And now, an interjection from a sex-positive feminist

When I usually encounter a "sex-positive" on the internet, they are about as far from being feminists as humanly possible. I submit for your evidence: Bang-Bros (don't worry, it's just a wikipedia link).

Occasionally, I actually stumble upon an actual feminist, not someone who is posing as one to write off their nasty exploitive shit as art, who submits that they are "sex-positive".

Via Feministe, KaeLyn's Feminist Porn: Sex, Consent, and Getting Off. I was pleasantly surprised. No overt anti-feminist sentiments were expressed. No glaring logical holes were presented. The comment thread, quite long at this point, is mostly civil.

Nevertheless, the post bothered me. Not in the way that inspires me to hurt inanimate objects, but in the way that I felt that the work of my feminist icons and my own opinions were being unintentionally misunderstood and discarded.

I find it most constructive to refer to the actual post for my analysis. KaeLyn starts her prose with:

Feminism has a love/hate relationship with sex.

How so? I have yet to meet a feminist that isn't a parody of the word that actually loathes mutual sexual satisfaction between various amount of people of various genders and non-genders. I simply have an issue with how that mutually consensual contact may be expressed in fashions that I feel have more to do with social convention and gender roles than reciprocal respect and genuine want. I don't hate sex, and I surmise that even the most strident of radical feminists doesn't either. Merely, most of us don't consider some forms of popularly considered "sex" sex at all. Where the average Joe sees a particular act as sex (for example, having sex with a sleeping girlfriend), I might see rape. That doesn't mean I hate sex, that means I hate rape and rapists. Also, there is a bunch of sexual expressions that are not rape in the legal/criminal sense, but I feel would not be possible outside of the pressures of a patriarchal society. Again, that is not a hatred of sex. Also, I have yet to find any sort of feminist that truly hates sex. It would probably be prudent of KaeLyn to reference a "feminist" that she assumes hates sex, so that I am not puzzled as to what she is referring to.

I once spent an evening at a hole-in-the-wall strip club with a 20-something friend fiercely debating her anti-pornography/anti-prostitution position. We spent half an hour of that night talking with a dancer, a young single mom and the only woman-of-color on the floor. She said it was better than working at a grocery store; she made more money and didn’t have to pay for day care. How could I blame her? It was niave and classist for us to engage her in this conversation, but I was in college and didn’t know how stupid I was being.

How is it naïve and classist to want to know the justifications and thoughts of a stripper? I think it's actually quite insulting to assume that the acts and works of a stripper are beyond question, or that engaging a stripper in conversation about her work, in so long as she is willing to talk, is demeaning. No human is ever beyond question, period. Of course, there is a right and wrong way to do everything. Simply discussing stripping with a stripper with the goal of understanding her is fine, in so long as she is willing to talk. Denigrating her lifestyle, however, would be sexist and classist.

Furthermore, is it naïve or stupid of me to wish that there were no women in the world that would have to pick between a minimum wage job and sex work? I strongly feel that true agency is not found between a rock and a hard place.

In the 60’s and 70’s, Andrea Dworkin led a brilliant fight to expose and illuminate rape culture and end violence against women. Her analysis of the gender binary, pornography, and theories of penetrative sex as a patriarchal act is at the titillating center of a lively and necessary conversation in the feminist community. I also believe the work of Dworkin and her peers has contributed to the division of lesbian and heterosexual feminists, persecution and demoralization of sex work and sex workers, exclusion of transfolk from feminist spaces, and a whole lot of personal feminist guilt. But I gotta’ give kudos to Dworkin for putting rape culture on the map and, there are many awesome, inspiring, fabulous feminist leaders I admire who also happen to be card-carrying members of the anti-prostitution camp including Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan.

How and why has Dworkin divided lesbians and heterosexual feminists? I consider myself a member of the "not heterosexual" category, and I don't feel ostracized and neglected by feminism. That mainly is because feminism is concerned with gender roles, and those are most often expressed in the relationships between two people of the opposite gender identity. Also, it might have something to do with the fact that heterosexuals are the majority of the population, and their experiences are more shaped by social norms and more common to come across. That is not to say that feminism never touches lesbianism, bisexuality, or any other deviancies from the gender binary. For example, the Beyond Masculinity project touched on the these issues from the perspective of genetic males.

Also, I have never heard of feminists persecuting and demoralizing sex workers. We criticize sex work, true, but that's because the conditions of every facet of the industry are so heinous that ignoring them would be tantamount to malicious neglect. If we truly want to fight against rape and sexism, I feel that we ought to look at the parts of our economy that are responsible for the most paid rape, infidelity, murder, abuse, disenfranchisement, child exploitation, and objectification. Simply wringing our hands about how much housework an upper-class woman does in comparison to her husband is a worthy discussion, but the seriousness of that issue pales in comparison to things like how the legal system ignores violence against sex workers but defends those that profit the most off of sex work, namely pimps, pornographers, and people like Hugh Hefner. All of the above, I might add, are idolized by popular culture while sex workers are vilified or objectified.

Furthermore, since when has Dworkin said anything nasty about transsfolk? The draft of her civil rights ordinance that characterized pornography as "the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words" states that the use of men, children, and transsexuals in the above context is also relevant. I recall, although I cannot locate a direct quote, that in Woman Hating she stated something to the effect that transfolk wouldn't exist if we lived in a completely unsexist world, although that doesn't mean that they don't live in a state of emergency and deserve full state funding for any and all medical procedures. By that, I gather that without a patriarchy, gender really doesn't matter much at all. In fact, gender will be as unremarkable as having grey or green eyes. Thus, if we change our gender, it would have very little effect on how people perceive us, much like wearing colored contacts or having your irises tattooed a different color. I do not interpret these as anti-transsexual sentiments.

All that said, a reproductive justice framework, in my mind, calls for the full rights of sex workers and a liberation of sexuality that goes beyond mainstream pornography and sex work. Don’t women, and all people, have the right to control their bodies, access their sexual desires, and to enjoy safe and consensual sexual pleasure?

Ironically, I completely agree with the above statement, but I draw completely different conclusions from it than those that KaeLyn expresses.

And while the porn and sex/adult industry is currently geared towards men and definitely objectifies women, forgets women’s pleasure, and supports an oppressive rape culture, I see a bigger solution than attempting to censor or criminalize sex. Like abortion, homosexuality, and other social issues that have been labeled “deviant” and make people uncomfortable, sex work and the sex trade will always go on, even if pushed underground. And legalization and support of sex work can open the door to helping the sex/adult industry become safer and healthier for sex workers and a more welcoming and affirming place for feminists and all people.

KaeLyn's initial reaction to the sex/adult industries are completely correct. Then, she errs. Radical feminists want to criminalize acts and depictions of rape and objectification, not sex. Abortion and homosexuality are not fraught with the same ethically wrong abuses as the sex industry. Pornography, stripping, and prostitution are not true depictions of sexuality and sex any more so than two actors in a sex scene are actually having sex. Some radical feminists don't even want to criminalize those things, but they would like a strong stigma to be attached to them and demand to increase for actual depictions of true desire and sexuality. My feeling is that the aforementioned is impossible in our current society because of the gender binary and roles. Patriarchy is still alive and well, and it is still best expressed through sex, and reinforced through orgasm. In a true "chicken or the egg" dilemma, the sexist sentiments of society demand demeaning sexist porn, and then the porn further warps and twists definitions of sexuality. This theory is correct, simply because the instances of non-objectifying porn are extremely rare. If I rented the 100 most popular porn videos, and magically brought them to life, I would have 100 sexual situations that I would wish to have no part of. I submit that those that remain pro-porn have an extremely romanticized and erroneous view of our sex industry, of the demand that fuels it, and the conditions that allow it to flourish and proliferate.

