|
|
Before I talk about why I don’t call myself a feminist, I want to be very clear that it’s not because I think feminism is anything other than awesome. I owe more to feminism and to feminist women than I can possibly describe. I have a deep respect for the great thinkers, writers, and teachers whom I have been fortunate to learn from. I would not be the person I am if it hadn’t been for the lessons, patience, and love that many of them shared with me.
There have been many times that someone has called me a feminist, even though I’ve never used that word to describe myself. Usually when that happens, I ask them to not do it. Since this has occurred …
Continue reading Don’t Call Me A Feminist
I recently attended a lecture by Robert Jensen, noted radical feminist, anti-pornography activist, and one of the producers of The Price of Pleasure, an anti-porn film that I’ve written about here and here. I went because I wanted to see what he was like in person. I’ve read some of his work, and I figured it would be useful to check his talk out.
I have quite a lot to say about his lecture. In fact, there’s so much to untangle that this post is split into multiple pages, which is a first for me. But it isn’t until all of the different threads are teased out that the larger pattern becomes apparent. So stick with me and see how it all fits …
Continue reading Untangling the Gordian Knot: An Analysis of a Lecture by Robert Jensen
Following up on my post yesterday, I had a really interesting conversation with Meghan Murphy of the F Word, both on her blog and on Facebook. After sleeping on it, I realized where something was missing from my description of sex-positivity. I had thought it was implicit in my choice of words, but looking back at things I’ve said, I don’t think it really was.
One of the difficulties that I’ve faced in discussing sex-positivity with some folks is that there are two different lenses that a lot of people use when talking about these issues. Some use an entirely personal lens, as in “I like doing this thing, or I find it empowering, so that makes it OK.” And others look at …
Continue reading Expanding My View of Sex-Positivity
Meghan over at the F-Word has a thought-provoking piece about the recent post by the Pervocracy on sex-positivity, and it’s inspired me to finally write something that’s been on my mind for a while.
As I’ve said before, I think that the only relevant criteria for assessing a sexual act or practice is the consent, pleasure, and well-being of the people involved. While that may sound simple, there’s a lot more to it than may be immediately apparent. After all, consent is really only meaningful when one has the ability to make a fully empowered decision. That’s limited by what options people are aware of (sex education!) and believe are open to them, among other things. If you’ve been taught that you have to have …
Continue reading The Complexities of Sexual Well-Being
There’s a new post up on the Good Men Project, Is Sex Positive Ever Negative?, which highlights many of the ways in which sex-positivity is seriously misunderstood. The writer, Lili Bee, starts with an account of a conversation she had with a friend and the roadblock they hit when he suggested that she do some reading on sex-positivity. So she went to her mentor, Robert Jensen, to get his thoughts on the issue. And that’s where things get squirrely.
Bee starts off pointing out that one of the problems with what many people think of as sex-positive communities is that there’s often a reactivity to the overboundedness that has been imposed on sexuality. I agree with her that a lot of people who say …
Continue reading Robert Jensen Doesn’t Understand Sex-Positivity
Ms Wolf-
I recently ran across your article, Why is Rape Different?, in which you argue that allowing rape survivors to remain anonymous when we don’t do the same for any other crime victim infantilizes women and makes rape prosecutions more difficult. Although you wrote this some months ago, it’s still bouncing around on twitter, so I feel moved to respond.
You make the claim that:
It is wrong – and sexist – to treat female sex-crime accusers as if they were children, and it is wrong to try anyone, male or female, in the court of public opinion on the basis of anonymous accusations. Anonymity for rape accusers is long overdue for retirement.
So let me explain to you, Ms Wolf, why rape …
Continue reading An Open Letter to Naomi Wolf: Why Rape is Different
As you may have heard, SlutWalk started in response to a Toronto police officer saying that women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to avoid harassment or rape. And what was originally intended to be a local rally has inspired dozens of similar marches around the world.
The word “slut” has a rather difficult and complex history. Some folks embrace it and reclaim it, while others argue that there isn’t any way for women to reclaim a word that has been so loaded with sexist messages. There has also been some really great discussion about the different impact the word has on women of color and the different relationships they may have with both the term and the notion of reclaiming it…
Continue reading Slut-Shaming Enables Rape
There’s a post on SexIs today from Roland Hulme, in which he shows that he almost gets how his privilege works. In his piece, he discusses the responses to a previous post of his, in which he wrote that (at the time), he was of the opinion that transgender people shouldn’t be able to change the designated sex on their birth certificates. And as he wrote:
It drew a lot of comments — many of them angry and frustrated — and opened my eyes to a lot of different perspectives on the issue. Ultimately, the debate revealed that something I thought was cut-and-dried turned out to be a lot more complex than I’d imagined. My opinion was challenged and my attitudes changed by the
…
Continue reading When Straight, White, Cisgender Men Don’t Get It
Debates about sex work and trafficking aren’t new, but they sure are heating up these days. As someone who has known many different sex workers of all different genders and sexual orientations in pretty much every branch of the business, while also not having ever been a sex worker myself, I find that I have a rather unusual perspective, at least among the people engaged in this debate. And at the recent conference for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, I heard about an enlightening way to think about sex-positivity that I think offers some clarity around this issue.
Breanne Fahs PhD from Arizona State University approaches sex-positivity from the understanding that true liberation requires both “freedom to” and “freedom from.” While …
Continue reading A Sex-Positive Perspective on Sex Work
If you’ve been paying attention to the evolution of the current debates around sex work, you’ve probably noticed that more and more people are conflating sex work and trafficking. Of course, there have always been plenty of people willing to slut shame, attack, and blame women who have sex for money in order to try to control them. For some reason, these folks almost never talk about men and transgender sex workers, though. And as this article points out, “Legislation and social discussion have often blurred or denied any difference [between sex work and trafficking], but that has always made things worse rather than better for those involved.”
Just to be clear, I would LOVE to live in a world in which nobody was …
Continue reading Sex Work is to Trafficking as Sex is to Rape
|
|
% Category: 
