Image via Silent-Porn-Star

Just for the record, the impression that “radical feminists” are sex negative might be mistaken, and is certainly misinterpreted, but it’s not completely insane.

While doing a little due diligence for my previous post (no, I don’t always do due diligence) I ran across this quote from 60’s/70’s feminist activist Ti-Grace Atkinson

If feminism has any logic at all, it must be working for a sexless society.

Source: Wikipedia

Perhaps not coincidentally, both the quote, and the “Take Charge” camera ad predate the work of radical feminists like Andrea Dworkin to define sexual consent for women as a valid social, let alone legal, concept.

Hard to believe since, today, he looks like a 1970s version of Austin Powers, but when that ad was current the man in it was a dead-serious male archetype! But when you hear, especially, feminists talking about male privilege, he’s embodying exactly what they meant.

Now. Are there feminists in the world today who take Atkinson’s stance on sex? Sure, just like there are still men who take the Vivitar man’s stance. Is Atkinson’s the dominant stance in feminism? Um, that would be a pretty unambiguous “no.” Is the Vivitar man’s the dominant stance among men? Err, best we can say is “we’d like to hope not.” And, if so, then is attacking feminism for positions held back when Austin Powers would have been current events the most logical possible use of anyone’s time? Me neither. But I digress…

The real big deal for me, though, is that when taken out of context, statements like Atkinsons tend to be picked up and used to reinforce the daft, dominant male notion that women as the “no-sex” class, innately disinterested in sex and from whom, therefore, sex must be… extracted. But Atkinson is not the only source of that conceit. Notice Vivitar man’s look of determination? Notice also his partner’s amused, if-you-say-so body language? So does it really matter what else Atkinson might have said?

More and more it seems to me what’s really going on, in dating, in so-called “pick-up artist” strategies, in relationship books, in expressions of feminist frustration and anti-feminist admonitions, is that women aren’t so much anti sex as anti-phony-bullshit-designed-to-get-sex. Until we, meaning us men, recognize just how hugely different those two things are, things aren’t going to get any easier. For anybody.