by Isabel Cole (isabelthespy@gmail.com) on 6.20.2010 · 19 comments

in General

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:

Postsecret card showing a photograph of a man with text reading "By insisting I orgasm... you ruined sex for me."

[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)," blogs Isabel Cole ( isabelthespy@gmail.com ), "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.)

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/06/20/this-is-not-a-post-about-sex/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1547080&forum_id=2#17151301)