It is right, however, to assume that it will go on as normal if it is illegal. However, legalizing it will hardly make those that sell objectifying disgusting smut easier to catch. Simply, our justice system is very concerned with the First Amendment and "innocent until proven guilty". Without suspicion of a crime, no investigation will take place. Our justice system is totally inept when it comes to combating things like child pornography, rape, human trafficking, and prostitution while those acts are illegal. Imagine how little will get done once the justice system has to have reasonable doubt of abuse, not just prostitution, before they break into a massage parlor that is holding women in sexual slavery. The justice system is not concerned, at all, with the plight of sex workers. The link I provided above to the man that received only a day in jail for killing a prostitute should make that abundantly clear. Donald Trump hires an underage nude model, offers an extremely transparent excuse, and receives no penalty. A Dallas strip club makes a 12-year old runaway perform in exchange for board, and is still open for business. These acts are blatantly illegal, exploitive, and foul, and still the justice system does nothing. Giving those that profit off the sex industry even more legal room to operate will hardly solve the problem. Ever since the Netherlands legalized prostitution, 80% of prostitutes are foreigners, and 70% have no papers, suggesting that they are trafficked. In contrast, once Sweden criminalized buying sex while legalizing selling sex and provided extensive exit programs for sex workers, demand for prostitutes has fallen, the number of prostitutes has fallen, and human trafficking has decreased at a rate unsurpassed by the usually ineffective anti-trafficking measures.

Making the demand for sex work legal will not magically transform the sex industries overnight into a feminist paradise. We should know better. The people who fuel and profit off of these industries the most are bigots, liars, criminals, traffickers, abusive pimps, cheating johns, pedophiles, and woman-haters. Simply put, the average john, porn-viewer, and strip club regular is not an up-standing member of the community. These are not curious people wanting to learn more about their sexuality (a ludicrous assumption, because there is very little in porn, prostitution, and stripping that has anything to do with real sexuality), these are people that, at best, are capable of completely divorcing the sensation of sexual arousal from respect and emotion. At worst, they are addicts to exploitation and degradation, constantly demanding more and more extreme porn until they glean sexual pleasure from rape, murder, children, abuse, and the most vile and inhuman acts.

I, and others in the pro-sex camp like Pat Califia and Betty Dodson, believe in a society that truly values gender justice, where women can make free and safe choices about sex and sexuality, be free from abuse and assault, and have available to them the same frank and authentic access to their sexual selves that Western culture affords men from the day they pop out of the womb.

Again, what would really help women make "free and save choices about sex and sexuality" is a society in which female sexuality is not defined by catering to the pleasures of her viewer. This is an evitable part of any economic exchange: by the very act of someone paying me to do something, it is assumed that the act itself is not pleasurable enough for me to do it without pay. A choice between minimum wage and stripping is not a choice that men have to make, so why should women? Also, a culture of men that masturbate to images of women that cannot and will not say no (or if they do, in the case of rape porn, they are forced anyway) is hardly going to convince anyone of anything other than the assumption that women are sexual property, open and welcoming to the male gaze, and always perpetually sexually available. These attitudes absolutely fuel the rape culture. In fact, I cannot think of a single man I have every slept with, who later admitted that he views porn, who seemed to have a good working knowledge of anything but what he wanted in bed and what he assumed I wanted by watching a bunch of smut. On the contrary, my best lover was a virgin who thought pornography was disgusting. We explored what we both liked without any preconceived notions of what sex ought to look like and what "real men" could get their women to do in bed.

Of course, it is more complicated then just embracing porn. I, obviously, do not condone human trafficking or sexual slavery. I do believe that legalizing sex work will help regulate and prosecute human trafficking and sexual slavery and will create human rights for sex workers. I do not believe that all pornography should be legal. Porn or sex work that involves minors, animals, killing of people or animals, and rape should be criminalized to the fullest extent of the law. I do think that pornography that include consensual sex between adults, including rape fantasy, incest taboo, BDSM, and other “kinky” sex should be legal and can be deconstructed and even embraced by feminist pedagogy.

Like I explained above, all evidence points towards the fact that legalizing the demand for the sex industry allows the most heinous of exploitations, while criminalizing it has proven to be the most successful policy. That is not to say, however, that the legality or illegality of sex work fuels exploitation. My theory is that neither matter much. What does matter is the simple fact that the justice system does not give a damn about the abuse of sex workers, even when such abuses are illegal. Legalizing sex work will only give them another excuse to fail to uphold the laws or put forth no effort in criminal investigations, and provide even more opportunities for pornographers, pimps, and johns to slip out of any charge brought against them.

KaeLyn's portrayal of "consensual" sex in this context is extremely limited. In a patriarchy, like I said, all sex acts lie along a continuum of non-consent. To simply group all sex acts into black and white categories of "consensual" and "non-consensual" is far too simplistic. In order to have such a sharp divide, the law would have to define consent in such a way that all acts could therefore be categorized easily and efficiently. As I have explained in a prior post about rape trails, the legal definition of consent is currently so easily manipulated that more women wind up shamed and alienated by rape trials than rapists wind up behind bars. This is because the law will say that consent is the difference between "yes" and NO. But that no has to be firmly and repeatedly stated. Oh, and there have to be bruises all over her body. Don't forget the signed witness statements of ten other people. They're only good witnesses if they are sober though.

Does anyone see the problem here? If rape porn is legal, how the hell is someone going to prove non-consent? If a woman will lose her only source of income and be popularly recognized as a prostitute or porn star, why the fuck would she come forward? If every sexual act she has ever done in her entire life is opened for scrutiny, why would she even bother? In fact, how could a prostitute living barely above the poverty line go after her upper-class pimp, or a single mother porn star working three jobs pay her legal fees?

The answer is that they cannot. If normal women cannot make rape charges stick, well, what hope do porn stars, prostitutes, and strippers have? Our legal system is so hopelessly fucked that our entire society would have to be re-ordered to deal with the legal demands of a regulated healthy sex industry. In so long as sexism, misogyny, and violence are demanded by the masturbating public, does anyone even for a second believe that this is possible?

So theories and pontificating aside, let’s add reality to the mix. The reality of what women, even feminists, find pleasurable is not always politically correct. Sexuality is not neat and clean. I have talked to many feminist women who struggle to balance what really happens behind closed doors and what they feel the bedroom politics of a “good feminist” should be. Enjoying BDSM, strap-on sex and sex toys, genderplay, rape and incest taboo, mainstream pornography, and other “deviant” sexual taboos with a consensual partner does not make a person a “bad feminist” or a hypocrite. To the contrary, feminism is what gave me permission to love sex, with myself and with others, to embrace my sexual orientation, and find out what turns me on. Pro-sex feminism argues that recognizing the role of fantasy in sexual arousal and coming out of shame about sexual desires opens the door to a more frank and honest discussion about women’s bodies, consent, and safer sex. And that leads to better, safer sex that encourages communication and complete, enthusiastic consent to sex that is fulfilling and healthy. How is that not feminist?

