Of Women, Pleasure, Feminists & Fingers
Sophie Platt, writing for The F Word, has an irritating but valuable article here.
Irritating because it is filled with typical vindictive puerility:
I would love for them to turn the tables round one night and end a sexual encounter before their partners had come. A friend of mine tried this once, and reported that the incensed rage and sulking that followed could only be likened to that of a three-year-old who has been told Christmas had been cancelled.
Also due to the prejudiced, sourceless bigotry that somehow imagines that an Austen reference that was long ago faded through overuse constitutes a valid substitute for anything beyond the most meagre of anecdotal evidence:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that teenage boys on the whole are more concerned with their own satisfaction than that of their partners
Let’s see if I can give this a go: It is a truth universally acknowledged that Afro-Caribbean men care more about stealing car stereos than raising their bastard children. Does that sound in any way acceptable to everyone? No matter, I shall just generate a false consensus in lieu of an adequete proof and make pretence that my view is that of the entirity of universe denizens. Does this not make a refreshing change from the mainstream press and its ceaseless distortions?
Furthermore her phallus obsession is seemingly total, as well as less than benign:
It’s just that so many are made to look like a penis, some disturbingly realistic, that they seem rather sinister as a tool for us to become better acquainted with our own bodies.
Where to begin with this? Is she stating that she finds real phalluses realistic? Or is it the prospect of women using items which resemble the organ used for the act that they are stimulating with it that unsettles her? Is it really appropriate and wise to label the sexual predilections of others “sinister” in such an article? Or any article? Is it in pointing out her failure to mention the rise of the “Fleshlight” devices for men that are now plastered all over the internet?
More harmfully still she has made a deep error in her analysis of “Raunch Culture”. Platt attempts to stage a forced division, of sorts, between the elements she truly disapproves of (lap-dancing legality, pole-dancing lessons, girls wearing mini-skirts and so on) from those she can not help but muster begrudging respect for (the popularity of a programme revolving around the sex lives of a set of vapid egoist females, the mass marketing and cultural strength of an item designed purely to bring women vast amounts of pleasure, vibrators on sale at Boots).
Such a dichotomy quite simply does not exist.
Both sets of phenomenon are part of a cultural motion away from the moralistic confines of the past and towards a state of personal liberty to pursue physical pleasure via carnal means. They are not divisible and any efforts to consider them along some form of “Pro” and “Anti” patriarchy lines is bound for failure, as are all other strictly partisan assessments. Women pleasuring themselves and feeling no shame and men resorting to bandwidth over charm and discussing without generating horror their nights at lap-dancing clubs are not in the slightest phenomenon which can be held apart. Their origins are precisely the same: formerly residual Christian morality dominated Britain’s views of carnal union, but since this is rapidly disintegrating people are beginning to act far more as they please and are in acceptance of far less restraints or restrictive mores. To divide this tendency into two separate paragraphs and imagine that it can somehow be split apart is the height of foolishness: they are simply differing manifestations within near identical circumstances. But Platt becomes wound up in her tiresomely hackneyed depiction of Raunch Culture:
it has become about appearing to be sexual available simply to please men and not to fulfil their own desires or fantasies.
The rise of so-called ‘raunch culture’ means that for many girls, merely looking ‘pretty’ has taken a back seat for looking ‘sexy’: supermarkets stock pole dancing kits as children’s toys, glamour modelling is in the top five career choices for pre-teen girls and hundreds of girls all over the country are counting the days until they are 18 and are legally allowed breast enhancements. Girls are being sexualised at an increasingly younger age, and it seems to be more about self-esteem than sexual satisfaction. The pleasure that comes from sexual experiences at this age is often the feeling of being thought attractive and being desired by a male than actually getting off.
Has she no conception of the positive effects of banishing shame in exposing more flesh than our present 1950s hang-over hegemony permits? Is she unaware that the frequency of exibitionism has always matched voyeurism? Obviously not: it is required that all shifts be made somehow in favour of the Patriarchy. Thus pole dancing kits suddenly are related to skimpier outfits for young women and are entirely unrelated to alterations that increase women’s pleasure.
As flawed a view as this unquestionably is this article is valauble because Platt has hit the nub of this issue: it is simply not expected of girls that they will entertain themselves, while with boys only (fittingly paired) certain fundamentalist Christians and some extremist feminists would argue otherwise. This is a strange and harmful double standard, in that it denies half of the population the assumption that it is correct to pursue their personal pleasure. The consequences are young (and occasionally even elderly) women who have never experienced an orgasm, a highly unfortunate state of affairs that leaves the men in a strong lead.
It would seem that Platt, then, is excellent at identifying the problem before us but fails in terms of solution. She, for instance, disparrages the shift that has eradicated the near total silence on matters of female pleasuring that reigned previously, through her offensive against the surgingly popular sex toys, now sold by a variety of mainstream stores and chains. For how can something remain a taboo when it is upon the evening news? Having the act she fears girls are not expected to participate in directly alluded to on chemists shelves is surely going to break the culture which she outlines.
The silence is thus effectively already breached.
