Is this feminism?

[username299]

I've just read about a 23 year old who comes from a wealthy background and plans to sleep with 1,000 men in 24 hrs.

In the article*, she calls herself a feminist and says she feels empowered.

I don't understand why this woman wants to do this. I can obviously understand the financial aspect but she talks about the event taking place in a warehouse with men coming in one door and leaving out the other.

I'm obviously behind the times because when I was that age, women didn't aspire to live stream themselves having sex with countless men.

I'm wondering what the hell has happened for women to choose to do this and think it's empowering. These women have the support of their families which I also don't understand.

*Daily Heil

@Thelnebriati Strangely enough it is liberalism that is currently eroding women's rights.

She’s clearly a very damaged woman and this will follow her for the rest of her life. It makes me sad

Also sex ‚work’ is definitely NOT feminist in my opinion.

'Liberalism' that places men's desires above every other consideration is just patriarchy/male rights activism with a new label. Claiming its 'feminist' because its a woman doing it is just another way to goad women.

@ChillysWaterBottle

Choice' feminism is just capitalism

Quite. No particular problem with capitalism (with appropriate restraint). But the ability to make money from an act for yourself doesn’t render it a feminist act.

Particularly if, as is the case here, it’s damaging to women overall as a class.

@Jennyathemall

Yes it’s feminist as feminism is principally about equal rights.

Tell me you don’t know what feminism is without telling me you don’t know what feminism is.

How is this about “equal rights”?

I'd imagine some of them are considering it is consensual. Porn stars are not forced into participating in this or that genre. Take BDSM for example, no woman is taking part in some of that stuff if she isn't into that herself, when she could just as easily get a gig doing vanilla sex. The fact that submission and domination is one of the most common sexual fantasies amongst women would support this.

To be clear, feminism decisively does not mean 'supporting women's choices'. Especially when these are terrible choices.

The mere fact that it's a woman making a particular choice does not make it a 'feminist' choice.

The very tenet of so-called 'choice feminism' misses the point by a very wide margin.

I think you’re very naive about the choices women in the porn industry have. And that’s before we consider the impact on every other woman who lives in a world where women are exploited and commodified like this.

We’ll never agree, so should probs stop exchanging.

I'm sure that I remember a similar cunning stunt being featured on Eurotrash about 30 years ago. We saw pictures of the men lining up, in a queue snaking around a school gymnasium, for their turn. It was deeply unsexy.

I remember seeing something similar in a GQ magazine when I was about 13 (would have been late 90s/early 2000s). The woman was in the back of a van. I was horrified.

Sleeping with 1000 men isn't feminism. The woman may be a feminist, but it is not a feminist act.

"Slut Shaming" is an anti-feminist act, so I'm not going to slag her off or invite others to do so.

Entering the porn industry is a choice in itself, I'm not saying that makes it a feminist choice, nor do I believe it is based in the patriarchy. But I've already said that. I'm very much about individualism in relation to most things. For me feminism comes in to play where there is tangible evidence of inequality such as legislation. For example, trans police officers can now strip search biological women.
But we can agree to disagree on what feminism means to each of us as it is a personal thing. Good debating with you 👌

Indeed.

Yet on every thread about behaviours by women which impact women as a class, someone will invariably pipe up that "choice" is the sole objective of feminism and that's the end of it.

The textbook example of this is discussions about taking the name of your husband upon marriage. Without fail on threads about this someone will say that feminism exists to allow women the right to "choose" including the right to take their husband's name upon marriage.

To be clear: women should never be prevented from making non-feminist choices. The choice to take your husband's name, along with other non feminist choices, absolutely should exist. But by definition, taking someone's name (and giving a man's name to your children because you've married him) isn't a "feminist choice".

Choice for women should be a non-negotiable element of feminism, including obviously the right to make non-feminist choices. But if the outcome of a choice serves to undermine women as a class (such as taking your husband's name) you can't claim that this is a "feminist choice". It is literally the opposite of the feminist choice.

The 1000 men are not dignified or respected either. They are a faceless, trailing mass getting a kick for 1.44 mins each.

Do you think she respects these men either? Doubtful.

Are they claiming to be feminists?

Telling adult women what they may or may not do with their bodies (including whom they may or may not shag, and for what reason) is no different to telling them how they should look or dress, or what they can and cannot do to earn a living; it isn't exactly feminist either, is it?

