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My vagina hates me: adventures at the sex clinic part 2
AKA the Chronicles of Poonarnia: part 2
And so continues the section of my increasingly large body of writing on vulval pain etc. in which i discuss my treatment. Elsewhere, if you’re interested, you can find discussions of how this condition (provoked localised vulvodynia, AKA vestibulodynia, previously known as vulvar vestibulitis) has impacted my personal and sexual life and how i still have great sex.
You can also read Adventures at the sex clinic: part 1 here.
So, on with the show!
[…] Because women are much less likely to sexually abuse teens than are men, those rare cases that do feature female defendants tend to attract lots of media attention – particularly when the woman involved is relatively young and conventionally attractive. Invariably, someone will suggest that the boys involved were lucky, and that rather than being abused, they had lived out every straight teen guy’s fantasy of nailing the hot teacher. When, as in this Ohio case, the boys involved are described as distraught at what had happened to them, there’s often a sense of disbelief. How could normal red-blooded American boys be upset about the fact that they got laid?
[…]
Make no mistake, I grieve the loss of Meredith Kercher and the horrible way she died. But I have little doubt that if Knox had been a little less pretty, a little less sexual, and a little less American, she’d never have spent a day in prison for her roommate’s murder.
I rejoice in her freedom today.
Me, too.
side eye. you have to be white to be thinking masturbation is “the last” female sexual taboo. seriously. im always left wondering where the fuck do ya’ll live?
Can you elaborate?
for WOC color simply existing =sexual taboo. we havent even gotten to bodily autonomy yet, much less masturbation, i mean. really.
I completely agree with you on that point, although i wouldn’t say that it’s something than can’t apply to white women—that is, i’m not saying it’s not a race issue (it patently is) but i don’t think it’s wholly a race issue.
I certainly think that it would behoove us all to remember than outside of a very small group of (yes, probably white), independently wealthy, upper-middle class women, feminine sexuality is completely off the table.
Sexuality is denied to poor women, working-class women, disabled women, older women, women in religious communities. The only arena in which these women are afforded some license, really, is within the sphere of mental health—although paradoxically “promiscuity” and “sexual deviance” are also frequently the very measures used to exert control over us—and it’s not as if, outside of very specific communities (i’m thinking here of very orthodox, kabbalistic Jewish populations, as an example) turning to the “madness” idiom ever really provided any liberation whatsoever.
And even (elaborating for a moment on the Judaism point) within those communities where turning to the culturally-sanctioned “madness” has been an option (if we understand dybbuk possession as a culture-specific syndrome a la, e.g., koro or amok), that “liberation” only involves moving from one kind of marginalisation to another (albeit one that is culturally acceptable as a means to express a sexuality that women are otherwise denied) and, further, involves reinforcing the traditional doxa and religious symbolism used to control women’s sexuality.
But, no, i definitely agree that the linked article comes from a place of definite privilege in comparison to the reality of most women’s sexual lives/social deaths.
(via bad-dominicana)
side eye. you have to be white to be thinking masturbation is “the last” female sexual taboo. seriously. im always left wondering where the fuck do ya’ll live?
Can you elaborate?
(via bad-dominicana)
Queer Porn Star Accused of Pedophilia for Breastfeeding Baby
By Diane Anderson-Minshall
Weeks after queer porn star Madison Young had her baby, she created an art exhibit titled “Becoming MILF.” The concept, according to Jezebel.com, was to explore how Young now embodies a contradiction, the dichotomy to end all dichotomies — that of the Madonna and the whore. At the show’s opening, she served up self-made breast-milk shakes and displayed a baby quilt made of burp cloths and porn star panties. Turns out not every feminist porn star agrees. According to Salon.com, a series of sex worker Twitter wars ensued, the controversy tapping into “culture-wide mommy issues.”
Porn star Furry Girl (who is known for her, um, stage name–like features) criticized Young for publicly breast-feeding, tweeting that only “creeps and pedophiles” are interested in seeing a porn star breast-feed and insinuated that exposing her child to such an audience was abusive. Girl called Young a “a revolting person” and dubbed her defenders “baby fetishists” and “pedos.”
Of course Young (née Tina Butcher) is already a well-known feminist porn star, director, author, and the founder of Femina Potens, an ever-evolving, queer and trans nonprofit gallery and performance space in California that the San Francisco Chronicle calls “the most happening art space in the city; a revolution in art and sex.” She’s curated the gallery for years, mixing envelope-pushing women’s sexuality exhibitions and spoken word shows from lesbians like Annie Sprinkle with less kinky feminist projects from literati like Michelle Tea. Young’s shown up on such outlets as IFC and the History Channel and in MSNBC’s Brian Alexander’s book America Unzipped, which has a whole chapter on her art and work.
So what was this controversial display of pedophilia that Furry Girl imagines? According to Salon, Young posed for a black-and-white photograph dressed up like Marilyn Monroe while clutching her daughter to her bare breast, nonchalantly breast-fed on a video, and then announced that she would nurse live and in person at an upcoming event meant to promote “health awareness for our queer, kinky, and sex positive communities.”
