Footwear as birth control. Photo of three of the author’s lower extremities by Stingray
Linking to yesterday’s essay on misogyny in sporty-wear is this post by pro-sport-corset blogger Random Bird. I am sorry to report that Random Bird’s remarks are mostly of a nature that causes bitter tears to spring to the despondent auntly eye (for example, Ms. Bird employs, without apparent irony, the hideous, superincumbent word ‘Derrida,’ in conjunction with such cringingly dude-o-centric rhetoric as “The vagina is empty. The penis fills it.â€).* Happily, she does discover what is perhaps the only imaginable use for a McDonald’s salad: comparing it to an uncircumcised weenie. Then she asks the very same question that blamers with the old pioneer spirit have often asked me.
“What are you wearing?â€
I kid, I kid. Everybody already knows what I am wearing: two boob scars, a pair of red polka dot boxers, a couple of Ace bandages under a giant fracture boot, one cruddy green leather oxford, and three chocolate marshmallow bonbon crumbs.
Anyway, what really interests me about the post to which I allude is that, after some blogular introspection on the subject of her ‘blowjob duties’ (gulp), Random Bird, who of course is 25, muses thusly:
Random Bird is onto something here (ignore the first bit—which I include only for context—where she invokes the strawfeminist; a girl who mistakes her vagina for an empty void would see feminism as the enemy of female sexuality). If I’m reading her right, she’s very sensibly curious, as have been a decent number of blamers over the years, as to just how a feminist is supposed to get off in this crazy, messed-up world.
Yall will be pleased to know that I have the answer.
A feminist gets off the only way a member of an oppressed class can get off: with extreme caution.
In other words, until the psychotic global system of dominance and submission gives way to a sane one that doesn’t fetishize oppression, there is no solution to the buzzkiller political problems inherent in all heterosexual boinking. That’s right. No solution. No happy ending. No scenario wherein prancing in a pink sportcorset can be construed as a politically neutral act. No ‘egalitarian sex’.
Sorry!
I can already smell the fallout; this unpleasant observation always pisses people off. Particularly women. Particularly those straight women who derive a large-ish chunk of their identity from their mad sexbot skillz and brilliantly successful assimilation of the principles of femininity, e.g. “pole dancing is empowering!â€, women who don’t yet grasp the scope of the hatred with which men view them. Because they are members of a patriarchal society, and because patriarchal societies always blame women for injustices visited on women, Sexy McSexersons often feel compelled, in no small numbers, to accuse radical feminists (and the occasional spinster aunt) of trying to suck all the fun out of fucking.
Not so fast, Sexy McSexersons! Whoa there, femininst-o-phobes! Radical feminists are not the enemy. We’re not even a bunch of homely old frigid prudes jealous of all the hot sex we’re not getting. Patriarchy is the real sex police. By convincing you that you’re hot when you cave in to its psycho demands, it has turned you into its slave. “Well, what of it?†you say. “What I choose to (a) do in the sack or (b) wear to work or (c) have implanted in my chest is none of your beeswax.â€
Perhaps not, but, well, it’s just that certain of your so-called choices are making the whole group look bad. Men appear to have gotten the impression that women are not, you know, quite as entitled as men are. So they’ve institutionalized ‘beauty,’ dieting, cosmetic surgery, sexual harassment, wife-beating, and rape, to name but a few of the thousand unnatural shocks female flesh is heir to. We’re blaming the patriarchy, not you, but really, mightn’t it be time to step up?
“Examine your lives!†is the Twisty refrain. Don’t forget that, as a member of an oppressed class, everything you do is political. So what say you reevaluate those phony, misogynist feminine constructs? Every tube of lipstick, every coy little head-tilt, every train-yourself-not-to-gag-while-deep-throating-a-flaccid-bratwurst session is a symbol of oppression. And not just your oppression, either, but the oppression of all women. And they’re not just symbols, either, but concrete evidence of your collaboration with the dominant culture. Every time you ‘choose’ to totter down the street in a pair of heels and a pencil skirt you’re a Yay Patriarchy billboard. It says “I willingly brand myself as different from and subordinate to men. Shall I bend over now?â€
Patriarchy isn’t just some hollow word invented by hairy dykes with sour grapes, you know. Women’s oppression is some serious shit. The sportcorset, insignificant little bondage joke though it may seem, doesn’t exist in a vacuum, ladies. It’s a part of the normativization of femininity—globally pernicious patriarchal bullshit that, if women are ever to fuck unfettered, must be chucked back into the fetid swamp of dudecrap whence it came. Nobody really looks hot working out in a human rights violation, anyway.
_______________________________
*A vagina is no ‘emptier’ than a leg or a dick or any other body part, but today’s empowerful woman remains unshaken in her belief that we’re all tottering around town with tragic, gaping holes in our clams. The vagina-as-negative-space/woman-as-receptacle concept is one of patriarchy’s more unappetizing morsels of propagandical bogosity.
Chapeau, Twisty!
Yesterday, I thought about “the empowerful woman”; today the words I will think about: “We’re not blaming you, but really, mightn’t it be time to step up?”
I love your (green) shoes!
nice post, actually very tough stuff to write about.
also, what a weird shoe.
Examine your lives!
The fear of feminism is so amazing. Seems like my initial reactions to feminism were much the same as many of these young women: How will I ever be able to have sex again if it makes me an oppressor of women and a person who hates women and enjoys their degradation every time I make love?
Luckily for me I have a mind that is disposed towards regarding the world as a complicated place where degrees of different states exist without contradiction or logical flaws. I have a smattering of sub-Junior College Philosophy to realize that categorical constructs can be flawed and disproven by those with the patience to figure out logical flaws.
Many of the ideas I agree with that are feminist are mostly valid outside a relationship of friendship and mutual love. Within this relationship, knowing about feminism helps me to understand the cultural struggles, somewhat unconscious, of a man and a woman seeking companionship and love from each other.
I have to laugh at the idea of the Alan Alda type feminist scorned and belittled by the mainstream. It seems so unlike my life, even though I do most of the cooking and cleaning around my house. Some people would see ‘women’s work’. A feminist sees something that needs to be done and just does it because otherwise you live like an animal, which seems to me what the patriarchy wants to reduce me to; a mere animal.
It’s weird, isn’t it, the things that get mistaken for sex. For fucking. Blather about “empty” vaginas (or, when I was in school pre-Derrida, wombs as “internal space”) and Standbyyourmanitude and clothing f’rgods’ sakes and yeah, crap one has to practice to endure. And ya know, I’m homely as a mud fence, but way back around 1970 when I realized I’d get an extra half-hour’s sleep if I quit with the damn makeup, my sex- /love-life improved immediately. That same weekend!
