I get so frustrated with the policing of the sex any woman chooses to have, especially by other women. If you diminish my "YES," you diminish my "NO." The arguments that the sex I choose to have diminishes or harms other women is no different than the argument that gay marriage diminishes straight marriage. I have your back for sexual choices, both your "NO" & your "YES." If you don't have mine, fine. But at least have the decency to not attack my choices with other consenting adults. If my right to consent, to say "YES" is somehow questionable or less than or open to be undermined than you are harming me by risking my "NO." It makes you a collaborator with the "She was asking for it." crowd. If my "YES" is not an absolute unquestioned right, then what does that mean for my "NO?" Until my absolute autonomy is recognize and accepted as a given, without diminishing my "YES" with the it's not really a choice, but a reflection of patriarchy analysis, I am not safe. Saying "YES!" to the sex I choose to have is an inherent human right, not a privilege only for males in a patriarchy. I thoroughly resent my autonomy being questioned by anyone.
You perfectly captured my feelings. As somebody who was was sexually abused, my "yes" to the sex I chose is one of my most valued and sacred things. I hold it in the same regard as being able to firmly say "no" to the sex I don't choose. I would almost say it's more important, because it took me so long to be able to step into my power as a sexual being, to be able to verbalize when I do want sex.
As a recent college grad who’s spent a long time trying to untangle why the hookup culture i so willingly participated in never felt right, you articulated something I’ve been looking for.
There is no "yes" without an equally accepted "no". Figuring out how to get THAT happy state of affairs is legit difficult. That's probably why writers like Perry fall back on tried and tested tools like leveraging traditional marriage to their benefi. Which, I believe, did not get the whole consent thing right until very recently. And was only available for some. It's any woman's right to be thoroughly disgusted, disappointed and worried about the current un-charming porn landscape. I am. It seems ... not super healthy for most people, and it certainly doesn't seem FUN. It's genuinely not what I want for my 10-year old son to clap eyes on very soon. But how to create something better, much harder and I don't think me churning butter in a linen apron will do it.
This seems like a pretty bad faith reading of Louise Perry's position on the possibilities of good sex for women. She doesn't argue that it's fundamentally degraded, but that for the vast majority of women, sex without love is not really pleasurable. Her "solution" to its fundamentally unequal costs is to only have sex with a man who loves you, does not want to hurt you, is committed to you, and would gladly support you in raising any child that could theoretically result from it. You can disagree with any aspect of that position but at least convey it accurately.
That is a pretty silly position because how do you arrive at it? Don’t have sex until you’re getting married? It’s so unrealistic. Casual sex is usually lame, but often sex has to happen before actual love.
>But of course women can't cruise—not with anything like the casualness and gamely curiosity that men do. Women have to worry about rape.
But why? The woman here is a lesbian. As far as I know theres less rape among lesbians than gays, so why dont they have a "no boyz allowd" version of this same thing?
Cruising means seeking sex from strangers in a public but discreet location. The fact that a woman may be seeking sex with other women does not make such places safe since a rapist is not concerned with the sexual orientation of his victim.
Thanks for a thoughtful post. I don’t think sex positivity is fake. I do think most women don’t know how to have enjoyable sex. My book is “Clitapalooza: Her flower blooms power.” Kirkus called it a cheeky exploration of sex and feminism.
I lived through the 70s. Compared to now in this regard, it was a utopia. At this point, I think all people should be able to say “Yes” or “No” and have it heard and respected, without judgment. The result of the reversal of Roe vs Wade and likely end of most contraception isn’t going to be more marriage or sex within marriage, however.,it’s going to be less of both. Why choose an act that has a much higher probability of causing your death? Why choose to be in intimate relationship with men who are so angry their undeserved power, control and their view of you as a possession are crumbling? We’re going to go the South Korea route: a birth rate below 1.0 and a decline in marriage. Peter Thiel is a homosexual who has zero to say about heterosexual sex. He cares about the topic only because of white supremacy. He is a very sick man and I don’t mean because of his homosexuality. He’s a rabid white suprematist who thinks of women as objects to make white babies. He follows Yarvis who once talked about killing excess people for biofuel for transportation buses. In my opinion, sex and marriage are simply becoming unappealing to an increasing number of women.
hi! I'm a producer for a daily newsmagazine on Phoenix's NPR station. (theshow.kjzz.org) I'm sorry to do this in a substack comment, but I don't think my other attempts at reaching you have worked. We would really like to have you on to talk about your piece in ELLE about VR sexual assault. If you're interested, shoot me an email: asinger@rioradio.org
"It’s possible that no woman has ever had real access to sexual utopia."
