Being Amber Rhea

Inspired by this post, I decided that I wanted to try writing for a larger audience. Eek! I’ve always felt very stressed out writing under any kind of pressure, even self-imposed pressure, but I want to challenge myself and see what happens. So last night I did a bunch of free-writing/brain-dumping. The result of that exercise has now graduated to rough draft numero uno, which means I had to cut a bunch of stuff so I could stick w/ a central theme. Here’s all the stuff I took out - I think it’s all important stuff and highly relevant, but I just couldn’t make it “fit.” Solution? Blog it!

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You often hear feminists saying that just using “choice” as an excuse or justification or way of avoiding dealing w/ complex issues is BS. And it is. They will often say, “The context in which that choice is made matters.” And it does!! So why does that concept fly out the window when the issue is sex, and in particular sex that squicks some people out?

Look, if you’ve got a woman telling you, “This is what I like, I’ve examined it and yes this is really what I want to do, and doing it makes me happy, and trying to force myself NOT to do it made me feel awful, and will people just get off my back about it already?” - what the fuck is so hard to understand about that?? A core tenet of feminism is the importance of listening to women, providing women with space to speak the truths of their lives, to speak honestly and openly without the restraints put in place by a society that tries to dictate what is acceptable and what is not. We often say when it comes to issues of rape: “Listen to the woman. Take her at her word. Believe her.” We often say when it comes to issues of abortion: “Trust women. They are capable of making their own decisions.”

Why do these sentiments not apply when a woman says she likes a certain kind of sex?

Recent editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves have removed some of the sex fantasies that were in the original 1972 version, because they were deemed too controversial or uncomfortable. Wait a minute. Wasn’t the point that women need space to talk about these things openly, even if (especially if!) they are “controversial” or “out of the norm” or make other people squirm a little?

Do you think I haven’t been told that, as a woman, actively wanting and pursuing sex, enjoying it for its own sake and not as a way to “get” something or as a reward, not necessarily tying it up with love or a relationship, etc., is bad and that there’s something wrong with me? You think the social script of sluts vs. good girls doesn’t play on an endless loop in the back of my mind, even now? You think I haven’t been hearing this shit since before I was old enough to really understand what “sexuality” even meant?

You think that’s not patriarchy??

The patriarchy is SEX-NEGATIVE. I am personally not a fan of the term “The Patriarchy” (capital P!) but I often refer to the sex-negative society in which we live. Guess what, folks? Same thing, different name.

I am tired of my arguments being reduced to black-and-white, simplistic, non-nuanced cartoons of themselves. And the funny thing is, often the people who are doing this reducing are, nearly in the same breath, complaining about arguments about sex being so black-and-white and over-simplified! It would be laughable if it weren’t so crazy-making. Uh, well maybe part of that is that you’re the one simplifying things. You are not hearing what people are saying. There’s a filter in place, filtering out the nuance.

Don’t tell me it’s not worth pushing back against the status quo. To do anything else feels like death to me, and yeah that might sound melodramatic, but I don’t know how else to convey it.

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Other responses to the Feministe thread:

• Bookworm: Feminist-positive sex: some initial thoughts
• let them eat pro-sm feminist safe spaces: Getting off on power exchange is BadWrong, let me tell you it.
• Letters from Gehenna: Examining Desire
• Renegade Evolution: You know, I think the feminist thing to do would be to stop telling people how to fuck…. and Patient Zero, it’s time for your Examination…
• season of the bitch: Female Desire Week (plus): Sex and Art