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Tra-Li, Tra-La! :-)
I had a marvelous evening out last night with the fabulous Ami_B! :-D There were chocolate martinis (well, chocolate martini, anyway) and cider, and stuffed mushrooms, and other yummy things, but! More importantly, there was chatter. And venting. And discussion of feminist rhetoric. :-D
This is why I love going out with Ami. The conversation just ranges all over the place. :-D
Anyway. A number of things came up, and one of them was "Talking to your Kids About Sex/uality".
See, my husband and I (although, granted, mostly I) have a growing collection of sexually explicit books. Most of these are gay-girl-porn of one sort or another, but there's also The Joy of Sex and my Dad's old book on sensual massage (something with-which I spent an educational few hours during my late teens, after I'd found it on his office shelf). Our Bodies, Ourselves might also qualify, but I'm not sure.
Anyway. My Fella is of the opinion that we should, once we have kids, keep this stuff in a locked box (or otherwise keep it the hell away from them). I'm more of the opinion that we should have it in our bedroom, somewhere where they can 'accidentally' find it (after they've hit puberty and can, therefore, reach the top shelf, or example), specifically so that if/when they do com across it, they'll have one more thing to be horribly embarrassed about (now) but will eventually (in theory) come to see as part of their parents' still-happily-married healthy life.
However. I have no idea whether or not I will still feel this way once the kids actually arrive.
But, something Ami brought up (which was certainly true enough in my case) is this: Kids are not going to want to learn about the joys of (responsable!) sexuality from their parents.
I sure as hell didn't. Ew. :-P
But, my Mom once handed me "Revolution from Within" (which is a Gloria Stinam book) -- presumably in the hopes that I would stage my own and develop some self-confidence[1].
Anyway. She just handed it to me and said "Just read it, and see what you think" -- or words to that effect. To date, the only part I've read is the part about her experiences as a playboy bunny[2].
Anyway. I figure if I do something similar with the huge tome that is Our Bodies, Ourselves (provided I have a daughter -- I don't think, alas, that there is such a book for boys), then my pubescent daughter will roll her eyes, shove it under the bed and ignore it -- but! She might eventually look through the table of contents and find the section on sex and pleasure and end up reading exactly what I wanted her to read in the first place while feeling secure in the knowledge that she's reading something I'd be scandalized (or whatever) to find out about. She'd get some intelligent, supportive education from women with experience -- without getting it from me and being embarrassed all to heck.
Yay! Everybody wins! :-)
See, I worry that my kids are going to grow up with this feeling that Sex is Bad (Naughty? Dirty? Nasty? All those terms that show up in freaking pop music?) or that there is a Right Way and a Wrong Way to do sex (not in terms of consensual/non-consensual, but in terms of how you breath, how long the guy's supposed to stay hard, whether or not the gal gets an orgasm, whose on top, etc, etc). And I'd like to find out about sexuality from sources that aren't going to screw things up too badly. :-)
Such as this one. :-)
Anyway.
So, there was that.
Something else I'd like to discuss, briefly (haha) is the idea of political-lesbianism and radical-separatist-feminism.
See, there's something that gets on my nerves when I'm reading stuff like 'Power Surge', or 'Women Hating', or 'Sex, Power, and Pleasure' or whatever. It's the idea that women who are Really committed to feminism are gay -- by choice.
Which strikes me as incredibly dumb.
I mean, One: If you're bi, and you actually can make that choice, you're still ignoring part of your sexuality and seeing it as a bad thing in the same way that a bisexual who choses to live only as a het (or someone who would really get off on BDSM but is denying that part of him/herself out of fear and loathing) is ignoring and seeing-as-a-bad-thing the part of her/him that is gay.
(Granted, this is me. Even as a fairly shy monogamist, I'm not exactly into self denial here. ;-)
Two: If you're actually het, and pretending to be gay for the sake of political commitment, you're going to be miserable. You're going to bitter and sexually frustrated, but you're also going to have to deal with a huge amount of self-loathing that comes from the fact that you can't stop fantasizing about The Enemy. which is a horrible position to be in.
