aren’t bad. Criminalizing certain behaviours is also not (necessarily) bad.

Let’s reflect on the behaviours we’ve criminalized in our society: murder, rape, domestic abuse, animal abuse, advocating genocide, and creating, buying, or selling child pornography. There are other behaviours we’ve criminalized that are silly, like doing certain kinds of drugs, but that’s a whole other political can of worms.

The point is that, as a society, we support the censorship of things we believe are deeply harmful to individuals and to society as a whole. Many of us, particularly feminists and other progressive types,  support the criminalization of behaviours that are violent and abusive. Whether we like it or not, laws do shape our behaviour and agitating for changes to legislation and been hugely successful for feminists (though there is much, much more work to do).

There is no need to share “information” that encourages and perpetuates and supports the oppression of women. In fact, I’m pretty sure that would count as some kind of hate speech. Pornography encourages and perpetuates and supports both rape culture (so, violence against women) and the oppression of women.

True freedom and true freedom of speech would exist in a society without systemic oppression. In a world wherein male violence against women is an epidemic, it is not reasonable to say that we live in a free society. It is also not reasonable to defend behaviours that perpetuate oppression and violence on account of “freedom” and “freedom of speech”. Those who argue this are stupid, narrow-minded jerks who’ve spent too long eating American freedom fries and only care about “rights” in as much as those “rights” provide them with access to the sex/money/power they believe they were born entitled to.

To those who argue that it’s impossible to ban pornography because it’s so popular, universal, or “normal”, well, so was marital rape at one time. So was smoking in hospitals. So was owning slaves.

What’s “normal” and acceptable today likely won’t be in 20 or 50 or 100 years. Banning pornography won’t lead to an immediate disappearance of all pornography, just like the illegality of murder hasn’t stopped murders from happening. But it does set a standard and it does teach us what is acceptable behaviour in society. The fact that we’ve criminalized rape has led us to understand that sex should not happen without consent (lest it become ‘rape’ and not ‘sex’).

Changes to legislation won’t solve everything, but is necessary.

Now, pornography is not “good” for society and it isn’t “good” for women (it isn’t even “good” for men!). Because of the internet, it’s readily available to children which means that this generation and all those that follow learn that women are to be fucked and to be humiliated and to be degraded from the beginning.

If you think change isn’t possible then you have no place in any progressive movement, conversation about equality, or, really, in a democratic society. If you think your “freedom” should come at the expense of half the population, then you’re the problem and your protests will fall on deaf ears, your cries of “censorship” growing ever more quiet as the rest of us move towards emancipation.

If you haven’t yet heard about revenge porn, you’re lucky.

Notorious dickbag, Hunter Moore, is big into the revenge porn game. He can be credited with mainstreaming the concept of punishing your ex by posting their nude photos online without their permission via his website, IsAnyoneUp.com.

Doesn’t take much to get rich these days, just a complete lack of anything resembling a soul.

Not only would Moore post the photos, but he would also post the person’s name, location, and link to their social media accounts, also helpfully facilitating comments under the images critiquing the person’s appearance. Innovative, right!

Eight months after his original site shut down, Moore, committed as ever to cretin status, announced he would be launching a new site: HunterMoore.TV.

Of course, the fact that he manages to keep this up this seemingly “legally questionable” endeavour begs the question: “How is this actually legal?” Amanda Holpuch explains, in an article for The Guardian, that (in the U.S.) under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, “website proprietors are not liable for content that is submitted to them by third parties.”

Even with that loophole, it’s clear that these sites aren’t going to get off scot-free.

Another revenge porn site (Gosh, it’s just a mystery why degrading women via porn is so popular!), Texxxan.com (and their hosting company, GoDaddy.com) is being sued by approximately two dozen women on the basis that the site was “significantly designed to cause severe embarrassment, humiliation, and emotional distress.”

The deal with revenge porn is that someone you once trusted enough to let take a photo of you engaged in a sexual act or text a photo of yourself naked to, now hates you enough to want to seek ‘revenge’ by turning you into publicly consumable porn.

Now, while the purpose of revenge porn is indeed, as Jill Filipovic writes for The Guardian, “to shame, humiliate and destroy the lives and reputations of young women,”(i.e. not just about masturbation), I would add that the existence of revenge porn is very much a result of a porn culture.

When we look at the ways women and girls are harassed and abused online, we see that it often isn’t just about words, rather it is often about porn. We see this in the Amanda Todd tragedy which happened back in October. While Todd was bullied and harassed, both online and by kids at school, she was also a victim of porn culture. As many feminists pointed out after she killed herself, Todd was not only ‘bullied’, as most of the mainstream media put it, but she was harassed in a completely misogynistic way. What many news outlets failed to mention was that Todd was turned into porn. A man she’d been chatting to online coerced her into showing her breasts via a webcam, later threatening to share the image with her friends and family unless she gave him a “show.” He followed through on his threat, circulating the image of Todd, who was in grade seven at the time, online.

Sound familiar?

It isn’t possible to separate what happened to Todd from this ‘revenge porn’ phenomenon, which is also why it isn’t possible to separate ‘revenge porn’ from ‘porn’.

