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Are you familiar with the blog I Blame the Patriarchy?
It’s written by a gal who goes by the name of Twisty and it is, by and large, quite a good blog with a lot of smart things to say.
However, something is bothering me.
See, she’s very anti sex-workers. Or so it appears, given how she writes.
I’d like to say that she’s just down on the industry which, I agree, could do with some damn significant overhauling in terms of who has power and how workers are treated (by employers, clients, the police and the media, for a small slew of examples).
Unfortunately, statements like the following seem to belie this possibility:
I have to wonder how many of the women identifying as “feminist” in the study were in fact the sort of feminist for whom “pole dancer” is a synonym. What I suggest is not altogether an unlikely scenario, since this species of feminist is, as we know, much more common than the feminist kind of feminist. Feminists who use their empowerfulization to reclaim femininity, you know, for themselves goddammit, would of course enjoy the reinforcingly pleasant side effect of appeasing dudes who are threatened by non-patriarchal gender roles.
(Emphasis mine).
See, what I see here is the specific and deliberate contrasting of “sex worker” with “feminist” – as if the two could only ever be mutually exclusive.
As if Carol Leigh, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Sasha van Bon Bon, Chris Bruckert, Kathryn Payne and my own girlfriend – just to name a very limited few – aren’t/weren’t radical feminists *and* sex workers at the same time.
So I’ve decided to use that paragraph, and the opinions that (seem to) underlie it, as a jumping-off point for something I want to talk about.
See, as both Carol Queen and Kathryn Payne (among others) have pointed out more than a few times, The Patriarchy – and the homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and general sexism (to say the least) that go with it – fears and loathes femininity.
“Proper” femininity is “under control”, infantilized one might say. It’s the femininity that wears pink and simpers and doesn’t know how to make decisions. It’s the femininity that says “yes dear,” over and over again. This femininity does not leave the domestic sphere – the house, maybe even just the kitchen. She has no concept of her own desire beyond a pubescent shame over her own body. This femininity sees sex as a wifely (only wifely, not girlfriendly) duty and/or a means to getting born-in-wedlock children.
This is the femininity that is held up, virginal and obedient, by The Patriarchy (the church and the law) as what women “should” be.
The other femininity. The one that is denigrated by the church and the law, the femininity that is all grown up, that wears red, that is carnal and knows it, that isn’t shut off from or out of her body, this femininity is criminalized, marginalized and demonized by The Patriarchy. And it’s denigrated in this way, and to this extreme, because The Patriarchy – this androcentric culture that is so, SO divorced from its own sensuality, sexuality, bodiliness – knows how damn much it craves, collectively, that carnality, that flesh which it has, throughout the cultural histories it claims as its lineage, called “female” and “womanly” and also “base”, “evil”, and “filth”.
Kathryn Payne has explained that the power (economic and survival) of the sex worker (the stripper, the agency escort, the street-walker, the porn star, the trophy-wife (bet you didn’t see that one coming – or maybe you did), the pro-domme, the peepshow dancer, all of them) lies in working femininity: in pulling out the stops and turning up the volume of what it is to be feminine until you can see it, hear it, smell it coming blocks and blocks away. This is NOT femininity that is performed to “[appease] dudes who are threatened by non-patriarchal gender roles”[1].
When one denigrates sex workers, one denigrates overt, aware feminine sexuality: One denigrates power-full, empowered femininity (whether that femininity is being done/played overtly for cash or for personal pleasure or for both) that knows what it wants and knows how to demand it. This denigration corroborates the beliefs and the power-structures (see [1]) of The Patriarchy, and it does the cause of Feminism no good what so ever.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] Because patriarchal gender roles include “active, aware, sexually aggressive, and independent men/males/masculinity” VS “passive, clueless, sexually “receptive” (receptical?) and andro-dependent women/females/femininity”, while sex-worker femininity is active, aware and aggressive, and knows that – particularly in the context of sex work itself – while masculine sexuality craves and seeks out feminine sexuality, feminine sexuality is whole and complete until itself.
