Essay Submissions Wanted!

Hey gang--the editors behind Feministing are looking for essay submissions for their upcoming book, Yes Means Yes!This sounds like an amazing project:

"Co-editors Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti are seeking submissions for their anthology on rape culture, Yes Means Yes!, to be published by Seal Press in Fall 2008.

Imagine a world where women enjoy sex on their own terms and aren't shamed for it. Imagine a world where men treat their sexual partners as collaborators, not conquests. Imagine a world where rape is rare and swiftly punished.

Welcome to the world of Yes Means Yes.

Yes Means Yes! will fly in the face of the conventional feminist wisdom that rape has nothing to do with sex. We are looking to collect sharp and insightful essays, from voices both established and new, that demonstrate how empowering female sexual pleasure is the key to dismantling rape culture.

Potential essay subjects could include;

* Revamping how public sex education is taught, and to whom.
* The new backlash against rape survivors (i.e., media obsession with drinking, Girls Gone Wild culture being to blame for assault)
* Bringing men back into the conversation, making men leaders in the movement to end rape culture
* Thoughts on “enthusiastic consent”
* Taking Back the Porn: How changing the pornography industry can stop rape
* The power of language (naming rape for what it is, or the new myth of “gray rape”)
* A primer for men on sexual assault
* How good sex (where women’s pleasure is central) can mean an end to rape culture, and how a society that values genuine female sexual pleasure will make it easier to identify and prosecute rapists.
* Rethinking sexual interaction as a private joint performance, as opposed to as an exchange of a commodity or service
* An analysis of the economics of female sexual alienation/oppression, and an economic model for resistance
* Holding the MSM accountable for torture porn, kidnapping crusades and faux feminism.
* Desegmenting the Market: overcoming commercially enforced sexual stereotypes to organize across race, class, gender, and difference
* On pulling out the invisible lynchpin of rape culture: homophobia
* Creating accurate media representations of rape
Women and men, published and unpublished authors, are all encouraged to submit essays. Be creative, be forward-thinking, be funny! Perhaps most importantly, we are seeking essays with a pro-active bent that offer new and insightful thoughts and actions on how to dismantle rape culture. No more “No Means No,” let’s think “Yes Means Yes!”

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:
Please submit your essays to yesmeansyes2008@gmail.com no later than March 1, 2008.
Essays should be from 2000 to 5000 words, double spaced and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address and a short bio."



I, personally, will be wracking my brain. Wrack yours too!

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Some People Are Like This, and Other People Are Like This!

Jezebel linked to a stupid article in the London Times about how US women are well-groomed and British women are busted. He describes things like waxing, tanning, and teeth whitening as "obligatory beauty maintenance," and essentially says that we're superficial bitches who tell our friends they're fat--yknow, in a good way! Blah blah etc, he is stupid and sexist and basing his concept of America strictly on L.A. This we know. I didn't even read the whole article because who gives a fuck.

However, I thought I'd share with you my OWN sweeping cultural generalizations. Having lived the better part of a year in London,* I determined that Londoners (at least) have a healthier attitude towards sexuality, in particular female sexuality. Furthermore, the guys have less stringent beauty standards. Now, it's been suggested to me that "Susan B.'s London is not everybody's London," but you're just as likely to spot a couple where the guy's more attractive as the other way around**. The women in their sitcoms are hot, but look like actual people. Bah, I saw the first episode of the pitiful American version of Coupling, which I'm told was almost word-for-word the same as the first episode of the awesome British original, and the guy who was supposed to be kind of dopey and not great with women was of course played by a chubby balding guy, even though the plot concerns him and a super-hot woman. In the British version, that character isn't much more or less attractive than his buddies-- they show his dorkiness, and this will shock you, through the WRITING AND ACTING.

Also, you can buy vibrators in Luten airport.

The author of the lame article talks about liking British girls, going to college in LA, then coming back and wondering what happened to the pretty. My guess? The girls didn't change, he just developed a taste for silicone and fake tans. As for me, at least once a week it occurs to me that if I actually wanted to be, yknow HAPPY in this life, I would move to London and marry some nice indie rocker who likes to dance***.