Three: If you are actually gay, but start seeing your particular biological trate as somehow morally better than someone else's biological trate, well, that's just freaking hetero/biphobia and just as damn stupid as homophobia for exactly the same freaking reasons, which I'm sure I do not need to outline.
In short: Choosing *what* (not who, because that's getting down to specifics, but what -- which set of genetals you're going to eroticize, if you will) you're going to sleep with in order to make a political point is, in my opinion, a really bad idea. The personal may be political, but in this case, I really don't think the political has any place getting into bed with you.
Anyway, why I bring this up is sort of as a response to a comment Ami made regarding this post.
Warning: TMI:
See, as a woman who willingly engages in het sex, I have to say that up until two, or *maybe* three months ago (so definitely after I married my husband), penetrative sex hurt like a mother-fucker. 'Good' penetrative sex was sex wherein the pleasue managed to counter-act *most* of the pain. But the pain was still a constant. Now, understand, if it was really hurting, I could say 'ow, that hurts' and my husband would stop[3].
So... See, all the stuff brought up in the article I linked to in the above-linked post, about the male privilige of ignorance and irresposibility, I can wrap my head around the concept of 'het sex = rape' in the sense that men are socially conditioned from birth to want sex, to go after sex, and to understand that "sometimes you just can't stop", and women are socially conditioned from birth to deny their own desire for sex, to provide sex to men (eventually, after playing 'hard to get'), and to be 'nice girls' and 'not make a scene'.
Now, as a woman, I know it is *damn* hard to go against my social programming, even when I *know* that this programming is *so* not in my best interests. It is, presumably, that much harder for a guy to go against his social programming when that programming comes with a hell of a lot of privilige attached. (None the less, I think the effor should be made).
Likewise, in the sense of 'het sex = painful invaision of a woman's body', or (see footnote 3) in the sense of 'het sex = cultural condoned willful ignorance of a given woman's wants, needs, and autonomy', I can wrap my head around the concept of 'het sex = rape".
Perhaps this is why I can't bring myself to dismiss Andrea and Susan and Adrienne and the rest of the gals completely out of hand.
BUT!
Regarding Ami's comment: Rape is more than those two things combined. It's a hell of a lot worse, and it's about power/control not the giving/receving of pleasure. Het sex does not litterally equal rape. And when it *is* rape, it's no-longer sex, per seh, but violence.
Ami's statement that to across-the-board say that 'het sex = rape' (even if you do qualify the hell out of that statement, which the anti-porn contingent do not) is to dismiss *real* rape as no worse than every other form of het sex out there, is a huge, huge insult to those women (and men, I should point out) who *have* survived the real thing.
And I think that is a really damn good point.
Anyway. How this ties in with political lesbianism and feminist separatism is this.
If all of your personal relationships are with women (not just romantic, but *all* of them); if your father and brothers cast you out for being gay; If you are bi/het but living as gay OR if you are actually gay, but have only just figured this out; If all of that, then:
You will be looking for a reason to explain *why* you ever slept with men (or experienced attraction to them at all) in the first place -- and social conditioning "I didn't know what I was doing, I was so brain-washed by society" or whatever, will probably make you feel a whole lot better. You can say 'I was unwillingly ignorant, but now I have come to my senses' and you won't have to deal with the fact that, yes, you actually had feelings for the guy you banged in the chevy or the honeymoon suite.
BUT
It also means that you won't have any personal reason to phrase your discussion of that social programming in a way that allows for a dialogue to be opened up (that's Ami_B's wisdom again, for you, folks -- go friend her, she's very smart and does stained glass). See, I would notice this time and again, and part of me would go "why is it usually lesbians (Exception: Naomi Wolf, although she talks about it with slightly less venom) who are willing to talk about this and display this much anger about the situation?
