"Fucking and Feminism" feedback

Lots of linking and commentary on the new column, "Fucking and Feminism." A brief overview:

Beyond Your Peripheral Vision has some really fabulous analysis and I wanted to add something I think I forgot to say in the column. Porn, stripping, bikini waxes, blowjobs, etc., whatever sex or sexual act you want to talk about don't have to be empowering in order to be a valid choice for women. It seems like we want to say it's about empowerment vs. exploitation - what if it's just about choices? I think this goes back to the idea of whether we want feminism to bring about equality or special status/pedestal/paternalism a la Shmuley Boteach (not saying he identifies as a feminist but did write a book called Hating Women) who explicitly says we need to put women back on a pedestal. Part of being rational, intelligent, autonomous adults is making decisions for ourselves. OF COURSE those will not all turn out to be good ones. Who could possibly think they would be? For me, the problem is when anyone, from a feminist viewpoint or not, tries to dictate what's good for all women (or all men) - how can one possibly know that? You can't. But I don't think the proper response to attacks on, say, blowjobs, is just to say "I like it" or "it's empowering to me." You know what? You can not like it and have done it, you can do it and decide you don't like it, you can do it as a quid pro quo, you can do it for money.

It's a red herring for it to have to be about empowerment and this all ties back into what I am going to write about, at some point, about casual sex and sex generally. There's this idea out there, I think, that if you're a woman and have casual sex and get hurt then you'd be better off not having done it. Certainly, I'm in no position to say "rah rah, casual sex is always great." These are arguments and situations reminiscent of what 60's feminist said about that sexual revolution - that it only worked towards the betterment of men and their sexual options. Not getting into every nuance here but firstly, I don't think sex is about a war between men and women and don't want to foster that mentality, because it's dangerous and can so easily descend into stereotypes. Part of why my book and my recent writing is hopefully going to focus on men as well is because I think it's a problem when they're always painted as the villains. I'm not saying men are perfect, nor are women, but it's disingenuous to further the alienation of men and women around sex. I would much rather look at ways for us to learn from one another and bridge the gaps that are there.

Okay, rant over, some other links, some, like Hit and Run (which must get a gazillion hits cause I've gotten so much traffic from them - thanks Julian, and Nick) and Feministing, with extensive comments sections (86 in Hit and Run as of this posting).

Feministing

Hit and Run

Salon's Broadsheet

One commenter at Hit and Run basically said that sexual freedom isn't, or shouldn't be, a feminist issue. First of all, sex has been a feminist issue since the time of Victoria Woodhull. Secondly, here, as in the blowjob column, I'm largely responding to other people's assertions about what's acceptable sexual behavior. That's something that's been said to everyone from Susie Bright to Betty Dodson to Nina Hartley and it's just a way to ignore debate about sex. It's very tricky and complicated - of course, sex is political, but I don't think that means that there is therefore a politically correct way to have sex or that one way is necessarily "better" than another. What you see or think you see or think about a certain act is not necessarily the way it feels to someone else.

I'm not quite sure why so many people can't offer suggestions for positive action without tearing other women and their decisions down in the process. Firstly, scolding, harping, and haranguing aren't going to make anyone change. Telling women essentially that they're big sluts for how they dress, act, or think really just serves to try to induce guilt and shame and I don't want any part of that.

There is actually a pretty interesting thread about Pink's "Stupid Girls" video at ModestyZone - yes, I'm linking to ModestyZone because it fascinates me and also because, especially in this thread, I don't think there are easy answers. About any of this. I'm not anti- modesty per se, or chastity, or any choices women want to make, but again, what I am against is the pitting of women against women, the sluts vs. the prudes, or however you want to designate that. I think that's the result in Shalit's A Return to Modesty and Shmuley Boteach's Hating Women when each suggest, basically, that any women who sleep with men before marriage are ruining things for the women who don't do so. Shalit urges women to form a "cartel of virtue" and Boteach I've already quoted here; that's what I object to categorically, not the notion that for some women, waiting to have sex would be a good idea.

Again, I think that there are no easy, one-size-fits-all answers to so many of these questions. Which makes it tougher for me to formulate my book proposal, but I'd rather grapple with the tricky areas than just dismiss anyone who doesn't agree with me. I think that's what happened with Sara DeKeuster; people just didn't want to hear that some women (actually, many women, I believe) have rape fantasies. That could not and did not compute and they just wanted her to shut up, and basically accused her of enabling rapists by encouraging men to think all women want to be raped. If you can't tell the difference between "rape" and "rape fantasy," well, sorry, you are not paying attention because obviously they are two completely different things. Related in the sense that the latter is a fantasy about the former, but to act like anyone would actually want to be raped for real is just ridiculous and pretty much impossible according to the definition of rape. But it's much easier to claim that no woman would really want to: give a blowjob, engage in a rape fantasy, have sex on camera, wear revealing clothes, etc. than to admit that some of us might enjoy, or at least do, these things on some occasions. Tying this together to the beginning, it's not imperative that we enjoy or be empowered by these things in order to choose to do them.