*OMG almost a year! I'm like a native, and totes qualified to comment on the culture! For reals.
**[Insert boasts about my pulling guys way hotter than me.]
***And start a meaningful theatre career, since theatre there actually matters, but that's a tangent.

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Tuesdays With Kyle

[Alternate title: "I like to quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation."*]

I've been writing back and forth with my friend Kyle, and warned him I would poach from our emails. We were discussing the differences between Second Wave and Third Wave views of sexuality, and I came up with this gem:

The old line was, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." Today we might say, "A woman needs a [partner-of-any-gender] like a WOMAN needs a bicycle."

Y'know--women don't really NEED a bicycle, but some women WANT a bicycle and enjoy having one, but if it broke or got stolen or whatever it would alter her life rather than ruin it. And a woman without a bicycle isn't looked at as weird. (Though people think it's weird that I literally don't know HOW to ride a bicycle, which is probably symbolic of something or other.)

Kyle was also more eloquent than I on the pros and cons of "I, Slut" so I thought I'd quote him as well, which will cut down on the self-absorption here:

I love what she's saying, but think it could be carried to its logical and unflinching conclusion: some people may go through an occasional "slut phase" which may be good for them and that should absolutely be their prerogative. Some people may choose to make sluthood a perfectly stable and happy way of life, and there's nothing wrong with that choice either, all things being equal. I just get the feeling that she's sort of still implicitly paying lip service to the notion that being a slut is deviating from some more "normal and healthy" state, kind of like Carnival is healthy, but only once a year. I think that's absolutely true for some people, but [The Ethical Slut authors] Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt might not agree with the sentiment.

Well said. I have never actually read The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities. I do know that the authors define a "slut" as "a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you." Which sounds pretty keen. Personally, consensual non-monogamy (aka the "open relationship") is not something I'm looking for, but I admire the people who make it work.**

Hooray for emails that get those blogger juices flowing!


*(George Bernard Shaw)
**When it's actually an open relationship and not just a guy saying, "I'll jerk you around while I screw other people."

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More On Teh Slutz

I recently posted about an essay from Nerve awhile back. I confess, I had not read it in awhile, and posted it for the sake of the Sex and the Citystuff. A few people took issue (unfortunately by email and not in the comments!) with the essay as a whole. So let's discuss.

First of all, I definitely read it that Wilner is criticizing her friends' behavior (and her own) when she discusses the sense of competition among them--'bad' behavior is praised to the point that Wilner feels she has to make her exploits sound naughtier than they were. Some people though she was endorsing this, but I strongly disagree:

But something unfortunate and inevitable has happened, which is that the freedom and beauty of the slut has been noticed, codified and replicated. Now it's not just a way to be, it's an aspiration, a point of competition. It's the girl who sees how long she can go without sleeping at her own place, like my friend Melanie. It's the girl who's trying to "collect all fifty states," like Alex, who lived down the hall from me. All this counting! Like any defined system of measurement — including the system of poodle-skirt wearing chastity — it can get oppressive.

(For the record, I don't call myself a slut. At one point I tried calling myself a playah, but that didn't feel right, either. Both terms imply a lack of respect, either for oneself or one's partners, and I don't feel like doing that even in jest. I know we're reclaiming terms and all, but I don't think my activities are strange enough to require that kind of name. As I've discussed, I have sex when I feel like it--I'm not trying to notch up that belt, but I don't deprive myself based on abstract principles.)

I agree that much of the essay is sloppy and glib, but I think at heart it's criticizing the romanticization of "sluttiness"--and there are good reasons to criticize it. The point she fails to effectively make is that there's not anything inherently wrong, or aberrant, about a woman having NSA sex, and to call that a "slut phase" is to pathologize it. It's apologetic--'oh, I know it's wrong, but there are extenuating circumstances so it's ok to do for awhile.' How bout this: don't call yourself a slut, and then you don't have to apologize for it!

