People have got to stop comparing feminists to Germaine Greer.
I mean yes, Germaine Greer is a feminist and yes, I'm a feminist but that doesn't mean we're one and the same. It's like saying that Chairman Mao and Li Cunxin are both Chinese and therefore one and the same. If you know anything about history you'll know that's...not really true...
I mean, I love Germaine Greer, but she's a little...radical. I mean, there's no way I'll taste my own menstrual blood. I've tasted my own blood before - anyone who's fainted from two hour nosebleeds has - but there is no sense in doing something so bizarre. I love and respect my body without such stunts, thank you very much.
But I will raise a valid point that was first (or maybe not first - forgive me if I haven't done my research, but I am trying to study for year twelve finals) raised in Greer's The Female Eunuch. Even in this day and age, with twelve year olds in mini skirts and grandmas in fuck-me boots, women still cannot take charge of their own sexuality. We are still sexual objects, not sexual beings.
Put it this way, in this day and age, it's a given that teenage boys will masturbate and watch porn. Granted, it's not exactly polite conversation, but realities are realities. It's naturalized into society. It never freaked me out. I only turned sixteen this year. This is the dominant discourse of boys as I've always known.
But what about girls? True, it's a given that there are lots of girls my age who are sleeping around, but when it comes to sexuality and sexual pleasure we're all rather prudes. Sex is something you do because, because people expect it of you, or because you're daring enough to be a slut and wear the scarlet letter proudly. It's something you do as a favour to boys, almost. To be theirs for the taking. Which is not an idea that I altogether reject, but that's the only way we view women and sex.
Sexual pleasure for women is seen as a reward - a reward for being desirable, a reward for catching someone's eye, a reward for getting a man and holding him down. If you can't do that, you don't deserve it - that's the message that was beaten into me. It's why for so long only married women were allowed to be sexually active - it's a prize earned by being the obedient housewife. But no. That's not right. Pleasure and happiness in every form is a right, not a reward, regardless of gender. Sex and relationships shouldn't be....bargains. I think we take give and take far too literally here.
A woman actively seeking sexual pleasure is still an enormous taboo. Doing things because you want to - not because it's expected, or breaking expectations, but because you like it - it's still not acceptable. Prostitutes do it for the money. Sluts do it out of desperation. Why can't we ever accept the idea that some women embrace their sexuality...because they like it?
The idea of a girl touching herself or watching porn is not naturalized into society but somewhat expected of boys. It still happens, everyone knows that, it's the worst-kept secret but a secret nonetheless - a shame. The proof? I know most of my readers are my classmates, and I'm probably going to get a lot of crap for this post, whereas a lot of boys have openly discussed such topics and nobody gives a shit. I don't care. The rumour mill can go suck it. Somebody has to say it. Besides, I haven't said a thing about what I do in my own time. My private life is just that - private.
Lipstick feminism subscribes to the theory that women are empowered by making themselves physically attractive and that there is no philosophic contradiction in being a feminist and being a female. We're all human. We all feel things, desire things.
In the end, I think that's the message that feminists are trying to bring about. Equality before the law is not equality within society. Women are no longer barred by the law, but they're still confined by societal expectations, social taboos, cultural inequalities between men and women. I don't want to live in a society where I cannot be me. Sexual expression is a part of personal expression, and in all ways we must be uninhibited.
I'm not afraid of people seeing me as...crass, seedy, flirtatious, provocative, whatever. Most of the people I know and like are like that, I don't see anything wrong with it. I'll be honest with you - I first started being like this when I was one of the boys, when whatever I said had absolutely no impact on the hormonal minds of teenage boys - I just wasn't the type, apparently. Now the tables are turning a little, but hey, I am who I am. I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not. No guy is worth biting my tongue and pretending to be a nun.
1 comment:
"Sex and relationships shouldn't be bargains. I think we take give and take too literally here".
And yet people like Catherine Hakim will talk about "increasing your erotic capital in the workplace" and this would be published.
The eunuch: capacity or desire? I had always thought there would be some organic failure making the eunuch, when they weren't socialised that way.
Outgrossing Germaine: would you taste your pubic hair?
Helen Gurley Brown (editor of Cosmopolitan, and managing the international editions when she left the American one in 1996) just died this week. She carried the "sexual pleasure" message before Greer, but not as far as Greer. In the 1960s, I believe? HGB's contribution was to the fun-loving woman who might not necessarily have an academic life or career, which Greer had in spades.
In the Female Eunuch there are lots of chapters about the body, and the two last chapters are about reform and revolution. You will meet the people who Greer thought were more radical than she was, and she took some inspiration and criticism.
Liked the distinction you made about privacy and secrecy in relation to female pornographic habits.
(Greer wrote two other interesting books: Slip-Shod Sibyls which is about women's poetry from Sappho to the nineteenth century and a lot in between. The second interesting book is Beautiful Boy which is a coffee table book about the beauty of the boy).
Greer was very much a populariser and a performer, even as she worked against the grain.
And though she went to a convent school (and the teaching nuns had among them some impressive feminists) she was one of the guys. She also handles regional and indigenous Australia well.
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