In my high school, there was for a time a trend among student groups to put up signs advertising their meetings saying, in big capital letters, SEX, beneath which, in tiny font, was printed, “Now that we’ve got your attention…”
It was a smart move, because hey, everyone loves sex! Teenagers especially love sex, in theory if not yet in practice! It’s good times! I, personally, am pro-it! You may be, as well! It’s a fun thing to do, a fun thing to, erhem, think about, and a fun thing to babble uncontrollably about after one too many margaritas (…just me? Ah. I see. Right, well, MOVING ON). You can do it in a bed or on the floor, with strangers and loved ones or by yourself, naked or in costumes, old-school or with props, first thing in the morning or… after one too many margaritas. FUCK YEAH, FUCKING.
Now that I’ve got your attention.
Sometimes I feel like some well-intentioned feminist spaces occasionally make use of a tactic similar to that employed by those student-run poetry magazines and community service clubs. Obviously, this comparison is unfair: sex was (to my awareness) not relevant to our chapter of Habitat for Humanity, whereas it very much is, and should be, to nearly all forms of feminism. And it’s not like I think there’s some kind of bait-and-switch going on (“reel ‘em in with the vibrators, then spring equal pay on them! they’ll never suspect a thing!”), or like sex is being used as a lure, of sorts.
But I get the sense there’s tendency to want to sexify feminism, make it sexy meaning alluring and use sex, and the appeal of good sex, towards that end. And I… kind of have a problem with that, actually. I have a problem with framing – even, yes, as part of a larger defense of feminism – feminism as something that is good even just in part because it leads to better sex. And, in particular, with the focus on orgasm as the epitome of sexual empowerment or fulfillment.
A week ago this card went up at Postsecret:
[Image description: A postcard with a black-and-white photograph of some dude - if he's someone famous someone let me know - wearing a beret and sitting in a director's chair, and on it, the typed message: "By insisting I orgasm… you ruined sex for me."]
The person writing this postcard, male or female, wasn’t writing it to feminism, and I’m sure no feminist I can think of would consider insisting anything that failed to take the other person’s desires into account a positive expression of sexuality. But it made me think of something I’ve mused about before (and am still getting my thoughts around sorted out), which is that I think there is a real risk, when you are talking about feminism to a broad audience and, especially, to a broad audience with a lot of younger women and teenage girls, that emphasizing the feminist=good sex! equation will wind up alienating a lot of people.
So we’re clear: I don’t mean that as some kind of loss for feminism, like it’ll send our numbers down; this is not a strategic thing, for me. When I say alienating, I mean making them feel alienated; making them feel less comfortable, not more, in their relationships with their bodies; and if there is a reason to lament their hypothetical turning away from feminism because of this it is, to me, solely that they would have then closed themselves, understandably, to a potential set of tools for improving that relationship.
I mean (because what’s the internet even FOR if not MAJOR TMI): when I was sixteen years old, feminism had told me it was okay for me to masturbate, and even awesome to do so, because it meant I was in tune with myself and empowered and shit, but it hadn’t told me that it was okay that I hadn’t figured the whole thing out yet. Kind of an unusual problem for a teenage girl to have, probably, but the point I want to illustrate is that you can’t, when speaking broadly and generally of feminism, forget that your audience is made up of individuals. I think when you’re positioning yourself as someone promoting an ideology that is to the benefit of your intended audience, you have a responsibility to actually think through how what you’re saying might benefit or harm them.
You have a responsibility, in other words, to keep in the forefront of your mind that you don’t know your audience. Your audience might – very likely – include victims of sexual assault whose relationship to their own sexuality is currently not in a place where they are able to think of “fulfillment” or “empowerment” or even pleasure; or girls who are, currently, being abused; or girls who’ve never had an orgasm and feel weird and insecure about that fact because god knows, if there is a thing in the world it is possible to feel weird and insecure about, some teenager somewhere is hating themselves about it right now; or girls who have decided for spiritual reasons not to have sex until marriage, which – if you’re trying to communicate to them and not just about them, and if your goal is helping women and not just getting more people to agree with you, then you have to be willing to engage with them, I think, without proselytizing. I mean: I think the US’s (and anywhere else’s) cultural obsession with hymens is like five different kinds of fucked up with a hefty side of creepy, and I also think it’s important to talk about that, and why, and how that plays out, etc. But me explaining this is not necessarily what a girl in such a situation needs to hear, and if you’re trying to bring feminism to more people – by which I mean making more people benefit from feminism, not just trying to get more people to call themselves feminists – it’s important to take the needs of those people into account.
I’m not saying it’s not important to tell girls what they can do, what they can dream of, what they have the right to want; these are all important things to talk about and make known. I just think that sometimes, what girls, especially young girls – and really what people, and especially young people – need to hear first is that it’s okay to be however they are right now. Without that, hearing what you can be can feel like hearing, again, what you aren’t, or what you should be. I think this is true of a lot of things, but perhaps especially of sex, which is already so fraught for so many young women.
