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

Tag: Sex

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

Oh Dan Savage…

Angry readers respond to his advice to the pro-choice girl whose anti-choice boyfriend refused to have sex with her. I’m laughing out loud in an internet cafe, and people are looking at me like I’m crazy — so read it. Favorite parts:

Dan’s excuse:

I thought my response last week to the guy who wanted to fuck his brother’s girlfriend—go for it!—would be the one that sent turds through turbines, not my advice for OBGYN. I had no idea abortion was such a contentious issue. But a salient point that my furious readers seem to overlook is that I WAS FUCKED UP WHEN I WROTE THAT COLUMN, and I said so.

And when other readers call him out:

Q. You told OBGYN to use birth control and “cross your fingers.” There is no need for luck! She can fully protect herself by doing the basics. Pills or hormone patches used correctly give you 99 percent protection, and she should be using a condom too, to protect herself against STDs. If OBGYN takes these two basic precautions, not even the Holy Ghost can get her pregnant. —OVER THIRTY

A. Thanks for sharing, OT, but didn’t the Holy Ghost knock up at least one teenager already?

— ——————————————————————————

Q. They can avoid conflict by avoiding pregnancy. I’ve never heard of someone getting pregnant from anal sex! Also, in the interest of being egalitarian, anal sex should include taking turns. That is, OBGYN should strap it on and fuck his anti-choice ass frequently. —PINK PEARL

A. Anal sex—of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Actually, I did think of that, and it was in the first draft of my advice to OBGYN: “Or let him fuck your ass—but only if you get to fuck his ass too.” But I took it out because I didn’t want to be accused of promoting anal sex acts to impressionable teenagers. That’s Wonkette’s job.

And damn if she isn’t good at it.

Bad news from my alma matter

Shorewood High School, where I spent four relatively happy years, is in a bit of hot water about a “profane” word in the annual literary magazine, Imprints — a magazine to which I faithfully contributed, I think, three out of my four years at Shorewood.

A blank space appearing on page 50 of Shorewood High’s annual literary magazine, Imprints, was once filled with a poem about a teenager’s first sexual experience.

The 13-line verse was abruptly pulled from this year’s magazine after parental complaints about a profane word in its title.

The fallout prompted school and district officials to seize, shred and reprint the issue. They also reassigned the magazine’s faculty adviser, a move the teacher is now fighting.

The poem’s author, Zoya Raskina, 17, said her verse was about the pressure teenagers face to have sex and the disillusionment that can follow. She said she didn’t expect the reaction, which prompted district administrators to ask Steve Kelly, an English teacher with the district for 35 years, to step down as magazine adviser.

The faculty advisor, Mr. Kelly, is one of Shorewood’s most well-known and well-liked teachers. I don’t remember a single student who ever had a complaint about him. I never had him for a teacher, but I remember hearing story after story from otherwise disinterested students about what they had discussed in Mr. Kelly’s class that day. The stories were so impressive that, after a year of college, I went back to Shorewood with a friend of mine (a former student of Mr. Kelly) and sat in on his class. The first thing you notice about Mr. Kelly’s room are the walls — they’re covered in student-painted murals, mostly (if I remember right) depicting scenes from the various novels that his students studied. He’s amazing; he’s one of the reasons that Imprints survives. And he’s certainly the reason why so many students want to be part of the magazine.

Shoreline (the school district where Shorewood is located) also tends to be a relatively liberal place, like most of Seattle. We had good, comprehensive (but abstinence-based) sex education. We read Huck Finn and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and other commonly banned books. My senior year, the fall play featured a “coming out” scene — and I was the ####### doing the coming out.

So when my mom told me about this story, I was obviously disappointed. Pulling Mr. Kelly from his position is a huge mistake, and one that I hope they rectify. It’s a literary magazine, for goodness sakes — sometimes, literature contains bad words.

And I can’t help but remember that when I was a junior in high school, there was a short story in Imprints that used the word “#####” at least a dozen times — I think “####” and “####” were in there, too. But that story was written by a senior boy — this poem was by a girl, about her first sexual experience. Do I smell a double standard?

So today, I’m depressed about the state of things in Shoreline, Washington. And I can’t help but see this event as representative of the conservative grip that seems to be tightening all around the country.