Sex Positive

The Feminist Times has an excellent series on sex work, covering a diverse range of issues. (Sadly, it is only found by searching for the hashtag #SexIndustryWeek, as if finding it on Twitter was more important than a person being able to find all the discussion on the site.) Because it is a diverse series, there are plenty of articles I do not agree with; but that’s what makes it a good discussion, so, please, do take the time to read them. However, there’s one article in particular that raised my hackles and prompts me to write today ~ primarily because it has gone without comment. Such absence of comment might make people think it is “right”. And it is not.

The article is #SexIndustryWeek: Dworkin Was Right About Porn, by VJD Smith of Glosswatch. In it, Smith uses the words of Andrea Dworkin to align all porn as patriarchal misogyny abusing and raping female victims:

This is the full text of the interview with feminist genderqueer sex worker @MxLaudanum, which was quoted in this article on the rescue industry I wrote for Cliterati (published 1/02/14). The interview itself makes a very powerful post in its own right. Written in just a couple of hours, it’s a stunning critique of contemporary feminism and how all of us on this planet tend to view the world in black and white.

I deeply respect Gloria Steinem. But I am terribly disappointed by remarks she's made regarding sex work during her recent tour of India. This publicity tour promotes her latest book, The Essential...

Has sex-positive feminism, despite its victories, forgotten that sex work is actually work, and often quite brutal?

...Despite the acceptance of “sluts,” the “prostitute” remains a deeply embedded symbolic marker between decency and disrespect. The “ethical slut” engages in sex of her or his own “free” will, while the “dirty whore” insists on getting paid for sex. Sex-positive feminists and other “sluts” believe there is nothing morally wrong with consensual sex between two (or more) people in private, or for adults, in a semi-public setting such as a sex club, dungeon or swingers’ retreat. But money changes everything.

I really wish the conservatives out there, especially those who are anti-feminist, would get their facts straight; to-whit, feminists are not celebrating “infamous college campus hook-up culture” ~ and especially not at the price of bad or even mediocre sex. Most feminists are, however, sex positive.

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 existence of courtesans is a glaring refutation of neofeminist dogma about objectification, the eternal victimhood of whores, etc; the fact that the most celebrated, successful and highly-paid harlots of all time were often those who were educated and could match or surpass men in intellectual pursuits throws a huge spanner into the catechism that prostitution is a manifestation of male dominance over women, that our clients hate us, and so on.  Whenever possible, neofeminist historians deny that courtesans were prostitutes, pretend that accomplished women were not really courtesans, or describe them with circumlocutions like, “she chose to cohabit with several men who supported her financially.”  And when all else fails, they simply ignore them.  Fortunately neither male historians nor female ones with less parochial views feel the need to dissemble about such women, and among them Tullia d’Aragona is rightfully viewed as worthy of respect and study.

If only the ratings agency looked as closely at gender bias as it does at consensual sex, it might do some good

You mentioned having a feminist girlfriend which made porn a no-no. Most of us know the history of feminism and pornography — which most people prefer to describe in terms of “feminists say porn bad”. There were actually various distinctions (between porn and erotica, and between feminist thinkers as well), but in your case, you had a feminist girlfriend who actually said porn was a no-no?

I teach an undergraduate seminar on “Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture” with a unit on the romance genre. This year, for the first time ever, the class consists entirely of women. Also new this year is an exercise we invented of an online, collaborative romance narrative. One question that came up in our writing experiment was how, when, and why to include sex scenes. We talked a lot about depictions of sexuality in romance fiction, as well as in the sex-saturated corridors of popular culture. How are the love scenes in romance different from those in pornography or erotica?

...I’m interested in the notion that a feminist is a woman who writes—a woman who dares explore ideas and fantasies that run contrary to patriarchal scripts for feminine docility, submissiveness, and sexual passivity. These scripts are still alive in the impossible contradictions and double standards my students report: be sexy but also pure, demands the culture. If guys sleep around it’s a sign of mastery and control, but if you do it you’re a slut.

Let it be this one. This Is My Body makes me weep — with joy, sorrow, hope, and fear. If you like, Like.