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.
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