Guest Blog
May. 17th, 2012 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
askygoneonfireA friend sent me this, and although I have a few comments and responses I have yet to share with her and don't agree with her on all points, I think it makes for an interesting read, so I'm sharing with you.
I'll pass on the link to this post to her if people make comments as I'm sure she'd be interested to engage in debate with people;
________________________________________________________________________________
Modern women are sexually liberated. There’s a sentence. I can speak from experience- I have, in my 26 years on the planet, had sex whenever I fancied, with whomever I fancied, assuming they fancied me back. Simples. Thank you, women’s lib ladies, flinging yourself in front of horses and inventing the pill and writing controversial polemics. I vote, I shag, I wear what I like, I work and procreate as I please (economic crisis notwithstanding), and if I ever took up exercise (lots of exercise) I could compete with the chaps on an equal footing, and all thanks to your marvellous efforts. Job well done.
Of course, it’s alright for me. I’m white, British, irreligious, liberal, and (officially- I have all the paperwork) educated, with two middle class parents who love me. There are others, many others, who despite the best efforts of feminist’s everywhere, are unable to enjoy such liberty. Religious or cultural traditions universally restrict women’s sexuality, amongst other things- we read about it every day in the papers. The woman from Afghanistan threatened with stoning for maybe possibly shagging someone who wasn’t her husband. The British Pakistani woman murdered by her relatives for having the wrong boyfriend. The woman forced into marrying an older man in a polygamous relationship as part of some weird Christian cult. The African woman who had her clitoris chopped off. Stereotypes often become stereotypes because they are seeded in truth, and these are only some of the most prevalent.
As a smug, pseudo-liberal westerner, a stereotype of my very own, I obviously feel entitled to say that each of these events are wrong. Categorically. I appreciate that this is a problematic position to take. Who am I to impose a universal set of ethics on the world? How is my sheltered opinion any more true than anybody else’s? I don’t know. I cant answer that. It’s not, probably, when you look at it that way. But I’m keeping it anyway, so bully to you. If the architects of these inhuman and, frankly, mad situations are allowed radical and inflexible beliefs, then I’m having one as well. There’s some equality for you. And I know who would win in a heated debate down the pub on a Friday night. Me, that’s who. Yep, the crusading spirit lives on in this 9 by 11 foot plot of green and pleasant land. We are right, and they are wrong.
And then, the other day, a 21 year old friend of mine (white, British, irreligious, middle class parents etc etc) told me proudly that she has a full Brazilian every month. Gosh, I said, isn’t that expensive and time consuming? I thought they only did that on telly and then discussed it at length in lefty publications? Not at all, she corrected me (told you I was sheltered). And then I wondered, aloud, isn’t this logistically problematic? Don’t you have to wait until it grows back long enough to get it all whipped off again, thus leaving you with only a brief (haw haw) window of baldness to play with, as it were, followed by weeks of light to mid to full hairiness? And if that is the case, why bother to do it at all, when roughly three quarters of the time you’re having sex with the hair still attached anyway? Oh no, she corrected me again. She would never dream of having sex except immediately after being waxed. None of the fellows in her peer group would have sex with a hairy girl, and all her female friends felt the same (an observation confirmed by a breathtakingly unscientific poll).
Forgive me one further smug pseudo-liberal self important generalisation: this is wrong. Who the hell taught these chaps not only that bald vaginas were normal, but that hairy ones were disgusting? I’m not sure we can point the finger squarely at pornography, seeing as I’ve seen plenty of au naturel adult cinema (and not just the retro stuff) and besides most of the free stuff you get whilst browsing the interweb when you think no one but google and facebook are watching is ‘amateur’ and thus hardly ever professionally groomed. And then my boyfriend said “show me a 21 year old male person, who has been offered, and accepted, sex, who at the point of pants-off says ‘goodness, that’s a bit hairy, I’d rather not’ and I’ll give you fifty quid”. This hypothesis was followed swiftly by another, possibly even more unscientific investigation, involving the application of a few pints of ‘truth serum’ to the relevant population, proving my boyfriend right. “The problem” he stated, diplomatically, “is girls”.