And when I got the hell away from the local patriarchal mores that still stuck to my shoes back in the hometown (this included some of the local dykes in my favorite bar giving me secondhand shit because they couldn’t figure out if I was butch or femme… Yeah, time-warp stuff. Be bi; get it from all sides.) and took the geography cure, things got pretty damned good. Great sex for thirty-some years and counting. Didn’t even have to shave my legs. Didn’t have to do anything I didn’t feel like, except get up and get dressed and hold down a job now and then, and that’s because we like to eat and drink and have indoor plumbing.
All this costuming? All this fashion nonsense? All this looking or behaving some certain way? It’s all about the patriarchy. It isn’t about sex.
While I could understand the sportcorset post well, this one gives me pause for consideration. I suppose getting married in the first place was an anti-feminist thing to do. Does it alter the scenario when I’m the primary breadwinner or just make it worse? DH is the designated kitty litter man. Is he oppressed or enlightened? I have a higher sex drive and usually initiate. I don’t perceive our sexual relationship to be either feminist or anti-feminist. Does it have any bearing? These are things I’ll have to think about today.
If the vagina is a void, is the womb a bigger void? How about the mouth? That would explain obesity in epidemic proportions.
twisty, you’re amazing.
thank you.
I’m a 45 year old blamer who grew up with a feminist mother in the 60s and 70s, and i’ve been in the trenches. My husband and I respect each other and our relationship is as close to completely equal as we can get it, which is pretty damn close. (I’m a bit more assertive than he is so I sometimes get the upper hand.) It’s challenging maintaining a relationship that sane in an insane world, but so far so good.
Thanks again. We need more like you.
Golly. My nostril is empty. My finger fills it. My ear is empty. An elbow fills it.
Not to open old wounds but you seem to have found someone else who thinks that a functioning gag reflex means that they are no good at oral sex. Does it ever occur to these women that oral sex might not be good for them? -
“And then I woke up, ready to admit it: I’m afraid I’m not good at oral sex. I was horrendous as a teenager; you can ask Patrick. I remember, at age seventeen, puking up lettuce on his dick.”
Maybe that’s what separates out feminists from women who haven’t yet embraced it - we’re not prepared to ignore our bodies’ complaints, whether it be being unable to breathe because we’re strapped into a corset or vomiting up salad over an unappealing penis.
‘Every time you ‘choose’ to totter down the street in a pair of heels and a pencil skirt you’re a Yay Patriarchy billboard. It says “I willingly brand myself as different from and subordinate to men. Shall I bend over now?‒
It does say that, it really, really does! You can’t run if a man tries to rape you, and its a 90% chance that the man is one of your friends or family. Pretend we live in a civilized world where what you wear and do doesn’t signify your sex-class status and THEN put six (or five, or three depending on whose stats you use) women in a room together and find out which one of them has been raped or abused.
Rape is a tool of warfare, and by acquiesing to a cultural imperative to dress in subordinate feminine drag costumes, you show just how effective it is in controlling you. Step out of line, look too masculine or too slutty and someone will let you know how horribly you’ve erred. Then tell me your choices about dress are made in a vacuum.
Finally, I would just like to say that “vagina as empty” is something that leaps from the hallowed halls of academic misogyny a la Plato’s “half-formed man” or Freud’s “penis envy”. Idiotic buffoonery used to justify rape and oppression as natural and right. If your vagina is an empty, longing receptable for the penis, it only echoes your mind. Try filling your brain with something other than the garbage this woman hating culture spews at you and you might view your body differently, even–god forbid!–sovereignly instead of something to mold to fit someone else’s desires.
Because you are choosing to accept sex-class status, because you don’t live in a vacuum, and because it affects me, too, try to pay attention to the reality of the world you live in.
That is one beautiful green shoe. If you didn’t have other biological factors guaranteeing its success, I don’t think you could count on it as effective birth control. Not at all.
Meanwhile, I love how you always tell people to just think about their choices, and then how many do, out loud, right here or in their own public spaces. The diversity of language and voice used to convey the thoughts your thoughts help spark is fascinating. No matter the age of the speaker, I always wonder what these same voices will sound like a few years from now.
Blame on.
Golly. My nostril is empty. My finger fills it. My ear is empty. An elbow fills it.
I love this. I’ve had occasion to think, when confronted by the bogus argument that hetrosex is “natural” in a way that homosex is not because the penis and the vagina were meant to fit together, that my thumb would fit up my ass, but it doesn’t mean that that’s the best thing to do with either body part.
And although this might sound condescending to the blogger to whom you link (and my apologies for that), i’m not at all surprised that said blogger is 25, rather than 35 or 45 or some such thing. It’s easier to buy into the patriarchal sexbot mandate when it takes little effort to achieve it. I was there. As we age, though, and the effort gets greater, the whole thing seems less natural, and increasingly silly, and eventually, supremely irritating.
Being a feminist is hard at 25.
I think it’s important to focus on the idea that the argument here–which I think is completely convincing–is about social and political structures. Yes, they’re expressed at the level of individuals, but anecdotal evidence (”My guy is different,” etc.) no matter how truthful, is sort of beside the point. The kindly master doesn’t make us re-evaluate the slave system, the brave Army medic doesn’t make us rethink our opposition to militarism, and similarly the conscientious male domestic partner doesn’t really call in question the critique of patriarchy as an oppressive system of institutions, practices, and ideas. And the Thatcherite myth of “individual choice”–a myth because it presumes equality of power and freedom, which don’t exist–always turns into a game of Blame the Victim: if she’s oppressed it’s because she doesn’t resist, individually (regardless of risk to herself or her kids etc.) No, it’s because she belongs to an oppressed group; individual heroes are admirable but rare, which is why it’s short-sighted to rest our hopes of justice on everyone acting heroic. Solidarity (with its corollary, not blaming the oppressed for their suffering) is the key.
For fuck’s sake, people, there are different ways to give a blowjob. Try to avoid doing things you can’t manage, as a caring partner won’t get off on that sort of thing. In other news, we all make our compromises. Sometimes we choose to put another brick in the wall of the patriarchy, but that does not make us bad people. Sometimes we choose to help break down the patriachy. Feminism is like zen, I think. They say carry water, chop wood before enlightenment, and carry water, chop wood after enlightenment. There’s never going to be a place where you can stop thinking and believe you are truly free of all influences from the outside world. It’s a tough path, but hey, you don’t have to do it if you don’t wanna.
Twisty,
I’m not crazy about that shoe, but I thoroughly enjoy how you’ve paired it with a sport sock. It assaults all my fashion sensibilities. Well done!
Reading Twisty is better than sex anyways.
As far as women who say that they are choosing of their own, unadulterated free will to squeeze into the narrow confines of feminine gender drag or otherwise engage in practices which limit their scope of power, parrot submissiveness, or mutilate the sovereignty of their bodies in any way shape or form:
Don’t piss down my back and tell me its raining.
