In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Sex

Back to (Slut) School

Her title, not mine.

As if we didn’t have enough reasons to dislike the Independent Women’s Forum, head anti-feminist wingnut Charlotte Allen quotes and links to a long rant about how girls are being turned into little prostitutes by the kids clothing departments.

Lingerie, size 6x, with a ‘back to school’ sign on it.

When did ‘toy’ lipstick become bright red and start lasting all day? Why would a six-year-old child need to carry a purse to school? Why is there makeup in it? Why does she know how to use it?

There are clothes in the little girls’ department that nobody would buy except Brooke Shields’ mother in “Pretty Baby.” Except. . . somebody’s mother IS buying them, and probably thinking “doesn’t she look pretty” in them.

Picture poor sleazed-up exploited JonBenet. That little girl breaks my heart.

Tiny little girls, wearing makeup and boobless versions of adult slinkwear. What kind of mother dresses her child like a bimbo?

Because that’s what these little girls look like, you know, when their mothers layer them oh-so-carefully in slinky satin underwear, croptops, hiphuggers (before they even have hips!) skirts that barely cover the subject, fishnet stockings, and HEELS. On a little child who has RECESS to deal with!

(I see London, I see France. . . .remember when the playground was the only place you could hear that?)

What is going through these mothers’ minds when they buy this sexy stuff for a seven-year-old child? Why don’t more schools forbid it? I don’t believe in censorship but clothing a little girl in Victoria’s Secret and sleaze is NOT right.

Come on, people. Please don’t send your tiny little girl to school in clothes that advertise something she doesn’t even know about yet. Dress her like a child, not a whorehouse intern.

Hooker with a Dora lunchbox. What’s wrong with this picture?

Now. Ask me what I think about beauty pageants for little children. Because they tell us more about the poor little kid’s mother than about anything else, don’t they.

That’s right. Call little girls sluts, and then blame mom.

Now, I agree that highly sexualized clothing is innapropriate for children. But is this the way we go about dealing with it? How about asking, “What is going on in our culture when we start sexualizing little girls?” Calling girls sluts because they dress a particular way isn’t going to accomplish much.

Why is anyone still shopping at American Apparel?

American Apparel has been celebrated as a young, socially responsible company that rejects sweatshop labor and pays its workers well. This is all true. But for those of you who missed the Jane article documenting the bad behavior of AA’s founder, Dov “Walking Erection” Charney, here it is. Jane is also doing a little poll to see if the article about Charney (in which he masturbates in front of a female reporter, among other things) influences anyone’s decision to shop at AA. The article is interesting, and Jane is a great feminist-leaning mainstream publication, so check it out.

If you don’t live in New York or LA, you may not have seen AA’s ads. They feature out-of-the-mold (but still really beautiful) girls in kiddie-porn-like poses — you can see a few of them on the AA website.

Read More…Read More…

Walking Wounded

I may be a bad person of poor character, but I sometimes read Dawn Eden’s blog. I know, I know, but ever since I gave up drug abuse, promiscuous sex, satan worshipping, and having abortions for kicks on my slow weekends, there isn’t much left for an intellectual mindfuck but Dawn Eden.

She seems nice enough — fairly reasonable, if a bit judgemental, and certainly speaks as an authority on many of her pet issues. Her favorite thing to write about appears to be sex — all sex all the time in the garden of Eden — but sex is not healthy or normal except within a particular set of constructs. Oh no. Today Ms. Eden decided to bag on one of her greatest blog adversaries, but was wise not to link that heathenous slut lest she turn her blog harpies on dear, chaste Dawn.

A childless feminist blogger took pleasure in taking apart Sandoval’s piece, accusing the writer of hating sex and hating sexually active singles. She buoyed her arguments by noting that while she herself supported having sex outside of marriage, she was not promiscuous—she’d been with the same man for four years.

Oh my. Who could that be? And why are we feminists suddenly divided into child-ful and child-less? I suppose I’m a less heathenous feminist since I have a child. Or wait, a hapless slut (I can never remember). Perhaps Dawn feels this unnamed blogger’s criticisms are too close to home. Nevertheless, she goes on:

Reading that, I thought, this is a woman who does not know what her life is for or who she is. She badly desires to anchor her life in a relationship, yet she has a contingency plan to escape that relationship with no strings attached, should it prove too cumbersome. She takes hormones to prevent her ovaries from releasing eggs, so that her lover’s seed may pass in and out of her without the chance that she’ll actually receive it.

There is so much in this little paragraph to criticize, and we haven’t even gotten to the part yet where she states that “contracepted sex” is merely “coitus interruptus” and thereby inferior to “the mixing of body fluids” that produces God’s Army. She condescends the unnamed blogger’s choice of commitment, suggests this unnamed blogger can not and will not know herself unless she’s knockin’ boots with a wedding ring on (I suppose any asker will do), judges this unnamed blogger’s willingness to face the reality of relationships, assumes quite a bit about the unnamed blogger’s medical contraceptive choices, and actually says the phrase “lover’s seed.”

