Earlier this month, Jillian Horowitz wrote about being a sex-negative feminist on xoJane. Reading her piece, I had thoughts similar to the ones I have when I find myself listening to Coldplay: “Is this… good? Is this good for me right now? Is this so bad that it’s actually good? Is the universe a cold and desperate place that will expand until there will be no more thermodynamic energy and no point to anything?”
To get something obvious out the way first, Horowitz is certainly right when it comes to some of her criticism wrt sex-positive feminism (which in itself has been sliding fast toward being nothing more than another cultural cliche for years now, incidentally). Take the issue of consent within patriarchy, for example. I don’t like to complicate it much. In my view, most men are both stronger and more socially privileged than most women. That’s the reality I live within and acknowledge. All the way out here, in the macho world of Moscow media, where I currently reside, it’s a reality we speak about in an offhand sort of way.
The phrase “rape survivor” feels phony and strange when I apply it to myself. I admire the phrase, I think it has great power. But when I sit down to type that words, “As a rape survivor, I…” there is always that twinge of pain, and the lingering doubt. Did I actually survive? Some parts of me obviously did, but others I’m not so sure of. In the aftermath, I battened down the hatches and went sailing in a dark and violent sea. I don’t know if all of me will ever fully return.
I’m not supposed to talk about these things, either. As a journalist, an editor, a “public person,” an occasional Head Bitch In Charge, as a playwright, I should not be making myself vulnerable. This will undermine my career. This will be used against me. How many times have I heard this before? When will I learn? Why don’t I just stop? I don’t have an answer.
Still, I am compelled to address Horowitz as a rape survivor. Because when you wag your finger and tut-tut at the ladies, and then turn around and deny said ladies their silly lady feelings, when you say, “the way you fuck is not ‘private'” and follow it up with a hearty “no whining,” you draw a pretty clear line in the sand. And the reason why I’m not willing to join you on your side of the line has everything to do with my past experiences.
Horowitz references the fact that “that many women have neutral to negative experiences with sex, whether due to a lack of desire or sensitivity or past traumatic experiences or myriad other reasons, or may not wish to have sex at all, and that none of this makes them unhealthy, aberrant, or wrong.” Yes! I agree!
But here’s another thing: people aren’t insects frozen in amber. Most of us will have sexual ups and downs. Some of us will manage to combine negative feelings with positive ones. Some alternate periods of celibacy with periods of libertine abandon that would make Anthony Weiner blush. People are different. People are weird. People change. This weirdness, these changes, they don’t always fit into neat little political categories either. That line in the sand? It’s often imaginary. Arbitrary. Reductive.
Horowitz bemoans the fact that when it comes to sex, ‘we fall over ourselves in an attempt to pass the least amount of judgment and avoid being categorized as “man-hating” or “anti-sex” or “judgmental” or “shaming” or “prudish.”‘ She reasons that this has a lot to do with “the seeming opposition between “sex-positive” feminism and just plain “feminism,” no qualifiers, and the demonizing of the latter.”
Well, duh. Feminism was and is attacked as the domain of bitter hags – and some of us obviously pushed against that very hard, the unintended consequence of this being that entire groups of people were initially sidelined. And that’s kinda a big problem. We do have a lot to answer for in that regard. I agree.
And yet, what about a simple concept such as shame? The reason why so many of us are quick to point out that we don’t want to be judgmental is because the world, on the whole, is pretty damn judgmental. Outside of your pristine feminist kaffeklatsch (assuming you enjoy pristine feminist kaffeklatsches on the regular), women were and are punished for being sexual, or not sexual enough, or sexual in the wrong contest, or sexual without being sexy, or sexual while being of the wrong skin color, and so on. In general, women are punished for being women – every damn day. This is why there is a reflexive need to no longer be judgmental. It’s not cowardice. It’s a defense strategy.
“We can’t fuck our way to freedom”? Well, sure. “We can’t crochet our way to freedom” also has a nice ring to it. Just as “We can’t lolcat our way to freedom” does. Or “We can’t moonwalk our way to freedom.” (Can we?)
I’m not trolling (OK, I am trolling – but only a little bit), but pointing out that sex is just one of those human experiences. In and of itself, it won’t set you free. But it’s stupid to argue that sexual experiences cannot be a liberating or enlightening experience for a given individual. That it won’t transform them. That said individual is probably just confused or brainwashed. That they don’t know their own feelings. Or that their feelings don’t matter.
Yeah, that line denigrating other people’s “hurt feelings?” The very fact that Horowitz even needed to say it hints at the emotional depths of the subject we are dealing with. Where sex-positive feminism can fall short is in the insistence that we focus only on the positive aspects of sex and the emotions surrounding it – bypassing the fact that human desire can be strange and ambiguous, and that it set you down all kinds of journeys, and journeys by their nature can be long, and difficult, and dark (and beset by Rodents of Unusual Size).
We all have our narratives (though women are frequently denied the role of author), and there is a lot of personal power in owning them, in taking credit and responsibility for the good, and the bad, and the ugly – to the extent that one can. Assuming that some people just don’t know any better when it comes to their own narrative is belittling. And kinda nasty. And makes you just “negative” as opposed to “sex-negative.” And that negativity is particularly difficult to respond to when one is a trauma survivor who Really. Doesn’t. Need. Your. Fucking. Approval.
Speaking of approval: A lot of online feminist discourse involves around the idea of validation. We seek it from others, or else put ourselves in a position of bestowing or withdrawing it (sometimes in very inappropriate and ridiculous ways).
I don’t need Jillian Horowitz to validate my sex life – because LOLWAT – but I do want to say this: precious, delicate fee-fees do matter here. Mine matter. And yours. And Horowitz’s. And none of this is an impediment to any sort of conversation on sex-positivity or sex-negativity or sex-notgiveafuckery.
Acknowledging the fact that the person you are speaking to is a human being is not the end of discourse – it is the beginning.
~UPDATE~
If anyone tells you that you need their validation, this is the gif you send them instead of a reply, OK?
