Psuedofeminism's Latest Accusations

Having recently been told that, because I am anti-sexploitation industry (which includes anti-pornography, anti-stripping, anti-prostitution, and anti-rape—though notably, not anti-woman), I am anti-sex and I think that women’s bodies are filthy and ugly, that I should take men down for walking around naked, and that I am the sexist, I have decided to refute all of these arguments.

Let me begin by saying that I am vehemently pro-sex. But my pro-sex outlook has qualifiers: it must be consensual, it must be informed, it must be adult, and it must not sexualise dominance and power. Anything that is not—or is, in the case of the last—is rape.

The first of my qualifiers deals with blatant rape: you don’t force sex on somebody against their will. This is done in pornography, prostitution, and stripping as well.

The second deals with animals—and the rape of animals. Because we cannot communicate with animals the way we can with humans, and because animals have different societal morality than we do, we must abstain from coercing them into something that has different societal implications than it does with, say, dogs. (And some instances of animal rape, as with inserting a live fish into a woman’s vagina, is needless and abhorrent torture, and almost always ends in the death of the animal/s.)

The third of my qualifications deals with children, and ties in with both the second and fourth qualifications, and often the first as well. Because children are incapable of understanding sex the way two (or more) consensual, informed, non-dominating adults are, sexual acts with them are by definition molestation and/or rape, even when legal (unfortunately, it does happen in some places in the world). Also, sex with children is also, by definition, disobeyance of the fourth qualifier, which leads us to…

Fourth: sexualisation of dominance and power is rape. That is because rape is based on the sexualisation of dominance and power. I hear the protests to this already. “But it’s consensual!” they cry.

Don’t you think I know that, on the surface, it’s consensual? I was there too. I went into BDSM for quite a while when I was younger—and I attribute this to having been raised in a woman-hating society, as well as the fact that I found internet porn when I was in my early teens. I internalised the message that dominance and power of men over women—and even other women over women—is sexy, and I got into a place that I look back and see that I didn’t really want to be in. I almost got myself into a worse place because of it: marriage with a man that would sexualise my disempowerment, objectify me, and endlessly compare me and my sexual actions to his hentai. I got out of that relationship, though it wasn’t in the best way.

My point is: it is not a truly free choice. From the book Consuming Passions: Some Thoughts on History, Sex, and Free Enterprise I quote:

“Who knows what women would choose or do in an atmosphere of real freedom? How many would choose women, how many would choose celibacy, how many would be bisexual, how many monogamous, how many would bear children? Most of us have never had enough freedom to know what it means to choose.”

Acting out your internalised abuse is not a free choice; it is, most often, a choice of coercive internalised pressures that leave no room for thought on what you really want—to be treated gently, to be treated as though you were precious, as though you were beautiful, as though you were wonderful and no harm should come to you. I think that every person, human and nonhuman, should be treated this way. Because we all are. Idealism? Perhaps. At least it’s not a fallacy to say that people are not born evil; they are made that way.

Now, to conclude that part of the rebuttal, I am, once again, pro-sex. I am pro-loving sex. I am pro-hot sex (which is, in reality, the same as the first—anything else is once again the sexualisation of dominance and control). I am pro-sex, pro-fingering, pro-anything that feels good to you as long as it does not hurt someone else. “Hurt, not harm” forgets that these two things are the same thing. People invariably internalise abuse, whether it’s “loving” or not.

The second accusation—that I think women’s bodies are filthy and ugly—is patently untrue. I am a bisexual that leans towards women; I am in a committed relationship with another woman who I love intensely and of who I think every inch is beautiful and worthy of the tenderest care.

I think, too, that my own body is beautiful. It is not your average porn star’s body—which is why, for a long while, I could not feel hot or attractive or sexy. I internalised the messages of this woman-hating society that only women that are thin and small and big- and firm-breasted are attractive and worthy of someone who thinks they’re hot, and I took it out on my own rotund little body with a vengeance: I went through bulimia, I went through periods of willful starvation, I cut and burned myself, in that order, because I thought that I couldn’t be beautiful if I were FAT—and then I thought that, if I couldn’t be something other than FAT there was no point in taking care of my body.

But I am fat. And I am beautiful and I am sexy. I do not hate my body.

I hate pornography, which tells both women and men that they have to look a certain way and act a certain way to be sexy and attractive. I hate prostitution, which tells women that if we don’t put out for our man, he may as well go “get it” from some other woman. I hate stripping, which also tells men that women should be servants to their sexual desire.

I don’t hate my body, and I don’t hate women’s bodies. I think they are beautiful in their own right—irrespective of whether or not pornography/the media tells them they’re beautiful. They are unique, and true beauty is exactly that—unique.

To the third accusation: I agree, but for a different reason. The majority of the time, when men walk around naked, it is to intimidate and/or show off to women. Even if it does mean that the man is proud of his body, it always succeeds in intimidating women—and men are given the freedom to be proud of their body every day.

I support walking around naked. After all, we’re naked underneath our clothes; why be ashamed of it? But nudity for women and men has entirely different social implications—men are laughed at nervously, wondering what he’ll do next; women are told they’re being indecent and provocative and if they get raped, well then that’s their own fault.

Alright, let me clarify: I support making the world safe enough to walk around naked in, for women, men and children. That should definitely happen. But it will not happen as long as men are taught that they have a right to a woman’s body and a right to objectify it: turning someone into an object is how you kill them, as with animals, and how you rape them.

To the fourth accusation: do I look like much of a sexist when I only recognise the oppression of women and children inherent in pornography, prostitution, and stripping? Do I look like much of a sexist when I oppose their exploitation to make a buck—an exploitation that not only often leads to their rape, but to the rape of other women? Do I look like much of a sexist when I add that not only to I oppose pornography centered on the objectification of women, but the objectification of men as well, in gay porn?

Do I look like much of a sexist when I am trying to undo the damage that internalising the abuse of this woman-hating society has done?

I, certainly, think not.