Sun, 2008-11-30 14:29

In a “best-of” repost Lisa of Feminist Mormon Housewives brought up a 2004 post by Not Ophelia about different standards of modesty in different countries (Europe, Utah, Saudi Arabia) and asks a great question…

Anyway, what stuck me about this whole European nudity thing was that toplessness and even complete nudity was not connected with sexuality the way it is in this country. At the pool there was [of course] much flirting going on between the gorgeous [topless] girls and the equally gorgeous [topless] boys. But I don’t think the boys were anymore ‘turned on’ by the whole thing than an American teenaged boy faced with a bikini would be. OTOH I do think the European boys were less turned on by the topless thing than say a Saudi boy would be when faced with the Modest Mormon Swimsuit. Female toplessness is no more a sexual thing in Europe than say showing your arm is in America. But in other countries a hidden arm is a sexual arm, and a sexual arm must be hidden [don’t you just hate that circular logic.]

So, a few thought questions:

It seems to me that one can be completely naked and completely modest [as in Europe.] One can also be fully clothed and quite immodest. Modesty may have less to do with a state of clothing and more to do with drawing attention to one’s self, particularly in a sexual way.

And as for burqas and the like — can/does modesty worsen lust? Or is it just prudishness that causes the burqa problem? [And its attendant female repression]

Read the original post here.

Can’t remember where I said it first, but it’s not that people look more or less sexy naked or partially undressed, it’s that generally speaking people don’t look any more sexy naked than dressed.

Case in point: almost everywhere faces are kept naked. This doesn’t mean we’re indifferent to attractive faces, in fact we’re sometimes captivated. What we don’t do, however, is sexualize naked faces. Going a step further, mouths and hands are unambiguously sexual organs, but almost everywhere naked mouths and hands are not sexualized.

This gets, I think, to Ophilia’s underlying point: the relative erotics of dress are about intention and, I think more significantly, viewers’ relative sense of privilege, not absolute state of dress.

Sat, 2008-11-29 21:59

Photo by Flickr user ideath. Used under a Creative Commons license.

I mentioned in the last post that I’d had such a relaxing day I’d forgotten to post anything. Well, part of the relaxation of having nothing to say means it’s fun to plop down on the couch to read a book I always meant to read to my children back when they were too young to read for themselves. (A copy having mysteriously shown up on a shelf in the intervening years.)

The book being T. H. White’s 1939 classic The Once and Future King. Which I vaguely remembered from my own childhood…

...but may have somehow confused with the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone... but I digress.

Anyway, right there on page one, barely halfway down the page, was something eminently post-worthy.

The governess had red hair and some mysterious wound from which she derived a lot of prestige by showing it to all the women of the castle, behind closed doors. It was believed to be where she sat down, and to have been caused by sitting on some armour at a picnic by mistake. Eventually she offered to show it to Sir Ector, who was Kay’s father, had hysterics and was sent away. They found out afterwards that she had been in a lunatic hopital for three years.

Hmm. Some sort of wound. From sitting on something. That she wanted to show to Sir Ector. And was sent away for being hysterical. Hmmm…

See also The Job Nobody Wanted for more about “hysteria.” See also “no-sex” class.
See also that in 1940 when the book was written an English (or, for that matter, American, Canadian, Australian…) husband could still have his wife committed to an asylum on his say-so. So it’s not just about deepening and enriching an ancient myth with day-to-day narrative.

Could be an interesting read. Who knew?

Sat, 2008-11-29 21:24

I don’t think I posted anything at all today. Kochanie did, and it was pretty great. But… aah, it’s been a wonderful day to chill out with the family, clean up and put away the last of the Thanksgiving decorations, munch on chunks of leftover turkey from the fridge (my nine-year-old, clearly thrilled, kept saying “it’s just like string cheese!”), hang out with a few friends and a couple of suddenly-exotic-tasting pizzas!

All in all a great “holiday.”

