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Sex-positive concern trolling!
Apr. 22nd, 2011 09:45 pmGuess what, y'all? Jill over at Feministe is concerned about all the women out there who don't enjoy sex as much as she does or consider it one of life's great fundamental pleasures, as well as the picky eaters and the non-foodies. She's really, really concerned! She also pities us and is sad to know that other people don't enjoy the same pleasures she does, and she wants to fix that because she is in favor of pleasure and joy. Unlike all us picky eaters and the old women who, amidst work and kids and financial worries and medical issues, are too tired to bother with sex anymore. She's so pro-joy she posted a list of other things that are great. Still no word on how much she pities vegetarians, non-dog-lovers, and non-hipsters.
As those of you who read my LJ in its earlier days know, I used to read Feministe and some of the other high-traffic feminist blogs regularly, and I quit bothering with most of them because of frustration with the way they handled a variety of issues. I happened to get temporarily drawn back to Feministe recently, and I noticed the post that started this and the comments on it and the follow-up post indicate how much and how little the the site and associated community have changed. For one thing, Jill name-checks asexuals in her post as people who are incomprehensible to her but vaguely okay, before going on to tell women who haven't been asexual their whole lives that there's something wrong with them for not being sexual enough, and also being ridiculously condescending to asexuals. When I was a regular reader, asexuals were not believed to exist and people claiming to be asexual were not okay. Now, asexuals get the "not that there's anything wrong with that (although there totally is, but it's rude to say so)" treatment. When I was hanging around, the closest thing that occurred to that was the occasional token mention of butch lesbians when defending contemporary patriarchal capitalist beauty culture against the hordes of slut-shaming, femininity-hating, insufficiently sex-positive feminists ("If you say you don't like to wear high heels and short skirts, or don't want to wear them at work, you're shaming all the women who do! Of course, the butch lesbians are exempt from this"). Because women who aren't lesbian, or who are lesbian but aren't butch apparently had no reason to reject or criticize beauty culture other than sheer enjoyment of bringing the shame. So . . . I guess it's something, especially since a lot of the comments are critical of the pitying, condescending, well, aren't you just a strange bug? stance of the OP. But as usual, the comments in support of the OP contain stuff that's even more offensive than the OP itself, including one (but only one!) person vehemently putting forth two of my old anti-favorite assumptions, that denying sex to someone who has come to expect it from you is equivalent to spousal rape and that people with no interest in sex run around tricking people with high sex drives into monogamous relationships and then denying them sex forever out of sheer perversity.
As those of you who read my LJ in its earlier days know, I used to read Feministe and some of the other high-traffic feminist blogs regularly, and I quit bothering with most of them because of frustration with the way they handled a variety of issues. I happened to get temporarily drawn back to Feministe recently, and I noticed the post that started this and the comments on it and the follow-up post indicate how much and how little the the site and associated community have changed. For one thing, Jill name-checks asexuals in her post as people who are incomprehensible to her but vaguely okay, before going on to tell women who haven't been asexual their whole lives that there's something wrong with them for not being sexual enough, and also being ridiculously condescending to asexuals. When I was a regular reader, asexuals were not believed to exist and people claiming to be asexual were not okay. Now, asexuals get the "not that there's anything wrong with that (although there totally is, but it's rude to say so)" treatment. When I was hanging around, the closest thing that occurred to that was the occasional token mention of butch lesbians when defending contemporary patriarchal capitalist beauty culture against the hordes of slut-shaming, femininity-hating, insufficiently sex-positive feminists ("If you say you don't like to wear high heels and short skirts, or don't want to wear them at work, you're shaming all the women who do! Of course, the butch lesbians are exempt from this"). Because women who aren't lesbian, or who are lesbian but aren't butch apparently had no reason to reject or criticize beauty culture other than sheer enjoyment of bringing the shame. So . . . I guess it's something, especially since a lot of the comments are critical of the pitying, condescending, well, aren't you just a strange bug? stance of the OP. But as usual, the comments in support of the OP contain stuff that's even more offensive than the OP itself, including one (but only one!) person vehemently putting forth two of my old anti-favorite assumptions, that denying sex to someone who has come to expect it from you is equivalent to spousal rape and that people with no interest in sex run around tricking people with high sex drives into monogamous relationships and then denying them sex forever out of sheer perversity.