Attitudes to sex: is it maybe a cultural thing?

It's not at all like supporting slavery in that no-one chooses to be a slave. I know that a lot of women do not choose to be strippers and are forced into it, but you can't just discount the ones that do.

Besides that, a lot of women aren't educated about these things. But by talking down to them or telling them they're stupid or patronising them all we're going to do is lose them and they won't be interested in feminism any more.

To me, it's possible to be feminist about some things and not others. It's not always easy, but it is possible.

Yes, I think we are all culpable of misogyny - impossible to escape it IMO.

Not caring about porn is one thing (although it strikes me as a rather callous and head in the sand position for a feminist). Speaking out in defence of it is another entirely.

I don't think a woman should have to be concerned with every women's issue going in order to identify as a feminist.

I do think there are some fairly basic concerns of feminism that are fairly fundamental to the movement. Certain aspects of society have been identified as being violence against women - it seems reasonable to me to think that a self-indentifying feminist would be against those things (in principal, it doesn't mean she has to spend every waking hour being concerned with them).

talking down and patronising is horrible to be at the receiving end of.
personally I find it such a difficult line to walk, whether as condescending patroniser or ever so 'umble patronisee. Probably both in the one statement.

But a patroniser will surely be so whether they are talking chicken keeping or feminism. It's not right to conflate the movement with certain personalities within it.

plus, people get angry. It's personal, it's political. Twice as much scope for anger there than in your average movement.

i agree and the analogy stands.

Yellowraincoat I quite honestly don't see how a woman can support stripping, etc and think that is a feminist position.

I just don't see how that is reconcilable. It is like supporting slavery or apartheid whilst saying you are a civil rights supporter.

It's hard to be 100% anything though, isn't it? I think to some extent we're all culpable of misogyny, just maybe not in such obvious forms.

I'd rather a woman was a wishy-washy more-or-less feminist who supported, say, rights to equal pay and equal access but didn't really care about porn, than someone who just thinks that the way things are now is fine.

Yellowraincoat, I think one of the main problems facing feminism today is the backlash.

But I do agree with you that in-fighting is supremely unhelpful too.

I also agree that there shouldn't be a checklist to be considered a feminist, but at the same time, I'm never too sure what to make of women who actively support misogyny whilst stating that they are feminists.

Feminism is a political movement, and like any other political movement, it has basic tenets which form the foundations of its values, principles, activism and perspective.

I do think that feminism is in danger of becoming a meaningless label. I nearly started a thread on this the other day actually. I think it would be good if feminism went back to its old name of 'Women's Liberation' - a much more accurate description of the movement.

No-one is asking you to agree with them or thinking they're fine. Of course there are massive issues with porn, I think you'd be hard-pushed to find a feminist who disagreed, or even a woman, or a man with half a brain.

I just think that we can discuss these things in a way without labelling other women or telling them they don't belong.

but there's good reason for that - and no it's not just personal it's political (as in the very real power relations and how they feed into these areas). i personally can't roll over and say yeah porn, prostitution and stripping are fine and personal when the reality is that they cause massive damage to women and exploit large numbers of people who have already been exploited through sexual abuse and gendered poverty etc.

it's a pretty fundamental issue so of course it can't just be glossed over.

Disagreement is very different in that you can still be respectful when you disagree. I see a LOT of talking down to women who make different choices and arrive at different conclusions. To me, that's infighting.

For some reason it seems to mostly be about sex. Stay at home mums are never vilified these days (and rightly so) but show any support for stripping/porn and you're hung out to dry. You're an idiot and not a feminist.

I see what you are saying, yellowraincoat, and why.

But what's the difference between 'infighting' and disagreement? We have to be able to arrive at conclusions and defend them, otherwise 'feminist' is just a label really without any bite.

btw I find it very sad indeed if any feminist called a prostitute a slut.

Some feminists are more equal than others.