Of course sexuality isn't always "neat and clean". If you masturbate to objectification, rape, or children enough you're going to want to objectify your sexual partners, rape some people, and have sex with children. In fact, you'll think this is perfectly normal. Take, for instance, the state of rape law today. Many people persist with the bizarre notion that is it perfectly normal for a man who sees a drunk attractive woman in a miniskirt to rape her. In fact, it's her fault that she got raped, because men are incapable of controlling their penises. Some people even go so far as to say that men who rape children are normal because she wanted his approval and dressed like a whore. The social definition of rape, consent, and sexual desire is so fucked up by the legacy of thousands of years of treating women like sexual property that the idea that the average person knows the difference between non-consent and consent without careful introspection is, frankly, extremely optimistic and dangerous.

My thoughts are that if you genuinely cannot get off without your rape role-playing and heavy BDSM you have serious issues. Sex is exciting enough with normal varieties like different positions and toys, why the hell does everyone have to add this undercurrent of submission/domination and objectification to get off? I personally have absolutely no desire to treat someone I respect or love as a masturbatory object, and I don't think that I could have a relationship with someone who does. You know, variety is the spice of life, but if all that gets the blood pounding is images and acts of objectification, exploitation, pain, and abuse, then please stay far far away from me. The notion that things like rape fantasies and heavy BDSM are feminist is bizarre. I cannot think of anything less feminist than the use of someone's submission, pain, and abuse to orgasm. At the very least, these acts are neutral. At most, they're criminal.

Of course, feminism did give me the agency to "find out what turns me on", but it also, to a great extent, showed me what does not. What does not turn me on, in any way or form, is violence, abuse, and exploitation. Feminism gave me the voice to say "fuck you and your porn, you're not getting that dick anywhere near my ass", and the knowledge to figure out it's better to want someone than to do what someone else wants because you want them to want you.

I also reject the use of "pro-sex feminist". All feminists are pro-sex and pro-women. Nothing is more "pro-sex" than telling people that want to define me in terms of what they want me to do and be to fuck off. What KaeLyn is implying is that I am "anti-sex". Which would be false, being that I love a little genital friction like any other human being. What I don't like is rape and exploitation. Thus, I do not like stripping, porn, and prostitution. I am capable of separating porn stars from pornographers, johns from hookers, and viewers from strippers. I follow the money and power. Who ever has it, and gets the most of it, is probably responsible for the disgusting state of the sex industry. Thus, I'm quite capable of not vilifying a woman that chooses between minimum wage and stripping, but wanting to drag the mutilated body of someone who goes on sex vacations through Thailand to fuck toddlers through the streets.

Frankly, discussion of why we get turned on by the things we do is healthy. After I was raped by a boyfriend, I had fantasies of someone tying me up and telling me I was a "sheath for his cock". I really don't consider that a healthy expression of my sexuality. Shame when it comes to sexual deviancy is healthy. It's what keeps a potential pedophile away from real children. Not all sex acts are equal. Just because it feels good doesn't mean it's moral. Seriously, do I even have to state something so obvious?

What would really lead to better safer sex is a society in which men don't assume women want exactly what they want because they masturbate to nothing but paid performances. A society in which I am not assumed to be perpetually sexually available by a culture of viewers who see image after image of women that never ever say no. A legal system that locks away rapists and abusers instead of vilifying their victims. A society in which I discovered what I wanted sexually before I discovered what I had to be for people to want me.

Underneath her prose, KaeLyn lists various porn sites that are owned by women, open to many kinds of beauty, pro-feminist, or trans-accepting.

I clicked on many of them, I didn't find really much of anything I could get off with. Mainly, because the majority of the sites still featured women for men to look at. They didn't even have the decency to have many woman that I would like to look at. I saw fetishizations of the menstrual cycle, hairy women, transsexuals, "alternative" women, feet, and vegans. But all of these lifestyles weren't respected for being genuine political statements, they were just another gimmick to wank to. That's the difference between someone who understands my anger and opinions and wants to do some serious introspection and research themselves, and someone that sees my anger, thinks its hot, and wants to fuck me without ever thinking about the words and feelings that I express.

That's not feminism, it's the fetizishation of feminism. If I wanted people to want to fuck me because I'm a feminist, I wouldn't be a feminist all! In this society, nothing is more disgusting than an opinionated cynical woman who doesn't shave her legs, doesn't give a shit about her weight, and is not impressed by your love of anal sex. What would really be a true expression of sexuality is someone who understands my message, understands me, respects me, and wants me because he/she likes me for who I am and what I think. A very shallow and hollow sentiment would be someone who still doesn't give a shit about what I say, but thinks my hairy legs are hot, and thinks my mouth could be put to better use than talking about rape at a Take Back the Night rally.

Also, the sentiment that a few women-friendly (or at the least, not insulting) porn sites are enough to combat the massive demand and supply of really disgusting abusive shit is silly. That's like Michael Jordan and Bill Cosby going to Africa and telling all the Africans that being white is not an advantage in this world, because look at all they accomplished!

Assuming that a stripper wouldn't want to be a stripper if she was offered a chance in her life to be a high-paid lawyer isn't insulting, it's realistic. I feel that the entire ideology of sex-positive feminism is built upon an overly optimistic view of the sex industry and its customers, an invented "anti-sex" opponent, and the unwillingness to face the facts that pleasure and exploitation are not incompatible, and never have been. Furthermore, until we look inside ourselves and at others and say to them, "you do not have the right to demand exploitive sex, have exploitive sex, pay for exploitive sex, or fuel the demand for exploitive sex", then we're never going to even dent the rape culture.

If patriarchy had a red button, I'd push the shit out of it

I admit that being conventionally attractive (although less so today than before, being that I stopped caring about what pant size I wear) and white severely benefits my social reception. It also helps that my French and South-eastern European background always give me a "knowledgeable" air by the nature of my sharp features and dark hair. Regardless, I absolutely notice the difference with how people treat me depending on what I wear. I used to be very self-conscious when I ran to the corner store in wrinkled shorts and sans makeup, but recently, I find myself forgetting to shave my legs for a week or more. I still do the "fat check" in the mirror, and I wish I could stop. I put on clothes, and then check to make sure, at various angles, that bits of untoned and flabby stomach, thighs, and back don't noticeably show. I hate this tendency in myself, but I have no idea how to stop it. Perhaps someone, someone blindingly stupid, might read this and think, "gee Jenn, lose some weight and you'll feel better about yourself!" And the fact of the matter is that no, I won't feel better about myself or lose weight, thanks ever so much. I feel better about myself when I am in shape and doing well in my social and school life. When I was the skinniest I ever have been in my life, a size two, and closely resembled Natalie Portman, I thought I was the ugliest and fattest girl in school. My negative body-thoughts now, at a size 12, are much less frequent. Still, they persist.

The fact is that I still wish I could change this in myself. Ha! I might as well submit myself to the illusion that I am a god, not a human, and that my perception of myself is not at all linked to society's judgement. Humans are inevitably social creatures. Every time I submit to patriarchal guidelines of dress my submission is rewarded with praise, attention, and sometimes, love. To think that anyone could erase that influence in their lifetime is beyond absurd. To even dream that my "fat check" ritual is a choice in the real sense of the word is shear idiocy. I know that this lack of choice and individuality bother the typical Western "master of my own destiny" philosophy, but we should all know by now what I think of the utter bullshit that taints mind of the average American.