Posted in: Feminism, Fisking, Post-Feminism, Sexuality
I would disagree with you that there is no difference between lap-dancing and vibrators: vibrators do not involve another human being in the sexual act. I am not one of those feminists who wants to see all lap-dancing bars closed, in fact, I’d like to see prostitution legalised (if only for the safety of the prostitutes) but to pretend that there is no difference between a solo act and one involving two (or more) active participants is disingenuous at best and actively misleading at worst. Which is a shame, because it spoils an article which is otherwise “valuable”.
“somehow imagines that a Bronte reference”
Eh? Austen old bean, Austen.
“Women pleasuring themselves and feeling no shame and men resorting to bandwidth over charm and discussing without generating horror their nights at lap-dancing clubs are not in the slightest phenomenon which can be held apart.”
You know, it is possible for man to masturbate without porn or lapdancing. Hard as it may be for you to believe.
I would disagree with you that there is no difference between lap-dancing and vibrators
No you would not, or at least not if you read my actual argument instead of presenting a shoddy straw man. What I was saying was that the two becoming more acceptable (both have existed for quite some time) is part of the same piece of cultural motion: towards acceptability of sexual actions formerly classed as sodomy (seeing as there was no chance for a child to be conceived) and towards a more accepting and tolerant position where “Do what thou wilt” is the law of the land.
Unless “Raunch Culture” is intended to be a term purely in existence to reference things that feminists (and the reactionary press) disapprove of, in which case I struggle to see its value, it must include both Rampant Rabbits being something a lady can keep on her bedside tables and shady night clubs where men and women will expose body parts to paying punters not retaining their formerly utterly unacceptable nature. Both are differing examples of the same cultural tendency.
Furthermore I never accused that feminist, the feminists, or for that matter anyone, of wanting all lap dancing clubs shut.
Eh? Austen old bean, Austen.
Whoops. I’ll edit that, my error. Late night blogging was bound to leave me riddled with such errors, although perhaps the largest one was writing a superfluous second post…
You know, it is possible for man to masturbate without porn or lapdancing. Hard as it may be for you to believe.
Ah, how glorious your presumptuousness! I don’t really see why I should have to give account of my own practices in defence of my argument (seems like quite the ad hominem to me) but since you made a poor assumption I suppose that I should call you on it: I often reference fantasy rather than existing material and also engage in collaborative erotic works via various digital media.
I’m too poor to frequent lapdancing clubs or any other establishment of that data but to be frank that’s not really the consequence of my lack of cash that has had me cursing capitalism most. I doubt that when (if?) I begin to earn a wage my unbreached pattern non-attendance will alter.
I will not deny using pornography, but if my supply were suddenly to run dry (something that nothing short of the death of the internet would achieve) I would not be overwhelmed with woe. For a number of years I did not rely upon pre-generated pornography for carnal kicks I suppose that this renders me a frequent but non-dependent user.
So no, it is not particularly hard for me to believe. In fact it was the norm for me for quite a while. I’ll not sink to your level and start making inferences about your own habits, but I’d suggest that you restrain your presumptuousness in future.
WTF? Gina was making a perfectly salient point, there. To go off on a rabid attack seems slightly like protesting too much to me…
Still, if you think that I’m erecting a straw man, when I was actually trying to (constructively) point out a flaw in your otherwise fairly rational argument then you’re going to take even the most innocuous comment personally, aren’t you? Silly boy!
(see, I can patronise you just as well as you can patronise me).
WTF? Gina was making a perfectly salient point, there. To go off on a rabid attack seems slightly like protesting too much to me…
“Hard as it may be for you to believe” she says. What does that imply to you?
Still, if you think that I’m erecting a straw man, when I was actually trying to (constructively) point out a flaw in your otherwise fairly rational argument then you’re going to take even the most innocuous comment personally, aren’t you? Silly boy!
Jennie, you said that I was arguing that vibrators and lap dancing are the same. I wasn’t.
(see, I can patronise you just as well as you can patronise me).
Oscar Wilde once said that people could only patronise you if you let them. He was probably wrong there, actually, but it sounds fun.
The sentence that Gina quotes doesn’t say that vibrators and lap-dancing are the same? Maybe you didn’t mean it to, but that’s what it reads like.
Yeah, so it does. My error. But it was intended to read as meaning that both were part of the same move towards a “Raunch Culture”, and it still could, but it’s ambiguous and rather than two examples they’re more like the focus that become equated. Or at least that’s an easy interpretation to make, although not at all what I intended.
It should be borne in mind, though, that I was not even referring to the events themselves, but the attitudes surrounding them. Women are becoming more open about their masturbation habits and consequentially doing it more and feeling less ashamed, while men are becoming less wary of admitting that they went to a lapdancing club to enjoy themselves. It is their willingness to discuss their actions and their degree of shame (if any) over them that I was referring to, rather than the actions themselves.
* poke *
Then we are pretty much in agreement.
I nominate you to come and get angry about something on MY blog next time
And FTR I have never been ashamed of masturbation, either doing it or talking about it, but then my daddy is a biology teacher, so I was brought up to think of sex as natural and healthy. I find it mystifying when people go “eeeeurgh” about things they’ve never tried which are perfectly normal and natural, but then I suspect I have a much broader definition of normal and natural than lots of people.
I have 3 things to say:
LOL, WTF, and TMI, dude.
kthnxbai ^_^