My friends are unhappy. My friends have casual sex. Therefore, casual sex makes women miserable. Science!! supports my opinions. Feminists convinced women they should have sex “like men.” Studies have shown women aren’t designed to have sex “like men.” Women are designed for relationships. Men are designed for sex. Women must withhold sex to get relationships. Women who put out too easily will never get the man. Therefore, feminists have condemned women to a miserable life of whoredom. The end.
I know I shouldn’t rise to the bait with opinion pieces like Maura Kelly’s recent “Comment is Free” column at The Guardian, titled somewhat obtusely “Deferred gratification makes sexual politics sense.” Her rhetoric is (I suspect) intentionally inflammatory, and the stereotypes she draws on about gender, sex and sexuality have no grounds in the actual data (despite her claims to the contrary). I know I should just let it slide on by as the junk science and bigoted commentary it is.
Vintage Slut
But the thing is, articles like Ms. Kelly’s just make me feel SO STABBY! And sad. And diminished, somehow, as a human being, for the limited, cynical view of human nature they perpetuates.
For example, in Kelly’s piece one can find the following unexamined and unsupported-by-the-evidence beliefs:
- The idea, based on personal anecdotes about the author’s friends, that all women regret casual sex. All of them. No matter the context or person(s) involved. Casual sex per se is antithetical to womanhood.
- The idea that casual sex and long-term relationships are mutually exclusive categories. You’re either a slut or a wife. You hooked up with someone and ended up dating them and then got married (and are still together five years, ten years later)? Not possible. You experimented with monogamy but discovered polyamory was for you? Your experience is clearly invalid.
- The idea that casual sex = women “acting like men.” Because apparently all men are into casual sex and only casual sex.
- The idea that “casual” sex (which she doesn’t define) is by definition unfulfilling, loveless sex,
- Sex which (have we mentioned?) makes women unhappy and regretful. I guess men just have thicker skins or something.
- The idea that OMG!FEMINISM is responsible for leading women to believe they should “act like men” and have all this unfulfilling sex in the name of liberation. Fie on you, false prophets!
- The (shite, baseless, discredited-by-the-research) idea that women and men are innately different in what they desire in relationships and what they desire sexually, when in fact most research points toward men and women having more intra-group diversity than inter-group diversity (translation: women as a group vary widely from one another, and men do as well … far more so than the two groups differ from one another as groups).
- Stemming from this idea of innate difference, the assumption that “women” and “men” constitute binary, oppositional sex and gender categories, erasing queer and trans* spectrum folks entirely from the narrative of human sexuality and human relationships. (Maybe my response to evo-psych bullshit from now on should just be a sign reading: ”I have a girlfriend. Your argument is invalid.”)
- The idea that OMG!FEMINISM is responsible for the unhappiness of “women these days” (all of it! every single bit!) who apparently answered the clarion call of the zipless fuck and are now regretting the loss of their market value. Because the only thing women have to offer men to catch and keep them is TEH SEX and the withholding of TEH SEX.
This final argument is, in the end, what really grinds my gears: the fact that underlying all of this bullshit is a truly impoverished, neoconservative, free-market libertarianism view of human relationships in which women’s value is reduced to their bodies and men are reduced to their libidos, and men are the market and women are the product.
Talk about a way to approach relationships that’s got “doomed from the start” written all over it. Like: fucking hell woman! If that’s all you want from your relationships? Some sort of exchange of goods and services rather than an actual caring and friendship, sexual pleasure and reciprocity? Empathy and learning and … I don’t know, joy? Then … I guess?
…go to it?
But … really? That is what you want to pressure your peers into seeking? That is how you want to encourage them to understand the world? That is the best you think life has to offer them?
To me that is the opposite of feminism, the opposite of love, and the opposite of the most positive, fulfilling forms of sexual expression we have available to us. It’s a complete and utter waste of the myriad and glorious interpersonal resources we have available through which to share our sexual selves with our partners, in whatever style we and our lovers enthusiastically, consensually, choose.
Including (gasp!) casual sex, which some people (omg!) actually find fulfilling as one aspect of their sexual lives.
Thanks to Hanna for the link; she knew it would piss me off and that I’d find some words to explain why. This post appeared in a slightly shorter, less polished form last week on my Tumblr blog, the feminist librarian reads.
Dang, Anna, I thought that was a joke. It should certainly be treated as such. I especially like the implication that women are utterly without agency of our own, such that “feminism,” whatever that is, can override our own wills and desires. Maybe that’s true in Kellyworld, but not in the real world.
But hey, since you’re a lesbian, you’re not vulnerable to The Evil Powers of Feminism, you lucky thing.