My friend was forcing upon herself a catalogue of restrictions regarding her sexuality. Was she thin enough, was she wearing enough makeup, matching underwear, waxed her bush? And this made me wonder, what is the difference behind the psychology of an ‘alien’ culture in which a women’s sexuality is persecuted openly, even violently, and the psychology of our own? The similarities were becoming all too clear: shame, a vagina monologue- esque revulsion of the human body, and fear. The fear of not doing it enough, of not doing it at all, or of doing it even once. The fear of not doing it right, or with the right person, of talking about it too much, or too little. The fear of not being ‘normal’, or ‘acceptable’. The fear of not being attractive. Everywhere I look, the rhetoric regarding the most universally practised human activity apart from consumption is dripping with fear. The fear of sex. This doesn’t seem very liberated to me, but I would like to propose the following solution: that we stop teaching women to be afraid of sex, and I would ideally like to go about this like Lara Croft, vigilante style, taking down the baddies one by one.
First in my sites are the easy ones: the fundamentalists. Driven by some fictitious religious or cultural code, invented by those with the power (and the money) in order to repress the ones who don’t, they condemn women to a lower order: second class; inhuman; chattel. At the risk of sounding a bit Team America, can’t we just get rid of them? I’m all for religion, mostly. They all mean well. They all promote charity, and love, and give people who need it solace and hope. This is marvellous. But when this is misconstrued, resulting in the denial of human rights, or any rights for that matter, to fifty per cent of the population, cant that nice Mr. Obama and Mr Putin join their not inconsiderable resources and just sort of stop them? I’m not suggesting we send in the army or anything. I’m suggesting we send in the Spice Girls. It’ll be expensive enough to warrant the involvement of some global superpowers (I heard they pull in about a million quid a gig), but I reckon if we install them in every part of the planet where such fundamentalism exists, from Texas to Tehran, and keep them performing every night, to everyone, until they get the message, we’d have the entire international community practising girl power like it was, ahem, going out of fashion.
Next, two birds with one stone the ‘slightly-less-fundamentalists’, and sex ed. I read an article the other day in which a group of Christianity based sex ed workers were explaining their project to advertise ‘abstinence’ to school children. This is fine. Each to their own. Making children aware of the choices they are entitled to make is all to the good. And then they said “obviously we only condone sex between a married couple, and we only condone marriage between heterosexuals”. Hmmm. This is obviously questionable, but part of another (although not wholly unrelated) debate. And then they said “statistically, married couples have the best sex”. Hmmm. And then they said “And obviously we teach boys and girls separately, because boys have to learn to respect a girl’s decision, and girl’s have to learn that they should only give up their virginity to a boy who has earned their trust”.
Hmmm. On the face of it, this seems lovely. Hugs and puppies. But the phrase ‘give up their virginity’ is more than a little bit subversive. Obviously, there’s the problem that they only apply this principle to the girls. But then there’s a more general problem. To solve this, I would like to let these ‘educational groups’ into a little secret (and fundamentalists take note, although I suspect the subtleties of this argument might be lost on you. That’s why you’ve got the Spice Girls). Whisper it… There’s no such thing as virginity. Ok, now say it a bit louder. There is only the period in your life before you have sex, and the period in your life after you have sex. This is equivocal to the period of your life before you have tried marmite, and the period of your life after. Some will never experience ‘the period in your life after’. For some, the transition will be a mere blip. For some, it will be life changing, illuminating, enlightening. For some, it will be very unpleasant, and all shades of grey in between. That is all. Virginity is not a thing. It is not a gift. It is not precious. It is not the be all and end all. It is a period of time. It is neither bad nor good if you are still having it, and it is neither bad nor good if you don’t. What is important is that it lasts as long as an individual chooses, and that the individual is made aware of the possible consequences when they decide to have a bash.
We teach our children to look left and right and left again and to walk carefully, unless they want to be killed by traffic, when we decide they are old enough to cross the road by themselves. Thus, we should teach them to consider their emotional circumstances and use contraception, unless they want to have a baby or an STI, when they are old enough to have sex. I’m told, legally, this is 16. So, to prepare them in advance, let’s have this ‘use contraception, unless you want a baby or an STI, and consider your emotions’ chat when they’re, say, 13 or 14, then leave it up to them. They’re old enough to have developed a proper understanding of the emotional bit- jolly powerful chemicals, hormones- but hopefully young enough not to have had a go already. We’ve already demolished religious and cultural lunacy (thank you Spice Girls), so we can teach all the kids exactly the same stuff, and it’s go for contraception, then leave it up to them. That’s sex ed sorted out (you’ll get my bill, Cameron). And to the slightly less fundamentalists, this: religion has a place, but it should stick to what it’s good at, and, I’m sorry religion, but you’re not very good at sex.