Fri, 2008-11-28 16:58

While searching for something completely unrelated I ran across the following post from last April by Jender of Feminist Philosophers.

Lt Colonel Diane Beaver was a staff judge advocate at Guantanamo Bay. She describes discussions about what “interrogation techniques” to use, in which colleagues took ideas from the TV show 24:

The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even: “You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas.” A wan smile crossed Beaver’s face. “And I said to myself, you know what, I don’t have a dick to get hard. I can stay detached.”

Then she gave her approval to waterboarding.

Standpoint theorists have argued for the claim that women or members of other marginalised groups may be able to attain superior positions for acquiring knowledge, at least of particular subject matters. But none of them would ever have endorsed the claim that female anatomy makes one automatically superior in judgments about torture techniques. The privileged standpoint(s) are not meant to be due simply to anatomy, and— most importantly, but most commonly overlooked by critics— they’re meant to be the product of a lot of hard intellectual work, rather than automatic. For more on standpoint theory, go here.

I nicked the whole post from here.

Seems like another failure to incorporate Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza’s concept of kyriarchy into ethical decision making. In the context of the Guantanamo decision-making process having a penis (at least as represented in Lt. Colonel Beaver’s testimony) provided no advantage, but not having a penis provided no advantage either… while creating the (mistaken) impression it did.

Fri, 2008-11-28 14:25

[Note: This started out as a note at the bottom of this post about sex work and domestic violence but realized it could probably stand on its own. —fl]

While looking up exact numbers of domestic/intimate homicides (assault rates are often barkingly ambiguous but a body’s pretty unambiguously, and un-ignorably, a body) I noticed two fairly persistent mismatches of statistics.

One set, comparing the number of women victims to men victims compares overall rates. This leaves the misleading impression that women overwhelmingly victims compared to men. Another set implies that women are overwhelmingly domestically homicidal compared to men. This leaves the impression that women are more sangunary when it comes to domestic violence.

Care to guess which camp (DV activists vs MRAs) prefer to emphasize which statistics?

Bottom line, though, is that men are overwhelmingly likely to be murder victims, period, meaning the relative percent of DV victims out of all types of homicide is pretty low. Meanwhile women commit a very small number of murders overall, so their DV homicide rates are statistically high but numerically low.

It took a little digging but it looks as though in the U.S. approximately two women are murdered by their women partners for every one man murdered by their woman partner. Still disproportionate but it also suggests domesticity isn’t a completely safe bet for men either. One wonders if relying on less partisan hyperbole might result in a) more common ground, b) less unproductively ginned-up gendered outrage, and especially c) fewer domestic homicides.

Update: I didn’t say it before but in case it’s not completely obvious, realistic ratios of domestic violence or domestic homicides justify nothing, mitigate nothing, explain nothing. And confuses nothing. It’s meaningless to say “only” two women die for every man instead of three or ten or fifty, just as it’s meaningless to try and spin something like “almost half the victims are men.” If the ratio is “only” two to one it’s as much a gendered problem as if it was a million to one. And if more men are victims says only that the problem is bigger than our gender narratives would have it, not that anything is somehow more “fair.” I’m pretty sure nobody would have misunderstood but it never hurts to be clear.

Fri, 2008-11-28 13:31

Photo “Tête à Tête” by Flickr user Pabo76. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Lynn Gazis-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones had a great post a little while ago, the third part of which (her post covers three unrelated topics) discusses the question of “casual sex.” One important point stands out (my emphasis in bold)

Final unrelated topic, “casual sex.” There was a thread at Hugo Schwyzer’s blog that digressed into a discussion of the meaning of this phrase. Here are my thoughts. Among the range of attitudes toward sexual morality in this country, you can find “it’s fine as long as it’s consensual and condoms are used as needed,” “it’s fine as long as you’re in love,” and “it’s fine as long as you’re married.” Oversimplifying a lot here, because there’s a lot more of a range in detail than that, but in this case, I want to discuss the “it’s fine as long as you’re in love” position.