Revenge porn is about degrading and humiliating women. It doesn’t work on men because men aren’t hated on a mass scale, as women are, and because men’s bodies are not used against them, in order to punish them.

Just as revenge porn isn’t simply about naked bodies, neither is mainstream porn. It’s the power dynamic that’s ‘sexy’ and it’s the degradation that separates both revenge porn and ‘regular’ porn from straight-up nudity and sex. When women are objectified, they lose power and men gain power. The male gaze is a disempowering one.

The fact that pornography is being used as a means to publicly harass and degrade all women (regardless of whether or not the woman in question was compensated for her image and/or the use of her body) should tell us something about pornography and about our misogynistic culture. It tells us that porn isn’t ‘just about sex’ or about ‘loving women’s bodies’ and that it isn’t somehow completely neutral.

The fact that 12-year-old girls are being pressured to text ‘sexy’ photos of themselves to boys and men (as well as older girls and women) is as a result of a porn culture. Porn cannot be separated from larger culture; isn’t something relegated to ‘adult only’ sites. It’s what we’re all supposed to be, as women, and it’s used against us. Feminists say ‘porn harms’ and often the public isn’t sure what that means. Well here’s an example.

Men like Hunter Moore grew up in the same culture that the man who harassed Amanda Todd did and in the same culture boys are growing up in today, learning that to coerce girls to turn themselves into porn gives them power.

It should be clear by now that porn is not about loving women.

No surprise here. The adult entertainment industry has followed through on their promise to file a suit against Los Angeles County, challenging Measure B, which passed in November, mandating condom-use on porn sets in L.A.

The suit, filed Thursday at the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on behalf of Vivid Entertainment and performers Kayden Kross and Logan Pierce, states that porn companies have the right to freedom of expression and speech, which includes the right to film sex acts without a condom. (via Huffington Post)

Free speech, in the porn industry, has always had less to do with freedom and more to do with profit, male orgasms, and also profit. It is an industry that cares little about people’s actual lives (unless the life in question is a penis). That they’ve extended their warped understand of mastubatory material as ‘free speech’ to challenge a law that is intended to protect performers from STDs is unsurprising, but ridiculous, of course.

Pornography has long been defended based on libertarian ideals that sees freedom as something that only exists on an individual basis. “Freedom = My right to shoot you/fuck you/own you/use you” stands in the minds of those who are too lazy or stupid or selfish to understand that negative liberty is regressive rather than progressive.

Last year, when this debate began, I wrote that the whole thing struck me as a faux-progressive derail – as though condom-use would make the porn industry ‘safe’ and therefore ethical. While I would agree that generally, advocating for condom-use on porn sets is a good thing (Gail Dines outlines why this kind of legislation is important, very well in two articles she wrote for The Guardian), my interest in writing about Measure B and the suit filed by Vivid Entertainment is not to argue for or against condom-use on porn shoots. My aim is to point out the ways in which liberals and those who would consider themselves to be or present themselves as otherwise progressive people, are making arguments that are in opposition to the creation of a free and equitable society, and have been suckered by libertarian language that, in fact, works against our collective liberation.

Measure B has been opposed by many in the industry based on arguments such as:the porn industry will leave L.A. and film elsewherethe porn industry might lose money,condom-use interrupts the ‘fantasy’ aspect of pornthe porn industry might lose money, andlaws such as these interfere with the rights of individuals to do what they want, whenever they wantthe porn industry might lose money.

It’s shocking and depressing to see performers go to bat for their billionaire bosses — it’s like watching the lower class attack organized labour on account of some deluded, neoliberal understanding of freedom that imagines the free market and privatization will somehow, some day, work in their favour.

But this is what happens when we understand freedom in individualistic terms.

The porn industry has done a great job of selling this idea that pornography equals freedom of speech and have convinced many performers to toe the party line. People who understand censorship as necessarily conservative and oppressive hear sex industry advocates say the words ‘freedom of speech’ and, without thinking, leap to their defense (for the record, almost everyone supports censorship in one way or another, otherwise child pornography would be legal).

So we have folks arguing that Measure B is  ’paternalistic‘ (because grown-ups can exploit themselves if they feel like it, goddamit!).

We also have folks arguing that porn is fantasy and that what people see onscreen has no impact on our real lives (you know, like how advertising and product placement has no real impact on people’s lives and their choices as consumers). Hey, if kids learn that condoms aren’t sexy and that women loooooove double penetration and gang bangs, that’s their problem.

And then, of course, there’s the argument that the ‘adult entertainment industry’ will have to go elsewhere in order to be profitable, leaving L.A. based porn performers out of work. You know,  just like how we should work against organized labour because unions force corporations into bankruptcy (big business is the real victim here, folks!) which, in turn, causes the working class to lose shitty, exploitative, jobs that keep us exhausted, poor, powerless, and in debt.

Tricky, tricky. It’s incredible how many fall into this trap.

What it comes down to is that all defenses of the porn industry are based the concept of negative liberty, which can be easily translated to mean: “Me, me, me. My money. My gun. My property. Also, my dick. Me.” Anything that infringes on me/my money/my dick counts as an attack on freedom in Pornland. We are manipulated into believing that laws, by nature, are condescending and necessarily infringe on our rights as individuals.