I apologize for the digression, but it is relevant. I notice how people perceive me in public simply because a social organism, I am programmed by evolution to do so. For someone to come along and say "stick it up and stop caring what people think of you!" is just so utterly simplistic that I seriously question the validity of conventional wisdom. One day, I will write a critically acclaimed philosophical treatise on what utter nonsense conventional "wisdom" is, and how it serves the interests of those in power. Perhaps this is wishful thinking.

Nevertheless, when I venture out of the house bedecked in large trendy jewelry, clingy tops, matching shoes, and a tastefully made-up face, I definitely notice the difference between that and "normal mode": unshaven legs, no makeup, shorts, old faded tees, hair up, and sometimes, godforbid, glasses. My hygiene is always impeccable in either case. My hair, even when I don't do much to it, stays neat by the good care of my fantastic hair stylist and her shampoo recommendations. I never ever smell, even in the disgusting Arizona summers. But still, in "glamour mode" I find that men smile at me, clerks make small talk, my friends make more eye contact, women graciously let me cut in front of them if I have fewer items, kids grin at me, and my family talks more about my successes than failures. In "normal mode" I am completely invisible. I still can get stares by the nature of my disproportionately large breasts and lips, but it's in a "eww slutty homeless crack addict/hooker" way, not in a "where did you get that cute top?" way. Men ignore me. Clerks don't make small talk and get angry if I notice a mistake rather than apologize. Women look down on me and turn up their noses. Children stare at me, sometimes point out my hairy legs to their mothers. And my family, the worst of all, tells me how worried they are about how I don't have a boyfriend, how I seem depressed, and how I come off as cold and bitchy. All of this after I have taken painful introspective care to make sure that my mannerisms do not change at all regardless of how I am dressed.

And it is beyond stupid to ask myself to be angry because I am too shallow to let go of what others think about me. I simply cannot, and I submit that no other human on the face of this planet can either. We can bottle these feelings of inadequacy up as much as we want, but they will persist in things like depression, domestic disturbances, eating disorders, and various other widespread social ills. What makes me so incredibly angry is that I feel this way at all. I cannot defeat human nature. What humanity could do, and it chooses not to, is destroy these stupid gender expectations. Erase the taint of marketing. Ship everyone out who uses power to sell a product or idea on our inadequacies to some deserted island, and then wipe it off the face of the planet with those stockpiled missiles. I, personally, would push that little red button until it cracked in half under the strain of my fervor. Everything in me hates this violence humanity submits itself to, and then viciously defends regardless of social class, political alliances, or privileges. And the shear gall of those who would deny it! Humanity as we know it is terminally ill. The thought that my inclination to destroy those parts of our culture that I feel are responsible for most of our present ills would be reviled as insane rather than praised as enlightened is truly a testament to how far this madness has encroached on our mental territory.

To this day, I hate myself no matter how far or close to the patriarchal guidelines I find myself. The only thing that at all diminishes this relentless self-hatred is the knowledge that I never, not once, consented to this nonsense. I urge everyone else to stop thinking of themselves as the instruments of their own self-destruction and start recognizing how the system we inhabit is specifically designed to make us hate ourselves and destroy ourselves, and then fool each other into thinking that everything is alright, that the most oppressed is responsible for our suffering (racism anyone?), or that the individual who cries silently to themselves with the thought that they cannot overcome this madness is pathetic and weak.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those that are oppressed by the patriarchy, and those that think they are not.

But godammit, if you're going to try to push my hands away from that red button, at least understand my urge to claw your fucking face off.

Consent, the patriarchy, and altruism

So it has been said, quite frequently, that my hatred of all patriarchy-inspired "beauty rituals" including high heels, surgery, and movement-restricting clothing is really demeaning to women. My critique of the violent and abusive nature of all things labeled feminine mocks women that choose such things of their own free will. Pro-porn¹ advocates claim that objections to the industries of objectification and abuse--porn, prostitution, and stripping--are taking women's agency away from them or applying the same kind of moral outrage that conservatives are apt to.

The disconnect, I believe, lies in the definition of "consent". In a prior post, I confessed that all sex acts within a patriarchy lie along the same continuum of non-consent. Which, although the word is shocking, makes all heterosexual encounters acts of rape. This is not to say that pleasure and love is not possible in this society. Simply, because of our socialization in gender roles, we cannot determine for ourselves whether or not even the smallest adherences to gendered behaviors--such as plucking your eyebrows--is actually an act of free-will. It seems simple: I want to pluck my eyebrows, so I do. But the question is, would I want to pluck my eyebrows if I had not been told that my naturally bushy brows are ugly? If every image I saw of femininity was not a gross distortion of nature, would I still have the desire to forcibly rip hair, and sometimes skin, from my body?

Thus, it stands to reason that the most gendered encounter--the act of coitus--is probably less a product of free will than any other.

However, that is not to say that I think everyone who does not realize that their actions are not their own is stupid. Nor am I infantiziling women. My point is that everyone, even me, does not consent to the violence done to their individuality by gender roles, and that the exercise of those gender roles in this society is inevitable. Humans are social creatures by necessity. Succumbing to our social programming in ways both known and unknown to us is hardly an act of stupidity. It is a mechanism of survival, instilled in us through billions of years of evolutionary adaptation. Basically, social creatures exist in a state in which they trust the members of their immediate social grouping not to hurt them. They know they they will not hurt them by familiarity. The social animal knows that to hurt others would be wrong or unnecessary, and since the other animals around it look and act similar to it, it assumes that they agree with this principle and are thus worthy of some measure of trust.

Therefore, when a new organism wanders into the vicinity of the previous animal's "turf", either seeking admission or to otherwise, the animals are far more likely to trust and tolerate an organism that acts and looks like them.

Humans instinctively know this. The social phenomenon of trends and fads arises from this tendency. Most humans will seek to minimize differences in order to belong to a group, and to be seen as a friend and not a threat.

To say that someone that adheres to gender roles is stupid, therefore, is to assume that people are more like gods than animals. We are lucky to possess free will and consciousness, and these things allow us reason that the things we do are wrong or silly or weird. However, thousands of years of social conditioning in the rightness of gender roles cannot be entirely overcome by any individual in so long as those gender roles are still encouraged by popular society and our immediate acquaintances.

It is hardly easy to admit that the power of reasoning cannot overcome my instinctive need to belong to the point where I can erase all the violence done to the definition of my selfhood. My choices in this mad world are either to submit to the need to belong and be unhappy by the nature of the things I must to, as a woman, to belong, or to resist the need to belong and be unhappy by the nature of my loneliness. The "choice" between two unhappinesses is hardly a choice at all. Even consciously choosing one or the other is hardly feasible, for there are a thousand ways that resistance is overcome.

And so I exist in a perpetual state of non-consent. I have never consented to the person I am or the urges I have, instilled by social conditioning. I can only choose to be aware of my misery and loss of choice, or fool myself into thinking that I am free. The second choice, however, is not the greater of two evils. The necessity of ignoring violence is hardly the actions of a weak mind. That too is human nature. If we see no other choice, then no other choice exists. It is not enough for me to say that one chooses to be a porn star, because I do not know if the rational behind joining the sex industry is entirely free. In actuality, I know that it not entirely free, in the same way that I know my decision to pluck my eyebrows is not.

What, then, of those who would objectify women? Are they not subject to the same social forces, are they not the same helpless victims of human instincts? That answer is complicated.

I believe, as do others, that humanity's instincts are not to rend and tear and kill. I think that we are inherently peaceful and altruistic, and that as social creatures we are apt to do good things for others, even for no gain for ourselves, because this instinct has resulted in the creation and maintenance of societies.

