The Case of the Missing Mass Fetish
Ok, so I was reading Rachel Maines' "The Technology of Orgasm," which despite the, um, buzz about it being about the history of vibrators is more subversively about how even before the Ancient Greeks doctors managed to basically medicalize, even pathologize, women's arousal without ever acknowledging it.
And then I started thinking about what Germaine Greer says in "The Female Eunuch" about the intense pressure to be self-denying that girls face growing up. And I started adding to all that the silly-when-you-think-about-it notion that only men have real-life, Freudian-style displacement fetishes (not the kind that really means more like "really turns me on" but means instead "can't even get started without rubbing against blue velvet.")
And it occurs to me that for, oh, at least the last 2500 years women have been under *extraordinary* pressure to engage in classic Freudian-neuroses-style sublimation/deviation/denial, where you transfer natural feelings away from sexuality and into stuff like housecleaning, or childrearing, or shopping for shoes -- a.k.a. pretty much the entire Patriarchal burden -- such that you're expected to have fucking *orgasms* when a man washes your dishes for you.
And exactly how would be different from the orgasms male fetishists get from licking a dominatrix's boots? Uh huh.
Kind of interesting that, as Maines, and Greer, and others point out, our set of social blinders leads us to deny, as Freud and others did, that women have no repression-induced erotic/neurotic fetishes at all when it's pretty clear society is constructed so that all women have the same *one* fetish. And that "pathology" be defined as *not* having that fetish. And that until terribly recently all interventions from FGM to psychotherapy to education to institutionalization to "self-help" programming from the likes of "Doctor" Phil and "Doctor" Laura have been considered a success if and only if they *restore* women to that fetish instead of to health.
And all for what? Because of a perception that men desire relationships with... repressed, unhappy, displacement-fetishizing partners? How's *that* been working out, dudes? Ya think tha problem with our miserable scarcity-oriented sex and love lives isn't that we're repressing our partners but that we're not repressing them *enough?* Sheesh! Anti-feminists have a lot of gall to call *us* kinky!
I recently figured out that this is exactly what I find revolting about a TV ad for Betty Crocker Warm Delights.
Yes, even the name sounds sexual. Yet, Warm Delights are these...things that you open, add water to, cook in the microwave for a few minutes, and get what ostensibly is a dessert.
As far as I'm concerned, the only time dessert comes out of the microwave is if you put a slice of cold pie in there for 20 seconds before you put the ice cream on it, but that's something else altogether.
The commercial shows women (and only women) eating these things, often in a bed and/or in pajamas, moaning and sighing, eyes closed. Some even lick the spoons and forks they're eating with. I think one even licks the bowl it's in.
It all seems to suggest that what you (woman with misplaced, confused, repressed sexual desire) will get out of this box is sexual pleasure, not some overpriced combination of chemicals that probably tastes only vaguely of chocolate.(Chocolate being another one of those things that is supposed to drive women just *crazy*)
It's hard to catalog the variations of stereotypes and nonsense that ad perpetuates. Let's see...there's "Women don't really want, need or like sex. They just want dessert...and probably jewelry." Or, how about "You don't really need/want/deserve sex. Just eat this cake and shut up. You'll feel better about spending your nights in bed alone." Or, my favorite "It's just too much work to cook something yummy for yourself, or even to go to a bakery to get it. Just put this in the microwave, it's just as good."
Ick. Just ick.
[Eww. Yeah, ick, just ick. Especially since it's sort of just distorting the old and... maybe *somehow* expedient sublimation of desire to benefit *family* through nurturing and *kept* the sublimation-through-food part even though the target demographic might be single. Instead of, you know, maybe advertising Betty Crocker vibrators or something!!! %!%$~!@$. For the record I've promoted your comment into its own post. Thanks,TLT. --fl]
Well, 2500 years seems a bit... hyperbolic. I'm not an expert, so don't take my word for it, but it seems to have been that way mostly among societies with a heavy judeo-christian influence. And even then, in most times and places it was only that way among the privileged classes (who usually had rather different cultures than the commoners they ruled over). Hell, some non-christian patriarchal societies even included "how people of both sexes can derive pleasure from coitus" in their sacred texts!
It doesn't appear to me that such attitudes became common among the "little people" until the cultural revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries which all but obliterated the hereditary ruling classes. And in the name of equality, some people started picking up some of the upper class's bad habits. But again, don't quote me on this, I'm not an expert.
But anyway, the image that a woman gets her orgasms from eating a muffin or a slice of cake or cream cheese on a bagel or some yogurt? I've always considered that retarded. Seriously.
[It's surprising but but true that "pelvic massage" for "hysteria" dates back to Hippocrates, who coined the term and documented the remedy roughly 2,500 years ago. I agree, however, that attitudes haven't been *quite* as short-sighted for all that time. The ancients also believed that women's orgasmic "sperm" was needed for conception. They were also convinced that women's sexuality was exclusively about wanting children. Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]
Figleaf, I realize this is an entirely banal comment compared to your usual quality of conversation, but I think you'll appreciate it.
Fabulous photo. I've been reading you for ages, and that got me out of the woodwork. You look great.
[Thanks Eileen! It never hurts my feelings when readers don't comment, but it's always wonderful when you do. Nice to meet you. --fl]
It might help if I spell my own website correctly. Oh well.
[Got it. Thanks, Eileen. --fl]
you transfer natural feelings away from sexuality and into stuff like housecleaning
There was a story around these internets a few years back about a woman whose husband hires her a pair of male "escorts" for her birthday. He tells her lasciviously to "do whatever you want with them" and leaves. She proceeds to have them clean the house for her. When they are done she has them post for pictures having sex with her so that she can show the pics to her husband and have him be properly turned on, but she expresses that the clean house was her TRUE satisfaction. Some friends of mine found this story amusing. I found it terribly disgusting. The idea of caring more about housecleaning than SEX just makes me feel nauseated.
And I tried to find this story so I could post a link and failed utterly. I am probably not doing it justice. I even asked my friendslist on LJ for help locating it and I got someone else who remembered the story but he didn't have a link either. Alas. Me waiting to see if anyone would respond is the reason this comment is so delayed :P
[Hi Plymouth. I hope the woman was kidding a little. Either that or that she enjoyed both activities and not just one or the other. Or something. --fl]