Wait a minute, is this the same Maura Kelly that’s grossed out by the site of fat people walking across a room, let along KISSING (blech!)?? Yeah. What a shock she’s written some piece of crap full of unexamined assumptions, unsupported “facts”, and my-experience-is-everyone’s-experience-duh nonsense. Thinking about shit critically is HARD, y’all! I guess she learned that pissing people off by writing shite generates page views.
Wait a minute, is this the same Maura Kelly that’s grossed out by the sight of fat people walking across a room, let along KISSING (blech!)?? Yeah. What a shock she’s written some piece of crap full of unexamined assumptions, unsupported “facts”, and my-experience-is-everyone’s-experience-duh nonsense. Thinking about shit critically is HARD, y’all! I guess she learned that pissing people off by writing shite generates page views.
I remember this train of thought when it was called The Rules. Almost makes me wish the Patriarchal Gender Norms Committee would come up with a new line of argument — it would still be eye-stabbingly wrong, but at least it would be… fresh?
@krismcn
Yep, I didn’t realize that until after I’d written the whole rant, but she totally is. This: “Thinking about shit critically is HARD, y’all!” made me laugh
. I know! There are days when I’m not sure my ladybrains can take it!
@mischiefmanager
Yeah, not sure where us lesbians fit into the mating-and-dating picture here. I have this nasty feeling we fit in on the sad-sack-single-lady end of the spectrum. We’ve gone off the EXTREME deep end when it comes to eschewing hetero-romance for ladybits. I doubt in this vision of sexual economy gals putting out for other gals registers as valid sexual exchange!
Plus, it further props up that pesky old Madonna/Whore complex!
Now, personally, I’m not a casual sex person. I know this about myself, and that is okay. And if other women are casual sex people, I don’t judge them. But I prefer to think of this fact about me as just another part of my unique personality and not indicative of my womanhood or lack-thereof.
BTW, my SO is NOT a casual sex man. I guess that makes him a freak? No, wait, men get to be varied and complex human beings, whereas we can just be Madonnas or Whores.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vyckie D. Garrison and Jennifer Lanham, Pursuit of Harpyness. Pursuit of Harpyness said: In which “sexual politics” make me feel stabby http://bit.ly/ebdkh8 [...]
Funny, I met my husband at the height of my promiscuity. That, and I’m totes the deathfatz while he’s quite handsome and we kiss in public.
….Must find and traumatize Maura Kelly with my presence…..
I find women, who are no longer high school-aged, who write about other women’s sex lives with this kind of attitude really mystifying. It’s like, I understand that if someone says “So what do you think about women who have casual sex?” then plenty of people will answer “they’re miserable sluts/wannabe dudes/misogynist platitude,” and though I obviously think those opinions are misguided and thoughtless I still understand why people think them.
But it’s different when someone writes something actively, instead of in response to a direct question; or when they feel so fired up about other women’s sex lives that they feel like they need to write about it publicly in order to condemn the practice. (NB: I did not read the original article because I am learning to control myself and limit my exposure to things that lead me to hate the universe.) It’s just like–you’re not a dude so terrified of losing his own status that he’s spouting anti-woman bullshit in order to control women’s sexuality and autonomy: what do you get out of this obsession with other women’s lives? If the women aren’t being exploited? Why do you even give a shit?
Cimorene, because women buy into the Madonna/Whore complex, too. They think themselves “Madonnas” and must trash the “whores”, because they’ve been duped into thinking that womens’ worth should be measured that way.
Well, I have a girlfriend /and/ a boyfriend, so her argument is extra invalid.
Did anyone ask her co workers to kindly remove the Bible Of Idiocy shoved up her ass?
@tylrjm
I like the idea of “extra invalid” arguments. Is that like getting an extra shot of espresso in your morning coffee?
What I find a tad undisturbed, is my own view related to the argument.
(Is anti-theoretical) approaches in a – new wave of anti-feminist thought unheard of before any, if any, of this happens in today’s world??
Honestly, there is relevant dichotomies to be had in such circumstances of reverse psychology. Example: reversing the roles of gender stereotypes. Problem solved (unfortunately enough. . .) there’s nothing but a Mel Gibson movie for maladaptive stereotypes.
Where does this fit on an ethical plain?? Let alone any plausibility in both sides used terribly bias response(s).
Yup. That’s how writers like that thrive. That’s all it is.
Why do you juvenilize an otherwise cogent discussion with lolspeak (OMG!FEMINISM, TEH SEX)? The writer you are critiquing doesn’t write that way and inserting it into paraphrases of her ideas discredits you rather than her.
@Craig: The answer to your question is abundantly clear if you read for context. The author of this post is mocking the juvenile, offensive ideas in Kelly’s original piece by co-opting juvenile language. It doesn’t “juvenilized” the whole post—you’ll notice she chooses to use it only when she’s mocking the ideas that are retro and stupid.
/readingcomprehension101