While it’s pretty obvious why those who run the multi-billion dollar porn industry would oppose a law of this nature, the fact that porn performers themselves would speak out against the measure seems a little more surprising. Why reinforce the fantasy that condomless sex is the sexiest sex? Why endanger the health and lives of people working in the industry even further than they already are? We can see the ways in which people have been impacted by libertarian/neoliberal discourse to the detriment of even their own lives.

Porn actor, James Deen, who is doing the good work of opposing even the semblance of safe sex, is quoted as saying that “he was “disappointed” that sex workers were being “continually bullied and used by others.” It wasn’t his wealthy bosses that he was talking about. It’s evil organizations like the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (the group who led the campaign to mandate condom-use on porn sets) who are, apparently, intent on ‘bullying’ and ‘using’ porn performers.

And it’s not just Deen who opposed the passage of Measure B. Porn star, Jessica Drake spoke out against the bill saying: “As a performer, and also as a woman, I don’t like the idea of someone telling me what I have to do with my body.”

This is not a progressive understanding of liberty, though the pro-sex feminists/libertarians/porn industry would have us believe that they are the true freedom fighters. Considering the constant accusations that feminists who oppose the sex industry are ‘in bed with the right’, it’s odd that the folks who oppose Measure B seem only to understand freedom in a completely individualistic and capitalist sense. As Dines pointed out in The Guardian:

Echoing the usual ideology of the right wing of the Republican party, the anti-Measure B campaign had three main purposes: to promote the economic benefits of the sector to the regional economy; to deny a need for governmental regulation; and to encourage workers to make their own choices, however dangerous or exploitative the conditions.

It’s also worth noting that these are the very same arguments made by those who advocate for the decriminalization of pimps and johns. Critics of prostitution are accused of meddling with jobs, free will, and of encouraging repressive, paternalistic laws which interfere with individual women’s ‘choice’ to sell sex, as well as men’s individual ‘right’ to buy it.

Dines also notes that Diane Duke, the executive director of the Free Speech Coalition (a porn industry lobby group) “is on record as saying that Measure B was not about “performer health and safety”, but rather about “government regulating what happens between consenting adults”. Sounds familiar?

“Consenting adults”: the magic phrase that ends every conversation.

“Consenting adults” erases the social conditioning that teaches women their bodies are to be looked at.

“Consenting adults” erases poverty and the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

“Consenting adults” erases the gendered nature of poverty and the particular ways in which women are impacted by poverty (which, in turn, often leads women into the sex industry).

“Consenting adults” erases the growing inaccessibility of post-secondary education and the insane levels of debt students are forced to acquire in order to attend university in North America (more and more we are hearing about women turning to the sex industry to support their educations).

“Consenting adults” erases male violence and sexual abuse (which is sexualized in porn and is part of the history of many women in the industry).

“Consenting adults” erases all circumstances and context that might lead women into the sex industry and refuses to address inequity and systemic oppression.

When you hear the words ‘free speech’ and ‘consenting adults’ being used by owners of corporations that make billions off of objectifying and degrading women, approach with caution.

When we’re actively opposing condom use because we’re afraid the porn industry might lose money, it’s time to admit that these arguments are not progressive and don’t promote freedom, liberty, or justice for anyone but those who are too stupid or selfish to care.

Shut-up and spread your legs. That’s the gist of some of the most recent advice offered by Australian sex therapist Bettina Arndt to the heterosexual women of the world in her series of books about what men want in bed and why women should give it to them.

Over the last few years, Arndt has variously suggested that men have innately higher sex drives than women; that wives should put out for their husbands, even when they don’t want to have sex; and that women should “stop banging on” about pornography and just accept that all men will use it, including their intimate partners.

There is nothing particularly new or radical about most of this. Such advice merely harks back to a time when performing your wifely duties and ‘lying back to think of England’ was the norm. A time when women were generally assumed to be a-sexual, and masturbating meant risking a referral for clitoridectomy; a surgical procedure to remove the clitoris.

Nor is there anything new in the claim that men can’t help themselves and are slaves to their hormonally hard-wired sex drives. It is this very idea that has often been used to excuse rape on the grounds of biological necessity. It is the same idea that underpins defences of prostitution which suggest we need a class of women to bear the brunt of male sexual violence in order to save the rest of us.

The concept of a completely biologically determined sexuality is reactionary. And Sexologists, clinicians and therapists have asserted pushed this concept now for more than a century, well, at least when it comes to men. In sexological thinking, women are not thought to be so susceptible to sexual urges and instead are seen as requiring helpful ‘advice’, detailing the ‘correct’ way to have sex.

What is new about this recent advice, however, is the acceptance and even praise of pornography. Arndt is not alone in promoting porn and admonishing women who are critical of porn use. A number of high-profile, practicing psychologists and sex therapists in Australia and North America take a similar approach.

Last year, for example, Sydney-based psychologist Raj Sitharthan openly condoned porn use, even endorsing it as “healthy”. He was quoted as saying: “If a male client is enjoying a healthy use of soft-core porn…then I’d probably advise him not to tell his girlfriend for fear of hurting her”. So there’s nothing wrong with porn use then, it’s just these troublesome reactions from girlfriends. Of course, it’s women that have the problem.