Who’s next then? Fascists. Eugenicists. Racists. Aesthetes. Anybody who judges anybody on the way that they look, or on their beliefs (apart from me, obviously, see above, re. crusades). Now that we’ve gotten rid of fundamentalism, no one can force anyone to do anything, which gets rid of all kind of modern ethical conundrums. Want to wear a burkha? Knock yourself out. Want to have dessert with that? Go wild. Shaved your head lately? Awesome. Fancy someone who’s the same gender as you, or believe in God, or Marxism, or unicorns, or don’t eat meat or dairy? Want to shave all you pubic hair off, or not? Smashing, let me know how that goes. Let’s have a couple of rules though, shall we? 1. Try not to deliberately hurt, physically or psychologically, another person, and apologise if you do. 2. Try not to be offended by another person’s beliefs or opinion, and don’t overreact if you are.
Now that everyone is getting along happy as larry, lets refocus on sex. An individual may be entitled to dress, look, behave and think how they like, but that doesn’t mean that everyone will find them attractive or want to have sex with them. This shouldn’t be confused with the old ‘beauty is only skin deep’ argument, because once we’ve gotten past skin deep people aren’t necessarily going to find your opinions attractive either, nor you them. I also imagine certain subconscious evolutionary triggers will hold true for some people, for the time being at least: are they healthy, intelligent, childbearing, the king? That having been said, we can’t dictate other people’s own health (it’s not in the rules, see, they only prevent us deliberately damaging other people’s health, not our own). The point I’m trying to make is this. No matter what you look like, or how you think, if you fancy someone and they fancy you, and you want to have sex with each other, and you’ve been briefed as to the known consequences and methods of avoidance, chocks away.
No right or wrong, you see. If there are no punishments (so long, fundamentalism), no grandiosity (so long, slightly less fundamentalism), no ignorance, (hello, universal sex ed), and no right or wrong (so long discrimination and prescriptive, cookie cutter views on ‘attractiveness’), then, hopefully, there should be no fear. I can’t promise how it’ll go though. That’s part of the fun.
I'll pass on the link to this post to her if people make comments as I'm sure she'd be interested to engage in debate with people;
________________________________________________________________________________
Modern women are sexually liberated. There’s a sentence. I can speak from experience- I have, in my 26 years on the planet, had sex whenever I fancied, with whomever I fancied, assuming they fancied me back. Simples. Thank you, women’s lib ladies, flinging yourself in front of horses and inventing the pill and writing controversial polemics. I vote, I shag, I wear what I like, I work and procreate as I please (economic crisis notwithstanding), and if I ever took up exercise (lots of exercise) I could compete with the chaps on an equal footing, and all thanks to your marvellous efforts. Job well done.
Of course, it’s alright for me. I’m white, British, irreligious, liberal, and (officially- I have all the paperwork) educated, with two middle class parents who love me. There are others, many others, who despite the best efforts of feminist’s everywhere, are unable to enjoy such liberty. Religious or cultural traditions universally restrict women’s sexuality, amongst other things- we read about it every day in the papers. The woman from Afghanistan threatened with stoning for maybe possibly shagging someone who wasn’t her husband. The British Pakistani woman murdered by her relatives for having the wrong boyfriend. The woman forced into marrying an older man in a polygamous relationship as part of some weird Christian cult. The African woman who had her clitoris chopped off. Stereotypes often become stereotypes because they are seeded in truth, and these are only some of the most prevalent.
As a smug, pseudo-liberal westerner, a stereotype of my very own, I obviously feel entitled to say that each of these events are wrong. Categorically. I appreciate that this is a problematic position to take. Who am I to impose a universal set of ethics on the world? How is my sheltered opinion any more true than anybody else’s? I don’t know. I cant answer that. It’s not, probably, when you look at it that way. But I’m keeping it anyway, so bully to you. If the architects of these inhuman and, frankly, mad situations are allowed radical and inflexible beliefs, then I’m having one as well. There’s some equality for you. And I know who would win in a heated debate down the pub on a Friday night. Me, that’s who. Yep, the crusading spirit lives on in this 9 by 11 foot plot of green and pleasant land. We are right, and they are wrong.