The main problem facing feminism at the moment, I'd say, is the level of in-fighting. All this "you're not a proper feminist because xyz". I find it almost unbelievable that one feminist would say that to another. Haven't we had enough of being labelled and having some sort of patriarchal order to life? I really don't need someone telling me I'm not a feminist. I believe in equality for women therefore I am a feminist.

It's like on the last Reclaim the Night when some prostitutes who were marching were being called "sluts" by other marchers. Completely inappropriate and ridiculous and alienating.

We need MORE feminists, not fewer. Any woman who is in any way willing to stick her neck out and say that women need more rights is more than welcome in my book. Feminism shouldn't just be for the militant few who want to have everything run by their rules. You shouldn't need to check a list in order to see if you're feminist or not.

Some women want to analyse things. Others see things on a more practical level. Some see things personally. ALL of those are fine. And none of us should be berating other women for making those choices. As soon as you do that, you are trying to silence other women.

Porn and sex are always going to be massively divisive issues because they are so personal. Maybe we all need to take care when we're discussing these to not use pejorative language or make other women feel unaccepted.

The vast majority of people react badly when I say I'm a feminist. Not because they are against equality for women or because they are misogynists - but because feminism has such a bad name. I think we really need to change that.

Also I have to say, I don't really like this 'did you see what was said on that other thread....' /quoting stuff from other threads type stuff.

I find these things can easily tun into forum Chinese Whispers (sorry if that is not an acceptable expression any-more, I don't live in the UK so not always aware of these things).

It can also look like having a go behind a poster's back.

I happen to be on both threads so I am able to defend my POV on the ejaculation thread, which has been misrepresented here.

WW I am on that thread and I don't think there is an insistence that it is always a degrading practice. That we be ridiculous, we don't have crystal balls!

The argument has more finesse. Certainly for me it is more about the fact that it is an re-enactment of an act that is intended to be degrading in porn. That it is an act which in porn eroticizes and reinforces the power dynamic of male dominance. Plus that fact that it is porn (which is violent against women and misogynistic) which has normalized this act.

I do not claim to know what goes on in individuals' lives to the extent where I can say anything about their personal private sex lives! How presumptuous and deluded would that be eh?! And I haven't on that thread. I haven't told anyone that they are degraded by this act or that it makes them a 'bad' feminist. That would be a really anti-feminist thing to do actually.

I believe and respect the women who say having their partner ejaculating on their face is anything but degrading. Why wouldn't I? As has been said about 100 times we aren't criticising people's choices.

This confusion happens a lot in discussions about feminism I find. If a feminist discussion, analyses why women might wear high heels, you will get a whole load of women taking the hump and thinking they are being criticised because they wear heels. (And some of them might have a go at the feminists for being catsbum-mouthed about fashion.)

And with sex people tend to take the hump even more because they pick up and run with the mistaken notion that they are being judged as somehow deviant/abnormal/etc.

But they aren't. At all. So it is a strawman, even if it is not an intentionally constructed one. It is also basically telling feminists to STFU with their analyses of society, because people are unable to not take it personally, even though it is not intended that way.

and if you're bombarded with these images before you've even really begun to explore your own sexuality and arousal freely then they must have even more of a shaping influence.

and if you're constantly getting the message of a woman's sexuality being a vehicle of pleasing a man and submitting to him then unsurprisingly some women are going to think that is what is erotic, to be a thing that gives pleasure rather than a pleasure seeking and gaining thing. it's also a message that sex has to be in the mind re: the idea of turning him on rather than an actual physical, sensual, orgasmic experience due to one's own arousal and pleasure - which is back to the view of women not really enjoying sex in and of itself but needing to do it via a man's pleasure.

i can't see why any of this would be contentious tbh.

