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

So today in class during a professor-led discussion of the concept of “sex-negative” culture one of my fellow students said that, fairly or unfairly, feminism is seen as sex negative to a lot of people.

Our professor (the sex-ed professor, not the women’s studies one) immediately said that if that’s the impression it’s an unfortunate one. And, I might add, that if our women’s studies professor had been there she would have quickly cited one of several studies showing that not only do feminists have better sex than non-feminists, their partners do as well.

Now that said the misapprehension isn’t exactly, 100%, completely false… in the sense that there’s a misapprehension, not that feminism is sex-negative anyway.

If I’m not mistaken (and I really could be since I’m a man and since this is my first quarter of anything like formal women’s studies) the issue isn’t feminism but the misapprehension that “sexy” and “sexualized” are the same thing. And again if I’m not mistaken, very, very few feminists have a problem with sexy, as in the deliberate attempt to appear attractive through behavior or appearance in order to arouse one’s self and one’s current or prospective partner or partners, whether one ultimately has sex or not. But again if I’m not mistaken most feminists have a problem with the applique of those behaviors or appearances to individuals and situations where sex is neither intended nor welcome.

Think pre- and post-virginity Britney Spears. And I don’t mean the singer herself, I mean public reaction to her appearance and behavior before and after it became known that she actually was a sexual being rather than an unconscious, untouched no-sex-class naif… who wore her jeans so low she evidently needed to wax her mons and had waxy, pseudo-innocent “Oops I did it again.” Again, we can’t be certain of Spear’s inner life during her performing heyday but we can be certain about the public’s sexualization of her… or, indeed, the ongoing sexualization wherein the once-innocently “provocative” virgin pays for her fall into mere has-a-vagina-after-all womanhood. (And note that said sexualized fall is playing out with all the intensity and perfection and… again on the public’s part… deliberation as was her sexualized rise.)

Another possible point of departure? Yeah, while some separatists and, especially 2nd-wave feminists object to blowjobs, but not cunnilingus, on principle, a lot of feminists think they’re fine when considered as one element in a rich, reciprocal, and mutually satisfactory collection of sexual activities two or more people can agree to engage in. That’s just being sexual. But if, on the other hand, health clubs were to come along and start offering blowjob-ercise classes, and making claims that it wasn’t actually about blowjobs at all-and-how-can-you-even-suggest-such-at-thing™ but instead was about the yoga-like qualities of kneeling and breath control, and that such classes were somehow (somehow!) open only to women? Well, this time I’m speaking only for myself but… that’s sexualizing something that, in the hands of someone like, say, Jennifer of Libido Events would remain possibly eyebrow-raising to some but would nevertheless remain only sexual.

Know what I mean? You want to have sex with someone who wants to have sex with you, have sex. You want to be sexual with yourself or with others, be sexual! If you don’t want to, that’s fine too, and if someone you’re with doesn’t want to then respect that. That, not even coincidentally, happens to be the position both of “sex-positive” culture and virtually all feminism**. Trying instead to, oh, say, sell elementary-school-girl-sized thongs with “little hottie” in sequins on the front and then make a big production about how your corporation helps fund to sex abuse prevention programs as at least one of the major “family” department stores found in nearly all major malls? Sorry, if you found feminists complaining about such antics it’s not feminists who were being sex negative there. Instead it would merely being feminists pointing out how egregiously sex-negative both the sexualization of both pre-teen fashion and child-abuse prevention really is.

So, one more time, this time with a clumsy table.

Again, I’m not speaking as a spokesman for… well… anybody but me although I am trying to convey something I’ve been learning in class. (And if I’m outright flunking the self-imposed exercise, which I’m pretty sure I’m not but you never know, and you’re at all inclined to participate then pointers, however harshly administered, will be appreciated.)

But anyway, this is all by way of attempting to explain the frequently-but-incorrectly stated assertion that feminism is somehow “sex negative” when it seems more accurate to say feminism opposes sex-negativity, especially in terms of the special case of sex-negative denial called sexualization.

[** Note: And, seriously, it’s not like even nominally “sex-negative” feminists don’t want sex at all, right? Not wanting empty-headed, exploitative, heterosexual-even-if-you’re-not-heterosexual sex isn’t the same thing as not wanting sex at all, right? That’s just not wanting to have sex with someone who isn’t authentically sex positive. So, as Heather Corinna’s famous for saying, when it comes to specific individuals “sex-negative” is sort of a red herring. —fl]