And I thought: Because they don't have to hide it. They don't *have* to temper their rage at male privilige and female opression because they don't deal with men! They don't have to talke to anyone who would be *personally* offended at having his (relatively speaking very mild and non-threatening) actions held up and compared to those of, say, the Polytechnique killer[4].
And that's true.
Even in my 'we are crushed under thousands of years of hatred' post, wherein I screamed my rage and frustration for all of lj (haha) to hear, I *still* tempered my words, at least a little bit, because I *knew* it would piss people off.
But it's also true that, when you don't have to bother tempering your words, the words that come out when you're being totally honest about how angry you are, can be so alienating to the people you are *not* talking to, that trying to fix the problems becomes that much harder -- because when you say something like "het sex always = rape" you remove any chance for establishing a dialogue as surely as you do when you say something like "a woman's position in this movement is prone".
See? No help what-so-ever.
So. I figured I'd go forth and bring this stuff up.
I have to go to work now, but there you have it.
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1] Haha. This from the same woman who expressed her intence displeasure and disappointment -- if I failed to finish my freaking spaghetti. Practice what you preach, mom...
[2] I found her tone to be very condescending. Like she was expecting the women who 'actually' worked as bunnies at the playboy clubs to be stupid. Even as the whole playboy culture of 'women can be sexualized, but they can't be actually sexual' bugged the hell out of me, so did her "I'm clearly so much better/smarter/etc than all of you who actually consider this a real job". I mean how exactly is that having your sister's back? So, yes, that pissed me off.
[3] None the less, my husband is also the guy who, up until I had a very painful chat with him in the wee, small hours of the morning, a few months before our wedding, would litterally *force* his hand between my legs if he felt like groping my cunt. Even though I'd told him pleanty of times that I didn't like him doing that.
[4] I know his name. I'm not saying it because I can also wrap my head around the idea that he, personally, doesn't deserves to be remembered, only his stupid-assed, hateful actions and why they were wrong.
I had a marvelous evening out last night with the fabulous Ami_B! :-D There were chocolate martinis (well, chocolate martini, anyway) and cider, and stuffed mushrooms, and other yummy things, but! More importantly, there was chatter. And venting. And discussion of feminist rhetoric. :-D
This is why I love going out with Ami. The conversation just ranges all over the place. :-D
Anyway. A number of things came up, and one of them was "Talking to your Kids About Sex/uality".
See, my husband and I (although, granted, mostly I) have a growing collection of sexually explicit books. Most of these are gay-girl-porn of one sort or another, but there's also The Joy of Sex and my Dad's old book on sensual massage (something with-which I spent an educational few hours during my late teens, after I'd found it on his office shelf). Our Bodies, Ourselves might also qualify, but I'm not sure.
Anyway. My Fella is of the opinion that we should, once we have kids, keep this stuff in a locked box (or otherwise keep it the hell away from them). I'm more of the opinion that we should have it in our bedroom, somewhere where they can 'accidentally' find it (after they've hit puberty and can, therefore, reach the top shelf, or example), specifically so that if/when they do com across it, they'll have one more thing to be horribly embarrassed about (now) but will eventually (in theory) come to see as part of their parents' still-happily-married healthy life.
However. I have no idea whether or not I will still feel this way once the kids actually arrive.
But, something Ami brought up (which was certainly true enough in my case) is this: Kids are not going to want to learn about the joys of (responsable!) sexuality from their parents.
I sure as hell didn't. Ew. :-P
But, my Mom once handed me "Revolution from Within" (which is a Gloria Stinam book) -- presumably in the hopes that I would stage my own and develop some self-confidence[1].
Anyway. She just handed it to me and said "Just read it, and see what you think" -- or words to that effect. To date, the only part I've read is the part about her experiences as a playboy bunny[2].
