Is the media stealing my sex life?

[DeirdreOfTheSorrows]

I've name-changed, because this is about sex and feelings and personal stuff and I'm probably pretty identifiable in my normal guise. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, either - but it's been on my mind for a while and I wonder whether anyone might be able to shed some light on it for me. I wonder whether I ought to have posted it in Feminism, too! But let's see how we go.

For a good few years now I've been feeling that my increasing awareness of of porn culture, and media stories about violence, sexual violence and cruelty of all sorts, are impinging on my ability to feel comfortable and secure in my own sexuality. I've never experienced violence myself, and porn hasn't been an issue in any of my relationships, so it's not a flashback type of situation - simply that my associations with sex are increasingly becoming mixed up with nasty and upsetting stories and ideas rather than my own (probably rather tame) experience.

Just as background, I wouldn't ever have thought of myself as a competitive sadder - I think I've got a pretty realistic idea about the way in which certain stories gain currency and play out in the media, and I think I can distinguish between empathy for a tragic or terrible situation and getting caught up in an emotional binge.

But for some reason I'm really struggling to maintain a sense of my own sexual self in the face of story after story of sexual violence or exploitation or coercion. It's as if I can't find the kind of easy lustiness I had when I was younger any more, and my brain can't switch off from stories about other people's dreadful experiences, or my political feelings about pornification, or MN threads in which people have shared how sex was used as a weapon against them, even though I'm in a relationship where sex should be perfectly safe and equal and unproblematic.

I really don't know what to do about this. One can't just stop knowing these things, and withdrawing from engaging with them would seem to be a dreadful cop-out. But how do I find a way to regain some innocence and spontaneity about my own sex life, rather than letting it be overshadowed by things which should be a political, rather than an emotional, part of my life?

MiniTheMinx

I'm astonished you don't hold NuLabour at least partly responsible.

I mean, how many educated higher earners, married with children, property owning women sell themselves into the sex trade or aspire to make porn

Don't know. How many men with those backgrounds do, and how many of those men do relentlessly hard, dirty, physically dirty, health damaging jobs, which is another alternative for less fortunate men.

Among many other things, I've earned a living at the blister end of a shovel, and I wouldn't recommend that either.

I am not motivated by party politics. Working class women subjugated economically by all men and her middle class sisters, subjugated sexually by all men, have for hundreds of years absolved middle class women of performing certain displeasing functions. Working class women look at their economically enslaved male counterparts and realised that not only is he powerless to protect her from economic exploitation but he has also been co-opted into her sexual exploitation seeks to avoid marriage and monogamy. Middle class women upholding marriage is part of the problem.

MiniTheMinx

Thanks for explaining; patient enough for a bit more explanation?

OK, tried hard, but don't understand

Working class women look at their economically enslaved male counterparts and realised that not only is he powerless to protect her from economic exploitation but he has also been co-opted into her sexual exploitation seeks to avoid marriage and monogamy.

Could you explain that a bit?

Oh and

I am not motivated by party politics........take a look at what the Torries are up to!

Nope, doesn't sound much like it

i don't understand that at all either. one difference with the classes though might be that 'posh' men will get married and I think women lower down the food chain might have to accept less, which leaves them vulnerable when they've had children. 40% of children are born outside of marriage. I wonder how many of those mothers would prefer to be married. so again, women from poorer backgrounds suffer most from this shift away from marriage. my x actually persuaded me to have children without being married and i agreed!! foolish i know but he capitalised on the fact that i wanted children. I was /am uneduated and poor.

The whole fertility/education/aspiration bit is interesting.

Talked to a WHO guy years back about the population explosion years back and he reckoned educating women was the best way to cut the population explosion. Educated women have higher aspirations and don't want to be breeding machines locked into poverty, he said.

Following down that track gets you into all sorts of problems; people say "Ooh, I can't afford more children" because of the aspirations for their family/children/lifestyle and get sniffy about those who have more... particularly if they are less educated or in some way counter-cultural, as they see them as a societal drag.

I have no answers, but a lot of interest in the discussion...