Indeed, a recent study found that about 1 in 3 sex therapists in the US actually use pornography as part of their recommended treatment to patients. The few academic articles available on what such treatment actually entails are illuminating. In one article: “Stimulation of the libido: The use of erotica in sex therapy” (erotica in this instance, merely being a euphemism for porn)  New York-based therapists Sharna Striar and Barbara Bartlik explain, not only that pornography use is acceptable, but that couples should actively incorporate it into their sex lives.

In addition, Striar and Bartlik claim that pornography is particularly useful for “couples with incompatible sexual fantasies.” They go on to extol the virtues of porn, explaining that: “it can be used to introduce a partner to a new mode of sexual experience that he or she might otherwise find distasteful or unacceptable”. This advice is often represented as radically liberating when, in actuality, it is outright repressive – it advocates, and attempts to legitimise, a form of sexual coercion.

Indeed, a lot of sex advice literature is deeply conservative and reactionary. Far from allowing an open and honest discussion about sexuality, it serves to shut down discussion altogether by citing spurious notions of biologically determined sexuality. In this view, there is no point in talking about what the joys of sex might be, as sexuality is simply delivered by the stork.

Fortunately, this idea is more fairy-tale than fact. Any sociologist, anthropologist or historian can tell you that sexual practices and norms differ enormously around the world and across time periods. The culture we live in largely determines our sexual norms and even conditions and shapes our own sexual desires, experiences and enjoyment.

Too often we believe that culture is only something that happens elsewhere, or is a remnant of bygone era but we do have a sexual culture in the West and pornography is an increasing part of that culture. It is sheer arrogance to believe that only in the suburbs of the Western world are we able to live out our biologically determined, ‘natural’ sexuality, unaffected by social surroundings.

Acknowledging that sex is a social act may be a challenging idea but it is also genuinely liberating. It provides the freedom to talk about the kinds of sex, sexual pleasure and sexual equality that are possible, rather than retreating to tired old notions of immutable urges. It also moves us forward from the repressive Victorian caricature of the a-sexual woman, needing to be ‘taught’ sexual response to the meet the demands of her husband.

Recognizing the role of the social in sex means that there is a point to “banging on” about porn too. Our sexual tastes and interests can change depending on context and circumstance, so the desire for pornography is no more or less biologically determined than the desire for a cheeseburger. Therefore, we can, and should, question what kind of sexual culture turns titles like Service Animals, Jenna Loves Pain and Meatholes into best sellers.

Those critical of pornography are endlessly accused of being anti-sex, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Porn narrows rather than widens our understanding of what sex is and can be. So if you would like to see a sexuality based on something more than multiple penetrations and watching people paid to fake their own sexual enjoyment, don’t shut up, speak out.

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Meagan Tyler is a lecturer in Sociology at Victoria University, Australia. She is the author of Selling Sex Short: The  pornographic and sexological construction of women’s sexuality in the West. She tweets @DrMeaganTyler.

Well this is it. The end is upon us.

By now you’re probably near-bald from tearing your hair out over the effed-upedness that we are subjected to every time Breast Cancer Awareness Month rolls around. Suddenly we’re inundated with pink crap as every company around tries to glom on to the breast cancer epidemic in an offensively opportunistic fashion.

From makeup, to laptops, to Swiffers (clean for the cure!), to ugly-ass jewelery, to one million stupid pink candles, it’s fair to say that pinkwashing has gotten totally out of control. And as if the feminizing pinking of absolutely everything (because breast cancer is so soft and delicate and lady-like) and the concerted efforts to make breast cancer all about consumerism directed very specifically at women (because effecting change can only be done by buying more stuff), there must be, of course, the pornification of women’s cancer diagnoses (because why the should anyone care about women unless they are fuckable).

First there are those idiotic ‘Save the Tatas‘, ‘Boobies Rule‘, and ‘Touch Some Breasts‘ campaigns/businesses which sexualize breast cancer by making women’s suffering about the male gaze (classy!). Then there’s this horrible video which came out of Chile recently that tries to get men on board by reminding them that breasts exist only for male pleasure. Which is, of course, why they matter. Get it? Women don’t matter — it’s their sexualized body parts that are important (are we starting to understand how objectification hurts women now?).

And finally, I somehow managed to miss the worst of them all earlier this month (I think I must have started blocking this stuff out as a coping mecanism) — the icing on the porn-culture-is-everywhere cake — having realized that they weren’t exploiting absolutely every aspect of women’s lives, Pornhub.com jumped on board (not linking to the campaign page, nope, no way) the breast cancer awareness train.

While originally the company tried to partner with the Susan G. Komen Foundation, the organization (who is capable of making ethical decisions every once in a while) refused to align themselves with Pornhub and said they wouldn’t accept any donations from them. Apparently they are still looking for a charity to donate to.

Corey Price, vice president of Pornhub says, pervily: “Our viewers will be raising money and awareness by doing something they already love: watching porn.”