And then, the other day, a 21 year old friend of mine (white, British, irreligious, middle class parents etc etc) told me proudly that she has a full Brazilian every month. Gosh, I said, isn’t that expensive and time consuming? I thought they only did that on telly and then discussed it at length in lefty publications? Not at all, she corrected me (told you I was sheltered). And then I wondered, aloud, isn’t this logistically problematic? Don’t you have to wait until it grows back long enough to get it all whipped off again, thus leaving you with only a brief (haw haw) window of baldness to play with, as it were, followed by weeks of light to mid to full hairiness? And if that is the case, why bother to do it at all, when roughly three quarters of the time you’re having sex with the hair still attached anyway? Oh no, she corrected me again. She would never dream of having sex except immediately after being waxed. None of the fellows in her peer group would have sex with a hairy girl, and all her female friends felt the same (an observation confirmed by a breathtakingly unscientific poll).
Forgive me one further smug pseudo-liberal self important generalisation: this is wrong. Who the hell taught these chaps not only that bald vaginas were normal, but that hairy ones were disgusting? I’m not sure we can point the finger squarely at pornography, seeing as I’ve seen plenty of au naturel adult cinema (and not just the retro stuff) and besides most of the free stuff you get whilst browsing the interweb when you think no one but google and facebook are watching is ‘amateur’ and thus hardly ever professionally groomed. And then my boyfriend said “show me a 21 year old male person, who has been offered, and accepted, sex, who at the point of pants-off says ‘goodness, that’s a bit hairy, I’d rather not’ and I’ll give you fifty quid”. This hypothesis was followed swiftly by another, possibly even more unscientific investigation, involving the application of a few pints of ‘truth serum’ to the relevant population, proving my boyfriend right. “The problem” he stated, diplomatically, “is girls”.
My friend was forcing upon herself a catalogue of restrictions regarding her sexuality. Was she thin enough, was she wearing enough makeup, matching underwear, waxed her bush? And this made me wonder, what is the difference behind the psychology of an ‘alien’ culture in which a women’s sexuality is persecuted openly, even violently, and the psychology of our own? The similarities were becoming all too clear: shame, a vagina monologue- esque revulsion of the human body, and fear. The fear of not doing it enough, of not doing it at all, or of doing it even once. The fear of not doing it right, or with the right person, of talking about it too much, or too little. The fear of not being ‘normal’, or ‘acceptable’. The fear of not being attractive. Everywhere I look, the rhetoric regarding the most universally practised human activity apart from consumption is dripping with fear. The fear of sex. This doesn’t seem very liberated to me, but I would like to propose the following solution: that we stop teaching women to be afraid of sex, and I would ideally like to go about this like Lara Croft, vigilante style, taking down the baddies one by one.
First in my sites are the easy ones: the fundamentalists. Driven by some fictitious religious or cultural code, invented by those with the power (and the money) in order to repress the ones who don’t, they condemn women to a lower order: second class; inhuman; chattel. At the risk of sounding a bit Team America, can’t we just get rid of them? I’m all for religion, mostly. They all mean well. They all promote charity, and love, and give people who need it solace and hope. This is marvellous. But when this is misconstrued, resulting in the denial of human rights, or any rights for that matter, to fifty per cent of the population, cant that nice Mr. Obama and Mr Putin join their not inconsiderable resources and just sort of stop them? I’m not suggesting we send in the army or anything. I’m suggesting we send in the Spice Girls. It’ll be expensive enough to warrant the involvement of some global superpowers (I heard they pull in about a million quid a gig), but I reckon if we install them in every part of the planet where such fundamentalism exists, from Texas to Tehran, and keep them performing every night, to everyone, until they get the message, we’d have the entire international community practising girl power like it was, ahem, going out of fashion.
Next, two birds with one stone the ‘slightly-less-fundamentalists’, and sex ed. I read an article the other day in which a group of Christianity based sex ed workers were explaining their project to advertise ‘abstinence’ to school children. This is fine. Each to their own. Making children aware of the choices they are entitled to make is all to the good. And then they said “obviously we only condone sex between a married couple, and we only condone marriage between heterosexuals”. Hmmm. This is obviously questionable, but part of another (although not wholly unrelated) debate. And then they said “statistically, married couples have the best sex”. Hmmm. And then they said “And obviously we teach boys and girls separately, because boys have to learn to respect a girl’s decision, and girl’s have to learn that they should only give up their virginity to a boy who has earned their trust”.