No one is saying you [the general you, not specific] can’t wear those shoes (sportcorset, fake tits), after all–you’ve been trained to love your oppression, but don’t pretend you live in a fairyland where your “choices” are free of influence or consequence. If you are going to assuage some patriarchal ego and hide behind the mask your oppressor deams acceptable, at least have the courtesy to not insult me with this crap about personal choice and how egalitarianism would kill your sex drive.
Boo-fucking-hoo. I’d rather live in a world without rape, even if it means you loose your patriarchy approved sex-drive. My sex-drive will remain just fine, and so will my choice of clothes. Maybe its time for you and the men you try so hard to please to evolve.
Twisty,
I have been lurking about your blog for 2 weeks now, I love your writing. Being new to Blaming, I have been afraid to post any comments.
Today’s post caused depressing epiphany.
Feminism does not liberate me from guilt about sex. The reasons given for the guilt have changed, but the guilt itself remains. I am a heterosexual woman, and no matter what, that’s bad.
I blame the patriarchy. (But I love that shoe.)
To me this is not just ignorance, but willful ignorance. I understand she is young, but criminilly, doing the mental work to differentiate between your own sexuallity and the dictates of the patriarchy is feminism 101.
“It seems that some feminists today are taking the position that to embrace your sexuality is to embrace the patriarchy.”
No, willfully ignorant patriarchy pleaser, this is not true. It SEEMS true to you because you are willfully ignorant.
I hereby apologize to the young patriarchy blamer for the intensity of my outrage.
I don’t care for the pointy patriarchal toe on that shoe but I am rather enamored with the spiky wooden heel, that looks lethal!
First I read, then I went back and looked at the photo. What I saw first was : a velcro boot, a green shoe and a turkey baster. Somebody help me! The shoe brings back fond memories of shoes I called my Wicken Witch of the West Shoes. These are even better being WWotW green and not black. You must be feeling better, the blaming is first rate.
To clarify, that is not a “Wikkan” typo but a “Wicked” one. The turkey baster, I cannot explain as easily.
Warning, nitpick alert.
Mmm, I always thought that theThatcherite ideology—whatever you want to call it—explicitly doesn’t assume equality of power and freedom. It simply says that you must make do with what you already have, because it claims (rightly or wrongly) that to attempt to alter class structure is to invite further tyranny. ie, your choice within the existing system is the best freedom you’re going to get given a starting place provided by capitalist markets.
I don’t agree with the idea either but I think it’s better thought out that many people give it credit for.
Gah! It’s a nun shoe, good for frosting the hearts of nice Catholic boys everywhere with the ice of pure terror.
bogosity?
Or is it bogusity, as in the state of being bogus? I admit that bogosity reads better, but ’tis confusing.
In any event, Twisty, thanks for setting down another boundary in the ever-continuing fight to keep feminism from being whatever the hell Madison Avenue wants us to think it is so that we’ll buy more shit. I thought of this recently while leafing through the misnamed “Real Simple” magazine. Readers were asked what their best beauty tool was to save time, and so many people went right to products of one form or another. It didn’t appear to occur to the readers (or, possibly, the editors) that the best beauty tool is to stop hating the way you look and finding happiness and confidence in your own damned self instead of relying on brand name snake oils and their fear/shame advertising.
What is edgy or ironic (or “edgy-ironic,” even) about working out in a corset? The patriarchy expects women to look hot when they’re at the gym, and RandomBird obliges, with an assist from that little mom-and-pop outfitter, Nike.
It’s not just heterosexual boinking. It’s boinking period. The patriarchy has fetishized homosexuality in much the same was that it forces women into being the sex class. It’s a no-win situation for every woman regardless of their sexual orientation. Also considering how “virginity” has been fetishized an argument could be made that choosing not to boink is submitting to the patriarchy.
As a bumbling, eager to learn feminnist, I need to ask: Given that we have been raised from infants to seek outside sources of sexuality and beauty, live still in a society that uses mindmelt marketing to ensure the tradition follows, how do we then begin to find our own “sexy” and “beauty”? Any skirt, some skirts, hemp skirts? Any heel, low heel, rubber heel? No makeup? Some? How do I trust myself after years of social sabotage? The older I get the more I see the way I leaned on the patriarchy to get by. Now that I am looking to change, how do I not throw the baby out with the bathwater? How do I know exactly where the subconscious internalized patriarchy end and I begin? I am an educated, successful woman but still struggle to cut away those layers that I now find self-sabotaging. See where I am going here?
1. Bogosity is a more lyrical form of the word bogusity, which I feel just fine about using, since neither word actually exists.
2. Mandos is back! The natural order is restored.
3. To whomever took exception to my green shoe: I assure you, it’s not pointy-toed, although I can see how the angle of the picture might make it seem that way. My anti-foot-pain instincts prevent me from cramming the Twisty toes into tight torture shoes invented by misogynist gay male fashion designers.
Schatze’s hallucination of a “turkey baster” has me howling! A visual Mondegreen!
“It seems that some feminists today are taking the position that to embrace your sexuality is to embrace the patriarchy. ”
Ah yes. And of course ‘embracing your sexuality’ is not about you wanting yourself to get off, or you wanting yourself to see naked attractive people, or you wanting to do said people. It means making yourself eye candy for others and being subject to other peoples desires. If there is one idea that should catch on it is that your sexuality should involve you as the subject. How did we miss this? Maybe people would buy it if I disguised it as a shiny pink covered self help book and someho got it on Oprah’s book list.
This woman = passive because vagina gets filled thing, man=active yadda yadda, to me reeks of magical thinking. People have this superstitious belief that thing mean things in the natural world. Penis = signifier for active priciple is to me the same when people thought 7 was magic becuse there were 7 colors and 7 planets(that they knew of), or thinking if I light a green candle I will get money ‘cuz money is green. This is the worst kind of armchair philosophy and it is touted equally by biblically feuled wingnuts an eugenics pushing ev-psych woman haters. I suspct anyone who says things loike that has little grasp on scientific thinking, and probably has logical leaps everywhere in their thought process.
jbeeky,
As a bumbling, eager to learn feminnist, I need to ask: Given that we have been raised from infants to seek outside sources of sexuality and beauty, live still in a society that uses mindmelt marketing to ensure the tradition follows, how do we then begin to find our own “sexy†and “beauty� Any skirt, some skirts, hemp skirts? Any heel, low heel, rubber heel? No makeup? Some? How do I trust myself after years of social sabotage? The older I get the more I see the way I leaned on the patriarchy to get by. Now that I am looking to change, how do I not throw the baby out with the bathwater? How do I know exactly where the subconscious internalized patriarchy end and I begin? I am an educated, successful woman but still struggle to cut away those layers that I now find self-sabotaging. See where I am going here?