And, again, it’s not that I’m saying feminism or feminists aren’t saying this, or aren’t talking about this, because it is and they are; but I think it’s important to be mindful of what messages stand out in certain contexts.
(Like I said: this is a thing I am still muddling my way through, and my thoughts are far from solidified or definite, so I am definitely interested in hearing different people’s perspectives on the mess of topics I’ve worked into this post.)
Women in the US are being bombarded by ideology that make it extremely difficult for them to enjoy sex. Feminism is right now pretty much the only space that promotes the idea that sex is good and women have the right to enjoy it. How is it helpful to have feminism join in with the everyday patriarchal message of “Sure, sex is ok, BUT…”? Aren’t there enough people already doing that?
Sex is “so fraught for so many young women” (actually, young people of any gender, not just women) in part because they are being told 50 times a day that it should be fraught. So they come to expect it, to concentrate a lot more on the complications and the problems and the difficulties. There is nobody there to talk about the beauty of sex, but there are crowds of people to talk about all the “buts” of sexuality. I think that feminism is definitely justified in simply celebrating human sexuality simply because nobody else is doing it.
I love this post & I loved it when you brought up this issue on tumblr, too. I consider myself sex positive but sometimes feel alienated by all the “good sex! sex sex SEX” talk because a. due to reasons unknown (seriously doctors tend to just shrug, ughhh so frustrating) sex is not always a pleasant experience for me and is sometimes quite painful, and also b. when you hurt all over a lot of the time, paying enough attention to what your body is doing to WANT and ENJOY sex isn’t always the top of the list either. If that makes sense?
So sometimes I feel a bit left out by the tendency in some feminist circles to be like “SEX! It’s awesome, amirite?” because not always and not for everyone, yanno?
Umm in short, good post.
I might try to respond more later, but all I can say right now is, this is a really great post. And that’s a picture of Ingmar Bergman! I’m not totally sure why it’s a picture of Ingmar Bergman. But it works.
Hmm…I think there are places that promote female sexuality in a commodified performative way, and that’s not much help for women who don’t experience sexuality like that.
also, asexuals.
“I just think that sometimes, what girls, especially young girls – and really what people, and especially young people – need to hear first is that it’s okay to be however they are right now.”
Yes!
While I liked this post, there are some things about it that bother me.
We are starting to make it dangerous to state our opinions.
I don’t know exactly how to resolve this issue for myself, let alone explain to others how to do so; but here is the crux: I believe that we should have compassion about what others (e.g., our audience) feel and have experienced. However, there is no way to know what is going to hurt or alienate someone else.
There is a line – and that line is a moving target – between being true to our subject matter and being compassionate to our audience.
Unfortunately, we cannot always accomplish both of those goals – or at least give them equal treatment.
One stellar example of this problem is the ‘danger’ of celebrating a person, event or concept; by highlighting one thing – someone else will almost always feel excluded.
“I think there are places that promote female sexuality in a commodified performative way”
It’s also unfortunately been my experience that many of those places are places that claim to be feminist. I’m not sure if that was the meaning behind this comment or not, but it has certainly been my experience.
@Clarissa I don’t think that was Isabel’s message AT ALL. I read her Tumblr and I think, what she was talking about, is that not everyone CAN or WANTS to talk about sex openly, and people put “trigger warnings” on things that talk about sexual violence or domestic violence or other horrible things like that, but some people still can’t read things that showcase sex in a positive light because it’s a highly traumatic thing for them to think about. I know that EVERY issue can be triggering for different individuals, and like @DeltaBob is saying, it sometimes can be dangerous and/or scary to state our opinions.
I think the problem is some young people read feminist texts or blogs and they are being told, finally, that there is nothing to be ashamed of about liking sex or fucking or orgasms or masturbation or wanting to own a vibrator and stuff like that. And that is awesome! BUT I think it can sometimes freak people out, especially if that is all new to them. And maybe, just maybe, if they still don’t really like sex or don’t care about orgasms or masturbating or wanting to be naked with other people, then they think that there is something wrong with them. The lack of discussion about THAT, about not really desiring anything or not really knowing how to navigate that desire because when they think of sex and all that it entails brings up an association of things that is traumatic for them is confusing, and there are few feminist resources that address that. (And hey, if there are, I would love it if someone would direct me to them.)
So, yeah, I think this sums it up:
“I just think that sometimes, what girls, especially young girls – and really what people, and especially young people – need to hear first is that it’s okay to be however they are right now.”
It’s okay to like sex and orgasms. It’s okay to not! It’s okay to be intimidated by it all. It’s okay to not give a shit. There’s no rule in that pesky little Feminist Handbook that says you must enjoy it and be 100% sexually liberated.