Hmmm. On the face of it, this seems lovely. Hugs and puppies. But the phrase ‘give up their virginity’ is more than a little bit subversive. Obviously, there’s the problem that they only apply this principle to the girls. But then there’s a more general problem. To solve this, I would like to let these ‘educational groups’ into a little secret (and fundamentalists take note, although I suspect the subtleties of this argument might be lost on you. That’s why you’ve got the Spice Girls). Whisper it… There’s no such thing as virginity. Ok, now say it a bit louder. There is only the period in your life before you have sex, and the period in your life after you have sex. This is equivocal to the period of your life before you have tried marmite, and the period of your life after. Some will never experience ‘the period in your life after’. For some, the transition will be a mere blip. For some, it will be life changing, illuminating, enlightening. For some, it will be very unpleasant, and all shades of grey in between. That is all. Virginity is not a thing. It is not a gift. It is not precious. It is not the be all and end all. It is a period of time. It is neither bad nor good if you are still having it, and it is neither bad nor good if you don’t. What is important is that it lasts as long as an individual chooses, and that the individual is made aware of the possible consequences when they decide to have a bash.
We teach our children to look left and right and left again and to walk carefully, unless they want to be killed by traffic, when we decide they are old enough to cross the road by themselves. Thus, we should teach them to consider their emotional circumstances and use contraception, unless they want to have a baby or an STI, when they are old enough to have sex. I’m told, legally, this is 16. So, to prepare them in advance, let’s have this ‘use contraception, unless you want a baby or an STI, and consider your emotions’ chat when they’re, say, 13 or 14, then leave it up to them. They’re old enough to have developed a proper understanding of the emotional bit- jolly powerful chemicals, hormones- but hopefully young enough not to have had a go already. We’ve already demolished religious and cultural lunacy (thank you Spice Girls), so we can teach all the kids exactly the same stuff, and it’s go for contraception, then leave it up to them. That’s sex ed sorted out (you’ll get my bill, Cameron). And to the slightly less fundamentalists, this: religion has a place, but it should stick to what it’s good at, and, I’m sorry religion, but you’re not very good at sex.
Who’s next then? Fascists. Eugenicists. Racists. Aesthetes. Anybody who judges anybody on the way that they look, or on their beliefs (apart from me, obviously, see above, re. crusades). Now that we’ve gotten rid of fundamentalism, no one can force anyone to do anything, which gets rid of all kind of modern ethical conundrums. Want to wear a burkha? Knock yourself out. Want to have dessert with that? Go wild. Shaved your head lately? Awesome. Fancy someone who’s the same gender as you, or believe in God, or Marxism, or unicorns, or don’t eat meat or dairy? Want to shave all you pubic hair off, or not? Smashing, let me know how that goes. Let’s have a couple of rules though, shall we? 1. Try not to deliberately hurt, physically or psychologically, another person, and apologise if you do. 2. Try not to be offended by another person’s beliefs or opinion, and don’t overreact if you are.
Now that everyone is getting along happy as larry, lets refocus on sex. An individual may be entitled to dress, look, behave and think how they like, but that doesn’t mean that everyone will find them attractive or want to have sex with them. This shouldn’t be confused with the old ‘beauty is only skin deep’ argument, because once we’ve gotten past skin deep people aren’t necessarily going to find your opinions attractive either, nor you them. I also imagine certain subconscious evolutionary triggers will hold true for some people, for the time being at least: are they healthy, intelligent, childbearing, the king? That having been said, we can’t dictate other people’s own health (it’s not in the rules, see, they only prevent us deliberately damaging other people’s health, not our own). The point I’m trying to make is this. No matter what you look like, or how you think, if you fancy someone and they fancy you, and you want to have sex with each other, and you’ve been briefed as to the known consequences and methods of avoidance, chocks away.
No right or wrong, you see. If there are no punishments (so long, fundamentalism), no grandiosity (so long, slightly less fundamentalism), no ignorance, (hello, universal sex ed), and no right or wrong (so long discrimination and prescriptive, cookie cutter views on ‘attractiveness’), then, hopefully, there should be no fear. I can’t promise how it’ll go though. That’s part of the fun.