I would think that perhaps it would be best to begin by asking what clothing choices have to do with women’s sexuality? The problem is patriarchy’s social construction of women’s sexuality as performance for men’s sexuality, not which costume women perform in, so to speak.
jbeeky:
Everyone’s answer is different, but mine is this: I conform to femininity as much as I must to propel my career forward. I will shave my legs, wear a bit of makeup, and stay relatively up-to-date fashion-wise so that I look like the professional that I am. Is this giving in to patriarchy? Of course it is! Of course. But I need a job, and I want a job I like. So I cave, and I acknowledge that.
The first thing you should do is stop reading fashion magazines. Next, stop thinking you have any obligation to look like any celebrity or model, EVER. Also, only exercise and eat well to the extent that it makes you healthier and happier. Not to make the boys at the gym want to fuck you.
[it took me so long, too long, to figure out that a hard-on is no complement. most straight men want to fuck any woman who’ll have them. it’s not like they’re all that particular]
Anyway, for me, it boils down to this: if practicing a degree of femininity serves my purposes, then I will do it. If it makes me feel bad, costs a lot of money, is painful, distracts me from my real goals, or only rewards me with generalized male sexual approval, then fuck it, cross it off the list, and don’t even look back.
I have over the years shed a number of feminine practices that seemed like reasonable capitulations at one time. It’s not easy to do a total purge, just start questioning your motives on a regular basis, and you’ll find old habits starting to drop away. You’ll also find you have more time on your hands, more money in your wallet, and less distraction from the things that matter to you.
xo,
Jezebella
Jezebella, excellent answer.
also love the “hard on is not a complement” thing. That is something that all women need to know. (if they haven’t figured it out for themselves yet)
Your green shoes make me love you even more. They are indeed beautifully witchy. I think they would look great reclining against your recliner, too.
Carpenter: Magical thinking about the vagina is in order, because it’s a magical body part. Which is why it gets put down so much. A void. Hah! A mouth! A ferocious, chomping mouth! Silly patriarchy defenders work to disguise the creative elastic membrane from what it is - the beautiful producer and consumer, never “filled” because it is a red-hot two-way electric conduit of transformation. Fear of the mouth (not of the void - who’s scared of a hole?) is the engine that keeps the patriarchy running.
Ooh, that is one well-turned ankle.
Oh dear, that seems to have a double meaning that I didn’t realize until I posted it.
“Ooh, that is one well-turned ankle.”
Hah!
“How do I know exactly where the subconscious internalized patriarchy ends and I begin?”
For that matter, how does anybody know where the tendency to turn into your mother (or father) ends and you begin? Where does the tendency to emphasize the sides of your personality that match the friend you’re hanging out with at the moment end, and you begin? I could go on all day.
I enjoy the search for a good answer to these questions, so I’m not saying we shouldn’t debate them and any number of others like them. It beats all heck out of discussing, say, purse styles, but you don’t really expect a final, definitive answer, do you?
Besides, if there was a final, definitive answer, the feministophobes (love that!) would just say that we’re being exclusionary purists with no room for diverse points of view.
Jezebella,
Thank you! I guess I am in a stage where I am am trying to find the motivation in my behavior. Seems simplistic but when I take it down to the level of whether the motivation was so cleverly externalized in our society for so long that I internalized it and now see it as a true motivation of my own doing, I get frustrated and quite frankly confused. I stopped hag mags long ago after I was involved in a grass roots campaign called “Don’t Use Our Cans to Sell Yours”, a call to the alcohol industry to stop exploiting women in thier beer advertising. As you can see it was wildly successful and now you NEVER see alcohol sold by silicone sisters. Never. But really taking inventory of myself and what I truly call my own seems to be a longer more convoluted journey than I first thought.
I think Jbeeky’s question is really interesting, because our likes and dislikes are so conditioned by patriarchy that we can’t untangle one from the other. An example: I like to wear boots with a moderate heel because 1) I think they I look good in them, and 2) They impart a confident “don’t mess with me” attitude when I wear them. They do, however, get a bit uncomfortable after about four hours, which I emphatically don’t like.
Now I have to ask: Is it possible to “look good” for myself alone? In some cases? Any? And what about that attitude? Is it there because I know I look good in said footwear?
The main problem is the oh-so-pervasive “gaze.” Are my choices a response to it, even if I don’t think they are? I never consciously say to myself, “If I wear these, men will think I’m hot.” Does that mean that my lack of intent mitigates the effect of the gaze?
To use an extreme example, for the sake of argument: Could I wear a corset (I never would, but still) in good conscience, if I truly and sincerely didn’t give a darn whether others found it sexy?
The moderation bot hates me today.
Oh dear, I will need a frontal lobotomy if I am to stop liking “feminine” things.
I am doomed.
Please allow me to be a big nerd for a moment:
The vagina is not “empty” on its own. In fact, the walls of the vagina lay flat against each other unless the woman who owns it is aroused or menstruating.
For what it’s worth.
This post — and the comments — are exactly what I needed to read today. Thanks to everyone.
Carpenter: “If there is one idea that should catch on it is that your sexuality should involve you as the subject.” Yes! Well into the Third Wave, and we’re still taught that women must focus on becoming better objects. This is reinforced by teaching us to substitute pleasing for pleasure. Why the hell do we keep talking about blow jobs? Let’s talk about cunnilingus for awhile.
“In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change. For women this has meant a suppression of the erotic.” (Audre Lorde)
Printing and saving, filed under “Classic Blaming”. Great post, Twisty.
1. Twisty: LOVE that shoe! as well as its occupant.
2. Rootlesscosmo, you raise an interesting conundrum. On one hand, the anecdotal does not count as data, and the my person/relationship is different/better can have the effect of minimizing the totalizing effect of the patriarchy. On the other, the personal is political. that is, being willing and able to construct a het relationship that at least questions and blames the patriarchy once in awhile may be the best for which we can hope right now–but it also can serve as a model for others, for people who want to BtP but don’t quite know how to go about it. We all have to live our lives–within the context of the patriarchy, yes; but we can’t do any more than BtP if we don’t make our own personal stabs in that direction.
3. Dr_igloo: much as I love twisty, I love sex more.
4. Carpenter: thanks for that clarification. For me, the sex IS all about getting off, seeing attractive naked people, getting off some more, doing/being done by said people, getting off some more, etc., but you’re right that the sexbot version doesn’t involve the sexbot getting any actual orgasmic pleasure out of the whole thing, which is just perverted.
5. Jezebella, a hardon may not be a compliment, but, when I want to fuck one, it certainly is a complement. (sorry; nitpicking about spelling for my own amusement is probably not nice, and I really liked your commentary, but I couldn’t resist.) And I loved your comment about fashion magazines in particular. I haven’t bought (or read) one in decades; even the covers just seem so repellent. I definitely BtP.
It’s always inspiring to me when someone like jbeeky chimes in. And all these posts encouraging women to relax about the feminine camouflage they are bound to wear.
That’s what has drawn me to feminism. The idea that we are not required to have all this anxiety about our outward selves, that it is imposed on us by the culture.