Lover’s seed. For real? Hopefully a person’s significant other has more to offer a relationship than “his seed,” you know, like mowing lawns and opening jars of mayo. For all the flack feminists get for our supposed single, monolithic view on marriage, sex, and manhood, Dawn seems awfully fixated on the, well, manhood.

Isn’t that interesting?

Someone here is walking wounded and it ain’t the unnamed feminist. But after all of this, I do have one niggling thought. For someone who promotes abstinence until marriage, rages against the “porn-liberal” and only refers to her own sexual life as “chaste,” Ms. Eden sure knows a lot about sex.

I wonder.

UPDATE: Amanda responds. Priceless.

It Isn’t The Masturbation That Makes You Go Blind, It’s The Porn

Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along – erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners’ calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents.

The new study by US psychologists found that people shown erotic or gory images frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards. And the researchers say some personality types appear to be affected more than others by the phenomenon, known as “emotion-induced blindness”.

Um, okay. Whatever.

Posted in Sex

Sex Ed in NYC Public Schools

Even in the most progressive areas, the anti-sex head-in-the-sand crowd seems to be taking over. New York City is introducing new sexual health education curriculum, and it’s a mixed bag. Some of it is good:

High schoolers will learn the difference between sexual harassment and flirting, how to set a sexual limit, and sexual refusal skills. Middle schoolers will learn about reproductive anatomy and the benefits of sexual abstinence.

But, not surprisingly, some of it isn’t so good:

The new curriculum doesn’t teach middle schoolers about birth control, for instance, or address sexual orientation except in the context of AIDS.

Even the good seems to be coming a little late — shouldn’t kids be learning the difference between sexual harassment and flirting well before high school? And shouldn’t they learn about reproductive anatomy before middle school? When 1 in 10 New York City public school students report having sex before the age of 13 — that’s right, 13 — it doesn’t make much sense to avoid teaching them about the naughty bits until they’re in 7th grade, and to not mention contraception until 9th.

The absense of discussion on sexual orientation is also disturbing — especially when it’s only mentioned in the context of AIDS. As Miriam Yeung, of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, says, “When you don’t see info about your life, or your behaviors or your feelings, then you don’t practice any health-promoting behaviors.” And as the article points out, the majority of parents (79%) want their children to learn about sexual orientation in their health classes.

The new curriculum also prohibits condom demonstrations in classrooms, which is just plain dumb. Condoms are most effective when used correctly, so it would make sense that we teach people how to use them correctly. What’s troubling is that if this is happening in New York City — which is pretty overwhelmingly liberal — just imagine what kids in rural Texas are being taught.

College Life: One Big Sex Carnival

Apparently we should return to single-sex dorms and bathrooms (which colleges have mixed-sex bathrooms?), promote marriage, and have parent-led “inspector committees” to track student sexual behavior. Because it’s not like college students are legal adults or anything. And according to the Washington Times article, “date rape” is such a silly term that we should put it in quotations — unlike, say, STDs and alcohol abuse.

This would all help to tame “the sex carnival that is college life today.”

Why do I feel totally left out of the party?

Feminists Vie for Female Submission

Last week, a study was released on female sexual submission that concludes “women, but not men, automatically associate sex with submission and that connection reduces the quality of their sexual experience.”

Long stretch, in my opinion, especially since their method of study involved free association with words like “sex” and “oven” (fucking oven?) and came to the conclusion that these terms and the speed with which women responded to these terms draw a correlation with women’s passive sexual activity. It is far more workable to draw correlations between passivity and the culture in which women are made than relying on Freudian psychology to determine the nature of female sexuality. ‘Cause you know Freud was real kind to women.

The priming results indicate that women may have unconsciously picked up the message that they should be sexually submissive, raising the possibility that women have internalized societal pressure, said Sanchez, a recent doctoral graduate in the psychology department and women’s studies.

Previous research suggests that social norms promote deference to men, and this extends to intimate relationships. This message is constantly repeated by the media in magazines, television and movies that “commonly display male sexual dominance over women and female sexual submission to men,” the paper states.

I’d also like to point out that many men and women enjoy various states of dominance and submission at different times in their lives and for a huge number of reasons. Although we can’t claim citations of personal preference are always pure, we also know that the range of human sexuality differs from person to person, politic to politic.

Long story short, we have yet another piece of research that amounts to common sense for any sane, thinking human being. Nonetheless, Cassandra of Villainous Sensibility announces that this study, and other recent studies on sex, is fueled by a dirty “feminist agenda.” I agree with much of her analysis on this research but still fail to see why the pointlessness of it should be laid at feminist feet. Why, we’re the crew that ensures you have access to birth control, sex toys, and sexual healthcare! Some of us even like teh cock!

No feminist I know of cheers at results like this — if anything, it means we ugly feminists have yet more work to do.

via Ilyka Damen