Uh huh. Right. For sure all those dudes are “raising awareness” about breast cancer via masturbation – the cure for everything.

So now porn is being presented as something that saves women’s lives. Or at very least cares about them. I’m thinking this is what the end of the world looks like.

The problems with awareness campaigns have been well documented. Most of these campaigns either don’t actually do anything and some of the companies who use ‘breast cancer awareness’ in order to sell products are actually part of the problem. Awareness campaigns tend to focus on unproductive solutions that ignore and distract from the root issues.

Organizations like Breast Cancer Action point out that “despite better treatments and increased access for many women, 40,000 women still die from the disease each year. A woman is diagnosed with breast cancer every two minutes. In the 1960s, a woman’s lifetime risk for breast cancer was 1 in 20. Today it is 1 in 8.”

What the hell is going on here? Is it possible that we all just aren’t watching enough porn?

Well, no. In fact porn is not the missing link.

While awareness campaigns and pink ribbon crap are on the rise, so is breast cancer. The reality is that we still have minimal understanding around causes of breast cancer, though we do know that “involuntary exposures to toxins in the environment” are a factor. Toxins and environmental factors are not addressed by awareness campaigns or pink ribbons. I assume this is because these issues have nothing to do with masturbation or profit. If only there were a way to sex up carcinogens.

Pornhub hates women. Which makes it all the more sickening to read statements such as this one,  from their actual press release:

It doesn’t matter if you’re into itty-bitty-titties, the perfect handful, jumbo fun-bags or low-swinging flapjacks, what matters most is that your kind and selfless gesture will go a long way towards helping our sisters to find a cure.

“Sisters”?? Go die.

Porn culture is the beginning of the end. If we aren’t talking about the objectification and sexualization of women as a key issue in the feminist movement then we may as well give up.

Though I occasionally find a good article in Vice, mostly I just find really terrible writing and misogyny/efforts at popularizing pornography. I mean, I like reading about drugs as much as the next person, but I just can’t stomach the constant objectification and glorification of porn (because I’m too fucking uptight or stupid to ‘get’ how objectification is actually artsy and ok if hipsters are doing it).

The magazine has really nailed the whole ‘irony masks racism and sexism‘ thing. It’s also spawned a whole faction of idiot hipsters who think that their writing is deep because it makes no sense. It’s the emperor has no clothes redux. NOBODY SAY ANYTHING JUST SMILE AND NOD AND PAT YOUR BUDDIES ON THE BACK BECAUSE THEY HAVE ALL THE RIGHT HIPSTER CONNECTIONS AND HAVE NEVER WRITTEN ANYTHING BEFORE AND DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE ANYTHING INTERESTING TO SAY BUT TODAY THEY DECIDED THEY WERE A WRITER AND HAHA DOES ANYONE HERE REALLY KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON HAHA NO BUT WHATEVER HA THAT CAPTION DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE.

ANYWAY.

Bad writing aside (yeah whatever, people in glass houses, yada yada), I’m getting fucking sick of the whole misogyny disguised as irony thing.

Earlier this week I saw these photos posted from a local hipster night that I’ve actually attended on many occasions. It’s awkward to say so publicly because Vancouver is a small place and because friends of friends etc, but seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you people?

It’s one thing to put up your party photos in your outfits trying to impress one another. It’s absolutely another thing to put up images of girls who are clearly fucked up and wasted spreading their legs for the camera. Did you ask their permission ONCE SOBER whether or not they minded having these images posted publicly? Because if it were me I would fucking mind. Acting like a trashy idiot whilst drunk is par for the course. We ALL do it. Ok, so I do it. But once actions become imagery, said images could possibly be construed as porny and it’s not your GOD GIVEN RIGHT because you know how to work a fucking camera to post this shit on the internet.

And even if all those women did give permission, in sobriety, for you to post their crotch/boob shots online, these images, whether or not you think they’re hip or ironic or funny or whatever, are fucking porny.

But I digress. The initial reason for this post was actually to address Jezebel’s new sex advice columnist, Karley Sciortino, who’s blog, Slutever got her a show at Vice under the same name.

In her inaugural column at Jezebel, Sciortino addresses facials and something called “pussy whipping” (Which I didn’t know was a thing either. APPARENTLY it’s “when someone hits your vagina with a whip”. Good to know, good to know.). And whatever, do what you want I guess. But for someone who is a) writing a sex advice column, so like, one would assume we would have thoughts and opinions on things and issues relating to sex, and b) writing a sex advice column for a feminist-ish site, responding to the issue of pussy whipping by saying:

In my mind, asking my view on pussy-whipping, or facials, is equivalent to asking, “What are your views on can openers?” These are all just things that exist in the world, and we don’t need to take a stance on them. There are certain matters that deserve careful consideration (i.e. casting an actress to play yourself in the movie version of your life); some casual jizz on your face isn’t one of them.

Um, what? Pussy whipping is the same as can openers? HAVING OPINIONS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT THINGS IS SO STUPID YOU GUYS.