Anxiety about being good at giving blow jobs, for example, taken to the point that you actually vomit on a penis. Who wants that kind of pressure? And then, pretending to like giving head. What has being good at giving head to do with being loved by someone? Nothing.
I think becoming aware of feminism can open your eyes to who loves you and who doesn’t. The guy pushing the back of your head down might just love blowjobs, not you.
This is off topic, but maybe some of you blamers might be interested in this. I just read that the Governor of S. Dakota is asking for people to pray for a week….seems that the state of S. Dakota has had NO RAIN for quite some time now. Hmmmm….isn’t that the state that the legislature, Governor, and stupid voters decided to force women to carry to term the children of rapists and their male relatives?
Yes, it is. And now it seems that Mother Nature is punishing these cruel folks. HA!
Anyway….I dropped the Gov. a note mentioning this fact. Maybe if they change their ways toward women, Mother Nature will turn on the faucet again!
If others are interested in contacting the Governor:
http://www.state.sd.us/governor/
Blame Blame Blame
Emma Goldman: I agree completely that “the personal is political,” certainly in the sense–which as I remember was the main one intended by the women who created the phrase–that personal relationships have a power dimension and are linked to institutions of power on the larger scale. Can decent, respectful, comradely het relationships serve as a kind of political action? Maybe. I hope so. They exist–my partner and I used to discuss giving an annual Leonard Woolf Award to men who genuinely supported women of ability and imagination, and there were candidates, though not many. Whether they can serve as exemplars I honestly don’t know.
My main concern was that–for complicated historical reasons–a lot of Americans really have trouble focusing on structures and institutions, preferring to fall back on anecdotes, true or urban-legendary, like the Welfare Queen or the Happy Hooker or (probably the earliest version) the Happy, Childlike Slave. But if we’re trying to understand how a society works (and, hopefully, how to change it for the better) these curiosities are immaterial.
Rootless, I agree completely. I think it’s vital that we not just examine our lives, but examine the structures within which they are lived, insofar as any of that is possible, and i also agree that examining the structures of power is not one of the strong suits of most Americans. I find myself doing a lot of backing and forthing in my own life–trying to see the structures, trying to make my way among them, trying to effect change when I can, in whatever small ways, etc. Other times, I uncork some wine and have at it.
O Twisty, won’t you please delete my second post that came right after the first. Just once, just once I want to squunch my eyes up and pretend I am one of the makers of the bons mots.
Oh, how I wish I were dry!
Particularly those straight women who derive a large-ish chunk of their identity from their mad sexbot skillz and brilliantly successful assimilation of the principles of femininity, e.g. “pole dancing is empowering!â€, women who don’t yet grasp the scope of the hatred with which men view them.
I think on IBTP, you are more likely to catch crossfire on this from straight women who don’t do any of these things, yet still enjoy sex with men. I have long resolved the heterosexual connundrum by being rather picky, choosing toys over boys unless the proper dynamic was in place. I think that is why I’m somewhat uncomfortable in “drag”, which is when I seem to elicit the male gaze: my bozo filters are not in place.
The problem with this approach: it works at the individual level, nothing more.
That said, I don’t think a lifelong lesbian really can speak for or advise straight women on feminist sexuality in this manner, not to the detail that this post attempts. You don’t like dick and we know that and respect that, but damnit Twisty, you don’t have much cred here! Consider how limited a straight womans “truths” would be advising gay women on these issues, and how that would sound.
Ms Kate, you don’t know me, so it is not surprising that your assumptions about my personal history are without basis in fact. But even if they were not, I would still have no compunction cutting loose with a critique of what I regard as irrresponsible behavior. Gay or straight, wrong is wrong.
Just have to say, this is a great discussion, so good that your back beating the drum dear Twisty.
My greatest epiphany came when I gained alot of weight and simoutaneously had to go on welfare.
Not only could I not afford to look good anymore, but the weight gained by taking anti-depressants to calm a severely anxious state, forced me to accept myself as something other than existing as attractive to men. Although prior to these events I considered myself quite the feminist, I learned I had much to learn. My choices were to opt out and accept a double-stigma status, or fight on and pretend.
I could no longer wear the high quality, classic styled wardrobe I had carefully crafted over the years, no longer could I enter into a woman’s clothing store or even pick out clothes at Goodwill and feel comfortable.
Not only did every purchase seem like I was cheating on other more important needs I and my family had at the time, but the woman I saw in the mirror in the fat lady clothes was not the woman I knew or wanted to ever be.
I had a few years of confusion and discomfort, depression and feelings of worthlessness. Then I found I could exist on my smarts and my talents, exclusive of the approval of the male.
I remember once wondering why all men are such jerks. Then after that phase, I suddenly realized, the potential friends and partners I could have known, I had failed to see before.
Random is afraid, like so many her age, that if she does act solely based on her own desires and decisions, lives for her satisfaction and comfort, that she’ll be abandoned and unloved, her vagina will dry up and she’ll just blow away in the wind. Not so.
But I took her down over at her own place in my regular rambling style. At 25 I already had three kids and was pissed as hell. Was I that unusual?
-
I agree: I’m working with a Twisty “projection” here. Fair enough.
Furthermore, I fully agree with your analysis of “empowerful”ness being yet another trap akin to “smells like liberated”.
That said, it still sounds at times like a Catholic Priest lecturing married couples on sexual behavior. You can’t go off on heterosexual sexual practices and presume external cultural motivations are the only possible motivations operative. Saying that no woman could possibly actually want to fellatiate her lover is like saying that because mainstream porn loves girl on girl action for the titillation of men, then the only reason a woman could possibly want to lick out another woman must be titillation of men. No woman could ever actually like that, really? Or do it for her own enjoyment and mutual pleasure of her partner? Of course not, she’s trapped in patriarchy.
Can we blame the patriarchy for such patronizing of women and their imputed motivations that they just aren’t able to see?
Girlfriend, as grossed out as I am by the idea, I will concede that it’s theoretically possible for a woman to dig fellatio. What isn’t possible is that when she does it, she enjoys the same degree of agency as the recipient.
Sounds right, Twisty. I’ve never heard a girlfriend of mine say she came while blowing. Not a one.
And I don’t care what anyone says…..coming is important. Fuck cuddling.
more on the vagina:
I dont think its too anthropomorphising of vaginas to say they are more like mouths than they are like some void that must be filled. On the subject of mouths theres the whole vagina dentana thing. I can only explain this by assuming that people have very powerful emotions-e.g. the insecure need to believe that vagina lesspowerful han penes. And the last thing you want to think about is what if they aren’t, so of course you think that, hence you imagine vagina dentana, a mouth mangling your delicate penis. I suppose thus is akin to saying whatever you do dont think about a hippopotamus and of couse you must think babout a hippopotamus. Or how some female friends fine Alan Cumming or steve Buscemi attractive-as they are so unattractive that thats the last thing you wanna think.