Luckily for women, this altruism is not damaged in the way that it is for men. We might be socialized into hurting ourselves, against the instinct of self-preservation, to serve a need to "fit in", because if we do not fit in, we are vulnerable and lonely. However, the altruistic tendency is socialized out of men by the constant message that women are not human, that they are different, that they are the Other. If the natural human inclination is to do good for, or at the very least ignore, those similar to us, then the only way that this instinct can be overturned is by the notion that those that we hurt and suppress and kill are abused for the sake of self-preservation, because they are not human, or because they, being the Other, like it.

This theme is not restricted to gendered interactions. The above is used again and again to perpetuate and justify every human horror, from sexism to racism to animal abuse and to genocide. People electrocute others on the orders of someone in uniform in order to belong and not resist perceived authority--a self-preserving response to the threat that authority embody. What things like the Mil.gram experiments show is not that humanity is naturally cruel, but that we are cruel when we can be convinced that this cruelty is necessary for our own survival or the greater good².

It is the socialization of the male that warps the natural human altruism, while the socialization of the female merely distorts the urge of self-preservation. That is not to say that females cannot act in such a way that is deliberately cruel, or that men can act in such a way that is self-destructive; merely that gender roles make it far more likely for men to be abusive and for women to be self-sacrificing.

All of this social theory is well and good, but what does it have to do with consent?

There is something very different between a gendered woman's act, such as choosing to stay with an abusive husband, and a men's act, such as beating his wife. That is where I make the distinctions of moral wrongness and consent. A violence done to the self may not be natural, but it is not morally wrong. A woman who chooses to stay with her abuser does no moral wrong. However, a man that chooses, as the result of socialization, to abuse another is not acting out of a perversion of natural human altruism, but is morally wrong.

Likewise, it is not an act of infantilization to admit that gendered interactions, "consented" to by women, are not a product of natural human instincts. It is an admission of their humanity and the social forces that every single one of us will never be free of in our life times. That is not to say that a man's violence is something that he cannot help. On the contrary. While his attitude about women may never be changed, and while men, in so long as the gender continues to be socialized in this fashion, will never consciously and subconsciously think of women as the Same, and not the Other, their choice to act in such a violent matter is exactly that: a choice.

Because we acknowledge that every one of us has the power of reason. We do know that when we do things that affect other people, even animals, that they probably have the power to form an opinion of our actions and the way that they affect them. A woman takes away no one's choice when she plucks her eyebrows or "consents" to marital rape. A man is morally wrong when he acts in such a way that requires the socialized subjugation of women for that action to be valid or "consented" to. In less words, a man perpetuates and submits to sexism, a woman only submits to sexism.

This can be observed in the incontrovertible fact that men, as a collective, have benefited far more from the present state of affairs than women have. Just as a slaveholder may consent to perpetuating slavery, a slave cannot "consent", in the real meaning of the word, to his own status. And this is shown, time and time again, by the state of fear and violence that the masters shower upon their inferiors. They must be made to think that their submission is an act of self defense and of normalcy, or the vast mechanisms of this convoluted hierarchy cannot function. But a man suffers no real loss in status by refusing to abuse. A woman, however, suffers very real losses by refusing to submit to the social forces that drive her to "consent" to her subjugation. Consent, in this context, can only be applied to those actions in which there is a net gain, rather than a net loss.

For it is taken as a priori knowledge that the act of consent, and to a lesser extent, free will, may only be taken by a fully rational human being. And it is truly a sick society in which the definition of consent is only applicable to those that would use it to submit themselves to some other's perversions and abuse, when the other can excuse his abuse, and gains, with various appeals to his right of superiority and moral wrongness.

And that is how and why, in many words, women's actions are not subject to the same sort of scrutiny and scorn as the actions of someone who perpetually benefits from a society that bestows upon him unearned privilege and rights for his chance of a penile appendage.  

¹I refuse to call them "pro-sex". Porn isn't sex any more than a movie with a sex scene is a real sex act. Just because it looks like sex and is marketed for sexual pleasure does not mean that it is sex and not a performance.

²Excepting, of course, those instances of real human sociopathy or mental illness. Which, I am convinced, are extremely rare and usually mistakenly contributed to psychosis and not an extreme reaction to normal socialization.

On Staying Single

Notice that I am not just single currently, but that I am staying single. This was not a conscious decision. I did not sit down one day, feminist ideology in hand, and decide to stay single for political reasons. It just happened. I haven't been in a relationship for two years. For a woman in her twenties, this is so odd as to be alien.

When I was in middle school, nothing could have been more important than being in or wanting to be in a relationship. Boys were just beginning to notice me, probably because I was one of the first girls to have her breasts grow beyond the mosquito bite phase. Luckily for me, I did not grow up in the Paris Hilton era. Britney Spears was still keeping most of her clothes on the late 90s when the pre-teen girl uniform of choice was polo shirts, short shorts, and high ponytails.

Regardless, my desire for a boyfriend and to look good had nothing to do with my sexual desire. Although I had curves and breasts to rival any grown woman, my sexual drive had not matured. I heard about masturbation, mostly from the eighth grade boys, but such things held no interest for me. Even the extremely progressive books on puberty that my parents bought me detailed male masturbation explicitly, although some of them spend a bit of time on female masturbation as well. Curious, I attempted this masturbation a couple of times. Nothing really much happened, presumably because my sexual drive had yet to develop (it would in high school), so I gave that up.

Why then, was the pinnacle of pre-teen social life the drive to attract boys? I obviously did not know what to do with them when I got them, and I had no sexual desire for them. I was putting on a performance, plain and simple. The dominant social message of the time, and I assume it has gotten worse lately, was that a girl should aim to look sexy and have sex, but her own enjoyment of the sexual act had nothing to do with it. This held true for my twelve year-old self: I was not attracted to boys in a sexual manner, and I had no personal desire for sex. I was simply responding to social norms. If I said a boy was cute, it was not the case that I was attracted to him. I simply recognized that he fit within the acceptable range of male appearances, and I wanted him to want me. My desires did not play into the equation at all.

As I moved on from middle school and entered high school, my sexual drive finally blossomed. I had a healthy desire for sex and masturbation by the time I was fifteen. Still, however, I cannot think of a time that I wanted a boy more than I wanted him to want me and the social power I would gain by being sexy and attached to a suitable male. I was also doing battle with my monstrous crush on my female friend at the time by denying to myself that I probably was not as straight as I would like to be. Nevertheless, the idea of a boy competing for me or spending time on his appearance for me was laughable. By the time elaborate hair and makeup routines were the norm for girls my age, boys had yet to grasp the concept of showering daily.

Simply put, being sexy was more important than being sexual. The conflicting messages of abstinence and MTV had done battle, and the result was "be sexy, be hot, be available and wanted. Your sexuality is shameful." It was not important that boys were attractive, and they largely were not, it was important that I was attractive to them. Due to my extremely extroverted personality and unwillingness, even then, to play weak or dumb, I never succeeded.

In college, the drive to be wanted and not to want became funny in its intensity. The antics of my peers inspired mental images out of a porno: buckets of male ejaculation everywhere, but no elusive female orgasm. Men were still boys, and still had not grasped the basics of hygiene that were common sense to the average eleven year-old girl. And why would they? All around them women were wearing next to nothing and viciously fighting for their attention with deeper tans, deeper v-necks, and higher shoes. All they had to do was sit back and enjoy.