She goes on:

People — women in particular — really need to get over the “is this degrading?” thing. If you have to stop and think about whether something is degrading or not, then it probably isn’t. I understand there are complex emotions involved in sex, so everything isn’t always black and white, but I also think that sometimes girls’ brains become so clouded by bullshit “feminist” ideals — “thou shall not be treated like an object,” “thou shall always be offended by men’s pervy remarks” (as if we are not equally adept at dismissing them, and dishing them out) — that we spoil our own fun.

Ok so no. Women do NOT in ANY WAY need to get over the “‘is this degrading?’ thing.” They do not need to stop thinking about things and questioning things like objectification and misogynist comments AKA SEXISM IN ACTION. That isn’t to say that you can’t like what you like or do what you want in the bedroom, but to suggest that thinking about and questioning our behaviour and sexuality is a stupid waste of time because, I don’t know, IT’S ALL SO IRONIC AND WE’RE SO BLAZÉ AND APATHETIC ABOUT EVERYTHING BECAUSE THINKING ABOUT THINGS AND CARING ABOUT THINGS IS SO LAME, is the worst, most thoughtless, boring-ass “advice” I’ve ever heard.

And then there’s the dig at feminism. That one really takes the cake: “Sometimes girls’ brains become so clouded by bullshit “feminist” ideals…” Really? REALLY??? Our brains are clouded by oh-so-powerful feminism? That’s like saying our brains are clouded by thoughts. “Oh y’all are just thinking to much. Let patriarchy take care of this for you.”

When the response to perfectly valid questions about whether or not a sexual act may or may not be degrading (and no, that doesn’t mean it is black and white – there can be BOTH nuance and critical thought for people who are ok with using tools such as critical thinking — BUT EW GROSS THAT’S FEMINISM ISN’T IT??) is “don’t worry your pretty little head about that”, that pretty much means that we’re supposed to let patriarchy do the thinking for us.

So what have we learned from this sex advice column, folks? Caring about and thinking about things JUST ISN’T COOL. And whatever, that’s fine for Vice. We expect that from them. We expect casual misogyny because giving a fuck isn’t a thing that the cool kids do – but for a site like Jezebel, which sort of aims to provide feminism-lite style commentary on issues and events, to hire a sex advice columnist who tells women to stop thinking so much and then slags feminism for brainwashing us into using our powers of critical thought is total bullshit.

Time to start caring about shit, hipsters. You look like a bunch of assholes. LIKE YOU CARE.

As feminists, sleeping with men is always going to be a little fraught.

Not getting to the actual act, per se – jumping into bed with people we feel like jumping into bed with can be pretty straightforward – rather the politics surrounding feminists having sex with men within the context of a patriarchy as well as, of course, the maintenance of a sexual relationship with a man in the long-term.

Applying the phrase, ‘the personal is political’, seems particularly difficult when we are talking about an act that can be very private and very personal. Certainly sex is one of those things that can make us feel extremely vulnerable. Including politics or even acknowledging that, in one way or another, there is a larger context to our behaviour, when it comes to sex, is something that I would say leaves something to be desired. Particularly for women, who work so hard to shake the inner and outer critic that says: ‘you’re not good enough’, ‘you’re not hot enough’, ‘you’re too slutty’, ‘you’re not slutty enough’ – I get why we might want to avoid opening themselves up to (further) public critique in the form of feminism. ‘Get the fuck out of my bedroom’ does strike me as a remarkably reasoned response.

That said, I’m not one to take individual acts as simply individual acts.

Recently, Emily McCombs posted a piece at xojane.com about her love of facials (no, not the kind you get at the spa). She wrote:

No, I don’t feel degraded by it, nor do I think my male partners’ enjoyment of said act means they hate women.  I mean, if they did, there are faster ways to oppress us than one shot in the face at a time.

She adds: “My orgasms are a politics-free zone.”

So ok. I also want politics to stay the hell out of my orgasms. BUT OH THEY JUST WON’T. I can’t help but acknowledge that sometimes the things we do or want or say in the bedroom are not entirely free of ‘politics’. Being aware that the larger context that, for example, might create a desire for a man to cum on our faces might possibly include, well, porn for one, doesn’t make you a bad person for enjoying that act. I think that it’s possible for an act to be symbolically degrading without an individual necessarily feeling degraded by that act in all cirucumstances. Feeling degraded isn’t necessarily necessary in order to acknowledge that often our desires are shaped by a larger culture that has worked very hard, for a very long time, to sexualize the degradation of women. And that acknowledgment does not mean the same thing as saying: “you are bad and wrong and unfeminist and ruining feminism for everyone because of the things that turn you on in bed.” Nope. Not the same.

To me, I just can’t see the point of being a feminist if I’m not going to ask ‘why?’ about most everything. I ask why I keep shaving my legs, why I’m unable to eat food for the entire day before a first date (I get nervous, you guys!), why I think buying shoes will make my life better, and I ask why I feel or think or do the things I do in bed with a man. Sometimes I even think about why I go to bed with men in the first place. Is this biological or social? Would I be a lesbian if I hadn’t been conditioned towards heterosexuality? Some of these questions I have answers to, others I’m not quite sure about. But I know this: much of my sexual history and behaviour has been determined by factors including my growing up a girl in a man’s world.