It’s written by a gal who goes by the name of Twisty and it is, by and large, quite a good blog with a lot of smart things to say.
However, something is bothering me.
See, she’s very anti sex-workers. Or so it appears, given how she writes.
I’d like to say that she’s just down on the industry which, I agree, could do with some damn significant overhauling in terms of who has power and how workers are treated (by employers, clients, the police and the media, for a small slew of examples).
Unfortunately, statements like the following seem to belie this possibility:
I have to wonder how many of the women identifying as “feminist” in the study were in fact the sort of feminist for whom “pole dancer” is a synonym. What I suggest is not altogether an unlikely scenario, since this species of feminist is, as we know, much more common than the feminist kind of feminist. Feminists who use their empowerfulization to reclaim femininity, you know, for themselves goddammit, would of course enjoy the reinforcingly pleasant side effect of appeasing dudes who are threatened by non-patriarchal gender roles.
(Emphasis mine).
See, what I see here is the specific and deliberate contrasting of “sex worker” with “feminist” – as if the two could only ever be mutually exclusive.
As if Carol Leigh, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Sasha van Bon Bon, Chris Bruckert, Kathryn Payne and my own girlfriend – just to name a very limited few – aren’t/weren’t radical feminists *and* sex workers at the same time.
So I’ve decided to use that paragraph, and the opinions that (seem to) underlie it, as a jumping-off point for something I want to talk about.
See, as both Carol Queen and Kathryn Payne (among others) have pointed out more than a few times, The Patriarchy – and the homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and general sexism (to say the least) that go with it – fears and loathes femininity.
“Proper” femininity is “under control”, infantilized one might say. It’s the femininity that wears pink and simpers and doesn’t know how to make decisions. It’s the femininity that says “yes dear,” over and over again. This femininity does not leave the domestic sphere – the house, maybe even just the kitchen. She has no concept of her own desire beyond a pubescent shame over her own body. This femininity sees sex as a wifely (only wifely, not girlfriendly) duty and/or a means to getting born-in-wedlock children.
This is the femininity that is held up, virginal and obedient, by The Patriarchy (the church and the law) as what women “should” be.
The other femininity. The one that is denigrated by the church and the law, the femininity that is all grown up, that wears red, that is carnal and knows it, that isn’t shut off from or out of her body, this femininity is criminalized, marginalized and demonized by The Patriarchy. And it’s denigrated in this way, and to this extreme, because The Patriarchy – this androcentric culture that is so, SO divorced from its own sensuality, sexuality, bodiliness – knows how damn much it craves, collectively, that carnality, that flesh which it has, throughout the cultural histories it claims as its lineage, called “female” and “womanly” and also “base”, “evil”, and “filth”.
Kathryn Payne has explained that the power (economic and survival) of the sex worker (the stripper, the agency escort, the street-walker, the porn star, the trophy-wife (bet you didn’t see that one coming – or maybe you did), the pro-domme, the peepshow dancer, all of them) lies in working femininity: in pulling out the stops and turning up the volume of what it is to be feminine until you can see it, hear it, smell it coming blocks and blocks away. This is NOT femininity that is performed to “[appease] dudes who are threatened by non-patriarchal gender roles”[1].
When one denigrates sex workers, one denigrates overt, aware feminine sexuality: One denigrates power-full, empowered femininity (whether that femininity is being done/played overtly for cash or for personal pleasure or for both) that knows what it wants and knows how to demand it. This denigration corroborates the beliefs and the power-structures (see [1]) of The Patriarchy, and it does the cause of Feminism no good what so ever.
- TTFN,
- Amazon.
[1] Because patriarchal gender roles include “active, aware, sexually aggressive, and independent men/males/masculinity” VS “passive, clueless, sexually “receptive” (receptical?) and andro-dependent women/females/femininity”, while sex-worker femininity is active, aware and aggressive, and knows that – particularly in the context of sex work itself – while masculine sexuality craves and seeks out feminine sexuality, feminine sexuality is whole and complete until itself.