Anyway. I figure if I do something similar with the huge tome that is Our Bodies, Ourselves (provided I have a daughter -- I don't think, alas, that there is such a book for boys), then my pubescent daughter will roll her eyes, shove it under the bed and ignore it -- but! She might eventually look through the table of contents and find the section on sex and pleasure and end up reading exactly what I wanted her to read in the first place while feeling secure in the knowledge that she's reading something I'd be scandalized (or whatever) to find out about. She'd get some intelligent, supportive education from women with experience -- without getting it from me and being embarrassed all to heck.
Yay! Everybody wins! :-)
See, I worry that my kids are going to grow up with this feeling that Sex is Bad (Naughty? Dirty? Nasty? All those terms that show up in freaking pop music?) or that there is a Right Way and a Wrong Way to do sex (not in terms of consensual/non-consensual, but in terms of how you breath, how long the guy's supposed to stay hard, whether or not the gal gets an orgasm, whose on top, etc, etc). And I'd like to find out about sexuality from sources that aren't going to screw things up too badly. :-)
Such as this one. :-)
Anyway.
So, there was that.
Something else I'd like to discuss, briefly (haha) is the idea of political-lesbianism and radical-separatist-feminism.
See, there's something that gets on my nerves when I'm reading stuff like 'Power Surge', or 'Women Hating', or 'Sex, Power, and Pleasure' or whatever. It's the idea that women who are Really committed to feminism are gay -- by choice.
Which strikes me as incredibly dumb.
I mean, One: If you're bi, and you actually can make that choice, you're still ignoring part of your sexuality and seeing it as a bad thing in the same way that a bisexual who choses to live only as a het (or someone who would really get off on BDSM but is denying that part of him/herself out of fear and loathing) is ignoring and seeing-as-a-bad-thing the part of her/him that is gay.
(Granted, this is me. Even as a fairly shy monogamist, I'm not exactly into self denial here. ;-)
Two: If you're actually het, and pretending to be gay for the sake of political commitment, you're going to be miserable. You're going to bitter and sexually frustrated, but you're also going to have to deal with a huge amount of self-loathing that comes from the fact that you can't stop fantasizing about The Enemy. which is a horrible position to be in.
Three: If you are actually gay, but start seeing your particular biological trate as somehow morally better than someone else's biological trate, well, that's just freaking hetero/biphobia and just as damn stupid as homophobia for exactly the same freaking reasons, which I'm sure I do not need to outline.
In short: Choosing *what* (not who, because that's getting down to specifics, but what -- which set of genetals you're going to eroticize, if you will) you're going to sleep with in order to make a political point is, in my opinion, a really bad idea. The personal may be political, but in this case, I really don't think the political has any place getting into bed with you.
Anyway, why I bring this up is sort of as a response to a comment Ami made regarding this post.
Warning: TMI:
See, as a woman who willingly engages in het sex, I have to say that up until two, or *maybe* three months ago (so definitely after I married my husband), penetrative sex hurt like a mother-fucker. 'Good' penetrative sex was sex wherein the pleasue managed to counter-act *most* of the pain. But the pain was still a constant. Now, understand, if it was really hurting, I could say 'ow, that hurts' and my husband would stop[3].
So... See, all the stuff brought up in the article I linked to in the above-linked post, about the male privilige of ignorance and irresposibility, I can wrap my head around the concept of 'het sex = rape' in the sense that men are socially conditioned from birth to want sex, to go after sex, and to understand that "sometimes you just can't stop", and women are socially conditioned from birth to deny their own desire for sex, to provide sex to men (eventually, after playing 'hard to get'), and to be 'nice girls' and 'not make a scene'.
Now, as a woman, I know it is *damn* hard to go against my social programming, even when I *know* that this programming is *so* not in my best interests. It is, presumably, that much harder for a guy to go against his social programming when that programming comes with a hell of a lot of privilige attached. (None the less, I think the effor should be made).