I made myself sound like a right ol' loser there. What I mean was, one minute I was young with an average sort of job and no kids. So I had potential and freedom and no dependents. So not having been to university didn't seem like the end of the world. Then roll on five years and I woke up with two kids, a childcare V income equation that couldn't be solved, five years older, and no rights at all!

it is kind of sad, I will tell my daughter, warn her, never to risk having a child unless 1) she can earn enough to support herself and 2) its father is a very decent man, regardless of the relationship they have, is he a decent man, because that is so linked to being a good dad.

and to my son, i would say you can NOT walk away from a child, you can not expect a woman to make more sacrifices than you are prepared to make yourself for parenthood so don't bring a child into the world unless you are certain you can make the relationship work, and even if you do that, it still mightn't work so earn enough to pay maintenance if you get divorced!

I want grandchildren, not that you'd think it, all the warnings I am bursting to give to my kids (one of each)

It's 'giving' women the means to control their fertility that decreases populations. Sometimes this goes hand in hand with improved educational standards for women but not always. Affluence helps too.

Back to Deirdre's original post, I do think the media is stealing my sex life and it takes lots of forms, lots and lots, see the escalation of eating disorders and so forth ... but I do agree with Minnie's point that it takes place in a wider context.

p.s. If "that" BBC4 programme I mentioned laughing at teenage nudity/porn on a phone is "satirical" or "funny" well I am a Sudanese meerkat (and the rest of the prgrm looked crap too).

VeritableSmorgasbord
It's 'giving' women the means to control their fertility that decreases populations.

OK, cool; how does that work then?
Takeup of condoms has been relatively crap though sub-Saharan Africa - the WHO guy was based out in Islamabad 30 years since...

[Or state-controlled mandatory abortion like in China

Sometimes this goes hand in hand with improved educational standards for women but not always.

What's the driver, and how was takeup managed in these other cases?

Affluence helps too.

rarely hurts...

very interesting discussion.

I grew up in the 80s in a world plastered with images of skinny, beautiful, available women. I did not fit. I was fat/nerdy/sulky.

I gave up on sex in my teens as men would not come near me. I was clever and scared them.

Women were thoroughly objectified back in the 80s too. When I was 6 my entire class cheered for the blonde, pretty girl at sports day. There was no such competition to be the 'handsomest boy'.

I NEVER felt sexually comfortable. I think that is partly why I married a man who was more of a friend/brother type, with catastrophic results later on.

The OP's previous sense of sexual freedom intrigues me.

Btw I do have a partial solution. Don't watch tv. Avoid advertising. And of course internet porn (goes without saying).

I watched TV for the first time in literally years last night (bored in hotel room) and started to feel weirdly claustrophobic very early on.

Documentaries showing people's 'embarrassing' boobs being squeezed, weighed and cut off with a weird, jaunty soundtrack... American legal dramas in which every woman actor over 35 had clearly been botoxed and whatever else to hell.

It's all gone very wrong and if you avoid seeing it, it gets into your head less.

Again, focussing on porn and sexually explicit media is actually missing the point. It;s the old engine of consumerism, insisting that we are nothing unless we Buy More Stuff, so our bodies, homes, experiences aren't enough on their own, we have to buy the latest thing.

Another reason why heteromonogamy is pushed so hard at us: it's basically (with a few fortunate exceptions ) tedious. So to stop it being tedious, people have to spend more money on it; underwear, romantic dinners, couple-therapy, etc etc.

JLJ: Can you remember the name of that programme? Because I can't, but I saw the trailer you are referring to, and it was clearly a comedy-drama rather than a documentary (whether you thought it was funny or not, the point is that the character was fictitious and exaggerated for dramatic effect). It was called Those Girls or Some Girls or something...

Giving women control over their fertility has very little to do with promoting condom use in sub-Saharan Africa
I mean it's interesting about your friend and all but condoms are not what I was getting at. Them being to do with men, and all that.

hmm I'm really not sure couple-monogamy IS what's being 'pushed at us' any more SGB.

The hookup culture my poor students seem to be stuck in is not exactly liberatory, particularly for women.

VeritableSmorgasbord

Condoms to do with men?
Yep. And women who want to avoid HIV infection...
... and many who want to space their children and aren't comfortable with IUD or hormonal contraception.

I'm interested in population control, and was genuinely interested in how you went about "giving" women fertility control in under-developed places without the education - or at least literacy - aspects.

The fertility control used in India wasn't great...

I suspect you're looking for an issue with me that isn't there...