Of couse it also has to do with the fact that bigots are greedyand must have faith in contradictory stereotypes. Thus vaginas are ust passive holes that have razor sharp teeth that will bite your dick off. Women are passive but also controlling harpies, women hate sex and are naturally choosier but they also need your giant throbing cawk.
Also jews are all whiny castrated nebishes but they control the global banking system, and blac people are all lazy but really whave higher bone/muscel density and thus are built for harder labor than white people.(see the fucked up thread from feministe last week).
I suppose this is because people are more interested in the “meanings” of things(that almost always coincide with the cultural ideology involving other people doing their work for them) and not in the facts about things.
Twisty, there are days when you are great, and there are days when you are positively awesome. I’ve been reading radical writing of numerous shades for years. Your ability to directly connect the powerline between the most apparently intimate act and the global (intergallactic, for all we know) partriachal dominance that is fundamentally what so much of our “world” is about transcends the usual (and enjoyable) episodic nature of blogging.
My testimony (as a man, fwiw) is that patriarchy pervades and destroys all relationships, sexual or otherwise. What we don’t know about is what we are missing. For example, who can actually know what a friendship between two people who (whatever their physical attributes) might move into a “sexual” relationship would be like? (Here I’m using “sexual” relationship to mean intimate physicality, to address the pro-fellatio lobby). The answser is no one—nix—nil—none. Individual relationships are socially mediated. They cannot exist outside the social structures that provide their very currency and language. So there is in fact no such thing as “the personal”.
It may arise once pervasive and fundamental oppression has been eliminiated in social relations. But for now, they cannot be experienced and are really not even conceivable. What we have is a shadow of what we could have. Speaking as someone in a 20 year marriage that is deeply fulfilling, I say that it is nothing like what any of us could experience, it is a great gift but for two deeply damaged beings whose struggle to best honor each other is the bright act of the better parts of our natures, the parts that can still see how badly off we all are.
Oppression is not avoidable. If we admit its existence, we admit a condition for a class, not a bunch of some individuals. The most fundamental fact about patriarchy is that it is pervasive. Otherwise, who would accept such a bunch of idiotically nonsensical manifestations such as high heels, sports corsets, etc.? We notice and remark on the strange behavior of people who, for example, move down the street by walking on their hands. But if that somehow became the norm for a sex-class, then it would be unremarkable, and indeed defended by some folks as by right for their individual enjoyment should they happen to get a kick from it. Obviously this is nothing like fellatio, or worse yet rape, but the point is the same.
“You can’t go off on heterosexual sexual practices and presume external cultural motivations are the only possible motivations operative.”
Of course we can. Human beings don’t live their lives by instinct. Human beings rely on belief systems to get us through the day. And guess who’s been dictating and controlling our belief systems since we were all itty bitty babies?
Sorry, but all your bases are belong to us. Do not touch that dial. There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image; make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: There is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to the Outer Limits.
The very phrase “edgy-ironic postmodern sexuality” makes me feel sorry for Random Bird.
I don’t believe there are any clothes at all (or indeed any lack of clothes) that a woman can wear without at some level invoking fetish or subjecting herself to the judgement of the patriarchy. The opposite to wearing ’sexy’ clothes is to wear big, shapeless garments, and the patriarchy have that cornered too - it is they who invented the burqa. Either way, all garments when worn by a woman reinforce the notion that her body is a sex object, to be covered up or revealed to the beholder.
Many of us want to escape this vortex of oppression, and resort to comfy, gender-neutral tracksuits. So do I, when I’m not at work. But even a tracksuit doesn’t solve the problem. Men are still likely to judge you in terms of your sex appeal - you’ll be called ugly, frumpy, frigid; or perhaps the fact that you’re wearing a tracksuit will make them think of you getting sweaty in a gym like the chicks in the Call On Me video; maybe you’ll even look hot in it. (I’m paraphrasing here from an old flatmate who was Mr Patriarchy - he really made me realise the truth in the old saying that ‘men would fuck a hollowed-out melon’. To a man like that, everything a woman does and is comes down to sexuality.)
There is no escape from the male gaze. Even if feminists took a leaf out of Chairman Mao’s book (which would be dubious for any number of reasons) and invented a standardised, genderless uniform, the patriarchy would find a way to fetishise it. Stilettos, pencil skirts and sports corsets are just the tip of the iceberg.
Twisty, I’m so glad you are back full force, and the comments are all thought provoking.
jbeeky, I struggle with similar issues. When my son was little, he loved dressing in stereotypically “feminine” garb–sparkly costume jewelry, velvet and satin, in deep pinks and purples, etc. I seem to remember being drawn to soft & sparkly attire myself, “naturally,” though it’s hard to tell because princessy stuff is foisted on little girls at such a young age. But nobody was pushing this on my son. If he still wore Dorothy shoes, pink lipstick and velvet skirts at age 12, it would be considered subversive (or sick, depending on the neighborhood), but I know that if he were a girl I’d have discouraged this kind of dressing because it would have “meant” that she was buying into patriarchal messages. With my own attire, it’s hard to tell whether I’m pleasing myself or some “ideal” I didn’t realize I’d swallowed.
I work with women who are recovering from eating disorders, and similar issues arise. It’s all very well to say, “eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full; eat what your body tells you to, and you’ll be healthy.” So many women have totally lost touch with the signals their body sends. If you’ve grown up with the message that a buttered baked potato is “evil” because it’s going to add a certain number of calories to your diet, then a craving for a baked potato is going to be met with an equally strong aversive impulse. It doesn’t surprise me that lots of women just join Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig, so that food choices are made for them and they don’t have to deal with sorting all this out. It’s so hard and complicated, when it should be simple and natural, and of course for that, IBTP.
What isn’t possible is that when she does it, she enjoys the same degree of agency as the recipient.
Yet where is the line between making this simple statement of obvious fact in a patriarchy, and denying the heterosexual agency of women altogether? Between describing oppression and imposing it? Between “I’ll do it with a man but do it my way, patriarchy be damned” and women have limited agency in heterosexual relations” to “women lack the capacity” free for all?
At least now we have context (instead of dissing specific sexual acts and four letters for an icky thing not to be named), but it is problematic in that denying women the capacity for agency historically leads to proscribed behavior for women.
I strongly agree that sports corsets on Serena are designed to deny agency and contain female agency. I’m strongly conflicted about containing the agency I have for the sake of a rigid ideal, including those who have strict ideas of feminist sexuality not including a hard penis.
KTal- I was never the classically thin woman and so never developed the obsessive need to buy clothes that do not fit right. The first time I wore high heels, my feet hurt for three days and so I never developed the need to show an elongonated calf. I did learn what styles and fabrics suit me. I learned that the majority prefer to have commerce tell them what they like and as a result, I often find my favorites at a steep discount when they are available. I work to maintain ME, the me that I am proud of and I rarely worry about what others think of that construct.
