You Don’t Speak For Me

This morning I was listening to NPR as I’m wont to do, and an interview with Erica Jong, the author of Fear Of Flying came on. I’d never heard of her before, but they touted her as a feminist figure: she wrote for the first time about female pleasure and about the idea that women might actually enjoy sex. But oh my did the interview fall short of what I was hoping. It encapsulated so many of the ideas that previous waves of feminism are still stuck on, and often that the media is still stuck on. It reflected a wide variety of the problems I see in the way that older people tend to show in the way they approach young people and young people’s sexualities. And I am sick of hearing these same complaints over and over.

So first and foremost, my frustrations came to the fore when Erica Jong came out and simply said “Women want sex. Women enjoy sex.” There is a lot to unpack with this statement, and to my mind it reflects sloppy thinking and sloppy speech. Now first of all there’s a lot of gender binary crap in here that I’m not even going to go into because it’s mainstream media and I don’t expect any better. But what I do have a serious problem with is how Erica Jong apparently speaks for the experiences of all women. T

his statement would have been perfectly fine if she had said “some women” or even “most woman” or “many women”. Because yes, it’s true that women are perfectly capable of wanting and enjoying sex, but perpetuating the idea that all people want sex or they’re in some form not right? That’s uncool. Extremely uncool. I’m sick of sex being held up as always super awesome and great and peachy. Yes, sometimes it is. Yes for some people it is. But it creates a horrifically unhealthy attitude of “everyone should want this all the time!” when we don’t recognize that sometimes sex sucks and some people don’t like it much and some people are ambivalent. When someone writes about sex for a national audience, I expect them to have the nuance to understand that not everyone likes sex. Erica Jong does not speak for my experience, and I wish she wouldn’t presume to.

So now that Jong has decided that she knows what every woman likes she moves on to hook up culture. Her first comment is that she doesn’t actually think that sex with strangers is very enjoyable (bully for her!) and so hookup culture must be empty and depressing and women aren’t getting pleasure (also because Girls said so). This is one of my hugest pet peeves in the world: everyone who has not been a part of hookup culture really just needs to SHUT THE FUCK UP about hookup culture. I don’t know if hookup culture is good for people or not because I’ve never been a part of it. But until someone tells me that it makes them feel miserable, I’m not going to presume that it does simply because I wouldn’t enjoy it. Apparently Jong has not managed to understand the fact that different people like different things. In addition, I hardly find it acceptable to judge whether or not women in hookup culture are getting appropriate amounts of pleasure because let’s be honest here, women in committed relationships don’t always get what they want either. In fact VERY often they don’t.

So after that judgmental gem, Jung continues on to talk about men’s reactions to her book, and she quotes one man as saying “If I see that book on a woman’s nightstand I know I’m getting lucky.” Um…creepy rapey what??? Just because a woman likes sex or perhaps just likes reading a sex doesn’t mean she wants to have sex with YOU, and the presumption that she does is part of what makes sex for women really sucky a great deal of the time. How does Jung get off judging hookup culture as uninterested in women’s pleasure and then spout of something like this and giggle like it was a great service she had enacted for the public?

I’m surprised that someone who touts herself as feminist, someone who says she’s all about the pleasure of women, who doesn’t like to see sex that’s all about the man’s pleasure, would be so naive as to think she can speak for the experiences of every woman (oh I forgot, because you’re Experienced that means you know what the rest of us really want and feel), and that she thinks how well you know a person dictates whether they respect you or are interested in a woman’s pleasure. Let’s be honest: there are men who are asshats in hookup culture and men who are asshats out of it, women who are satisfied with their sex life in hookup culture and women who are satisfied out of it. The particular mode of sex doesn’t really have a lot to do with the larger cultural milieu that says women’s pleasure is only useful so far as it makes a man feel manly because that crosses all kinds of sex.

And then to top it all off, she decides to bring up 50 Shades of Grey. First of all the host of the show called the book an S+M book, which is blatantly false, it’s simply an abusive relationship book. Second, Jung proceeds to say that S+M is inherently bad because if a woman allows herself to be tied up she is the victim and is not taking responsibility for her sexual choices. I don’t know that I can express how many things are wrong with this, and once again, it’s someone speaking for a whole gamut of experiences without any real knowledge about those experiences. First of all, BDSM encompasses a great deal more than simply being tied up. That’s an extremely limited critique and doesn’t really hit at most of BDSM. Second of all, it’s not always a woman who is a sub (duh). And finally (and most importantly), BDSM should always be engaged in with the consent of both parties, with clear communication about what both parties want, and with a safe word so that both parties are responsible for when the scene begins and ends, and know what’s appropriate and desired in the scene. For the most part, people in BDSM sexual relationships actually talk more about what happens in their sex life and thus seem to take on more responsibility for their sexual choices than anyone else.