Good post.
It is frustrating when issues that don’t immediately pertain to the self gain no traction and develop no legs, despite how vitally important they are. This society is sex-obsessed in all the worst ways, so I agree that it’s important to teach young women to see themselves as sexual beings without several huge dollops of guilt and shame.
Yet, Feminism isn’t specifically designed to be a sex advice column, and one would hope that people would see the importance of all the areas discussed without needing to be baited first. My answer is that we ought to continue to seek to discover intersections and parallels between subjects and causes, because then they become real and tangible to an audience.
Sex is a big part of feminism because the mainstream culture’s views regarding sex and women (and men, and trans) is fucked up. A goal of feminism is to empower women to make their own sexual choices. Obviously part of this is to say it’s ok to enjoy sex and be sexual, but I agree that we need to be careful not to say you MUST enjoy sex and be sexual. For some women being sexually empowered means having the confidence to say they are not ready for sex, or do not enjoy it, or want to save sex for a committed relationship (like marriage). I hope that there aren’t too many places claiming to be feminist spaces where they say you need to have sex or enjoy sex in order to be a feminist.
I think there are places that promote female sexuality in a commodified performative way, and that’s not much help for women who don’t experience sexuality like that.
For the comment: yes.
I think I read the postcard a bit differently than some other people, though. I just read a certain amount of resentment at the idea of “good sex = orgasm” replacing the “good sex = having fun”. And, while the two aren’t mutually exclusive, sometimes orgasms aren’t going to happen, and it’s still really good.
Personally, I’d really resent it if the focus of any encounter was a performance requirement (aka: I NEED to have an orgasm to demonstrate it was good) rather than a mutually pleasurable activity that may or may not end in orgasms.
“…and if your goal is helping women and not just getting more people to agree with you, then you have to be willing to engage with them, I think, without proselytizing.”
Yup.
And I think feminism becomes alienating when it’s used as a brand and girls/women are commodified as promoters of that brand. There aren’t many things more alienating than objectification and I think that’s what keeps people (rightfully!) away from movements that are more about image maintenance than service/survival/community etc.
I think it’s fine for feminists to speak their mind on their personal views of sex and sexuality, but these beliefs and ideas should be–like you said– treated as tools others can use and not logos for them to wear.
“I just think that sometimes, what girls, especially young girls – and really what people, and especially young people – need to hear first is that it’s okay to be however they are right now.”
Yeah, this.
I just think that sometimes, what girls, especially young girls – and really what people, and especially young people – need to hear first is that it’s okay to be however they are right now. Without that, hearing what you can be can feel like hearing, again, what you aren’t, or what you should be. I think this is true of a lot of things, but perhaps especially of sex…
I could not agree with your more. And indeed, this is one of the primary purposes of the project I’m working on at the moment. :)
FYI, Jill, that vaguely looks like Noted Misogynist, Quentin Tarintino.
I was a little startled when I saw the postcard because I identify with the text on it so strongly. I do not orgasm with partnered sex. Never have, possibly never will, and certainly do not want to at this point in time for various reasons. And that’s kind of a hard thing for some people to understand–that I am not interested in orgasms when involved in partnered intercourse (I’m actually quite terrified). In fact, I have had some partners whose entire “mission,” it seemed, was to get me off, regardless of whether or not I wanted to be gotten off, which made me feel absolutely helpless.
“I just think that sometimes, what girls, especially young girls – and really what people, and especially young people – need to hear first is that it’s okay to be however they are right now. Without that, hearing what you can be can feel like hearing, again, what you aren’t, or what you should be. I think this is true of a lot of things, but perhaps especially of sex, which is already so fraught for so many young women. ”
You are correct that it’s important that people know that we are just fine the way we are right now (even if that particular state of being is something that makes no sense to most other people). It does make me feel insecure and disappointed with my “abnormal” sexual self because I actively refuse to pursue something feminism tells me I have the right to want and have.
I am a survivor of sexual assault, and sometimes when it comes to sex, I don’t want to be empowered. I just want to be left the fuck alone about it. And the part about feminism equaling good sex just because I’m all educated and empowered is intimidating to me. For me, the relationship between feminism and sex is ideally that anything I want to do so long as all parties are legally/physically/psychologically able to consent and do so enthusiastically is acceptable, even if it means I tell my partner he needs to go home if he’s going to keep trying to make me orgasm.
I apologize if this is rambling or in any way nonsensical, but this post definitely struck an emotional chord on me.
Something I saw pointed out in another place (I forget where): what about people with various disabilities? There are disabilities that can preclude a person from having an orgasm or make certain kinds of sex difficult. Are we including these people?
I wanted to say that I’m not sure if the commodified sex stuff is just feminism coopted and sold back to us or whether it originated in the market and came back into feminism.
Good post, thanks for your thoughts.