arobotstolemyuterus:

thepeacockangel:

I’m not talking about the focus on rape, that’s an act of violence.

I’m talking about how the whole “how should a feminist fuck?  who should a feminist fuck? Is porn feminist? Can you be sexually submissive and a feminist?  Is this underwear feminist? for what reasons can a feminist acceptably fuck? What sex positions are feminist?” is making feminism a matter of individual sexual morality, and of regulating the sexual practices of women.  By making feminist (aka: moral) sexual practice a central concern for individuals, it distracts from collective organizing, and revolutionary practice.  Like bourgeois concern over proper sexual practice and regulating the sexualities of working class women and sex workers is just transmuted into the language of bourgeois feminism.  Like whether you’re condemning it or proclaiming loudly that “This porn is feminist” or that “strippers are feminist” you’re still putting yourself in a position of determining sexual morality and giving the discourse of sexual morality central importance.

It’s similar to locating moral practice in the dietary or body regulation habits of individuals.  It’s a bourgeois distraction from the project of actual gender liberation.

I largely agree. I mean, I think a lot of feminism that gets mainstream attention is so focused on individual choices (to shave or not to shave? Work outside the home or take on the domestic work? etc.) that it ignores collective action or systemic factors. 

That said, I’m not sure we should completely get rid of all feminist conversations about sex. Like, I’m really skeptical of feminism that asks nothing of men and I’ve encountered too many men with misogynistic attitudes towards sex over the years. So, like, I agree with every that you’ve said, but I do think we should address misogynistic attitudes toward sex. It’s not entirely incompatible with anything you’ve said, though, but I’m not sure how it fits in exactly.

I mean yeah, I think we do need to address that, but like making it about women’s choices or behavior on an individual level is weird.  Like “Is what she does sexually undermining feminism” is like a way to divide women into “fucks right” and “fucks wrong” which is just like “madonna” and “whore” or “healthy” and “frigid”.  I don’t think we should never talk about sex, but it seems like sexuality is the primary area we look at when determining if a woman or piece of media is feminist.  Like the whole discussion of like every female popstar ever (which like I don’t think is super useful anyway, because media is more symptom than cause) is “Is she sexually empowered or sexually objectified?” and like really why is that the question we ask?  Why are we asking that?  Why are we assuming that like women are in charge of how a society like ours receives any image of them sexual or not?  Like isn’t the problem how people respond to those images more than which ones are created? Why aren’t we asking “why aren’t people treating women regardless of attire or sexual behavior as fully human?” because like James Bond can be a horrible human being, run around in a speedo and have sex with everything that moves and he’s a power fantasy not a sex object and that’s partially because of how society perceives him, not because of what his behavior actually is.  And so like liberate women, stop objectification, I think.

Like I think we need to organize together to demand shit from men, because like an individual woman asking an individual man to quit being such a dickhead involves a massive power differential and is ineffectual.

Like if we have mass organizations that are ours, and don’t include them in any positions of power we can do things like making sure everyone knows when a dude is a street harasser, or says shitty things about women or has misogynist entitled sexual attitudes or whatever and we can collectively come down on the fucker.

I guess I feel like:

A: misogynist attitudes towards sex are indicative of misogynist attitudes in general, like it’s hard to think women are sex objects if you actually think women are people in general, like at best they’re conditionally people, and like it’s been proven that men who exhibit high levels of hostile misogyny see scantily clad women as objects but it’s like they already exhibit high levels of hostile misogyny, a dude’s not going to be mr. actually a good feminist and then only bring out the misogyny in the sack.  If we fight misogynist attitudes in society

overall, we’re probably helping to deal with misogynist attitudes towards sex

B: I guess I don’t feel like feminism can really ask anything of men, because like that’ll only get the ones who are already listening and they’ll still think of it as doing us a favor rather than doing the most basic “don’t be a piece of shit” stuff.  We have to demand change from a place of strength.  We need to have consistent mass organization with a structure and strength that allows us to demand change from men and to preserve past gains (like we’re losing reproductive rights left and right, and most feminists live in states where we don’t have to worry too much about that, or in liberal bastions and have resources to travel to get reproductive care and our lack of mass organization has allowed misogynist shitheads to trample on rights we won decades ago).  Asking doesn’t get systemic change, concerted collective effort and organized resistance do, you know what I mean?