Also, I don't buy the part about going to her friend's place to see her conquest of the evening. Why would the guy have come to the door with her in his boxers? He totally would've hid out in the bedroom.

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You've got some nerve!

As in, because I'm ripping off another one of their articles and showing it to you.

A friend of mine (hi Kyle!) emailed me with a question about sex-positive attitudes in Second Wave versus Third Wave feminism. I sent him a way-too-long email in response, but anyway: It brought me back to Carrie Hill Wilner's essay on Nerve, I, Slut, which talks about the sexual liberty that characterizes the Third Wave--and how this liberty is often twisted into something cartoonish, inauthentic, a new standard to which we must pretend to adhere.

Also, it talks about Sex and the City, and how the show did NOT represent Wilner's sexuality, or that of her friends. I have had trouble articulating this--I have mixed feelings about the show, which I find entertaining but also grating and somehow irking. Wilner puts it well:

But what really bothered me about the show was that it presumed to speak for me, the youngish urban female, and her supposedly newfound ability to Have Sex Like a Man and Use Bad Words. It was "shocking," "brutally candid," "honest." The media spoke of Sex and the City as if it were the fucking Rosetta stone of femininity — as if women could no longer understand themselves without the assistance of premium cable... According to Sex, promiscuity was a glamorous pathology, a mutation of the second X chromosome, something unnatural, temporary, alien — like obesity and cancer, an ailment of modernity that must be endured by those who yearn for the ruddy health of monogamy...I guess what I'm trying to say here is that my sexual touchstone isn't a neurotic bitch with a bikini wax.

[My emphasis.]

There is one episode that exemplifies the difference between what SATC espoused and what I did. It was called "Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl..." and Carrie's plot was that she was dating a slightly younger (late 20's?) guy who reveals he's bisexual, and has had a long-term relationship with a man (plus two with women). FIRST of all, I was alarmed by the squareness of the show's stance on male bisexuality--even Samantha says "dump him." But Carrie goes with it, and ends up at a party with all his friends, who get introductions like, "This is Sue, she's having Ryan and Bob's baby" or whatever, and who've all dated each other in various gender combinations, and Carrie's getting skeeved. Then they all play spin the bottle, and Carrie for the first time in her life has to kiss a girl--played by Alanis Morissette. The kiss isn't bad or good (Carries says it "tasted like chicken"), but she realizes this is not her scene and bails.

So, my problem? I would much rather hang with those crazy kids who freak Carrie out so much than with Carrie and her Gucci-worshipping, pseudo-enlightened friends. (And let's not even talk about Candace Bushnell herself, who just seems awful.) For one thing, I doubt any of my female friends will make it to 33 or whatever without having kissed a girl.* And while when I first saw the episode I conceded that I'd be a little weirded out to be in a social circle where everyone had dated each other, that is actually starting to become my reality so I can't complain. But the real point is, not only do these non-Carrie people have a GENUINELY open attitude about sex and sexuality, they seem to spend more time having sex than talking about it, unlike our Fab Four. I mean, spin the bottle? Awesome. Hopefully the guys made out with each other, too, but SATC would never show us THAT. (Actually, do they ever show us two guys kissing? I'm not sure.)

I did, however, love Miranda. And still do. Miranda was the actual feminist, incredibly smart, loved her job and excelled at it, had a baby and married on her terms, when she wanted to, to the best guy we meet on the show, and basically Has It All. She is also the only one who seems genuinely comfortable with both relationships AND casual sex, and manages to date a black guy with it being all, Look, She's Dating a Black Guy! And Cynthia Nixon was the best actor on the show. Her plotline in the above episode actually redeemed it for me,** as it concerned her insecurities about whether she was female enough, which is something a lot of successful women grapple with. So, kudos to her, but blah to the rest of the show for being so self-congratulatory while also being so narrow.


*Especially since I have probably already kissed them.
**And may or may not have made me cry.

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But what IS this "Third Wave" of which you speak??