Interestingly, I have never lacked friends and partners. There are people all around us who do not swim in the mainstream and just because some want to force us into it, does not mean that we have to go. I like my rivulet, it has depth and a warm current and it goes everywhere that I want to go.
On another note, there are places for corsets, sports is not one of them. Some of my best friends love corsets and make their own. Of course they are friends with back problems which explains alot.
Either Twisty is right or she isn’t, Ms Kate. The problem with the Catholic priests is not their sexual status but that they are wrong about their views of women and marriage. Now if they’d tell their flocks that marriage is a patriarchal institution designed to keep women and children subordinate to men then they’d be right and we should all pay attention.
There’s nothing empty about the vagina. It is a collapsed space. There *is* no space unless something pulls the walls of it apart.
Because there’s no hatred AT ALL coming from other women, right? I mean, that would be completely against feminist ideals, wouldn’t it? Oh…wait a minute…
It’s nice to know that if I decide to have a boob job (which I plan on doing), wear makeup (which I do), and grind on a pole (which I have done), then I am somehow being an ignorant brainwashed slut who is incapable of making the “right” choices for myself. I suppose I should live my life always asking, “But what would the radfems think of this?” before doing anything or making any sort of decision.
I feel, to best participate in this thread, that I need to find some Dorothy Parker moo-goo dust and sprinkle it on me AND THEN hang at each of the 7 sisters until I’d ooze feminist nomenclature as easily as I sweat in a sauna.
However, feeling undergunned, I still launch a salvo.
What about the Red Bug Factor? We have hostas and red bugs swarm on those hostas. They join at their butts and one drags the other and not even my thundering feet will tear them asunder. They want to fuck not because fucking is especially pleasant when you’re a red bug, but because procreation is their point. That’s their supreme purpose. And they’re quite cavalier about my feet, for mortality is inevitable, but reproduction makes them immortal. So, they’ll do risk and endure whatever they must to reproduce.
We’re red bugs too. All our fancy polysyllabic words and ducky notions don’t let us duck the big feet of fate. Time squashes all of us…and even worse, chips away at all of us…and on a cellular level, we understand that procreation is the only way our DNA survives the grave, so bring on the corset, the spiky shoes, the bimbo bra. We’ll do what we must do and endure what we must endure to reproduce.
>What is a good feminist supposed to think about sex?
It’s all about my orgasm. Putting my “mad sexbot skillz” to my own delight.
A good partner, on the other hand, thinks about the other’s orgasm.
I think you’re dead on, Twisty, in that servicing a man is servicing the patriarchy. As a feminist and a blamer, the best I can do is demand equal time (or more) fighting the patriarchy.
I read through some of your older stuff (am new here)…and have been thinking about the phrase “universal sexbot mandate.” I think what is just as universal, if anything is, are the strictures we face on the spread of our affections. What is important is not who gives who head so much as who can walk down the street arm in arm or hand in hand. I’m a woman-lovin’ man, but there are plenty of my guy pals that I love to be affectionate with. And frankly, the latter is just as much of an issue. Much of the Arab world is deeply sexist, but (speaking as someone of Lebanese heritage) I really like the way it allows affection between men. This is not to excuse the much worse parts of Arab culture, just to point out some things about our own way of living: we have very strict rules about how you can be physically affectionate with various people. Yes, there are homophobes in our society. But for the most part, we are not homo-phobic, but homo-allergic, afraid of just being physically close with members of the same sex. I think too often people see a few blatant homophobes and mistake them for a universally held belief, when the deeper problem is less with homo*sexuality* and more with homo*philia*. We have a whole system of sympathies and alliances across gender lines which cross-cut the various sexbot/desirebot mandates in place. Which is to say there is more than just sex at stake in pictures of corseted females. There are also deeper, more fundamental forms of intimacy and attachment. But maybe that’s not right either.
I have empty holes in my ears and my nose, am I supposed to allow a dick to be put in those?
Ms Kate, my point is that women ain’t got no agency from the git-go. Why is it that, whenever I point this out, I am accused of bringing about the condition I merely describe?
But the really fascinating question to me, Ms Kate, is what exactly does “for her own enjoyment†mean?
There is the pure tactile sensation, and some women even claim to like the taste. More likely, it’s an association—Pavlov’s dog really wanted a steak but he learned to love bells. How many women have learned to love “servicing†for approval and security, for the sheer clarity of expectation or for the tawdry sensation of decadence?
The curious thing to me as a writer of erotic fiction is how terribly huge the bdsm market is and that it’s still growing. The people buying these novels of “alpha†males and subordinate females in slave-sexual relationships are WOMEN. Desire is not simply a genetic function but a highly constructed part of personality, and what, do you suppose, has contributed to that construction?
“There is no escape from the male gaze. Even if feminists took a leaf out of Chairman Mao’s book (which would be dubious for any number of reasons) and invented a standardised, genderless uniform, the patriarchy would find a way to fetishise it. Stilettos, pencil skirts and sports corsets are just the tip of the iceberg.”
No they aren’t. Stilletoes mess up your feet and cripple you, pencil skirts hobble your walk and make it difficult to move and corsets interfere with your breathing. These items are used by the patriarchy to make women literally feel their oppression in their bodies. Even if our minds ignore what is being done to us our bodies know. The reason why men find these items sexually exciting is because they cause women pain and discomfort.
So what if a man fetishises a utilitarian uniform? I don’t really give a fuck what men think about me as long as I am free to move, walk and breathe. Please preach your counsel of despair somewhere else.
Hey pole-grinder,
What’s with all the hate? I’m just the messenger. Here’s the message:
The dominant culture is going to love your new fake tits, and will lavish you with praise and hot-cha-chas for demonstrating your willingness to endure the risks and pain of mangling surgery for the sake of your own subordination, but it will not love you any more than it does now.
By the way, as a recent alumna of multiple surgeries, 3 of them boobal, I would beg you to reconsider letting anyone with a knife anywhere near your chest. That shit fuckin hurts.
Maggiethewolf: “We’ll do what we must do and endure what we must endure to reproduce.”
If you believe sex and intercourse are synonymous, you have accepted the male as normative for defining sex. Do you realize that a woman’s orgasm has nothing to do with reproduction, unlike a man’s?
We’re not bugs. Sure, we have urges to do things with our genitals, but what we do with them is entirely learned. The Catholic Church’s “natural law†is based in the notion that sex has one form and one function, and that is based on male experience as normative.
Besides, if sex is really just biological when it comes down to it, why the heels and fake boobs? How does that make one pussy better than any other?
teresawymore, women’s orgams do correlate with reproduction. The contractions advance the sperm.
And heels and fake boobs extend fertility markers.
Why makes you think we’re not big, fancy, chatty bugs?
And you wrote, “Sure, we have urges to do things with our genitals, but what we do with them is entirely learned.”