I totally agree too, I Almost feel guilty about having sex when I know there is so many people out there who are forced to have it.

Very interesting thread OP. I know exactly what you mean.

OneMoreChap "Working class women look at their economically enslaved male counterparts and realise that not only is he powerless to protect her from economic exploitation but he has also been co-opted into her sexual exploitation seeks to avoid marriage and monogamy"

All women are oppressed by the men of their own class but working class men are oppressed by other men (exploited for labour) and working class women are exploited (for their labour) by everyone male and female, for sexual exploitation by men of all classes and middle class liberals are happy to sell them up the river. On a recent thread in relationships where a wife had found her husband was visiting prostitutes, she blamed the "sluts" for tempting men Does that make any sense?

Ok, I'll bite, how am I being oppressed by men of my own class?

On a recent thread in relationships where a wife had found her husband was visiting prostitutes, she blamed the "sluts" for tempting men

I don't think that's a common reaction, MiniThe Minx. Whenever I've read threads on here where someone's arsehole of a husband has bought sex, they are understandably devastated but they haven't blamed the women. It's far more common for them to be apalled that their partner considers women a product to buy. Perhaps I just haven't seen the same threads as you.

Working class women subjugated economically by all men and her middle class sisters, subjugated sexually by all men, have for hundreds of years absolved middle class women of performing certain displeasing functions.

This kind of implies that there are certain sexual acts that, although 'displeasing' to women, must be performed for men by some women or other.

I don't understand how middle class women upholding marriage is at the expense of their working class sisters, unless they are saying 'oh well now I'm married I don't have to do any of that nasty sex stuff, I'll just turn a blind eye to my DH spending all our money getting his 'needs' met elsewhere' - this is not something I see happening.

Absolutely, we need to deal with class inequality and absolutely we need to stand shoulder to shoulder with poorer exploited women but I'm not happy with the blame being shifted to other women when the problem as I see it is men believing they are entitled to sex.

I dunno, maybe I've misunderstood because usually I find myself nodding along with your posts.

Interesting thread - on the original issue by the OP, I couldn't orgasm until I was about 25 because i felt ashamed of my own vagina (because I had slept around a bit as a youngster, and had an abortion). It felt like something to be ashamed of. Plus I was exposed to porn at a young age.
Now this is a very cheesy solution (so to speak) but I bought this book about Tantric sex (can't remember the name, and can't find it) and found it really helped me enjoy it again - maybe that'll help?

There has always been a school of thought among some educated, middle-class feminists, that some sexual acts are inherently displeasing to women, and that any woman who performs them is a peasant, a victim, or brainwashed. And if they can't use that label with any conviction, they call her a traitor to her sex or something. Because they can't actually cope with the idea of all women not being deep down Just The Same.

Going back to my earlier undeveloped point, that blogpost is bollocks because it makes consent a female issue and doesn't understand the law...

Consent is not a legal concept entirely related to the rape of women by men. It is part of marriage, sex, contracts, medicine etc in the legal world. It also has a legal definition not a general one when being used as legal terminology; agreement by choice, not any of the words listed in the blog. Those are two false assumptions that the argument is built on.

The other false assumption is that rape and sexual assault cases (where males or females are the victims) focus on consent which is the same as focusing on the behaviour of the victim. Proving consent is crucial to a defence of consent or reasonable belief of consent and it is up to the defendant to establish the steps they took to ascertain consent. It isn't an examining of the behaviour of the victim any further than it needs to be in order to actually convict someone of a serious crime and the focus is on the defendant to establish that they took steps to ascertain consent and had a reasonable belief of it.

The fourth thing that is absolute bollocks is this enthusiastic participation rubbish. Plenty of times I've really enjoyed sex without being an "enthusiastic participant" that isn't abuse or something the law should be involved in, the reason the law is agreement by choice is because it is the tried and tested legal standard which strikes the balance between protection of the vulnerable (the choice bit which prevents coercion/duress etc) and to prevent unnecessary and complicated prosecutions which don't achieve anything.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with consent.

Oh and I feel a bit like sgb is either not reading or deliberately misunderstanding that I'm not saying "wah all porn is awful" I've seen a lot of porn, that's why I feel how I do. I'm saying you have to look at the total effect of the porn (sex) industry on society and not judge it just by some selected bits which may be better or worse.