Same old, same old
A commenter at Feministe said:
As a parent of 2 girls, I’m hoping that I can encourage them to feel empowered by being smart, skilled, happy, powerful, knowledgeable, athletic, etc. Getting positive sexual attention seems pleasant enough, but also seems ’second class.’ Mostly because it relies on ANOTHER person’s judgment, and not on your own internal power.
*sigh*
Where to begin?
As Jenny put it a few weeks ago: “You’re a woman. You may have your intelligence or your sexuality. You may not have both.”
This, of course, is nothing new at all. In fact, it’s so not new that part of me wonders if I should even bother blogging about it. But it never fails to throw me for a loop when self-identified progressives spout the same reductive, dichotomous crap as the status quo conservatives they claim to oppose.
And you know, I bet the father who made the above statement has the best of intentions. Of course he does! He wants his daughters to be valued for more than their looks or their sex appeal; he wants them to be valued as whole people, who have minds and hearts as well as bodies.
And yet, somehow, in the earnestness to ensure that women and girls are valued intellectually and not just physically, the physical gets left behind.
-Well, actually, scratch that; the sexual gets left behind. Because if you’ll notice, in the above quote, the commenter included athletic ability among the list of skills for which he would like his daughters to be admired.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be valued as a whole person; I don’t think any reasonable person would argue otherwise. But the thing is, people have bodies. People have sexuality. So, part of being a whole person is valuing those aspects of oneself as well as the mental, emotional, and spiritual. It’s not an either/or game. Compartmentalization of a major part of oneself is in no way holistic.
As a child, these are the lessons I learned: It’s more important to be valued for your mind. The mental is superior to the physical.
And in a lot of ways, that was a good lesson. I have always enjoyed a rich inner life, and have excelled intellectually. I wouldn’t trade either of those things. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to grow up basing my entire worth on my physical appearance or physical abilities. But, at times, I feel like I went too far in the opposite direction. I was out of touch with my body. I felt guilty about my strong sexual desires, because those were “second class,” to use a phrase from above. Smart girls use their minds. Smart girls have more important things with which to concern themselves. Smart girls don’t. We know this to be true.
Except, smart girls do. And I realized that denying this very strong, powerful, essential part of myself in the name of being “smart” was not very smart at all.
My other beef with the above quote is this part in particular: “Getting positive sexual attention seems pleasant enough, but also seems ’second class.’ Mostly because it relies on ANOTHER person’s judgment, and not on your own internal power.”
Let’s leave aside the “second class” business for now, the connotations of which could make for a whole other post.
What bugs me about this is the language, which was probably used without any specific thought given to it: “Getting positive sexual attention.” Certainly, there is nothing wrong with getting positive sexual attention if that’s what you want. However, using that language as the assumed default here once again casts women as passive recipients. Women are portrayed as being desired; but what about desiring? What about acting? What about seeking, learning, growing, self-actualizing, and all that other hippy-dippy stuff? Owning one’s sexuality (“my body belongs to me”) absolutely does rely on one’s “internal power.” It can even be a source of that power. When women take full, unapologetic ownership of our sexuality, we are reclaiming it from the tired old rule of women’s sexuality being defined by others.
So, while I 100% support women feeling empowered by being smart, skilled, happy, powerful, knowledgeable, and athletic, I equally support women feeling empowered by being sexual and by not denying the body. I support women feeling empowered by all these things, because none of them are mutually exclusive.
Absolutely, Amber…absolutely. I get so sick of the Mind over Body, at all times, at all cost mentality. I really, really do. People have bodies, and funny enough, when it comes to desire, well hell, the mind is involved there too.
I do not, and never will, get the reasons people find that somehow wanting to be sexual, to desire and be desired, is so….wrong. Unempowered. Unimportant.
I mean really, I know some downright WICKED intelligent women who care only about being seen as smart, good in business, all that, and ask me if they are happier than the women who have average minds and careers but fulfilling sex/love lives?
Answer is, no.
Amber, I love this post! I want to hug it, squeeze it and keep it all to myself!
Absolutely brava, Amber.
Being a man who really does dig intellegence AND sexuality (in no particular order), it gets real tiring to hear this constant drone of bullshit about how sexual women can’t be intellegent…and intellegent women can’t or shouldn’t be sexual. Funny how I never seem to hear anyone on our side of the debate ever say that only sexual women can be intellegent, or that intellegent women must be only sexual….but I am constantly blown out by the message that a sexual woman automatically loses the ability to be intellegent…..as if her clit or bust cancels out her brain or her heart.
The idea that not all women can or should be Rhodes Scholars, that the broad range of intellegence and competence should be respected as much as the woman’s choice of how she chooses to express her sexuality, seems to escape these jackals. Not everybody can become the President or the CEO or even a doctor or lawyer; sometimes, you have to fight with the tools you have.
And has it ever entered that person’s mind that a young woman might seek sexual attention on her own terms and for her own pleasure?? Why the fuck must it always be about Teh MEN?!?!?! And..if a man does respond to her seeking such attention positively and still respects her as a human being, then what the hell is the problem there??
Oh, I forgot….women aren’t supposed to think of themselves as proactive sexual beings and invite themselves to sexual attraction and desire. That leads to gawking men whistling at women, which leads to raunch culture, which leads to rape and “degradation” of women, which leads to….
Same old absexual hymnal, 4,439th verse. Old and tiring.
Anthony
Word. Motherfucking word.
(Ah, how the “feminists” elsewhere would react to THAT statement.)
Since you already quoted me (thanks!), I’ll just quote you back:
When women take full, unapologetic ownership of our sexuality, we are reclaiming it from the tired old rule of women’s sexuality being defined by others.
Perfect. Too damn perfect.
I like my women intelligent.
Me too. I never said otherwise.
Awesome.
Oh.
Ha!
Anthony… unfortunate misspelling there, dude!
Thanks for the comment, seriously; but, that’s kind of amusing. :) Hey, I’ve made some pretty unfortunate typos in my day, so I’m not hating.
Oh. damn…..how in the hell could I have misspelled “intelligent”??
That’s what a long day of work will do to you…
Sorry about that, folks.
Anthony
*Slowly slinking myself away until Amber gets a editor for the comments box*
Anthony
I’m reminded of some of my ranting back for the Blogging For Sex Ed day thing, where I noted that the whole not treating sexuality as an integrated part of people that needed to be dealt with rather than stuffed in that second-class box was a big part of what got me sexually assaulted.
Because that whole ‘Oh, don’t deal with sexuality stuff, that’s beneath you’ nonsense mostly leaves people vulnerable to predatory behaviour. (I wouldn’t be surprised if it encouraged predators, too, but I was on the ‘bitten’ end of that one.)
Amber, you’ve really hit on something here. There has to be a way to emphasize that women can’t rely on the physical appeal aspect, while still emphasizing that they can and should take pleasure in it, or even take power from it, if they wish to. I can see how that would be difficult for a male parent to convey, but I think it can be said without invoking “second class” or “another person’s judgment.”
In fact, when one is really taking charge of the physical and enjoying it, it isn’t ABOUT another person, but about oneself. As a nerd who, like you, was always told to emphasize the academic, it was fun once away from home for the first time to experiment with different looks. Some of which I was well aware made people uncomfortable and were not viewed by many men as attractive. But it didn’t matter — it was fun.
This is the best post I have read from you. WOW! There are a number of lines that are just great quotes and ideas. I really love how you turned around the idea of the attention coming from someone else to owning your own sexuality and desires and I really love how you show this is the healthy side of being a whole person.
Very Very awesome
Thanks, Sherry! I’m so curious, though, how did you come to find it today, over a year after I wrote it?