Likewise, in the sense of 'het sex = painful invaision of a woman's body', or (see footnote 3) in the sense of 'het sex = cultural condoned willful ignorance of a given woman's wants, needs, and autonomy', I can wrap my head around the concept of 'het sex = rape".
Perhaps this is why I can't bring myself to dismiss Andrea and Susan and Adrienne and the rest of the gals completely out of hand.
BUT!
Regarding Ami's comment: Rape is more than those two things combined. It's a hell of a lot worse, and it's about power/control not the giving/receving of pleasure. Het sex does not litterally equal rape. And when it *is* rape, it's no-longer sex, per seh, but violence.
Ami's statement that to across-the-board say that 'het sex = rape' (even if you do qualify the hell out of that statement, which the anti-porn contingent do not) is to dismiss *real* rape as no worse than every other form of het sex out there, is a huge, huge insult to those women (and men, I should point out) who *have* survived the real thing.
And I think that is a really damn good point.
Anyway. How this ties in with political lesbianism and feminist separatism is this.
If all of your personal relationships are with women (not just romantic, but *all* of them); if your father and brothers cast you out for being gay; If you are bi/het but living as gay OR if you are actually gay, but have only just figured this out; If all of that, then:
You will be looking for a reason to explain *why* you ever slept with men (or experienced attraction to them at all) in the first place -- and social conditioning "I didn't know what I was doing, I was so brain-washed by society" or whatever, will probably make you feel a whole lot better. You can say 'I was unwillingly ignorant, but now I have come to my senses' and you won't have to deal with the fact that, yes, you actually had feelings for the guy you banged in the chevy or the honeymoon suite.
BUT
It also means that you won't have any personal reason to phrase your discussion of that social programming in a way that allows for a dialogue to be opened up (that's Ami_B's wisdom again, for you, folks -- go friend her, she's very smart and does stained glass). See, I would notice this time and again, and part of me would go "why is it usually lesbians (Exception: Naomi Wolf, although she talks about it with slightly less venom) who are willing to talk about this and display this much anger about the situation?
And I thought: Because they don't have to hide it. They don't *have* to temper their rage at male privilige and female opression because they don't deal with men! They don't have to talke to anyone who would be *personally* offended at having his (relatively speaking very mild and non-threatening) actions held up and compared to those of, say, the Polytechnique killer[4].
And that's true.
Even in my 'we are crushed under thousands of years of hatred' post, wherein I screamed my rage and frustration for all of lj (haha) to hear, I *still* tempered my words, at least a little bit, because I *knew* it would piss people off.
But it's also true that, when you don't have to bother tempering your words, the words that come out when you're being totally honest about how angry you are, can be so alienating to the people you are *not* talking to, that trying to fix the problems becomes that much harder -- because when you say something like "het sex always = rape" you remove any chance for establishing a dialogue as surely as you do when you say something like "a woman's position in this movement is prone".
See? No help what-so-ever.
So. I figured I'd go forth and bring this stuff up.
I have to go to work now, but there you have it.
- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)
[1] Haha. This from the same woman who expressed her intence displeasure and disappointment -- if I failed to finish my freaking spaghetti. Practice what you preach, mom...
[2] I found her tone to be very condescending. Like she was expecting the women who 'actually' worked as bunnies at the playboy clubs to be stupid. Even as the whole playboy culture of 'women can be sexualized, but they can't be actually sexual' bugged the hell out of me, so did her "I'm clearly so much better/smarter/etc than all of you who actually consider this a real job". I mean how exactly is that having your sister's back? So, yes, that pissed me off.
[3] None the less, my husband is also the guy who, up until I had a very painful chat with him in the wee, small hours of the morning, a few months before our wedding, would litterally *force* his hand between my legs if he felt like groping my cunt. Even though I'd told him pleanty of times that I didn't like him doing that.
[4] I know his name. I'm not saying it because I can also wrap my head around the idea that he, personally, doesn't deserves to be remembered, only his stupid-assed, hateful actions and why they were wrong.
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