Jenny’s Pennies

As you see not much have happened here lately. It’s not that there is a lack of blog worthy things, but I just haven’t mustered up the will to write something even remotely clever about them.

Like last week, I really wanted to chime in on this discussion. Yeah, I’m one of those that think that whatever rocks you boat, go ahead and do it, as long as it is consensual and involves adults. And I have a huge problem with the certain kind of feminists who say that I can’t really enjoy doing X, and if I just examined more I would realize that x is damaging, degrading and that enjoying x means I am fucked up (no pun intended) and traumatized/abused/insert random “you must be a victim”-word here. (Addendum: enjoying x can also mean that you’re an evil evil patriarchy enabler and that you should hand over your holy womanhood membership card.)
But as awesome Amber said in the comment thread, what if I have examined and I realize that I still like x and not doing x didn’t make me feel good? Should I continue to do it and feel guilty about it, or should I stop doing it and feel bad because I’ve repressed something I really want?
“The Patriarchy” (yes, in quotation marks) has always told women that they shouldn’t enjoy sex because that makes you dirty and bad bad bad, but you should always be available for it —
so why are some (mind you, some) feminists adding to the chorus of slut-shaming, “no respectable/undamaged/good/self-respecting woman could like that” comments?

I agree to a certain point that the personal is political, yes, but I also wonder… How does what we do in the bedroom affect society as a whole? I mean, when the anti-gay people come with their “same-sex marriage will ruin heterosexual marriage” and “gay sex means the end of civilization” we laugh at them and point out that what other people does in the bedroom does not affect them in any way.
So in what way does a woman giving blow jobs, getting off on power exchange, enjoying rough sex, or whatever else have a larger impact on society? As commenter Iamcuriousblue said in a thread over at Ren’s, if everyone who engages in kink, power differentials etc suddenly stopped in the name of feminism, I don’t think we would see any positive effect in the real world - it would not mean equal pay, it would not mean a more equal division of household chores, it would not mean an end to abuse and sexual assault.
But if our choices in the bedroom does have affect the outside world, then what is feminist-approved sex anyway? Is enjoying power-play and slapping ok, as long as you have examined properly? Do we need to divide our time in the bedroom 50/50 - her on top/him on top, him coming first/her coming first, him calling the shots/her calling the shots? Or is all heterosexual sex out? What about lesbian BDSM then? Is getting off on being slapped and called a bitch ok as long as it is done by another woman?

Yeah you probably get where I stand on this and I didn’t intend for this to be so long, so here’s some other people who have good things to say:
RenEv of course, and again
Letters from Gehenna - yes totally agree with this:

No amount of “examination” will make any form of sexuality ideologically correct.
Sexuality does not have an ideology.
As people said in various places in this blowup, a penis in a vagina is a penis in a vagina; it’s sex, it’s normal/natural/biologically common/whatever, it doesn’t have an ideology. The meaning is something that people create, attach, ascribe.

and Belledame

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under Feminism, Sex and sexuality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.