No one has ever had access to utopia of any kind. And science fiction is fantasy, not observation.
The politics of narcissism is the politics of immaturity in adulthood. But now we have the childishness of "good girls and boys" as opposed to "bad". The fetishized nostalgia is unchanged. Read a bit more about the 70s. Gay male politics was almost never leftist, and mostly openly reactionary. Sex never escaped shame.
"The lowest of the low" "The queer art of failure" etc etc.
Fascist kitsch is no more overt now than it was then, but it's spread. And liberals have redefined self-hatred. Plastic surgery is now a new world of optimism and progress, unless it's plastic surgery for women who want breast implants and not mastectomies. Fantasies of males and maleness have priority.
Perry is a reactionary, writing on a website founded by a racist European nationalist homosexual. I once told a fascist gay Catholic he wanted people to hate themselves as much as he did. He said yes. The logic is obvious.
In a puritan country sex positivity became the mirror image of shame: the desperate indulgence in the forbidden. What other countries are having this sort of crisis? I'm talking specifically about sex, not economics and class. The UK is becoming Americanized.
Most of the sex that goes on is men raping the bodies of women. Maybe that makes me sex negative but I want to decide the sex I want to have - and the key being it’s sex that I want to have. Not sex that is men accessing my body. Catherine Mackinnons rape redefined is mandatory reading for all women.
I get so frustrated with the policing of the sex any woman chooses to have, especially by other women. If you diminish my "YES," you diminish my "NO." The arguments that the sex I choose to have diminishes or harms other women is no different than the argument that gay marriage diminishes straight marriage. I have your back for sexual choices, both your "NO" & your "YES." If you don't have mine, fine. But at least have the decency to not attack my choices with other consenting adults. If my right to consent, to say "YES" is somehow questionable or less than or open to be undermined than you are harming me by risking my "NO." It makes you a collaborator with the "She was asking for it." crowd. If my "YES" is not an absolute unquestioned right, then what does that mean for my "NO?" Until my absolute autonomy is recognize and accepted as a given, without diminishing my "YES" with the it's not really a choice, but a reflection of patriarchy analysis, I am not safe. Saying "YES!" to the sex I choose to have is an inherent human right, not a privilege only for males in a patriarchy. I thoroughly resent my autonomy being questioned by anyone.
You perfectly captured my feelings. As somebody who was was sexually abused, my "yes" to the sex I chose is one of my most valued and sacred things. I hold it in the same regard as being able to firmly say "no" to the sex I don't choose. I would almost say it's more important, because it took me so long to be able to step into my power as a sexual being, to be able to verbalize when I do want sex.
As a recent college grad who’s spent a long time trying to untangle why the hookup culture i so willingly participated in never felt right, you articulated something I’ve been looking for.
There is no "yes" without an equally accepted "no". Figuring out how to get THAT happy state of affairs is legit difficult. That's probably why writers like Perry fall back on tried and tested tools like leveraging traditional marriage to their benefi. Which, I believe, did not get the whole consent thing right until very recently. And was only available for some. It's any woman's right to be thoroughly disgusted, disappointed and worried about the current un-charming porn landscape. I am. It seems ... not super healthy for most people, and it certainly doesn't seem FUN. It's genuinely not what I want for my 10-year old son to clap eyes on very soon. But how to create something better, much harder and I don't think me churning butter in a linen apron will do it.
