Even further follow-ups on Kink in Exile’s post about erotic appeal and men. Shulamith Firestone, one of the original 60’s-era radical feminist and author of Dialectics of Sex actually has some seriously cool stuff to say about beauty and eroticism. In a way that pushes forward her agenda, not at all backing it off. Check it out.

And eroticism becomes erotomania. ... From every magazine cover, film screen, TV Tube, subway sign, jump breasts, legs, shoulders, thighs. ... Even with the best of intentions, it is difficult to focus on anything else. ... But in all this barrage of erotic stimuli, men themselves are seldom portrayed as erotic objects. Women’s eroticism, as well as men’s, becomes increasingly directed towards women.

Hmm… no wonder critics accused Mathilde Madden and Kristina Lloyd of being “‘hard-headed feminists’ ‘do gooders’ and, um, ‘lesbians‘” for thinking erotic photos of men are hawt!

Firestone continues

I want to add a note about the special difficulties of attacking the sex class system [Note: seriously, “no-sex class system” would have been better nomenclature —fl] through its means of cultural indoctrination. Sex objects are beautiful. An attack on them can be confused with an attack on beauty itself. Feminists need not get so pious in their efforts taht they feel they must flatly deny the beauty of the face on the cover of Vogue. For this is not the point. The real question is: is the face beautiful in a human way – does it allow for growth and flux and decay, does it express negative as well as positive emotions, does it fall apart without artificial props – or does it falsely imitate the very different beauty of an inanimate object, like wood trying to be metal?

I say “no-sex class” is more appropriate than “sex class” precisely because women as ideal sex objects are projected as wood or stone — faces and forms frozen… literally “statuesque,” eyes on the horizon, jaws tilted and knees locked just so. (One wonders whether the seemingly enforced breakdowns of… almost exclusively… women at Kink.com is fired by desire not so much to see them break down as to see how much they can “take” before they do.)

It gets better though,

To attack eroticism creates similar problems. Eroticism is exciting. No one wants to get rid of it. Life would be a drab and routine affair without at least taht spark. That’s just the point. Why has all joy and excitement been concentrated, driven into one narrow, difficult-to-find alley of human experience, and all the rest laid waste? When we demand the elimination of eroticism, we mean not the elimination of sexual joy and excitement but its rediffusion over – there’s plenty to go around, it increases with use – the spectrum of our lives.

That’s so cool! Everybody thinks radical feminists are anti-sex, or, even better, “sex negative.” It’s more like… you know that old joke “I like both kinds of music, country and western?” Or “We have both kinds of wine, red and white.” Or, maybe more accurately, “We only serve the best beer — if it doesn’t come in a green bottle we won’t sell it.” It’s like they’re objecting to that kind of view of sex — not that there’s something wrong with country music, or beer in green bottles, or even no-strings simulated sex with submissive skinny supermodel sibling sluts from Sweden and Saskatchewan but that that’s the only valid kind, and only if you “pass the test” of either beauty for women or worthiness for men and if you don’t fit you don’t count.

Because great hand-blown hummingbird feeders that view of sex, relationships, and sexuality isn’t just “sexist” or bad for women (though obviously it is) it’s also a desperately, starvingly impoverished view for everybody.

What. Ever.

It’s funny but even though I don’t always feel comfortable or welcome claiming I’m a plain old feminist it’s stuff like this that makes me say, unhesitatingly, that I identify as a radical feminist.