Now Jung’s description of a good fuck included lots of clothes falling off and “souls meeting through tongues” but I didn’t hear any mention of consent or talking to each other or checking in or anything else that might be good practice in a sexual environment, so apparently she thinks that people just tie each other up without talking about it, but this illustrates once again why it’s a very good idea not to comment on things that you don’t know about.

I’m so so sick of hearing people spout of these piles of crap. You can be respected by your longtime partner or by the person you just met, or you can be disrespected by any of those people, just like you can in any other context besides sex in the world. This may sound like I’m just really angry at one person, but I have heard all of these sentences from other people, from other feminists, all over the media, from family members, from friends. These things are not helpful. They are not teaching young people how to respect themselves better, they are not giving some deep insight into the feelings of young women. They are continuing a culture that demands women all feel and act a certain way, that eliminates choice, and that shames people who deviate by telling them that they’re hurting themselves. Please stop. Young women are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. We really don’t need anyone else butting in.

Consent Is Not Magical

So my post yesterday got some negative feedback (as I somewhat expected), with people saying that it was horrible and wrong of me to butt into other people’s sex lives and that as long as people are agreeing to do something then it’s fine and unproblematic.

 

Now I want to be clear: I am in no way suggesting that any individual should have control over another person’s sex life. What I am suggesting is that sex should not be a magical pass that keeps any consensual act from criticism. I am suggesting that we should be able to discuss how sex plays into political and patriarchal questions, ask whether certain sex acts might have negative consequences, and explore some of the complexities of consent in a world where women’s choices are necessarily constrained. I also want to be clear that I encourage people to not feel ashamed of their sex lives, sex desires, and choice to have sex because in general shame is an incredibly unhelpful and unnecessary emotion.

 

It was pointed out to me yesterday that sex-negativity is a misleading name for the position I’m taking, which is a point well taken. That said, I feel comfortable with the ID and want to keep it personally.

 

But back to choice. This seems to be something that people mistake all the time: because they chose something, because it’s their opinion or their desire, that means it must be right. If all the parties involved in an action consented to it, then it cannot be criticized and it’s fine.

 

This is just patently false. Choice is not a magical thing that changes all of your actions into positive ones. The moral worth of an action is complicated, and it involves things like choice, consequence, motive, and symbolism. Choice is one element of a variety of intertwining pieces that determine whether your action was positive or negative overall.

 

But sex is incredibly charged and personal, and it can be a hard place to look to understand the intricacies of choice and criticism. Let’s look at some less charged actions that were freely chosen and yet still really horrible. There are lots of examples of this, but first I’d like to focus on one close to my heart that also happens to terrify the vast majority of the population: self-harm. Self harm is something that is freely chosen and consented to by everyone involved. But it causes harm and negative consequences. Very few people would argue that it is a positive action (and when I’ve tried to point out that it might have some useful or positive elements, people tend to freak out a little bit so don’t suddenly change your mind and say it’s great).

 

We can see clearly that despite the fact that this is something incredibly personal, something that directly affects only one person, and something that is freely chosen, it is not a positive action and it’s one that we would want to criticize or change. It may impact others indirectly. We want to talk about the things that drive a person to do it and ask them if they might have a different way of dealing with those urges.

 

Now this example might not do it for all of you as it’s a fairly controversial example (and I’m really not trying to suggest that sex is like BDSM, it was just the clearest example of a negative but freely chosen action I could find). But there are TONS of other examples. Someone brought up organ donation to me recently. Very often, when people say that their choice not to donate their organs is beyond criticism because it’s their choice, I get confused. Yes, we all have bodily autonomy. And no, no one is going to steal your organs out of you because you haven’t consented. But that doesn’t mean that there are no negative consequences to your action or that you couldn’t have made a more positive choice. Simply because you have bodily autonomy doesn’t mean that others can’t ask you to explain your actions or try to convince you that a different action might be better. They’re free to discuss the ramifications of not donating organs, or explain to you why they choose to donate their organs. Sometimes one freely chosen action is better than another.

 

Again, none of these are supposed to be direct parallels to sexual choices, they are simply illustrations that things we choose to do with our bodies that don’t involve violating another person’s bodily autonomy or consent may still have negative ramifications or be a negative decision.

 

A final example is one that’s close to home and illustrates how gently we have to move around these kinds of criticisms: veganism. Many people realize that veganism is probably the most ethical life choice in terms of eating: it is best for the planet and respects animal life the best. However many other people choose not to be vegan. Oftentimes non-vegans pretty much ignore all vegan arguments because they think that their right to choose what to do with their body means their food choices should not be open to any criticism. They get incredibly pissed when a vegan suggests that maybe they shouldn’t eat hamburgers filled with bacon for every meal. Now food is a very emotionally fraught topic, and in many ways they might be right: each of us has the right to eat what we choose. However the larger impacts of an individual’s diet mean that the choice to eat meat has larger implications that might make it a negative choice. So while they do have the right to eat as they choose, others may ask them to consider how that action affects the planet as a whole.

