Then Again, Maybe I Do Lose Feminist Merit Points
...at least according to Twisty:
The language and imagery of ‘choice feminism’ [see Linda Hirshman] is the language and imagery of sex, which, since it’s the only paradigm we’ve got, is simultaneously the language and imagery of patriarchy.
What if, instead of blindly asserting our ‘right’ to ‘choose’ the patriarchal sexbot model, we (and by ‘we’ I mean all the roller girls, amateur pole dancers, blow jobbists, and other ’sex-positive feminists’ [Emphasis mine] I’ve managed to encrabulate over the past year or two) examined what it is, exactly, we’re supposedly choosing?
I assert that we’re choosing the path of least resistance. It’s much easier to acquiesce to a set of established conventions-social, aesthetic, political, sexual, sartorial-for which the rewards (dudely approval, other women’s satisfying jealousy) dangle brightly ahead, than it is to blaze forth in a fury of white-hot anti-feminine iconoclasm and risk ridicule, ostracism, and male reproach. Life’s rich pageant is much more accessible when you go with the flow. Patriarchy, as the Spice Girls and Paris Hilton can attest, rewards conformity. Which is why the new feminism must be sex-ay, and why the only freedom it promises is the freedom to enjoy the degradation.
Still working my way through how Twisty's white-hot anti-feminine iconoclast mandate meshes with my believe that freedom means having as much choice available as possible.
The language and imagery of ‘choice feminism’ [see Linda Hirshman] is the language and imagery of sex, which, since it’s the only paradigm we’ve got, is simultaneously the language and imagery of patriarchy.
What if, instead of blindly asserting our ‘right’ to ‘choose’ the patriarchal sexbot model, we (and by ‘we’ I mean all the roller girls, amateur pole dancers, blow jobbists, and other ’sex-positive feminists’ [Emphasis mine] I’ve managed to encrabulate over the past year or two) examined what it is, exactly, we’re supposedly choosing?
I assert that we’re choosing the path of least resistance. It’s much easier to acquiesce to a set of established conventions-social, aesthetic, political, sexual, sartorial-for which the rewards (dudely approval, other women’s satisfying jealousy) dangle brightly ahead, than it is to blaze forth in a fury of white-hot anti-feminine iconoclasm and risk ridicule, ostracism, and male reproach. Life’s rich pageant is much more accessible when you go with the flow. Patriarchy, as the Spice Girls and Paris Hilton can attest, rewards conformity. Which is why the new feminism must be sex-ay, and why the only freedom it promises is the freedom to enjoy the degradation.
Still working my way through how Twisty's white-hot anti-feminine iconoclast mandate meshes with my believe that freedom means having as much choice available as possible.