My thoughts, desires, insecurities, and behaviours are not suddenly cordoned off from a larger culture once I close the bedroom door. I also don’t believe I’m being degraded every time I have sex with a man, though many accuse feminists of holding this belief. I actually don’t know a single feminist, in person, who believes that.

Like McCombs, I don’t see semen as “dirty or offensive”  — though I’m not convinced that that’s what Dworkin meant when she said:

The ejaculation on her is a way of saying (through showing) that she is contaminated with his dirt; that she is dirty.

First off, I think there is a difference between the images we see in pornography, which is what Dworkin is referencing in this quote from her 1993 speech Pornography Happens to Women, and what we do as individuals in the bedroom (though these two may well be connected). When we see a man ejaculating onto a woman’s face in pornography, it is reasonable to view that act as representative of women’s subordination. Mainstream pornography is generally, as Dworkin describes, about things happening to women’s bodies. Things are done to their bodies. Men are the actors, and male fantasies are projected onto the bodies of women.

In film theory everything has meaning. Everything is symbolic. Similarly, in pornography, as Dworkin points out “everything means something.” Gender means something, bodies mean something, body parts mean something, the acts done to women mean something. Getting a facial in your bedroom doesn’t necessarily have the same meaning as a woman getting a facial in a porn movie does and, in fact, the relevance of whether or not the individual actress in the porn appears to be ‘enjoying’ the cum shot to her face is less important than the larger meaning of the image on screen. I am not at all surprised that “the majority of porn shows women basking in and positively loving receiving a facial” or that “a lot more straight porn features women happily accepting facials than reacting with disgust and evident humiliation” because women in porn are presenting a fantasy and that fantasy is that women enjoy being objectified, cum on, gang-raped, called whores and bitches, whatever. Porn is about male fantasy. The fantasy is that women like everything you do to them, as man.

So how does this translate into real life? Women spend a lot of time and energy trying to please men. We learn early on that we are being looked at – that we are to be looked at. That we are performers. It took years before I actually started enjoying sex. YEARS. I think what I enjoyed most about sex, when I was younger, was the feeling of being desired. The actual sex part was super boring for the first while.

We learn, as girls and women, that the performance is more important than the actual feeling. Do you know how many women can’t actually relax during sex because they are so self-conscious about whether or not their stomachs look flabby? A lot. Read Cosmo (which actually suggests facing away from your partner during sex if you feel self-conscious about your body!?). HOW THE HELL ARE WOMEN SUPPOSED TO HAVE ORGASMS WHEN THEY ARE WORRYING ABOUT WHAT THEIR STOMACHS LOOK LIKE? And in other news, are men everywhere having trouble relaxing and cumming while they are in bed with women because they’re concerned their pecs aren’t muscly enough? Sigh.

What I’m saying is that, when we feel that sex is a performance it impacts, well, our performance. And the reason we see ourselves as performers in the bedroom, the reason that we’re thinking about our appearances, and the sounds we’re making, and our facial expressions, is in large part because of the porn/pornified images we have seen onscreen.

So same goes for facials. It’s more than likely that women learned this was hot from porn. And that is troubling. Because I think emulating porn doesn’t help us enjoy our bodies or sex, nor does it help us relax and have pleasure in bed. In fact it inhibits it in many ways.

All that said, I actually completely agree with McCombs when she says: “We can recognize our influences while still liking what we like.” We don’t have to have sex in any prescribed way simply because we are feminists. But to say that “sexism doesn’t get to dictate what I can and can’t enjoy” isn’t entirely true. Because in many ways it does and it has. All the fucked up ways I behave in my life were, as far as I can tell and in one way or another, determined by my experience being socialized in a patriarchal society. That doesn’t mean I need to hate myself for it. It doesn’t even mean I need to stop behaving in those ways or thinking those weird, unhealthy things about my face/life/body/boyfriends. But it sure doesn’t hurt to recognize how sexism factors into the equation. In fact, I think that understanding the way that sexism has messed with my head is the only way to overcome it (eventually).

Feminism has made sex better for me. Not worse. Feminism hasn’t limited me, it’s helped me to understand me. It’s helped me understand what I’m comfortable with, who I’m comfortable with, and what I’m comfortable doing. It hasn’t made me ashamed. What made me ashamed was the not knowing. The trying to fit into some pornified version of the me I thought I was supposed to be. Why didn’t I like all of the things I thought I was supposed to like? Without feminism I thought I just wasn’t liberated enough to enjoy degradation. That was a whole bunch of bullshit. I don’t need to dress up in cheesy lingerie and put on a strip show in order to prove how empowered I am because I don’t actually need to prove anything to anyone. Thanks feminism!

This isn’t to say that I’m constantly having perfect, empowered, multiple-orgasm, insecurity-free sex either. It doesn’t mean that I don’t catch myself performing at times. The sexism is still there folks! Inside the bedroom. Inside my head. But I’m done trying to enjoy or pretending to enjoy things that feel boring/painful/degrading because I feel like that’s what sexy girls do.

So I don’t particularly want politics in my bedroom either, but they’re there. Whether we like it or not. As long as we’re feminists and we’re living in a patriarchy, it’s very likely that we’re going to desire or enjoy things in the bedroom that might make us uncomfortable or confused or uncertain. We might wonder why sometimes we feel as though we are performing, why we asked to be spanked, or why we love getting facials. I’m never going to tell anyone to stop liking those things but I’m also not going to pretend as though that facial isn’t symbolic. You aren’t fucking in a bubble and yet you also can have your desire. Have it without shame. No one’s here to police the sex you are having but as we move forward in this world and on our paths as feminists, so long as we are sleeping with men, politics will be in the bedroom, in one way or another.

But yes, you can keep your orgasms.

According to a recent article in The Daily the new hot thing for marrieds or soon-to-be-marrieds is porn. Ha! Obviously right? But this isn’t just any porn, it’s fiancée porn! Starring you!

It’s called boudoir photography and the idea is that, supposedly, gifting your husband with his very own wifey porn will stop him from consuming strange lady porn online.

The Daily quotes Dallas-based wedding photographer Lynn Michelle as saying: “A lot of women do boudoir because they’re afraid their fiancés are looking at porn and they’d rather them be looking at her.”

First of all, that strikes me as all kinds of stupid. If your husband/fiancé wants to watch porn he’s going to watch porn. I seriously doubt that, just because you’ve produced your own private monogamy-themed porn for him, he’s going to give up his online porn habit. It seems to me that the kinds of relationships wherein the female partner is passively and hopefully trying to discourage their partner from watching porn, all the while knowing and understanding that their partner is currently watching and has always watched porn, are the kinds of relationships wherein porn consumption is accepted and acceptable. In fact, becoming a porn actress yourself seems to encourage the idea that porn consumption is just a natural part of being a man.

Here’s a thing. Men who get laid for free still seek out prostitutes. Men who have sexy wives still watch porn. Men whose wives take pole-dancing classes for funandkicks! still go to strip clubs. No amount of playing the game is going to discourage a man who likes to objectify women from objectifying women. If you want to marry a guy who doesn’t watch porn your best bet would likely be to marry a guy who doesn’t watch porn. In terms of effecting change, the if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em technique has never worked in the history of ever.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all men watch porn and frequent strip clubs and buy sex. I’m also not saying that men can’t or don’t change. But it’s more likely that a man is going to stop objectifying and exploiting women (or never do it at all) because he arrives at some understanding of the the fact that the sex industry exploits and objectifies women and isn’t useful in terms of building an ethical, egalitarian world (other possibilities that may contribute to ending men’s exploitation of women includes creating a system wherein women can survive and thrive in our world without having to resort to selling sex). He’s not going to understand any of those things because you dress up in sexy wedding-themed lingerie (also, ew?) and take photos.

Somehow we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that emulating porn stars and strippers is something that is fun and sexy (see Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs for more on that postfeminist phenomenon) good time lady fun. So, instead of coming up with things that might actually be fun and sexy and liberating for ourselves as women, we give up and tag along behind the boys. For all of our supposed sexual freedom, we sure are an unimaginative bunch.

Another example of this lies in the difference between popular activities for stag and stagette parties.

The typical/stereotypical stag party often involves the buying of sex in one way or another. The bachelor celebrates his ‘last day of freedom’ by celebrating women’s lack of freedom. He goes to a strip club, is provided with lap dances and/or more elaborate sexual services. Not all men do this, of course. Many men I know can come up with much more interesting things to do than sit around in a skeezy room with a bunch of dudes with half hard-ons, buying over-priced drinks and paying bored women to pretend they are even remotely interesting or attractive. But I think it’s fair to say that this is a popular activity for many pre-wedding bachelors.

In contrast, the most popular trend for stagette parties as of late is to pretend to be strippers for a day. Also known as pole dancing or lap dancing classes. How this is ‘fun’ I will never understand. I mean, let me get this straight — while your soon-to-be douchebag husband is off watching strippers (because, let’s not forget, male bonding is based on celebrating male power and, therefore, female subordination WHOOOOO!), you and your girlfriends are practicing to be strippers yourselves. Not because you need a job, no no. But because our twisted world has manipulated us into believing that playing with objectification and pretending that women’s subordinate status in our society is actually empowering because we’ve volunteered to objectify ourselves is fun! So true. Having to sell sex to creepy drunk losers for a living is SO MUCH FUN.

This also plays right into that virgin/whore dichotomy patriarchy is so fond of. Men get to marry the ‘virgins’ who behave publicly chaste but privately will behave like ‘whores’ for their husbands’ pleasure. The real ‘whores’, of course, don’t get to play this privileged game because their livelihood is dependent on behaving like and being labeled as ‘whores’ publicly. As we can see, this stripper-for-a-day crap is offensive and oppressive for a variety of reasons.

I mean, come on. Can’t we do any better than this? Are we seeing the ridiculousness that is taking pole-dancing classes while our male partners are off watching pole-dancers? Would this be an appropriate time to mention the word irony?  While our partners are out being creepy assholes we are busy practicing how to perform for them. Gross. And do we really believe that becoming the porn our boyfriends or husbands watch is going to stop them from watching porn? Does this strike us as slightly illogical?

Can’t our lives please revolve around more than male fantasies? Please? Let’s at least try.