...one of the problems with criticizing “casual sex” is that it’s easy to take that in fuzzy ways that don’t have much to do with really thinking about what responsible sexual behavior involves – “casual sex” is sex if you’re not really, really in love, or sex if you haven’t had the requisite number of dates first, or sex with a number of partners that’s, well, fuzzy, but certainly more partners than I’ve had. So, if you’re going to criticize “casual sex,” be sure to be clear about what sex you don’t consider casual; otherwise people will just fill in their own varied ideas, and pat themselves on the back for not having “casual sex” by their own standards.

She said it here (but you’ll have to scroll down a bit.)

First of all I really appreciate her point that definitions vary up to the point where, for some people… quite a few actually (certain major religious denominations, for instance) non-intentionally-reproductive sex in marriage may be frowned on as “casual sex.”

(Quick note: I haven’t mentioned this for a while but I come by “prudish libertine” honestly: while I’m a strong advocate of having sex if you’re ready to have sex, I also firmly believe that “now you’re married now” doesn’t automatically mean “now you’re ready to have sex.” What does mean ready for sex? Here’s the official Scarleteen checklist. It’s long. It’s fairly strict. It doesn’t include “well, now that you’re married you should.” I think it’s spot on. But I digress….)

What I really appreciate is Lynn’s point that “casual sex” is what my logic and rhetoric professor called an equivocal term that needs to be defined before we use it. Even in, well, casual conversation.

A similarly equivocal term would be “sex**.” Another would be intimacy.

Speaking of which, Lynn mentions what she sees as my position on intimacy and casual sex. It’s a good illustration of her point about defining terms.

Two of the bloggers I read often are non-worksafe figleaf and Steven Barnes. Both of them talk a lot about sex (figleaf with more explicitness than the much more work safe Steven Barnes). Both of them clearly see sex as a vital and positive part of life. Neither of them seems to have a sexual ethic tied particularly strongly to a particular religious tradition, and neither goes with the old rule that you should need to be married to have sex. And both are pro-choice, as well as, of course, pro-birth control.

But beyond that, the guidelines they set seem to be very different. figleaf, who likes to call himself a “prudish libertine” or a “libertine prude,” has lots of ideas about what ways of approaching sex are desirable, but none of them require any level or intimacy or relationship between the partners (assuming both enthusiastically consent). Steve has said that it’s wisest not to have sex with anyone from whom you wouldn’t take a 2am phone call a year later, and that it’s not good to have sex under any circumstances where you wouldn’t be around long enough to know if a pregnancy resulted. Now, the thing about this advice is, whether you think it’s the right place to draw the line or not, it’s a clear place to draw the line, and not an arbitrary one. I think this kind of advice is rationally defensible in secular terms (and the 2am phone call example rather appeals to me), but simply letting people read whatever they want into “casual sex,” not such a good idea.

I think this is another case where the definition of “intimate” is equivocal because it sounds like Steven Barnes and I aren’t that far apart. I tend not to talk much about intimacy not because I think it’s unimportant but because I (mistakenly?) assume it’s a given. (Much like I wouldn’t talk about the importance of atmospheric oxygen if I blogged mostly about exercise.) I should probably make it clear every now and then that while I may have a much more expansive definition of “intimacy” it’s very, very important to me. For instance I’m not comfortable inviting someone to dinner if I wouldn’t be willing to field a 2am phone call from them a year later.

And no, this doesn’t mean I’d only invite someone to dinner unless I’d also have sex with them. “Intimacy” may encompass “sexual interest” but not vice versa at all, at all.

[**See Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich. Also, a college-level sex-ed textbook I read had a table discussing what people considered “sex.” A small number of surveyed respondents thought even penis-in-vagina intercourse to ejaculation didn’t count. It was way below 1%, and there was no explanation, but that anyone at all thought that might not count illustrates that what’s meant by the word is extremely ambiguous. —fl]

Fri, 2008-11-28 13:06

Anastasia of Sexualité mentions what may (or may not) be a trend that’s getting way less attention than women auctioning their virginity on eBay.