as a kid i had to enjoy turning 'him' on for my 'pleasure' out of sex and take my cues of how to behave, what to want etc from him. as a woman i learned i found my own pleasure and took my cues from my body and me and became a true participant and enjoyer of a mutual act. the pornified version would see women remain in that kid state forever. sure some people enjoy practices that others don't but it's not really sexual preference and enjoyment it's the enjoyment of acting out degradation or acting out violence and power. in a sense it's not sex at all but a psychological need or drive to reenact violence and power incorporated into the sexual act. there is nothing sexually pleasuring about having someone jizz in your face (to coin a phrase) but there's a psychological game being played and an enactment of disturbing power relations. maybe there's some 'ease' or something of giving into that role provided for one. dunno - maybe waffling now.

beyond the 'obliged' factor there's also the fact that we are all very susceptible to the incredibly sophisticated pumping out of messages that surround us these days. that includes sexuality. so how sexuality is shaping up is going to be influenced by what messages are being pumped out. we are constantly being bombarded by supposed 'sexy' images that actually violent and likewise violent images that are being tinged with sex (thinking of the long lingering camera gaze upon the female naked rape/murder/torture victim for example).

Good post Kritiq.
Perhaps it is about how soon those sexual practices crop up in a relationship. Before the influence of porn maybe the 'degrading' acts would have appeared in a relationship but only after you knew each other very well but now, thanks to sexual normalisation of these practices, and that is not just about porn, but about being able to meet people into any practice you care to name at the click of the button, then thay are becoming normalised to the point where someone, typically the man, brings them in a lot more quickly, which is not a good thing as out of the normal sexual practices (and some would argue normal sexual practices) should only take place in the context of a loving long term relationship.
How to get people to see this, especially young people, I don't know.

Shoopaloop, that wasn't what I interpreted from the "jizz on face" thread at all. I saw some folks trying to explain the political, cultural and social context of pornography - particularly the increasing accessibility of porn and the fact that sexual practices that would have been considered hard core, extreme and/or niche even 20 years ago now feature regularly in "mainstream" porn. I also saw some arguing how this now more accessible and extreme porn, which relies heavily on the overt degradation of women (both actions and dialogue) has influenced men's and women's expectations of what sex should involve in the average male-female relationship.

I also saw alot of people trying really hard to argue that their choices in sexual activity weren't influenced by porn at all. Some suggested that it could be a turn on to know your partner was getting off on something, even if you didn't like it, or even that one could get turned on by being degraded. There was alot of poo pooing members who didn't think "anything goes" was fine as being pretty hung up.

Thing was, I didn't see feminists telling any women or men what they should or shouldn't do in their sexual relationships. I did see some asking folks to think about why certain practices might have become more common and ponder whether women in particular might be feeling "obliged" to say they enjoyed practices that they felt were degrading or demeaning just because they thought it was the "norm" and didn't want to be rejected or thought to be square or prudish.

Suggesting someone think about an issue isn't the same as insisting they have no right to have a view, do a certain thing or that they should be silenced.

Fairtrade advocates raise awareness of horrid conditions for children in sweatshops and hope consumers will think of this when making decisions on purchases. Anti-vivisectionists want folks to think of how animals suffer for cosmetic testing when we make a choice of shampoo. It's hardly a leap to imagine that feminists would like people who consume porn to think of the violence and abuse many actors suffer in hopes that people will realise they can get their rocks off without aiding and abetting another human's suffering.

And the problem with this is . . . ? Nope, I can't see it.

yes we are - including me funnily enough.

Of course we can have differing opinions.

I don't really see how a person can support the porn industry and simultaneously claim to support feminism though. Surely the two positions are just too far apart and contradictory of each other to be reconcilable?

It would be a bit like supporting hate speech and racially motivated violence against black people whilst claiming to support the civil rights movement.

It won't be taken seriously.

Ugh "funfemproporn types and real radfems" - REALLY?

We're still here are we? You're either a real feminist or you're not? And you wonder why so many young women are completely turned off by the idea of feminism?

That's it. Right there. We are allowed to have differing opinions you know.

Feminism for prudishness