What made me broach this topic? A post on Jezebel, my favorite source to steal from, about the 35th anniversary of Ms. magazine and why they can't bring themselves to care. A quote:

It's like, according to them, you're not a real feminist unless you're doing something boring and constructive without any flash or pizazz. Why does everything have to be so dour? There are fun aspects about being a woman, you know. That's probably the biggest divide between second and third wave feminism. There's this emphasis on the "serious" shit, which is indicative in their coverage of grave news, and insistence of an anti-pornography stance.

I basically agree with them, though I do fear that many of today's feminists choose the personal OVER the political, and that we need both pizazz AND activism. But anyway, it reminded me of a Nerve* article I read awhile back that gave a good explanation of third wave feminism. I link you to the beginning of the article, but the stuff about what the third wave means to the author (Ada Calhoun) is on the second page. Here's a particularly nice quote:

I think growing up post-AIDS, we who were born in or around the '70s had to be more honest and upfront with each other about sex; it made us more equitable, curious and fair. We became well educated about date rape but sensible enough to laugh at the absurd rigidity of the Antioch Rules.
Third Wave women, as I know them, are financially independent. They're happy alone, or they're looking to create families with partners rather than providers. They are politically active, voting, signing petitions, contacting their representatives and being conscious consumers and respectful employers and employees. They enjoy sex, especially thanks to the enthusiastic presence of feminist porn companies, anthologies like Gynomite, sex-toy stores like Good Vibrations and Babeland. They are represented in the media by reasonable, funny feminist writers like Jennifer Baumgardner, Rebecca Traister and Lynn Harris; on TV by Tina Fey and Samantha Bee. Third Wave women are women from all over who have an innate sense of their own value and potential...They are self-aware, adventurous and live supportive lives with men and with each other.

Some people argue that what we're going through now is not actually a new wave--more like Second Wave 2.0. I think there's truth to that, but it's not the whole story. This new wave has broadened itself, and our causes extend to race (Second Wave was notoriously white, to the point that some black feminists had a different name for themselves--Womanists), sexuality (hurray for LGBTQ!), and the notion that there are many ways to be a feminist. There are still core issues upon which the movement rests--there is no feminism without contraception, and housewifery is still a tricky issue--but the guiding forces are freedom and collaboration.

There are plenty of cliches I can throw out there. We today don't think of bras as tools of oppression but as sources of physical comfort (especially us well-endowed girls--ouch!) and expressions of sexuality. We don't have to choose between marriage and identity, and we can find men who share our beliefs and are allies as well as friends and lovers.

Perhaps all of this is obvious, but it's good to lay a groundwork. So, what do you guys think? What does the third wave mean to you, and what parts are confusing/unclear? What differences do you see between these recent waves, and what experiences do you have explaining feminism/having it explained to you?


*My other beloved source of theft.

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Maybe this is why I like Disneyworld so much...

Let's talk, briefly, about porn. I don't have time right now for a full long post on the topic, so I'll say this: I am, generally speaking, pro-porn. Partially this is because I do not believe that any medium, art form or genre can be inherently without merit. (The "fuck TV" crowd needs to watch Six Feet Under, stat.) It's partially because I understand why the average person would find porn appealing. I mean, people having sex. Makes sense to me. And it's partially because I find porn appealing every now and then. (See: the part about how porn is people having sex.) But there are also excellent arguments AGAINST porn that I often have trouble totally refuting.

On Nerve right know there's a great essay by Shalom Auslander about the porn of his youth (and how it interacted with his Ortohodox upbringing) as compared to the porn of today. His description of the porn he first came to know and love is one of the best arguments in favor of porn I've read:

"… the fantasy world of pornography seemed like a parallel, if gooey, version of the Garden of Eden my rabbis had just described to me. Legs were eternally spread, bodies were proudly exposed, heads were thrown back in ecstasy. In porno there was no guilt, no shame, no fear, no anger. Black people fucked white people, white people fucked black people, men fucked women, women fucked women, and, in a magazine named Blueboy, buried at the very bottom of the pile, men even fucked men...With inspiring abandon, women lavished attention and in turn were lavished upon, and men spilled their seed on the floor and the chair and the couch and the bellies and the backs and the faces and the lips without fear of retribution... do what you want, the leaders of Pornoland declared, but judge not, scorn not, worry not. Paradise. Perhaps this had been Walt Disney's idea when he created Disneyland — a place, first and foremost, free of anger."