This seems like a pretty bad faith reading of Louise Perry's position on the possibilities of good sex for women. She doesn't argue that it's fundamentally degraded, but that for the vast majority of women, sex without love is not really pleasurable. Her "solution" to its fundamentally unequal costs is to only have sex with a man who loves you, does not want to hurt you, is committed to you, and would gladly support you in raising any child that could theoretically result from it. You can disagree with any aspect of that position but at least convey it accurately.
That is a pretty silly position because how do you arrive at it? Don’t have sex until you’re getting married? It’s so unrealistic. Casual sex is usually lame, but often sex has to happen before actual love.
Brilliant. Thanks.
>But of course women can't cruise—not with anything like the casualness and gamely curiosity that men do. Women have to worry about rape.
But why? The woman here is a lesbian. As far as I know theres less rape among lesbians than gays, so why dont they have a "no boyz allowd" version of this same thing?
Cruising means seeking sex from strangers in a public but discreet location. The fact that a woman may be seeking sex with other women does not make such places safe since a rapist is not concerned with the sexual orientation of his victim.
Thanks for a thoughtful post. I don’t think sex positivity is fake. I do think most women don’t know how to have enjoyable sex. My book is “Clitapalooza: Her flower blooms power.” Kirkus called it a cheeky exploration of sex and feminism.
I lived through the 70s. Compared to now in this regard, it was a utopia. At this point, I think all people should be able to say “Yes” or “No” and have it heard and respected, without judgment. The result of the reversal of Roe vs Wade and likely end of most contraception isn’t going to be more marriage or sex within marriage, however.,it’s going to be less of both. Why choose an act that has a much higher probability of causing your death? Why choose to be in intimate relationship with men who are so angry their undeserved power, control and their view of you as a possession are crumbling? We’re going to go the South Korea route: a birth rate below 1.0 and a decline in marriage. Peter Thiel is a homosexual who has zero to say about heterosexual sex. He cares about the topic only because of white supremacy. He is a very sick man and I don’t mean because of his homosexuality. He’s a rabid white suprematist who thinks of women as objects to make white babies. He follows Yarvis who once talked about killing excess people for biofuel for transportation buses. In my opinion, sex and marriage are simply becoming unappealing to an increasing number of women.
hi! I'm a producer for a daily newsmagazine on Phoenix's NPR station. (theshow.kjzz.org) I'm sorry to do this in a substack comment, but I don't think my other attempts at reaching you have worked. We would really like to have you on to talk about your piece in ELLE about VR sexual assault. If you're interested, shoot me an email: asinger@rioradio.org
"It’s possible that no woman has ever had real access to sexual utopia."
No one has ever had access to utopia of any kind. And science fiction is fantasy, not observation.
The politics of narcissism is the politics of immaturity in adulthood. But now we have the childishness of "good girls and boys" as opposed to "bad". The fetishized nostalgia is unchanged. Read a bit more about the 70s. Gay male politics was almost never leftist, and mostly openly reactionary. Sex never escaped shame.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25486357?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
https://www.bookforum.com/interviews/bookforum-talks-with-dale-peck-14542
"The lowest of the low" "The queer art of failure" etc etc.
Fascist kitsch is no more overt now than it was then, but it's spread. And liberals have redefined self-hatred. Plastic surgery is now a new world of optimism and progress, unless it's plastic surgery for women who want breast implants and not mastectomies. Fantasies of males and maleness have priority.
Perry is a reactionary, writing on a website founded by a racist European nationalist homosexual. I once told a fascist gay Catholic he wanted people to hate themselves as much as he did. He said yes. The logic is obvious.
In a puritan country sex positivity became the mirror image of shame: the desperate indulgence in the forbidden. What other countries are having this sort of crisis? I'm talking specifically about sex, not economics and class. The UK is becoming Americanized.
An excellent essay, thank you.
Most of the sex that goes on is men raping the bodies of women. Maybe that makes me sex negative but I want to decide the sex I want to have - and the key being it’s sex that I want to have. Not sex that is men accessing my body. Catherine Mackinnons rape redefined is mandatory reading for all women.