Other adults exercising their free choice is nobody's business but their own. I see we've already had the lame old trope of women 'turning to' sex work to make more money; why is nobody ever said to have 'turned to' cleaning or bar work or filling shelves for some extra cash?

Same old, same old. She's going to be bloody sore in the morning though.

The point of the thread is that she believes what she's doing is feminist and empowering.

Feminism is an ideology and selling sex is not part of that ideology. However a woman can do whatever she wants, obviously.

I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to them. Have you?

She’s not claiming it’s an act of feminism or to support feminism either. She simply says she ‘finds it empowering’ and the article cites than users of Only Fans are ‘mostly young women who cite ‘female empowerment’ and ‘feminism’’

So you banging on about this woman and feminism is sort of moot.

Over the years I've read about female students turning to sex work to pay their fees and stripping became an acceptable side hustle.

It’s been an acceptable side hustle since women were allowed to attend University. There was only a lull during the AIDS epidemic.

Prior to that, it was an acceptable side hustle to sleep with senior men in your office because your little secretarial “job” was all about getting promoted or catching a husband.

no comment on the feminism angle. I think the same act can be feminist and not feminist, it really depends on the answer to the question of ‘who benefits’?

If the woman benefits, it’s feminist. If the woman loses out, it is not feminist.

Empress Messalina.

But if the outcome of a choice serves to undermine women as a class (such as taking your husband's name) you can't claim that this is a "feminist choice". It is literally the opposite of the feminist choice.

Don’t agree with your example here. Taking your husband or wife’s name doesn’t “undermine women as a class.”

Women aren’t a class anyway.

I think class has a lot to do with how feminists of a certain privileged class try to control the choices of feminists from less privileged classes by categorising them as feminist or not feminist. There is a complete disregard for the reality of how the other classes, religions, and ethnicities live and navigate the world.

If you read the article she says:

'Honestly, it’s changed my life. How I feel about myself, my confidence. I am 23-year-old woman who pays my own rent and earns good money. I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved – I’m a feminist, 100 per cent,’

I very much doubt the men who are apparently flocking to have sex with her, have any respect for her and I doubt they'd claim to be empowered or feminist.

@SugarandSpiceandAllThingsNaice

Don’t agree with your example here. Taking your husband or wife’s name doesn’t “undermine women as a class.”

We'd have to agree to disagree: many varieties of feminism consider women as a "class" based on their relationship to men in patriarchy. Many women consider women as a class because of the historically gendered nature of caregiving etc etc.

Historically taking a husband's name was a symbol that a woman was accepting ownership by her husband. Until fairly recently a married woman was quite literally owned by her husband. That's not legally true now of course, but there are many reasons feminists are justifiably uncomfortable with it. Again, that's not to argue that a woman shouldn't do it, but its difficult to position taking a man's name as a "feminist choice" when it is literally a symbol of ownership by a man.

I think class has a lot to do with how feminists of a certain privileged class try to control the choices of feminists from less privileged classes by categorising them as feminist or not feminist.

That's true. But it doesn't change the fact that you have to have some definition of feminism otherwise there's no point to it. Simply saying feminism is anything a woman chooses makes it meaningless. If less privileged women are unhappy with those definitions they are welcome to seek to change them but just asserting that all choices are equally feminist is evading this.

You sound like The Sun. I remember articles in the 80s about how 'working girls' all slept their way to the top. It was a common misogynist trope, still is if you listened to the way Trump spoke about Harris.

Students having sex to pay their way through university wasn't an acceptable side hustle when I was there. If anyone was, they certainly didn't brag about it.

I remember when stripping went from sleazy to acceptable in the 90s with lad culture. Pandering to the patriarchy has never been feminist.

I said she doesn’t describe the act as an act of feminism. Which she doesn’t. How she considers herself as a general person is by the by.

Does it matter how these men think of her? Is that part of the equation when she’s not declaring it a feminist act.

I consider myself a feminist. But many things I do are not an act of feminism – like shaving my legs or plucking my eyebrows, or wearing a bra, or giving my kids my DH’s name, or keeping my hair long, or wearing makeup. Etc etc etc …

She is being interviewed on the event and describes herself as a feminist. It's natural to conclude that she sees what she does as feminist and as she says, 'empowering'.

You brought up the men, not me.