Female chauvinist pigs - do they exist?

[puddle]

Interesting article in the Guardian today about Ariel Levy who has written a book called "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture"

"My book is not an attack on the sex industry," says Levy. "It's about how the sex industry has become every industry...."

....as illustrated by for eg with phenomena such as pole dancing, breast implant surgery being routine, the new fashion for brazilians, playboy merchandise being targeted at schoolchildren, Ann Summers on the high street.

She calls women who are willing not just to accept this culture, but actively to participate in it: taking up pole dancing as a hobby for instance as "female chauvinist pigs", which she defines as "women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves".

I read the article this morning and it really struck a chord with me. especially this quote

"If you happen to be a person for whom this incredibly specific form of sexual expression [the ultra-consumerist porn-star ideal] is authentic," she says, "then this is your moment, and you should enjoy it. But if you're anyone else, then you may as well be back in the 1950s, because there's no other sexual model on offer to you."

Interested in what others think. Is this another example of women beating up each other and blaming ourselves for society's ills? An ultra conservative critique?

what about those wh are pretty - have plastic tits and have a masters in economics?

They are just greedy and want to be liked for everything.

you right - they are just twats. wheres my gun

I have a sister who is very pretty and very clever and I often feel sorry for her ( except for when she is clothes shopping together then I hate her ) as people seem to assume she is thick. Even my Mum refers to her as the thick one and she is actually quite clever.

But she doesn't have plastic tits, although she wants them - and she does say it is for herself and no one else but I just find it sad that a beautiful young woman would want to distort her body - but maybe deep down I know the one thing I have thatshe doesn't is a great cleavage - perhaps I don't want her too beat me on that front too!

Yeah yeah all those women out there waxing their pubes off to please themselves!! what a joke...pole dancing implanting and and starving themselves into oblivion to make themselves happy what a crock...they do it for men (to get sex or otherwise) and other women and very occasionally for themselves imo

and if you think a woman is impowered by grinding her neither regions against some bloke for a tenner your sadly mistaken...she wants cash lots of it... the lazy womans way.

Yes I am being judgemental,but I don't think that any part of the sex industry should be encouraged as a career move...by the time my dds are teens there will probably be ads in the local jobcenter ffs.

btw I get lots of good sex and I'm not ugly

i think you are being rather disparagig of pole dancers i am sure they work very hard - and do they get ergonomic assessments for those heels? i dont think so.

lol yes and all that chafing from those thongs they should get danger money.

I think I agree with her. Need to read the book.

Sexual equality should have made the sexes more equal - instead women are now supposed to become more like men (or like men want them to be). Yeah, we're up for it all the time, yeah we looove wearing thongs, we love starving ourselves so we can look like skinny adolescents but with big t*ts. Oh yes we're so empowered...... It's no different to Victorian times when women were expected to fulfill stereotypes....just different ones.

God help us if sex is only one part of our lives when in fact it should be the biggest more important part. Men think about sex every 15 seconds and if women don't does that mean they need a good sh*g just to make sure she does in future? I hate the way that sex is everywhere....it's as if our whole society has become adolescent...we don't just need to be doing it all the time but we need to be seen to be doing it and telling everyone about it. ..even if we're not. Weird.

Custardo , I can only assume that you are being sarcastic when you say "women are doing these things for themselves and to enable a greater possibility of a great fuck", or are you a man?

the song "sisters are doing it for themselves" is ringing in my head. Think custys point is that if a woman is not afraid to actively seek good sex, for her own pleasure, it's being seen as being victim of the media. I'm not saying there aren't unsavoury aspects (many of them) to the porn industry, but it is possible that a woman would want to watch porn herself or so something sexual for her own pleasure without being a "female chauvinist pigs".

Is Ariel Levy the one with the amusing but whingy column in the sunday times magazine?

I think custy is a man

Just found this thread. haven't read it yet but just wanted to say I've read the book and it is very good. Really readable too.

callisto - i think i just have the balls!

The book actually informed a lot of work in my dissertation, there were a lot of other sources of course. But the main premise of her thesis is that the sexualisation of our culture is essentially commercial not progressive (I looked into the progressive models and I found the evidence weighted to Levi?s argument.)

Custy, to say that Levi just needs a good shag because she is critiquing the commercialisation of human sexuality is just rubbish.

Callisto, men and women do want to be attractive to their prefered sex. There's nothing wrong with that. Levi isn't saying that there is either Custy.

What she's saying is that human sexuality is being exploited for commercial ends, that in a free market environment real diversity and individuality is ignored, That femininity has been reduced to a porn aesthetic, and that there are is a scarcity of female role models around who don't take their clothes off for young women to identify with.

Custy's not a man - just a polemicist!

Have I killed it? I'm on a roll today

yeah ....a.... err polemicist.

i have a degree in it - see

was femininity not always reduced to a porn aesthetic?

No, before porn women didn't think they needed to shave their fanny's, get false knockers or labiaplasties (LOL, or whatever it is they're called) and a whole host of other recent 'fashions'. There has always been erotica, but industrialised porn is a very modern phenomenon.

I knew I should've put a grin beside polemicist.

its all about getting your rocks off - or getting into someone elses pants though and big knockers before the invention of bigknocker surgery was done with corsets - or hankerchiefs

a womans aesthetic has always changed with the prevailing morality of the day.

i dont think its a new thing - just a more widely publicised thing. am not negating its existance - just the obviousness ( lazy tedious re-hashing of) subject matter.

the female aesthetic ( its a shit word to type that is) is marketable. as is everything else. and it always has been.

She calls women who are willing not just to accept this culture, but actively to participate in it: taking up pole dancing as a hobby for instance as "female chauvinist pigs", which she defines as "women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves".

like we have ever been anything but?

I agree, but it's also exploitable. That's just what Levi is examining.

And yes, it is all about sex and trying to maximise the opportunities for access to the best mates, from an evolutionary perspective anyway. But morals do come into it, and there's nothing wrong with questioning stuff we feel might be exploitative and sometimes harmful to our understanding of human sexuality.

It is a really good book though. For the other side of the debate see Brian McNairs Striptease Culture...if anyone's interested..

I think you need to read the book to get the more nuanced points of her argument.