Dare To Be A Feminist

A lack of interest in romantic relationships is setting off a demographic time-bomb that threatens all of us.

In the United States, women’s bodies are constantly sexualized and objectified. Ironically, however, the women in control of those bodies are expected to refrain from actually using them to express any kind of sexuality. That’s largely because “purity culture” — essentially, the assumption that women need to remain chaste, and present an image of modesty to the outside world — is deeply ingrained in American society. The worldview is instilled in many American kids beginning at a young age through abstinence-only education, and constantly reinforced as women move through the adult world, too.

This approach to female sexuality has far-reaching consequences. Indeed, even though proponents of abstinence until marriage claim it’s a directive that applies equally to both genders, purity culture has an outsized impact on women. Here are five examples of that unfair dynamic

The abortion debate is not about unborn babies. I bet you knew that, didn’t you? If it were, there would be a similar outcry over every issue involving the lives of babies. Such as lack of healthcare, babies born addicted to drugs, babies killed after being left in hot vehicles, etc. Every year here in Texas someone leaves a kid in a carseat in 100 degree weather and the kid bakes. No public outcry. No organized protest. In fact, the person responsible usually escapes criminal prosecution.

But do you really know what it is about? The pro-life attempt to criminalize abortion is not about saving the lives of unborn babies. If it were about that, you’d see pro-lifers working toward preventing unwanted pregnancies and better adoption rates of unwanted children. In Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood, Kristin Luker explains the psychology behind this centuries-old debate.

People generally don’t put a lot of time and effort into an issue unless it directly affects them. So..how are pro-lifers directly affected by the abortions of others?

The abortion debate is about women and their role in society.

Seeing that this article, Mediocre Sex – The Price Women Pay For Freedom? by Jennifer Kabbany, was published at right-wing college site The Collage Fix, I should have resisted and not given it a cl...

The men’s petition in the November issue of the magazine Causeur was signed by figures including the novelist and editor Frederic Beigbeder, several journalists and columnists, comedians, actors and the lawyer Richard Malka, who has defended clients including the former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The petition stated “some of us have gone, go, or will go to prostitutes – and we are not even ashamed”.

They added “everyone should be free to sell their charms, and even to love doing it.”

But feminists and the government expressed outrage at what they saw as the hijacking of the feminist writer de Beauvoir’s 1971 abortion manifesto in which 343 famous women, including Catherine Deneuve and Jeanne Moreau, admitted having had an abortion, something which left them liable for arrest. That petition, which the media later dubbed the manifesto of the “343 salopes” (s**ts or b**ches) helped lead to the legalisation of abortion in France.

As this type of porn gains visibility, it reflects a greater demand for explicit sexual representations among women, where sex isn't always a "ribbon-tied box of happiness and joy," say editors in this excerpt from "The Feminist Porn Book."

...With the emergence of new technologies that allow more people than ever to both create and consume pornography, the moral panic-driven fears of porn are ratcheted up once again. Society's dread of women who own their desire, and use it in ways that confound expectations of proper female sexuality, persists. As Gayle Rubin shows, "Modern Western societies appraise sex acts according to a hierarchical system of sexual value." Rubin maps this system as one where "the charmed circle" is perpetually threatened by the "outer limits," or those who fall out of the bounds of the acceptable.

On the bottom of this hierarchy are sexual acts and identities outside heterosexuality, marriage, monogamy and reproduction. She argues that this hierarchy exists so as to justify the privileging of normative and constricted sexualities and the denigration and punishment of the "sexual rabble."

One should also note that this is not simply a matter of “feminism having won, so just let it all go away.” For the findings also reveal that “total family income is higher when the mother, not the father, is the primary breadwinner.” Thanks, pink collar ghetto, unequal pay, and continuing notions of gender inequality in the workplace. Not to mention all the BS traditional notions of motherhood.

Never mind the facts, however; let’s just get to the million dollar subtext question Liza Donnelly put forth regarding the 37% — the married mothers who have a higher income than their husbands: Can Husbands Handle Being Outearned By Their Wives?

...If you want to dismiss all this as the ramblings of irrelevant talking asshats on Fox (for which I will gently remind you that their rhetoric is often too dangerous to be dismissed), you’ll need to also know about this other study, called In Sickness and In Wealth...

By Jess Zimmerman, grist.org

But back off, ladies: For once in our lives, this birth control’s just for dudes.

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High priestesses embodied the goddess, and had ritualistic sex with the ruler of the country to bless him as the caretaker of the people. ...

Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance - Defining Sexual Freedom as a Fundamental Human Right...