After a disastrous series of boyfriends where the male orgasm was far more present in our relationships than the female orgasm, I had the luck to fall into Feminism by way of a Women's Studies course. Among the considerable changes in my life, I stopped wanting men to want me if I did not want them back.

Simply, if my sexual pleasure had no part in the equation, I wanted nothing to do with men. If they were not attractive, their attention was gross and creepy. It was surprisingly easy to find my dry spells becoming longer and longer, only broken up by my mostly pleasurable forays into lesbian relationships.

How was this so? Once I gave up performing the sexy routine, guys largely did not want me. Which was fine with me, because most guys my age hadn't touched a razor or bar of soap in half a week. My university was like a scene out of a pornography: most of the women were conventionally attractive, but the men were as lazy with their appearances as they were with their health.

Today, I find it pathetically funny how my pursuit of my own pleasure--wanting attractive men, wanting sexual fulfillment--removed me from the dating scene. By raising my standards to men that I wanted, instead of men that wanted me, I had to find men that spend a comparable amount of time on their appearance and would be invested in my pleasure as much as their own. Unsurprisingly, the men who spent as much time in front of a mirror as I did (which wasn't much, considering that I stopped tanning and wearing large amounts of makeup) were the ones that dated the most feminine women, who had the personality of swine, or who were more interesting in acting out their favorite pornography than pleasing their significant other.

What I realize today is that the dating scene revolves around male pleasure. Male orgasms, male lust, male appreciation of beauty. If I wanted female orgasms, my lust, and my appreciation of male beauty I was holding out for something that did not exist. Or, if it did, it was not available to me once I stopped tanning, obsessing about how flat my abs were, and wearing hundreds of dollars of makeup.

In conclusion, I stay single because it's pathetically easy, but not by my design. Perhaps one day I might stumble upon a man who is as invested in looking good for me as I would be invested in looking good for him. Instead of me wanting him to want me and him wanting me, I would want him and he would want me. Then we could meet in the middle, form a relationship based on mutual attraction, admiration, and lust.

How sad that society has made such things the exception, and not the norm.

Body Positivism: Health in a post-BMI Mentality

One of the most valuable things I have taken away from Feminism is how to love myself and everyone, no matter what shape they are. I especially have to give a hat tip to the lovely ladies over at Shapely Prose for all of their hard work. I feel like the battle to accept myself, and others, is constantly uphill. The work of feminists and fat acceptance activists has helped me increase my self esteem and be healthier, mentally and physically.

Nevertheless, various health issues connected with food run in my family. For years, I struggled to control my intake and exercise religiously. This struggle was mostly fruitless, because I love to eat and cook. Running in place on a treadmill was nowhere near as fun as inhaling the heavenly aroma of home-made risotto as I stirred it on the stove, and then receiving glowing compliments on my culinary abilities from my family and friends.

The age-old "diet and exercise" shtick wasn't sticking. Fat Acceptance mentality in tow, I decided to go to a friend-recommended local nutrionist for a check-up that I refused to receive from my weight-obsessed general physician.

Before she began, I set a few rules. No talk of BMI. No discussion of weight and "weight classes". I stressed that I really did not care about what size I wore. I wanted to know if I was getting the right vitamins, if my cholesterols were in balance, and I could pass basic physical fitness tests. In short, I wanted to know everything worth knowing, and nothing that wasn't worth knowing. If I was healthy and moderately fit, I didn't need "weight loss tips".

She agreed, thankfully. I don't know how well such rules would have worked for regular nutrionists (she was more of the natural hippie variety), but she was perfectly agreeable, and understood why I asked her to leave such inconsequential things out of my check-up.

I passed the physical fitness tests, with moderately high endurance ratings, but low strength ratings. She said those could be increased with more fiber in my diet and simple things like carrying more grocery bags at once. I'm awaiting my blood and urine tests though.

I feel like looking after my health in this fashion is much more productive. Weight does not really determine a lot of health issues. I could have the body of a super model, but be malnourished. I could be as toned as an Olympic athlete, but have serious cholesterol issues. More than weight and BMI, excesses and deficiencies of certain vitamins and minerals in your blood are responsible for various ailments. Besides, dieting has been found to be useless in the long run, and a constant drive to "improve" my body, on the assumption that it is "bad", is not healthy mentally or physically. My intestinal disorder and allergies can and have put me in the hospital. I have no wish to screw around with food unnecessarily.

Fat Acceptance and health are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I have found them to be very inclusive indeed. Here's to enjoying food, my body, and my life!

Plastic Surgery and the Fake Beauty Ideal

What do Cindy Jackson, 48, and Steve Erhardt, 23, have in common?

They've both spend over $100,000 USD on plastic surgery.

The images above are of human beings that do not exist in nature. What I find intrinsically wrong and disturbing is my reaction to both pictures. Cindy, my mind tells me, is a pretty woman. Don't I wish that I will look like that when I'm almost 50? Steve, according to my inner sense of beauty, is a bizarre parody of a man. Cindy is beautiful, and Steve is abhorrent.

If my inner sense of beauty was as unwarped as I would like it to be, both pictures should disgust me. My mind should be incapable of finding completely unnatural and fake images of humanity as sexually appealing, or more so, than images of unaltered human beings.

I tested this with several of my friends. Unanimously, regardless of their gender or sexual preference, everyone I talked to found Cindy better looking than Steve. In fact, only one of my friends, a straight woman, thought that Steve wasn't disturbing.

What does this mean?

It means that our definition of female beauty is so warped that we find completely invented images of women prettier than actual women. This standard does not apply to men. When confronted with an image of the "perfect man" who has spent thousands of dollars augmenting himself to adhere to a beauty ideal, most react with disgust. When we see Cindy, on the other hand, we find her unanimously prettier than Steve, at the least, and extremely good-looking in general.

I submit this experiment as absolute undeniable proof that the image of female beauty is invented to a degree that male beauty has never been. Humanity finds the male that occurs naturally much better looking than one that appears plastic and fake. Whereas, unless we're plastic surgery experts, we are incapable of recognizing alteration to the female form because we are socialized to find such alternations beautiful and normal.

It is the true female body, with its stretch marks, pores, unlined eyes, uneven skin, knobby knees, and slight pouch that we find as disgusting as the altered male.

Repeat this experiment with your friends. Even though I spend hours weekly trying to deconstruct the false image of beauty that marketing has socialized into my subconscious, I still find Cindy infinitely more attractive than Steve. I highly doubt that anyone, regardless of their sexuality or gender, disagrees with me.

It is this evidence—socialization has ruined my natural sense of beauty—that is much more horrifying than the thousands of dollars and months of pain women undergo to transform themselves into some Living Doll. Although I cannot determine which came first—the demand for false beauty or the image of unnatural beauty—I can say that my subconscious is evidence that we continue to perpetuate this demand for the mutilated image of femininity despite any objection that so-and-so prefers natural beauty.

In fact, I postulate that anyone when confronted with a unadorned symmetrical female face through the media would not find it as attractive or "normal" as the completely unnatural image of Cindy Jackson.

This fact, coupled with the observation that we are capable of valuing real men over altered men (who would argue that a naturally handsome man is less appealing than Steve?), leads me to believe that feminist theory is undeniably true: that what is we think is "normal" female beauty has nothing to do with nature. This hijacking of female beauty and biology is nauseating in its totality.