At the event itself, Young discussed breast health, while other presenters talked about breast cancer, antiretroviral drugs, and safe sex. “It wasn’t a sex party; it was an adult sex-ed class hosted by sex workers,” writes Salon’s Tracy Clark-Florey.
Furry Girl, an actress in vegan porn, tweeted that context is at the root of her argument, though she no longer wants to comment on the debacle. Meanwhile, Young returned to social media in hopes of ending the Twitter mommy sex wars: “The only one sexualizing this image of me breastfeeding is you. Which makes me feel truly disgusted and violated.”
(via dreamofsleep)
Really wish the article read “why do people become sex workers and why do people go to them?”…
Anyway, it’s a piece in the Guardian.
I am increasingly losing faith in my colleagues
NB: (Edit, Nov 2011): I misspoke here. Or miswrote. I wrote this post whilst angry and frustrated at my class and colleagues for ignoring the larger issue of Foucault’s slut-shaming and Rubin’s bullshit child-abuse apologism.
What i wrote last October does not accurately reflect my beliefs on the topic. This discussing ought to have read “offending paedophiles” or “child sex offenders” or somesuch. It was wrong of me to conflate the two—but, in some explanation as to why i did, Rubin’s argument begins by doing the same and mine is a response to hers.
You will find that my genuine opinion is better reflected in other (far more recent) posts on the topic. You should be able to find them quite easily, or i can provide links if not.
I thought i’d added an explanation to this post back in March. Turns out i had only done it to a repost of it—so i’m adding this now.
This morning we were reviewing Foucault’s History of Sexuality: Volume I and Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality”.
Yeah, the same History of Sexuality in which “Saint” Foucault engages in child sexual abuse victim-blaming, slut shaming and sexual abuse apologism.
One day in 1867, a farm hand from the village of Lapcourt, who was somewhat simple-minded, employed here then there, depending on the season, living hand-to-mouth from a little charity or in exchange for the worst sort of labor, sleeping in barns and stables, was turned in to the authorities. At the border of a field, he had obtained a few caresses from a little girl, just as he had done before and seen done by the village urchins round about him; for, at the edge of the wood, or in the ditch by the road leading to Saint-Nicolas, they would play the familiar game called ‘curdled milk.’ So he was pointed out by the girl’s parents to the mayor of the village, reported by the mayor to the gendarmes, led by the gendarmes to the judge, who indicted him and turned him over first to a doctor, then to two other experts who not only wrote their report but also had it published. What is the significant thing about this story? The pettiness of it all; the fact that this everyday occurrence in the life of a village sexuality, their inconsequential bulcolic pleasures, could become, from a certain time, the object not only of a collective intolerance but of a judicial action, a medical intervention, a careful clinical examination, and an entire theoretical elaboration (“The Repressive Hypothesis” in The History of Sexuality. London: Penguin, 1998, 31).
(Foucault goes on to reiterate that the man was “simple-minded” and a “village halfwit” and the little girls ”alert” and who would take “a few pennies… for favours the older ones refused”.)
Yes, the same Rubin who thinks paedophiles are victims of a “savage and undeserved witch hunt” and who fudges around the issue by applying to them the misnomer of “those whose eroticism transgresses generational boundaries”. she suggests that paedophilia should not be thought of as “a horror incapable of involving affection, love, free choice, kindness and transcendence”. She suggests, also, that paedophilia should no longer be “firmly entrenched as [a] psychological malfunction”, and refers to it as a “pathology” only in scare quotes.
So, why my loss of faith?
Because during our review of these works/authors—and we even discussed that Foucault passage in details—it wasn’t covered.
[I should add here that i’m currently battling a throat infection and have more or less lost my voice; it is most painful to talk.]
What was touched upon is Rubin’s idea that paedophilia is to contemporary (1980s) sexual perversion what homosexuality was in the 1950s, and that 20 years on we will no longer consider paedophilia to be a perversion. Well, it’s been over twenty years, so she’s clearly wrong. And that was pointed out. But it was THEN said that in another 20 years, or 50, this change would happen and something else would take the place of paedophilia—zoophilia was suggested—as the ultimate in sexual depravity/pathology.
It seems to have escaped my colleagues that in the 1950s, when homosexuality was considered almost universally to be a pathological and depraved sexual trait, so too was paedophilia. Paedophilia has always been considered as WORSE than homosexuality—because it obviously fucking is! Whereas views changed towards homosexuality because it made perfect sense for that to happen, because the misconceptions about homosexuality were just that—misconceptions—conceptions of paedophilia are based entirely in truth and cannot—should not—ever change.
Whilst i can understand the study Rubin (to address the egregiousness of her beliefs in this respect), i cannot understand why we would study Rubin (or Foucault) and NOT ADDRESS IT.
I almost walked out of that room today. On what fucking planet is it okay to ignore abuse apologism? On what planet is it okay to ignore victim-blaming and slut-shaming?