And what has led you to believe that ANYTHING is entirely something? I’m not arguing that our constructions, our artifices, don’t play a part. I do suggest that we extend biology, rather than deviate from it.
Sorry, Twisty, in my comment at the start of this thread I misquted you! It should have read:
“We’re blaming the patriarchy, not you, but really, mightn’t it be time to step up?”
In order to make change, first we have to figure out what we want to change, then we have to try to imagine something different. Blaming is part of the first stage, and our conversations (including these here) are the only thing that will make possible a next stage. It is possible to individually and collectively change the meanings we assign to behaviors, feelings, practices, even if at times it feels impossible. I don’t think we can do this only as individuals, but I don’t think the collective stuff happens unless we examine our lives, as Twisty says.
Delphyne tells me: “Please preach your counsel of despair somewhere else.”
I’m not preaching a counsel of despair. On the contrary, I’m quite cheery. Nor am I, in any sense, advocating stilettos, pencil skirts, or sportscorsets, and yes, I am fully aware of their specific problems. I just observed that escaping from the political dimensions of your appearance is potentially not so easy as switching heels for flats. As Twisty argued above, these things do not exist in a vacuum. The patriarchy places a woman’s appearance at the top of the list of stuff for her to be judged on, with everything else falling a very long way behind. Jezebella’s post, above, is enlightening - she admits that she makes compromises in the way she dresses between feminist inclination and patriarchal expectation. Most of us probably do. She acknowledges that ‘it’s not easy to do a total purge’, and I agree. But what I’m really interested in is what might remain after a total purge. Would anything be politically or sexually neutral while the patriarchy endures?
Now, you may decide to participate no-holds-barred in the patriarchal pageant - like Whitters above, who’s about to empowerfulize herself by getting her boobs sliced open and replaced with big lumps of oddly-shaped, slowly-hardening poison - or you may decide that you’d rather wear clothes that leave you ‘free to move, walk and breathe’. FWIW, I think it’s tickety-boo that you choose the latter. But my point remains: the patriarchy will continue to judge every woman as a potential sexual object. Including you. Whether you like it or not. Whether you care or not. For that is its way.
Maggiethewolf: “women’s orgams do correlate with reproduction. The contractions advance the sperm.â€
A woman’s orgasm is totally unnecessary to reproduction. As many rape survivors can attest, the sperm will get there even if impregnation was horrific. On the other hand, a cold beer has helped innumerable coeds reach impregnation, but no one’s put that in a biology textbook yet.
“And heels and fake boobs extend fertility markers.â€
Exactly. They are marks of culture: taught, learned, enforced. They enhance, obfiscate, and manipulate desire. They are necessary to reproduction insofar as those reproducing decide they are. Nature and God really don’t care if I have a push-up bra. And I told my husband if he cares, he must first put a hanger around his balls to keep them from their unsightly sag.
“Why makes you think we’re not big, fancy, chatty bugs?â€
My cerebrum.
“And what has led you to believe that ANYTHING is entirely something? I’m not arguing that our constructions, our artifices, don’t play a part. I do suggest that we extend biology, rather than deviate from it.â€
I suggest we are complex, but I would say you’re minimizing excessively to say our constructions “play a part.†It is biology that “plays a part.â€
Horse shit. Fake boobs are just that - fake boobs - and even the most realistic (and breast implants are not designed to look realistic) resemble non-modified breasts about as much as a peg leg resembles a human foot. By your logic, men should despise fake breasts. If men are attracted to “fertility markers,” they should be repulsed by a bodily modification that could potentially prevent a woman from breastfeeding.
And how does hobbling footwear qualify as a “fertility marker”?
And if attraction to these “fertility markers” is so unavoidable and unchanging, why have the demands of the patriarchal society of women and their bodies been so fickle and subject to fashion? Hell - just take a look at the way women have been depicted in art for the last five centuries alone (a mere sneeze in the ultimate lifespan of the human species), and you’ll find that the patriarchy has, at one time or another, demanded every possible bodily shape from women at one point or another, so long as it is one that is impossible for the majority of women to acheive healthfully and without extensive effort.
Didn’t this ruckus start about blow jobs? So we’re talking about the penis as a sex organ, not a reproductive organ.
You know, most of us here are suggesting the vagina is the counterpart of the penis, even when we talk about the penis as a sex organ. That’s patriarchy-thinking because that’s what serves their interest.
The female SEX organ is the clitoris. It’s just that men have little use for it except how quickly it can be used to make you spread your legs, get done with “foreplay,” and move on to “sex.”
For someone who says she isn’t preaching a counsel of despair Catherine, you’re doing a good job of sounding like that’s exactly what you are doing -
“I just observed that escaping from the political dimensions of your appearance is potentially not so easy as switching heels for flats.”
“She acknowledges that ‘it’s not easy to do a total purge’, and I agree.”
Do you know what? It really is that easy. Try it. You’ll find out how easy it is. You have to want to do it though and maybe that’s the problem.
“If you believe sex and intercourse are synonymous, you have accepted the male as normative for defining sex.”
Someone finally said it! Thank you! I was beginning to wonder if “lesbian” was going to register on anyone’s radar. What precisely do people consider lesbian lovemaking? Not sex? Of course this is exactly how the patriarch’s think. Lesbian sex isn’t “real” sex. And their attitudes and laws reflect it. As a result, a lesbian lawyer was able to have a field day with a client’s husband who accused her client and her lesbian lover of adultery. The letter of the law, however, states that penile penetration must occur in order for an adultery to occur. Oops. Sorry boys, can’t have your cake and eat it too.
While love and affection is a basic human need, sex is not. Intercourse has little to do with love and affection. Interourse, under patriarchy, is a political institution. The result is, we live in a rape culture. Until we start to understand that intercourse is a political institution, we will never begin to understand or address rape and men’s violence towards women.
As for intercourse and men’s gaze being “natural,” there ain’t nothing natural about it. Men are taught and conditioned to hold these values and attitudes toward women. If men were taught to fetishize ears, then it’s ears that would attract the male gaze. But it’s not ears or sex men have been taught to eroticize. Sorry, sisters. But what men eroticize is POWER. Not sex. Intercourse is only a means to an end. It’s a male status symbol of power, control and dominance. And that is what he worships and eroticizes. Not you. You’re nothing but the sacrificial lamb.
“my point is that women ain’t got no agency from the git-go
I agree completely that the “agency” mantra is too often invoked to rationalize acceptance of subordination as though it were a liberating choice. But there is, I think, a real problem with the claim that oppressed groups lack agency entirely, which is that it leaves us with no way to explain how they do, in spite of everything, manage to organize resistance. (Marxism has the same problem–capitalist relations produce “false consciousness,” yet they also–inevitably–give rise to revolutionary opposition.) I don’t know how to reconcile this difficulty but I think it needs to be dealt with.
“Do you know what? It really is that easy. Try it. You’ll find out how easy it is. You have to want to do it thou