(Cross-posted)

Makeup: A Rad Fem's Dilemma

Makeup was my right of passage to womanhood. My parents absolutely refused to let me wear it until I was thirteen, and then only in muted shades and small amounts. Looking at the over-sexualized images of pre-teen girls in the media and my younger brother's yearbook, I can honestly say that I am grateful to my parents. Makeup wouldn't have made me less self-conscious, and would have taken a sizable chunk out of my allowance--and when I was 16, wages.

Now, I do not wear anywhere near as much makeup as I used to at 16, and even 18. Although I am in my 20s, I am often mistaken for a teenager because of my short stature and lack of "smoky sex kitten" makeup; even while bar-hopping I prefer light makeup.

However, my guilt over buying and wearing eye liner, blush, powder, and mascara persists. Am I a bad feminist because I sometimes like how I look with makeup better than au natural? Given that I self-identify as a radical feminist, am I somehow falling sort of the label? Do I invite men to look upon me as an object or sexually available?

I know that people perceive me as stereotypically feminine the more makeup and gendered clothing, like mini-skirts, I wear. More doors are held open (literal, not metaphorical), I am addressed as "honey" instead of "ma'am", and men smile at me more. Although, I never get the respect I want from co-workers and professors no matter how little makeup I wear, or how much. Professors that are enthusiastic about taking my male peers under their wing hesitate to do the same for me and fellow female classmates because we are female. A male professor, and most of mine are male, sponsoring a female student is rare simply because the professors are afraid of the perception that they are sleeping with us, or they simply don't think of us in any sense other than a sexual one. Even in sweatpants and no makeup, my male professors will not invite me to lunch to discuss further the symbolization of Aristotle's classical dilemmas because being female means that I am always potentially a sex object, never a peer or a prodigal student. All of my sponsors in my field have been female. I am lucky that my university employs many female Philosophy professors, because otherwise, I sincerely doubt that I would have had the opportunity to do as much as I have.

This constant perception of being a sex object: am I only fueling it by wearing makeup and gendered clothing? If I'm not dressed up, am I still responsible for the actions of others because of my female mannerisms?

My answer is a resounding no. My choice of clothing and face-paint should not affect my opportunities in life. How much eye shadow I do or do not wear does not affect the poignancy of my thesis. In my ideal world, men and women would wear as little or as much makeup as they please, and it would not affect any situation outside the contexts where makeup and gendered clothing are relevant.

Besides, I am kept at a distance professionally by male superiors regardless of how little makeup I wear or how long my skirt is. Feminism, I think, is about choices. I choose my gender-identity. I like being pretty and female. What I do not like is being patronized, belittled, and sexually objectified in a context in which such attention is entirely inappropriate.

In the same way that "promiscuous" women are responsible for the bad behavior of their male peers, every woman is held responsible for the sexism of their colleagues because of how she dresses or acts. Too frumpy and she is a slacker or a frigid bitch. Too feminine and she is a sex object or a coy flirt. I am always defined in terms of "fuckable" or "not fuckable" every second of the day because women, regardless of how they dress, act, or look, are members of the sex class and thus may be belittled, shamed, over sexualized, and harassed with the justification that anyone with a vagina is simply "asking for it".

My choice to wear makeup is my business. A woman's choice to get breast implants is her business. It should be obvious that the choice to sexualize women out of context and act like sexist dog is precisely that: a choice.

How people attack women who choose to do something perfectly legal that makes her feel good about herself and defend those who choose to be assholes is completely illogical. The phenomenon of blaming the victim saturates every justification of harassment, violence, and injustice that women and even young girls suffer daily.

I say, enough already! If the choices I make are always wrong and the injustice I suffer is always right, then what choice do I have? I choose to please myself, and only myself. Fuck everyone else. I sharpen my eye pencil and apply it to my upper lid because I think I look good when I do. If my best male friend thought he did too, I would let him borrow mine without a sideways glance.

Treating women like objects is also a choice. The idea that it is the fault of the evil female temptress, her gender fallen from grace by the actions of her ancestor in the garden of Eden, is nothing but unadulterated bullshit and should be treated as such.

On Being a Bookworm: Part Four - what do women think of porn?

Paul is an excellent writer. Although, I am slightly disappointed that Pornified is not as theory-heavy as I think the topic of porn demands. That is probably just the Philosophy major in me talking though.

With much enthusiasm, I started the chapter titled "Porn Stars, Lovers, and Wives: How Women See Pornography". I was disappointed, however, that Paul chose to focus more on how women thought of the men in their lives that used pornography rather than the effects of pornography on women that use it. I thought the chapter was too heteronormative and played up the "jealous girlfriend" routine to the point where the cliche began to wear thin. Some highlights of the chapter were:

A human sexuality professor at Stony Brook observes shifting norms:

"Twenty years ago, my female students would say, 'Ugh, that's disgusting,' when I brought up porn in class. The men would guiltily say, 'Yeah, I've used it.' Today, men are much more open about saying they use porn all the time and don't feel any guilt. The women now resemble the old male attitude: they'll sheepishly admit to using it themselves." ... He has mixed feelings about this change. On the positive side, he says, women's embrace of porn seems to reflect increased sexual agency on their part... yet the new attitude strikes him as disturbing. Female fantasies have changed over the years as a result of porn and what Kimmel calls the "masculinization of sex". Compared with ten years ago, women's fantasies are more likely today to include violence, rough sex, strangers, and descriptions of male physical attributes. "Personally, I think that for a woman to construct her sex life like that of a man is a rather impoverished view of liberation".

I wish the chapter also expanded upon the liberalization of porn. Paul claims that the adoption of porn as "hip" has blocked any serious critiques of it. The new version of "sex positivism" seems to view pornography as instrumentally positive and a vehicle of equal opportunity sexuality, even though real porn may be violent and produced by decreasing the agency of its performers. Also, framing the argument in such a way that pornography is equated with erotica makes it easier to pigeon-hole opponents as "anti-sex", although many pornography critics are careful to define erotica as something positive, and fundamentally different.

For instance, the classic feminist Gloria Steinem points out that erotica, based on the word eros (passionate love or yearning for someone else) is about "a mutually pleasurable, sexual expression between people who have enough power to be there by positive choice." The root word of pornography, however, refers to prostitution and is "violence, dominance, and conquest. It is sex being used to reinforce some inequality, or to create one, or to tell us that pain and humiliation are really the same as pleasure."

An oft discussed point in feminism is the ability to be the agent of your own objectification. Paul spends considerable time on the story of Valerie, a woman in her thirties that has used porn since she was twelve. She claims that she can easily tell if her sexual partners watch porn because they are obsessed with "fucking... bright lights on, staring at my body parts, going through the motions". One of her partners wanted sex at least once a day, but never showed an a speck of sensuality and romance. She hypothesizes that he was keeping her at an emotional distance, and using porn as an instrument to facilitate this behavior. What she first found sexy about him, his similarity to the porn stars in her movies, destroyed their relationship.

Paul is careful to never say that women who liken pornography to liberation are wrong. However, she does point out that although sex-positives may view their attitudes as empowering, "the kind of pornography their men are into is all about the men--about their needs and about what they want, not about their women, their relationships, or their families."

Women do internalize porn, according to the poll done for her book; 6 out of 10 women believe porn affects how men expect them to look and behave. Only 15% of women will assuredly say that pornography does not raise men's expectations of women.

