Sex-Neutral Feminism

This is what I was going to write about an hour ago:

Okay.

I’ve had it with sex-positive feminist bullshit about prostitution, porn, and consent. I’ve. Had. It.

Exactly what good does it do to promote kink dot com as a “feminist” porn site?

Exactly what good does it do to claim over and over and over again that women are free to make whatever choices they want?

Exactly what good does it do to ignore other women’s realities, to ignore even the possibility of other realities besides your own, as you dominate feminist discussions with your demands for the right to say yes-yes-yes to whatever you want?

Why is all of the oppression so many sex-pozzers say they’re experiencing radical feminism’s fault? Why do we have to turn an uncritical eye to their choices or be called patriarchal and oppressive? Why is my life up for critique (I’m apparently a moralizing anti-sex pro-censorship wannabe republican because I don’t think porn can be feminist, let alone kink’s porn) but not the lives of sex-pozzers? Why are they so defensive about their lives that any discussion of sex acts becomes an antifeminist decry against their choices?

What the fuck is the point of all of this?

Let’s remember, feminists of all stripes: patriarchy is the enemy. Patriarchy is the one telling us what’s hot, what’s sexy, what’s desirable, what our bodies are worth, what we can/should do with our bodies, what we cannot/should not do with our bodies, and just how much control we actually have over our bodies. I’m not saying women are powerless or that we should “de-empower” women for their own good. I’m saying that ignoring patriarchal limits on what we can consent to is not feminist. It is not fighting the patriarchy. It is, indeed, enabling patriarchy to continue by acquiescing via our silence.

What we experience now as women — as a class and as individuals — is not all that there could ever be. We are only just now beginning to reify the fantasies our foremothers have had in centuries past. The world is not done being created. We can still change it.

I was going to fix all that up, make it sound better, make it make more sense. I was going to link to a bunch of other blogs where I see this kind of shit happening. And then I was going to post it.

Until I saw this over at Twisty’s.

Some glorious, much-needed excerpts:

As long as Liz brought it up, let me just say this one last thing about sexy feminism. It’s a too-too-tool of the patriarkay. It’s an expedient justification, a way to rebrand what everybody does when they’re in their twenties, which is to drink too much and screw a lot, as a cool 21st-century-activist political activity.

This would just be kind of funny, you know, youthful hi-jinx and whatnot, except that, since it is entirely devoid of philosophic value, sexy feminism has sort of caught on. It’s had the untoward effect of diluting the message of actual feminism. And the even more untoward effect of vilifying radical feminism. And the even more untoward effect of strengthening patriarchal oppression.

[. . .]

Sexy feminism creates two groups of women, but, oddly enough, neither group is for women. I allude to the “sex-positive” group and the “anti-sex” group. The first benefits the status quo. It reassures women who fear the burden of true liberation that femininity is a legitimate identity. The second is the fictitious enemy of the first — a stand-in for the real oppressor — and functions as the dark, hairy background against which the glowing orgasmic accomplishments of the sexy feminists may glitter in the light of life’s dudely disco ball. Of course there is no real group of anti-sexites; this is a fabrication that allows sexy feminists to indulge in patriarchy-appeasing misogyny on feminist blogs.

I propose [a] third, easy-breezy alternative to the suffocating conformity demanded by this tiresome positive vs. negative binary thought system: sex-neutralism. Get busy, don’t get busy, whatever! While recognizing that penis placement has enormous political, social, and economic ramifications, particularly for members of the sex caste, the sex-neutral feminist — and I may be the only one alive — puts the act itself on a par with sneezing. Pleasant enough when it happens, but hardly worth elevating to the pinnacle of human achievement, or devoting 98% of an internet to.

[. . .]

By the way, you can’t “do what you want despite patriarchy.” Patriarchy declines to offer you full agency, even if — particularly if — you try to take it. That’s why patriarchy is bad.

Allow me to officially proclaim myself a sex-neutral feminist. I don’t care what you do in your bedroom or with whom you do it or how or when or how frequently, because what you do and what you’d like to do in your bedroom does not constitute a feminist framework. The fact that I don’t want to be raped, however, and the fact that I’m taking active steps toward changing a culture that currently condones rape into one that actively forbids it and punishes rapists — well, that constitutes a feminist framework. Yes, I want to have sex on my own terms. One of those terms is that I have sex when — and only when — I want to have sex. For that to happen, my “no” needs to be heard. My “yes” is taken for granted already. Because this is a patriarchy. I am a woman; therefore, I am in the sex class. I say “yes” by simply existing. Saying “yes” more often to patriarchal expectations and rallying for my inalienable right to say “yes” to patriarchal expectations will not change anything, because my “right” to say “yes” to those things is not under attack.

Now that we’ve taken care of that, let’s move on to more important issues.