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Tomorrow Waits With Joy
Holly at The Pervocracy posted an entry titled “Sex-Pozzie“, which was then mentioned on Feministe, and both threads have generated many comments of the wow/ugh inducing variety.
All I can muster is to republish parts of two earlier posts. When I wrote them the suicide of Hope Witsell was in the news.
First there was:
This is about the slut-shaming suicide of a 13 yr old girl who killed herself. Hope Witsell sent some naked photos, they got passed around like naked photos always do, her school, students and teachers alike, slut-shamed her mercilessly.
This is what sex-positive feminism is all about. It’s not about liking sex, it’s about teaching that sex isn’t shameful. Teaching that sex, and that nudity, is “positive” is the opposite of teaching that it’s shameful. We can’t teach “not shameful” without teaching “positive”. It’d be really great if we can, if you know how, please let us know.
This girl got the same shaming in the hallways of her school, from boys and girls both, that so many bloggers heap on playboy centerfolds. I know, we don’t call them sluts anymore so much, we know something doesn’t feel right about that, so we say they promote “rape-culture” and women’s oppression, if the centerfold happens to have said that she feels “empowered” by it, we tell her she is confused, possibly brainwashed. Delusional, stupid, childlike, “doesn’t get structure”, weird. That is shaming.
The idea that sex is not the most important thing is what, I think, all feminists want to teach girls. I understand the perception a lot of people have of what “pro-sex” feminism is; that it’s about liking sex, and thinking that sex is great, but “pro-sex” feminism is just a different way to teach girls that sex isn’t the most important thing.
Then there was:
Among the various things that decorate my walls, is a small unassuming frame with just one dash of color and a handful of words:
Hope. Tomorrow waits with joy.
That’s what I’d like to say to every girl who has to walk down the hall while taunts, spoken or imagined, of SLUT! and WHORE! echo behind them. Tomorrow waits with joy. I won’t tell you it gets better. I can’t make that promise. I can’t promise that it gets easier either, it does for a while, but then it gets worse again. Life is like that.
But someday, beyond the better or worse and easy or hard, comes understanding, and understanding brings joy.
Those people with their taunts, and their justifications for saying them, will never go away. That’s another lie I won’t tell you. No one grows out of it. They use new words, and they construct vast theories of why it is ok to call you a slut. They will twist it and twist it until they have painted you as the one who taunts, and they are the ones who suffer. They may even get you to start believing it, that it’s your fault. It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault that you took a naked picture of yourself.
Were you proud of your body? Were you trying to prove something? Were you trying to get attention? Did you do it for pride, ego, or loneliness? It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault that you sent the picture to a boy, or a girl.
Did you want them to like you? Did you want to feel pretty? Did you want to feel wanted? Did you want to? It’s not your fault for wanting to. It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault that the boy, or the girl, disregarded your wishes and didn’t guard the photo the way you expected it to be guarded.
Were they charming? Did they promise they wouldn’t share it? Did they say you were special? It’s not your fault that you fell for it. It’s not your fault.
But more important than it not being your “fault” – is that the things you did, are no one’s fault. It is all right and good and normal and natural. To be proud, to feel lonely sometimes, to want attention, to be too trusting – all of that is right and good and normal and natural. It’s nobody’s fault that you are a normal person. What blame could there ever be for “normal?”
Only a slut – would be so prideful, so eager for attention, or so easily fooled. If that’s what makes a slut, we are all sluts.
The MacKinnon Patriarch
If you’ve got a beef with Catharine MacKinnon then you’ve come to the right place. Watch my latest from youtube:
Christmas Is Special Because Of Jesus!!
We Are All Sluts
Among the various things that decorate my walls, is a small unassuming frame with just one dash of color and a handful of words:
Hope. Tomorrow waits with joy.
That’s what I’d like to say to every girl who has to walk down the hall while taunts, spoken or imagined, of SLUT! and WHORE! echo behind them. Tomorrow waits with joy. I won’t tell you it gets better. I can’t make that promise. I can’t promise that it gets easier either, it does for a while, but then it gets worse again. Life is like that.
How Did All This Patriarchy Get Into My Feminism?
If the “acceptableness” of woman has been defined by patriarchy largely by her willingness to not demand attention - If patriarchy doesn’t approve of attention seeking women – whether they get attention by sex or smarts – how can approving of attention seeking women support Patriarchy? It doesn’t, no matter who says it does.Two groups have fought like hell for 30 years to keep that status quo. Conservative Patriarchy upholders and ‘Radical’ Feminism. We never turned the status quo into “women who use sex are the best!” – although many radical feminists today seem to think that we did. Since the very first woman’s studies programs began, feminism has split into a war over whether or not getting “attention by sex” is good or bad. One side says it’s bad, one side says it’s good. One side upholds the status quo, one side doesn’t.
Almost all of feminist energy, only 3 or 4 years after roe v. wade, was focused exclusively on fighting “pornography” which – not coincidentally was the go-to industry for women who wanted “attention for sex” or who used sex to attain power. It’s not a coincidence that feminists such as Betty Friedan, who literally started ’2nd wave feminism’ with The Feminine Mystique,aligned themselves against the anti-pornography crusaders. Those early “pro-sex” feminists recognized that women who use sex for gain were not the enemy that ”radical feminism” painted them as.