Just as there are women auctioning their virtue, there are women that are paying professionals to be deflowered.

I can see the positives of paying a male escort for that very first time. If I recall all the sex surveys I’ve read over the years, the first time is a so-so event. Disasters outweigh the triumphs; the disappointment can be a shock, influencing one’s view of sex – until they have a better experience.

Professional sex workers are just that – professional. While paid sex may not compare to ordinary sex, it may be good for that first time. I think if you have a good first sexual experience, you’ll expect more of the same or have an idea of what works and what doesn’t. A crap experience is something else.

She said it here.

Growing up it was a bit of clicé for older men to deprecate the “fumblings” of “snot-nosed punks” when assessing… well… the asses of attractive young women. In favor, not surprisingly, of “old bulls” who “knew what they were doing.” Said snot-nosed punks were supposed to be taken to a brothel to be “broken in.” Nobody considered that, gee, maybe if young men weren’t supposed to be, or more often pretend to be “broken in,” and maybe if young women weren’t, or weren’t supposed to pretend to be passive and ignorant then maybe they could work out the details, you know, together!

Shocking I know. As Scarleteen’s Heather Corinna says, though, the benefits of mutual fumbling are terribly underrated — unless you think you have something to prove… and maybe if you don’t think it’s “supposed to hurt” then getting there together can be kind of fun. Not to mention a whole lot more egalitarian.

But still, if collaboration between equals is one way to take control of a situation tradition says should be the domain of men then, perhaps ironically, yeah, hiring someone you’re confident can be competent and (at least professionally) courteous would be another.

[Note: I object so strongly to the current construction of transactional sex as currently constructed not because it’s selling sex — I don’t have a problem with that — but because it’s so unilaterally gendered: men desiring sex, women desiring compensation. See also The Oldest Profession Nobody Wanted. Therefore the idea of some women preferring to hire sex professionals not just to “break them in” but because they themselves would be more likely to enjoy it seems like a qualitative rather than quantitative development. (See also the last chapter of Pepper Schwartz’s Prime. —fl]

Fri, 2008-11-28 12:40

Aspasia of La Libertine’s Salon raises what perhaps too many people, thinking it’s a just snarking, might dismiss

“Why do cops and prosecutors feel this compulsion to hold up a victimized prostitute as the only reality of a prostitute and hence, a reason why the profession should be abolished, when they don’t do the same in other cases where (usually) female-male sexual relations are involved? Why don’t cops and prosecutors who deal mostly with married, monogamous male-on-female domestic violence cases ever say, ‘Marriage is not a victimless crime. Look at this woman, really look at her. She looks like every other woman–a victim of her upbringing, a victim of her circumstance and now a victim of the government’s policy.’ Because, hey, that is very often the case in het dv cases. I know many women who have been abused by husbands who came from homes where their father abused their mother and perhaps the daughter thought, ‘oh, this is how married couples are supposed to interact’.”

She said it here.

Thing is, actuarially speaking when it comes to risks to women’s life and health domestic violence in heterosexual domestic relationships really is high — well below cancer and heart disease but right up there with all other causes. So it’s not so much that the risks of sex-work are overrated as the risks of non-sex intimate relationships are drastically underrated.

Funny how it’s just the nature of the twittery vs. substance fallacy that people (myself not excluded) would get all frissiony about the safety of sex-workers (oooh,sex crimes… as if most violence against prostitutes occured during commercial sex) without bothering to put it in the context of the safety of all women in relationships.

(Via Amber Rhea.)

Fri, 2008-11-28 11:55

An exasperated Abby Lee of Girl With a One-Track Mind snarked out an impressive list of Cosmo-esque “Facts.” Various approving bloggers have posted excerpts, here’s mine.