Pornography is a "guy's thing". Men still hold the same double standard that sex-positivism was supposed to erase. 6 in 10 men, according to an MSNBC poll, would not like their partners to view pornography unless it was with them. This attitude was shown in one of the "Cosmo Confessions" featured monthly in Cosmopolitan magazine:

Once a month, my boyfriend has a guy's night out with his buddies. Normally, they shoot poll or go to a ball game. But last month, I overheard him making plans to go to a strip club. It really upset me that he didn't bother asking how I felt about his sticking dollar bills in other women's G-strings. Instead of confronting him, I did some investigating and found out that the night he was planning to go to the club happened to be amateur night, which meant that any girl could get on stage and dance. So I called a few girlfriends, and we headed to the club. After a few drinks, I surprised my guy as one of the novice strippers. He was so shocked that he just froze--until I started undressing. Then he jumped on the stage and begged me to come down, promising me he'd never go to a nudie bar again."

Although she never comes right out and states it plainly, pornography is the instrument of a woman's own objectification. The nature of porn is to arouse men with the objectification of women--to reduce the act of sex to an animalistic game of dominance void of emotion. If a piece pornography is not objectifying, chances are that it is erotica. I personally think that it is demonstrably important that we separate erotica from porn so as to tote the positive role of erotica, facilitating the agency of women and emotion in the sex act, and contrast it with the negativity of pornography.

Previous parts of this series: Part One, Part Two, Part Three

Animal Cruelty is Not Sexy

Cross-posted at Female Impersonator

"Sex sells". When it is not selling me pants, sunglasses, bikini waxes, and a fat-complex it is now selling me morality. Take away the message and what is the difference between an ad like this and one like this? The answer is absolutely nothing. Naked women have nothing to do with Levi's pants or vegetarianism. The message, "this lifestyle promoted in this ad is sexy", does not vary between the two ads. The only difference is that one lifestyle is that of buying jeans, and the other is the lifestyle of not eating meat.

We humans must be incredibly stupid to fall for such shoddy marketing. I really have no words for a society that buys cheap body-spray en masse when the half-wit marketing experts at the firm have nothing more to say for their product other than it makes women take off their bras. How does it do that? Nobody knows, simply because there is a cognitive dissonance when I try to compute a reality in which people are convinced to buy a product on the promise of sex that it cannot possibly deliver.

Axe Body Spray is hardly the worst offender. Axe promotes no political agenda other than the dudely enjoyment of foul smelling cologne masking the fact that you have not showered in a week, or the simple-minded pursuit of titties. This ad campaign works, I might say, because the people who would use cheap cologne to excuse not taking a shower would be the kind of dupes to connect buying something with getting laid.

Liberals, however, claim to function on a higher level. Empathetic beings concerned with the plight of life everywhere do not need bared breasts and toned asses to buy, or not buy, a lifestyle.

Wrong.

Guess what bikini models have to do with the suffering of chickens? Absolutely nothing. If PETA really wished to highlight the suffering of animals, they would make their protests horrible, frightening, and sickening. With so shortage of horrifying images of animal suffering (five minutes of googling produced this, this, this, and this) why does PETA, among other organizations, feel the need to sell the idea that animals are suffering for our lifestyle with sex?

Melanie B, from the Spice Girls, would also like you to know that Sex Trafficking is hot. "Get your tits out for trafficking!" an activist asks us. We all know that strippers and prostitutes always get the best side of the law, because society as a whole values their opinions and personhood so much. Making our causes into our pimps and baring it all for a liberal cause, of course, wins the respect of many. It is also very relevant to the discussion at hand. Animal abuse and the unwilling trafficking of sexual slaves in our own country is titillating and sexy.

PETA reminds me of a circa-1970s Al Sharpton, who shot himself and his cause in the foot by involking the ire of New York Jews with some insensitive antisemitic remarks. To this day, Sharpton and his pose of goons continue to give activists a really bad name by various other classy shenanigans such as sexism and rape apology. Of course, the average American can tell you that he or she thinks Sharpton is full of shit. He or she will place Sharpton in the "bat-shit crazy" category alongside PETA. The most damaging person to their causes, obviously, is PETA activists and Sharpton themselves. The average American is not convinced. Thus Sharpton and PETA are unsuccessful.

In contrast, anti-abortion activists continue to get considerably more positive press than PETA. The reason why is not rocket science. Perhaps it is because their ad campaign is so blessedly simple and horrifying. I am firmly and absolutely pro-choice. However, I will say that if I had no opinion on eating meat or abortion, the anti-abortion ad would be significantly more morally compelling than a strip-tease for animal rights.

There are only two rules to good advertising: keep it simple and relevant. The anti-abortion ad is a picture of an abortion, thus it is relevant. It just states, "abortion is bad". The PETA ads, however, are convoluted and self-defeating. Alicia Silverstone with no clothes on does not really have anything to do with my greasy hamburger. The PETA ad asks the viewer to make a connection between nakedness, fur, and animal cruelty. The connection is tenuous, and thus, falls apart. The abortion ad achieves its purpose while the PETA ad does not.

Not only does PETA need to fire its marketing executives, the organization itself is probably the only thing on the planet more self-defeating than Al Sharpton. Commenters will poo-poo my critique all they want, but the fact remains that feminists can be agents of their own oppression especially when they sell their bodies for a cause that has nothing to do with sex. Yes, the woman who climbed into a cage while naked and pregnant in the cold to protest animal cruelty did so consensually. Would she, however, have posed nude if female nudity was not the biggest successful seller of unnecessary over-processed shit on the planet?

In conclusion, I hate PETA, and will continue to do so because:
(a) They utterly fail at marketing
(b) They protest the cruelty of animals with the objectification of the female body
(c) They diminish the horror of their cause with meaningless strip teases
(d) They diminish and poo-poo the objections of activists for other causes
(e) They are the most unintentionally self-parodying group on the face of this Earth

I will not continue to suffer any fools, especially sexist fools that sit on their high-horse naked and defeat feminism's basic tenements in order to diminish the real issue of the objectification of women, and to sexualize the suffering of animals.

Note: As the author of this post, I will delete comments that are trolling and offensive, and ask that all contributors to this tread ignore all those who will attempt to hijack the thread.

America's Next Top Model is plus-size, but not really

It should really go without saying that the fat-shaming America's Next Top Model reality show is as close to feminism as Hitler is to Gandhi. In a rare sign of normalcy yesterday, however, the show crowned Whitney Thompson as America's Next Top Model.

Ashamed that they succumbed to the demands of real feminine curves, the world then proceeded to label Thompson "plus size". The model, who confesses that she waivers between size 8 and 10, should be ashamed of her "otherness". No real modeling agency will work with a fatty!

Yet again the media marginalizes the average woman. The beauty ideal is so ridiculous that we label someone who cannot shop in plus-size stores a plus-size model. I must confess that I wear the same size Thompson does, although I am nowhere near as statuesque, blond, or toned. If I wished to swim in my clothes sans a pool and shorten my pants six or more inches, I might be able to shop in a plus-size store.

I have nothing against real plus-size women. Women of all shapes and sizes are beautiful and unique. However, it is beyond stupid that our culture labels women at a normal weight and average size as "chubby" or "plus-size" while women that are slightly larger than average are ostracized and viewed as barely human.

I am not at all surprised, however, that the original source then links to a story on "weight winners", as crowned by US Magazine. Let us all eat diets devoid of sugar, bread, and fat so we can be as miserable happy as starving beautiful Hayden!