He then recounts his discovery of the modern porn that includes things like "choke-fucking" and other delightful and violent things that he wouldn't want to imagine (much less see) a person going through. Now, I'm certainly not opposed to S&M porn and whatnot, I'm no Vanilla Lobbyist, but there is definitely a spectrum and this far end of the spectrum, which is becoming more mainstream, is definitely disturbing.

So. I like the essay because it nicely (and experientially, my favorite!) sums up two opposing sides of the argument, and reminds us that "pornography" can mean a lot of things. Have a read (it's short), and let me know where you stand.

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From Susan B's Archives: Sluts

Hi gang! Here is one of my favorite essays from Nerve. It came out some time ago, but I wanted to share it with you all. To sum up, it's about the backlash against young women actually making good on their sexual liberation, being instigated chiefly by second-wave feminists who are maybe a little jealous. It's from the perspective of a recent college graduate, and it's both thoughtful and frank, with an appropriate dash of glib thrown in. An excerpt:

My friends and I often put nice boys and romantic love on the back burner, because they demanded the time we had already allotted to theses and volunteer programs. Hooking up with someone on a Saturday night didn't require us to follow up with brunch on Sunday, which worked out well, because we had a lot of homework to finish before The O.C. came on.

[Please keep in mind that I think a "Golf Pros and Tennis Hos" party sounds like the lamest thing ever, but if I insert some of the parties I did frequent at Wesleyan*, my alma mater, it makes sense.]

The essay pretty much speaks for itself. But basically, I'm tired of this shit, of Katie Couric going on TV and decrying blowjobs, tired of articles that remind me of the Feminine Mystique-era studies saying that college education made women unsatisfied with being house wives, so maybe they shouldn't go to college. As my good friend Alden once said, "I sort of can't understand why people wouldn't like hooking up. It's like not liking ice cream." Of course, an excess of ice cream can sometimes be bad for you, but everyone has their own limit. And people don't cluck their tongues at you if you eat ice cream without wanting to marry it.

How does this apply to me, you may be wondering? I don't like to get TOO autobiographical, but suffice it to say that I don't date much, and my number of belt notches, if you will, is totally sane and reasonable and also way higher than that of almost everyone I know. To my mind, my sexual history is no better or worse than my friends'--in college, as now, I hooked up on my own terms; sometimes drunkenly**, sometimes randomly, always safely and sans victimization. There are some hook-ups that seemed stupid later on, but I never actively regretted them. "Walk of Shame" was always considered a tongue-in-cheek term, as it most often seemed a Walk of Gloating. (The morning after I lost my virginity I got to walk home in heels, a long black evening gown, and a big ol' Austrian crystal choker. Oh, and a big ol' smirk. It was a red-letter day and I wanted people to know, damnit!)

I have a problem with this idea that sex should only be had with someone "special." Cuz, you know who's pretty special? Me. Sex is often better when BOTH parties are special, but that doesn't make it the only brand of peanut butter on the shelf***. I'm now thinking of the recent Onion article, "Study: Casual Sex Only Rewarding For First Few Decades." And again, smirking.

I hope I'm not sounding OPPOSED to people who don't have casual sex. But now that not everyone I know is a Wesleyan kid, I've run into people who are weirded out by those of us who DO. I don't get it, guys--what's the big deal?


*Naked Parties, The Sex Party, Queer Prom, in general most parties at Eclectic, that one Chi Psi party I randomly went to and announced my plans to get "drunk as an unrequited poet" (and succeeded, with shady results...)
**if by "sometimes" you mean "usually"
***What?

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