It’s interesting if you look at the start of things, of 2nd wave feminism, if you look at it with a skeptical eye, I have and no it doesn’t make me an anti-feminist, but it’s interesting that there were groups of feminists, and then there were women who were powerful in other areas, but didn’t actually seem to be saying very feminist sorts of things. They were lawyers and doctors and writers who were of the opinion that even though women deserve to be ‘equal’ – sluts were still bad (nevermind the question of what makes a slut). They justify that wrong-headed belief that sluts are bad with a lot of theories, which when you break them down they are all basically: hate the sin, not the sinner. Slutty Sinners are only tempted by the Devil of Patriachy with empty promises and lies.
As feminism advances, the fight against it changes, and the most hotly debated area of feminism is still all about women who use sex for attention. A sex positive feminist will say that a woman who poses in playboy is being a feminist because she earns money using sex/sexuality/her body, Not-so-sex-positive feminists will say that she is using sex/sexuality/her body to get attention. Then the quesiton is ‘what’s wrong with attention’ and the reply is that it depends on the kind of attention – right back to the belief that sex to get attention is wrong – right back to the status quo.
If you ask what’s wrong with liking attention by sex, you get a whirlwind of justification for why it’s wrong like she’s advancing ‘rape-culture’, which relies on the theories that say men are just natural born brutes and liars and sex fiends who’ll do anything to keep a woman under his control. They rationalize and justify the dislike of women who use sex with examples of what the most violent and disturbed men have done to women. If someone doubts the assertion that so many men are that violent, and if they say that some women just like sex, they are painted as an apologetic and an anti-feminist. I doubt the assertion, not because I care that men get a bad rep, but because it is clear to me that they use this image of Man as Beast to justify their own discomfort about these women who use sex. No woman would choose it, no woman would like, they must have been forced. They must have been tricked, coerced, trained to perform.
There is nothing wrong with disliking women who use sex, but it’s not feminist to try to sway everyone else to your way of thinking when you have to use lies and distortions to rationalize your questionable theories.
Being so dedicated to that feminism because that’s what you’ve been taught, to the point where you can’t step away and take a look with a critical eye, isn’t a good thing. You can’t tell that the back of the house is on fire unless you look or you have a smoke alarm. Pro-Sex feminism is the smoke alarm. At this point, we’re very very very alarmed. Not many people seem to be listening. A lot of people would like us to shut up and go away, and we will, but you have to put out the fire first.
Pro-Sex Feminist Thoughts To Ponder
I didn’t know it at the time, I just read about it on the Curvature about Hope, a 13 year old girl who killed herself because she was “slut-shamed” at school was published on the same day I wrote this:
I guess this is about reclaiming words, specifically the word “slut”. You know the term “slut-shaming”, and how it’s a bad thing, but who’s doing the shaming? It seems like most of the time feminist columns and blogs are helping to uphold the status quo that says “girls who like sex are bad”.When someone out there in not-really-a-feminist land passes judgement on a woman for some sort of real or implied sexual “transgression”, a lot of feminists respond:
Just because a girl likes sex, it doesn’t make her a slut.
Conclusion?
Sluts are bad.
The Feminist Sex Wars – Too Much War, Not At All Sexy
But yeah, unfortunately, as much as I truly believe the “too much war” part of that, guess I’m a soldier in this bullshit and can’t just retreat from it. None of us can – whatever side a person is on – they are on that side in that fight because it’s important to them, and the cause is a righteous one from where they sit. It’s a terrible thing for people who are so often allied on so many issues to find themselves on either side of a divide within the larger ideology they believe in. It’s the greatest weakness of the political left – we encourage free thinking and being true to ones self – and well, sure enough – heartily encouraged, people go off and start thinking freely and being true to themselves all over the place like they can’t get enough of it :) - and so we have a bunch of groups – all good folks – but groups who have their own areas of concern or issue or agenda to work. I don’t mean to criticize – all that seems a great way to live life – but in real life we also have a bunch of weirdos who unquestioningly follow lessons from thousand year old moralistic fables and worry about whether or not god will take them to cloud-town after they are dead - and they believe damn near anything anybody tells them - tell ‘em god sent you, praise him, stick around for a while and next thing you know they’ll give you the deed to their house - just tell ’em the baby jesus said so. If it weren’t for those weirdos we’d probably all be ok.
So the feminist sex wars – yeah, totally not sexy, but quite passionate. And not really so much about sex as it’s about social constructionism and evolutionary psychology. When you hear a feminist bad-mouthing evolutionary psychology as anti-feminist nonsense – she’s probably NOT a sex positive feminist.
“Feminist social constructionist evolutionary psychology wars” would maybe be a better name for it because then at least people would know how unsexy it really is.
Feminist SCEP Wars – almost has the same ring to it as “sex wars”, but even better because SCEP sounds like some horrible disease, hard C on that btw. And Feminists DO hate horrible diseases, I think we can all agree on that.
Transgender Day of Remembrance
Today marks the 11th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, and it’s not just a day where we are supposed to remember-to-remember that transgender people exist, but a day to remember all the transgender people who have been killed out of ignorance, bigotry and hatred.
“The Gender Puzzle”
Andrea Dworkin on BookTV – from 2002
The video isn’t embeddable you can watch it here (update: maybe you can watch it, the page is giving me trouble now, says it has errors) It’s 51:24 in duration, including introduction and question and answer portion. I’ve transcribed only Ms. Dworkin’s prepared speech, beginning at 3:30, below, and my thoughts on what she said follow:
