If more evidence were needed that Holly of The Pervocracy is the real, solid deal and not “a rich white heterosexual American ‘privilegebunny’ who luxuriates in what you imagine is an oppression-free bubble.” A-hem. Anyway, tackling yet more vapidity in Cosmopolitan — a column about “Guy Truths They’d Tell If They Had The Guts” she says (emphasis hers.)
“Threatening to revoke sexual privileges is both cruel and unfair and leaves us no equal measure of recourse.”
Hurrr, funny joke, I know, but still. My body isn’t like the community pool that you can visit any time the door isn’t locked, it’s not something left open by default and occasionally closed as a punishment, it’s attached to a goddamn person. The thing a lot of guys don’t seem to get is that for a woman to not deny them sex, she has to have sex too. Giving a guy “sexual privileges” doesn’t amount to handing him a key and walking away, it means her whole naked body is going to be wrapped up in his and that’s awfully unpleasant to be doing if you don’t actively want it yourself.
Now that I think about it, there’s that respecting permission to have sex without respecting who’s giving permission again.
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So that’s the “sexual privileges” part. The “hurr, funny joke” being the “no equal measure of recourse” part. Because, you know, women being the “no-sex” class and all it’s just impossible that women could ever be horny independent of an initiating man. Tradition says hetero men must initiate. So a woman who’s horny when a man’s not, or, even more unthinkably, horny for him when he’s not horny for them, is going be invisible to him. (More sound at your back, dudes.)
Anyway, arms-length, nose-holding sexual theorizing from ivory towers and remote Texas ranches is great and I wouldn’t give it up for the world. But it can only take you so far. Holly brings equal certainty, and clarity, home from the front lines. And you can’t go far without that either.
Submitted by 2848 (not verified) on Fri, 2009-04-10 15:54.
The "no equal measure of recourse" line appeals to the perspective of men who feel that they're hearing "find someone else" from EVERY woman. Kind of like how men who stop initiating take themselves out of the running, unless they are spectacularly attractive. Just in practical terms, anyway.
Submitted by 2848 (not verified) on Sat, 2009-04-11 19:22.
The thing that gets me about it is, it's only a punishment as long as you let it be a punishment. If you just shrug and say "okay - your loss too!" and carry on as normal, it takes away all the supposed power of the denial of "sexual privileges". And after all, you're with a girlfriend for something other than sex, right guys? Guys? Right!?
This seems to me to be the outcome of a wholesale fetishization of sex (more in the social-sciences sense than in the kinky "foot-fetishist" sense of the term) by the male population. Sex isn't an object of worship, it's an intercourse between two people.
The curious thing is it isn't stated as "revoking sexual privileges", it's stated as "threatening to revoke sexual privileges". It's almost as if the threat is seen as more potent than actually doing it. It's also interesting the way it's described as "unfair" and "cruel" - it seems like it's felt as a psychological tactic so that the punishment is one of humiliation rather than a simple "denial of pleasure". The other thing that comes out of it being "unfair" is the "community pool" concept that is expertly dismissed by Holly.
[Brilliantly put, SE! If sex wasn't transactional (in this case, women exchange sex for *good behavior*) then yeah, "revoking privileges" would be a completely null concept. The really ominous part, though, is that it *can* be a real threat... if the guy sees sex only as an exercise in privilege. And, consequently, never considers the possibility that she might enjoy it too. And no, it's almost certainly not as overt as that but still, it's the no-sex class paradigm in action. Thanks. --fl]