• I adore that when people say “sexy”, they mean “female”.
• It pleases me that the default position in how sex is marketed is always male and heterosexist, or female and bisexual. Because women never want to see pictures of naked men: all of us are happier just to look at other women, don’t you know?!
• I love it that porn is so focused on the male perspective, because as a woman I obviously have no interest in seeing it portrayed through a female gaze.
• I don’t need to wank because, like, I’m not a man. Also, my boyfriend might get jealous.
• I have no need for orgasms because cuddling is so much nicer and women don’t have the same sexual urges as men, anyway. Also, what’s an orgasm?

• I like accusing women of being “sex negative” if they reject the mass-market monopolisation of their sexuality as a financial commodity.

She said it here.

It’s funny how that whole “humorless bitch” thing works. By a lot of standards I’m being “sex negative” when I reject the mass-market monopolization of women’s sexuality as a financial commodity. The “financial commodity” part could just be another way of saying the “no-sex” class — it assumes women’s sexuality as an extractable or manufacturable, transferrable, fungible**: of value to women as an item of exchange but not personally needed (since cuddling is so much nicer.)

More recently I’ve gone “sex negative” on the mass-market monopolization part as well, objecting to the remarkably durable-in-the-face-of-counter-evidence impression that women are such a universal symbol of (heterosexual) sex that generically sexualized images of women are used to market erotica by straight women for other straight women. Leaving room for men to appear exclusively as… well, it’s kind of irrelevant since except for the occasional crusading blogger hetero men almost never appear as erotic in their own right. Doing things to correctly erotic women, maybe, as proxies for presumed hetero male consumers, but never themselves intentionally presented as erotically “consumable” for the enjoyment of methodicall-presumed-non-existant hetero women consumers (who’s boyfriends wouldn’t approve of them wanking anyway… unless it was so they could watch.)

Yup. Sex-negative, that’s me. That’s Abby Lee. That’s Amanda Marcotte and her boyfriend. That’s a lot of you. Because it’s not even sex unless it’s only pleasurable to men and profitable for women. Anything else would be unnatural!

(I love Lee’s list, by the way — it’s cool seeing which items different people have chosen to excerpt for their posts. If you visit her site you can probably find favorites of your own.)

[** Fungible: Term used to describe assets (usually securities) that can be exchanged with similar assets and are capable of being “loaned” (www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/vatfinmanual/VATFIN9300.htm); a commodity that is freely interchangeable with another in satisfying an obligation of goods or commodities — freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation (wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn); Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungible.) —fl]

Thu, 2008-11-27 20:06

Image: Aristotle and Phyllis by the Master of the Amsterdam Cabinet, c. 1485, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The depiction of the concubine Phyllis riding the philosopher Aristotle was a popular subject for artists of the Gothic period and early Renaissance. Popular because the patrons of those artists considered the scene to be emblematic of the relationship of the sexes and of the mind and body. The scene known as Aristote chevauché is derived from the medieval tale Lai d’Aristote“ written by Henri d’Andeli, a thirteenth-century Norman poet.

According to the Lai, Aristotle, tutor to Alexander the Great, advised the young king to avoid the company of the concubine Phyllis, since the time spent in her arms was dissipating Alexander’s energy and dedication to his studies and civic duties. Alexander agreed, albeit reluctantly, and eventually told Phyllis the reason why he avoided her company. Phyllis devised a plan to unseat her learned rival.

When Aristotle was in his study in the early hours of the morning, he was distracted from his reading by the sound of singing in the garden. Looking out the open window, he saw Phyllis, barefoot and clad in a gossamer shift, dancing and singing in the garden. As any serious student will tell you, willpower is no match for sexual desire which has been denied for too long. Aristotle groaned, closed his books and called to Phyllis. He told her how much he wanted her and, she promised to satisfy him if he would indulge a whim of hers: he should be her steed and allow her to ride on his back around the enclosed garden. Aristotle agreed, dropped to all fours, and carried Phyllis on his back while she sang:

Master Silly carries me.
Love leads on, and so he goes,
by Love’s authority.