 

Pointing this out is not an attack, nor does it remove the bodily autonomy of an individual to continue eating meat. It begins a conversation and asks them to consider alternative perspectives. Respectful vegans will understand that the situations of other individuals must be taken into account and that no one should be forced to be vegan or insulted or shamed for their choices, however they are still willing to discuss the ramifications of meat-eating. We have seen how quickly this can get ugly, but I have had productive conversations about my own choice to be non-vegan with vegans who adamantly believe that veganism is the best choice.

 

But somehow when we bring sex into the mix the ability to discuss these larger ramifications is suddenly considered negative, invasive, and shaming. Why is it that when sex is in the mix, choice becomes the magic card that shields all actions from any criticism or questioning? Discussing, criticizing, or questioning does not take away another person’s freedoms, nor does it necessarily shame them (although it can and thus we need to be careful with it). It asks for more, and it asks them to consider if their actions could be more positive. That’s all. Just as free speech does not free you from criticism, neither does bodily autonomy, particularly when your actions have ramifications like reifying patriarchal structures that create negative impacts throughout society.

BDSM: A Feminist Pursuit, But Not Taken Lightly

So there’s a lovely little post up at The Pervocracy about BDSM and feminism and how you can do both at the same time, which I a.want to promote and b.want to add to. Now I am going to add the caveat that I do not personally practice BDSM and so if I get things wrong I am HIGHLY sorry and I don’t want to be stepping on any toes for talking about things that I don’t know about. Anywho, I think this post got a lot of things right. I think it’s right that feminism shouldn’t want to “save women from themselves”, I think it’s right that in general the BDSM community pays a lot more attention to consent and safety than other people who have sex, I think that feminism has no place telling women what makes them feel good, and I think that BDSM is a whole lot more complicated than “submissive female, dominant male”. So back off people who are all anti-BDSM.

Now that being said I have worries about all kinds of sex as a feminist and that extends to BDSM. Again, I think everyone has the right to pursue whatever kind of sex they want as long as it’s consensual and doesn’t harm anyone (more than they want to be harmed). But in situations of BDSM where there is a submissive women and a dominant man, I worry that it confirms certain scripts that are all too common in our communities. While it’s true that that might be your personal kink and it might make you feel strong and powerful, we all have to be aware of the fact that our desires are shaped by the community that we come from. I often have the desire to just roll over like a rug and let people walk all over me in my relationships. That’s certainly societally conditioned. It’s not good for me, and the more I do it, the more I confirm that that’s what women do: I set a bad example for any women around me.

This is not to say that I should feel guilty for these urges. It is not to say that there’s something wrong with me for wanting to be submissive sometimes. And it’s not to say that I might not naturally be a quiet person (hint: I’m really really not). What it DOES mean is that I should be aware of the times when I want to act out the script that’s been given to me and consciously choose whether I want to follow it or not.

I think that in many ways these same considerations apply to BDSM scenes. Even if we are acting out violence towards women in a fully consensual way that makes a woman feel powerful, it is still repeating the same script of violence against women. And that has the potential to be far more dangerous than we may expect it to be. Even if our intentions in acting a certain way are to please ourselves, to make ourselves feel powerful or connected to another human being, we should also be aware that what we’re doing is part of a context: the context in which violence against women is normalized and we are continuing to create that image.

Now BDSM is slightly different from my desire to let my partner make all the decisions in my life because it is in fact a role-play, and because it is usually very private. For these reasons, I think that it may not in fact be as worrisome as some other examples of unexamined desire. But that doesn’t mean that it’s entirely unproblematic. I think that when people choose to engage in BDSM, they should be aware of the potential for their actions to be misinterpreted as upholding the status quo, they should be ready to vehemently argue against that (as the article cited above did), and they should be ready to act very differently in their lives when they are not roleplaying.

I’m really not entirely sure how we can follow what we desire and want while still criticizing the status quo. If I desperately want to be a housewife, should I give up that dream because it gives a certain impression of women? Probably not, but I should be aware that my choice might have been shaped by other pressures, and talk about it with my daughters/sisters/friends/women around me. How do you think we should deal with it when what we want may not be entirely up to us? I think that again we might find ourselves caught between our responsibility to follow our own desires and do what makes us feel good, and our responsibility to act in a way that promotes the well-being of others. Our desires don’t exist in a vacuum, so how do we follow them while also challenging the things that might have shaped our desires?