More on "Female Chauvinist Pigs"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/17/AR2005091700044.html?sub=AR
I still haven't read the book, but there's an article by the same person. And I think that now I can better articulate what bothers me most about it. It makes the assumption that there's no middle ground: here are our feminist foremothers, who ceaselessly exposed exploitation of women through pornography, through stereotypes, through compusory heterosexuality itself. And over here are American culture's impressionable female teenyboppers, shakin' it and flashin' it and becoming "totally fascinated" with "raunch."
And that leaves me out. That leaves out how I got radicalized in the first place.
See, I came to feminism because I'd heard rumors that these nasty evil feminist types hated kinky sex and hated porn. I'd just found my place in the SM subculture. Standard straight sex had never made sense to me. I felt threatened because I knew that, according to everything I saw around me, TV and ad billboards and even my mom, good girls submitted, just a little, to boys. I knew I was different. I knew that it wasn't just that I had a whole bunch of the stock wild and crazy dominatrix fantasies, but also that I couldn't be happy if I let myself be led through my sexuality by men. I knew I liked women too, but I had no idea where to start with that and I figured everything would start to make sense once I found other perverts. And that's exactly what happened. I found a place where I could pick whether to lead or follow. I found a place where people thought about what they did with one another, mostly. Even the straights.
And then I heard that "the feminists" had hated on some SM lesbians years ago and deemed them "patriarchal." I researched it and I read a whole bunch of things that people calling themselves "radical feminists," whatever in the world that was, were saying about sexuality. It read to me like they hated women who didn't toe their party line, who didn't hate all porn, who got off on the things I did -- or worse, got off on being the one these things got done to, instead of did. I was disgusted. I hated the idea of calling myself something other than a feminist, because I had a vague idea that "feminists" in years gone by had done good things for women, but I decided that if "feminists" would rather see me go back to a different and hostile sexual world so there'd be no whips... then screw it, I was no bloody feminist.
But... some of what they said, I couldn't get out of my mind. Some of the things they talked about mainstream pornography depicting, I agreed with. Some of the things they asked about why so many women like being submissive, I'd asked myself too. Some of the suggestions that maybe some of it came from the fact that that's what our culture might demand of them, I got. I'd fought long and hard to be a top, and it often felt pretty thankless. Men called me "a feminist" if I didn't order them around in exactly the way they wanted, and they didn't mean feminist as "someone who in years gone by had done good things for women." Why did men who wanted to be ordered around think I was there to please them? What were they rebelling against? Why was feminism a dirty word?
I became more and more interested. I started to research what people meant when they said power disparities were bad for women. I didn't agree about kink, no, but I started to see what kinds of hierarchies they were talking about. Man over woman. Rich over poor. White over... damn near everyone. It began to make sense.
But if it hadn't started with sexuality, would I have gotten the point? If I hadn't been interested in "wild dominatrix fantasies" would I ever have realized what's wrong with the way a lot of people act some of them out? Would I ever have realized what kinds of hierarchies really do hurt women? Would I ever have thought about what a pair of boobs jiggling on some crappily made tape might actually mean? Would I ever have started to see the ways that "equal opportunities" under the laws aren't really, if most of us are brought up in a primordial ooze of sexism anyway? Would I be a radical feminist today?
No.
If that makes me raunchy, I apologize for my radical feminism.
Except... no I don't.
I still haven't read the book, but there's an article by the same person. And I think that now I can better articulate what bothers me most about it. It makes the assumption that there's no middle ground: here are our feminist foremothers, who ceaselessly exposed exploitation of women through pornography, through stereotypes, through compusory heterosexuality itself. And over here are American culture's impressionable female teenyboppers, shakin' it and flashin' it and becoming "totally fascinated" with "raunch."
And that leaves me out. That leaves out how I got radicalized in the first place.
See, I came to feminism because I'd heard rumors that these nasty evil feminist types hated kinky sex and hated porn. I'd just found my place in the SM subculture. Standard straight sex had never made sense to me. I felt threatened because I knew that, according to everything I saw around me, TV and ad billboards and even my mom, good girls submitted, just a little, to boys. I knew I was different. I knew that it wasn't just that I had a whole bunch of the stock wild and crazy dominatrix fantasies, but also that I couldn't be happy if I let myself be led through my sexuality by men. I knew I liked women too, but I had no idea where to start with that and I figured everything would start to make sense once I found other perverts. And that's exactly what happened. I found a place where I could pick whether to lead or follow. I found a place where people thought about what they did with one another, mostly. Even the straights.
And then I heard that "the feminists" had hated on some SM lesbians years ago and deemed them "patriarchal." I researched it and I read a whole bunch of things that people calling themselves "radical feminists," whatever in the world that was, were saying about sexuality. It read to me like they hated women who didn't toe their party line, who didn't hate all porn, who got off on the things I did -- or worse, got off on being the one these things got done to, instead of did. I was disgusted. I hated the idea of calling myself something other than a feminist, because I had a vague idea that "feminists" in years gone by had done good things for women, but I decided that if "feminists" would rather see me go back to a different and hostile sexual world so there'd be no whips... then screw it, I was no bloody feminist.
But... some of what they said, I couldn't get out of my mind. Some of the things they talked about mainstream pornography depicting, I agreed with. Some of the things they asked about why so many women like being submissive, I'd asked myself too. Some of the suggestions that maybe some of it came from the fact that that's what our culture might demand of them, I got. I'd fought long and hard to be a top, and it often felt pretty thankless. Men called me "a feminist" if I didn't order them around in exactly the way they wanted, and they didn't mean feminist as "someone who in years gone by had done good things for women." Why did men who wanted to be ordered around think I was there to please them? What were they rebelling against? Why was feminism a dirty word?
I became more and more interested. I started to research what people meant when they said power disparities were bad for women. I didn't agree about kink, no, but I started to see what kinds of hierarchies they were talking about. Man over woman. Rich over poor. White over... damn near everyone. It began to make sense.
But if it hadn't started with sexuality, would I have gotten the point? If I hadn't been interested in "wild dominatrix fantasies" would I ever have realized what's wrong with the way a lot of people act some of them out? Would I ever have realized what kinds of hierarchies really do hurt women? Would I ever have thought about what a pair of boobs jiggling on some crappily made tape might actually mean? Would I ever have started to see the ways that "equal opportunities" under the laws aren't really, if most of us are brought up in a primordial ooze of sexism anyway? Would I be a radical feminist today?
No.
If that makes me raunchy, I apologize for my radical feminism.
Except... no I don't.