Alexander, intrigued by the singing in the garden, looks over the wall and sees Reason ridden hard by Desire. When confronted by Alexander, Aristotle tells his student that there is a lesson to be learned here: if a wise and aged philosopher can be swayed so readily by Love then one as young and inexperienced as Alexander must be on his guard against such temptation. However, Aristotle’s influence has been weakened and Alexander once again enjoys the company of Phyllis.

Henri d’Andeli’s narrative has a tongue-in-cheek quality, poking fun at those who believe themselves impervious to physical desire. But over time the story behind the scene was changed. Phyllis was no longer Alexander’s concubine but the wife of Aristotle and, her act of riding her husband like a beast was interpreted as an example of woman’s malicious manipulation of man’s need for physical love. By attributing such power and malice to women, men became, by default, the submissive class. A resentfully submissive class.

We are in dire need of new imagery.

Where can one find an image of male vulnerability that is not insulting? The place to start is the most powerful sexual organ, the human mind, preferably the mind of one who has lived on both sides of the whip. One such as Elizavetta Mora, of Vespertine Erotica. Consider this excerpt from a piece entitled, Words: sometimes they’re pretty useless, in which she describes a man who can deliver a fifteen minute monologue detailing what he wants Elizavetta to do, yet cannot look her in the eye as he speaks. And for her, that reluctance holds the key to what that man really needs and wants:

“Tell me how much,” I said. “Tell me how much you want me to hurt your cock. Say it. Say all those words you just said… say them again to me.”

His eyes began fluttering with tears. He struggled with trying to speak while looking in my eyes. His struggle went on for a long, holy moment.

Then just before it seemed he was going to finally speak, I reared back fast and slapped his face very hard.

When his head snapped back toward me, the look on his face went from stunned to hurt… betrayal… anger… in a matter of seconds. I backed up and stood barely a foot away from him to watch while he strained and arched in his bonds toward me, away from me, totally at the mercy of all the emotions and sensations firing at light speed through his being.

Eventually, as I suspected would happen, a great rage rose up in him; a rage that made me thankful he was bolted to the wall. And, as I suspected, it was the rage that finally did it (along with, perhaps, my uncompromising, uncommenting witnessing of it).

And as that lifetime of rage silently burned it’s white hot way from the center of his body outward, he never broke my gaze – and never said a word – until his knees gave way and his cock spurted in wild grunting whole-body thrusts into the electrified air between us.

You can read the entire post by clicking here.

That scene conjures up many images in my mind, none of which I would describe as humiliating or insulting. One has to have a profound respect for another human being to free him from so fortified a prison of the self.

If you visit her site and read her poetry and stories, you will find that Elizavetta understands what Helene Cixous meant when she referred to l’ecriture feminine, feminine writing, language that allows a woman to express what her body feels like to her. Such language is poetic, nonlinear, and free of the restrictions of realistic prose. It is this language, grounded in the body, that Elizavetta uses to give shape to the thoughts of the spellbound Thomas Rhymer:

To her understanding smile, he begged, “Am I dying?”

“Ah, no, I am not that One, Thomas.” So gently she spoke, with a knowing of long abiding sorrows it seemed. “Not yet that One.”

With that, she took his hand and suddenly they were astride her horse. His arms went about her like they had always been there, and his face buried itself in her hair.

His wife’s voice gone. His children’s smiles, all gone. His afternoon rest along the safe bank of his own river, the river of his fathers, gone. Her hair, her apple-scented hair was the whole golden world, the only world before him now. Everything else, forgotten, forgiven, swept away.

She clicked her tongue and snapped the reins. They lurched forward and the river’s rushing tumble sang along with the harness bells. The sky around them clouded over with every blue and gray that could be painted.

You can read The Rhymer’s Queen here.

Please. You have a long weekend ahead. Go visit Elizavetta and allow yourself to be vulnerable.