Sex positivity is bad for feminism?

The Frisky just ran an their commentary on an article claiming that sex positivity is bad for feminism and worse than that: boring.

What does a girl have to do to be interesting these days anyway? Should I invite Zille and Miss Calico over to my place so we can mix gluten free cake batter with Hitachi magic wands, get it all over our bodies, spray it on the wall ala Jackson Pollack, and then tie them up and read Judith Butler out loud as torture? Well…to be fair there are some good ideas in there. For the record, I like a lot of Butler’s ideas. I just have one hell of a time getting through her prose to get to them.

So why is sex positivity crucial to feminism? Because I still get called a slut in a bad way. It happens when I’m walking down the street in jeans and a t-shirt, it happens at a bar, it happens when I reject someone’s sexual advances, and it gets in the way of me trying to access reproductive health care (such as Plan B on a Sunday morning). I like being called a slut. When I hear something like, ”well little girl, I have attached 5 set of clover camps to your body, tied you up, and you’re still begging for me to make you cum, you hot little slut,” I get wet. “You should invite Ms. Mayhem to that play party because she’s a lot of fun and such a slut,” is a compliment because I’m adding to the intentions of the party and can create a lively atmosphere. 

Being called a slut in a bad way, for me, is when someone assumes that because I like to fuck that I lack grey matter or that it’s ok to touch me without my permission and harass me in public because I have fun taking nekkid photos. Sex positivity will be crucial for feminism until I can do porn and not have most people immediately think that the only reason I graduated from high school was because of the decline of the American educational system and a sliding scale for chicks with tits. 

No, I’m not particularly interested in going to another ‘hold hands-eat tofu-sing folk songs-and talk about the beauty of the female orgasm’ workshop either. But you know what? When there are still pre-orgasmic women walking around who haven’t experienced what I try to do at least once a day I’m glad that there are people out there trying to help. Men have pills and women have kumbaya but if that’s what you need to get off and everyone is able to consent to it, for the love of whatever you believe, do it! No one is forcing you to sit through these workshops or lectures and for those that do they are infinitely cheaper than months in sex therapy.

But the part that gets me is that sex or porn isn’t interesting. Really? At least the hugely anti-porn or anti-bdsm people admit to having spent hours pouring themselves over the degrading filth. It has to at least hold your attention if you’re going to dedicate a portion of your life writing, talking, and campaigning against it. They’re more interested in porn than I am it seems. 

It took me a minute to realize that boring wasn’t the term Hess was looking for at all. As I clicked on the links I found that all but one were about Annie Sprinkle. Hess wants everyone to just stop talking about orgasms because there are ‘more important things to talk about’ but sex positive feminism is a really recent inclusion into the study of feminism. It also had to fight its way into a safe space for discussion given the number of sex-positive feminists I have looked up to for years who had bomb threats called in to the places where they were speaking. Sex positivity did not enter feminist consciousness like a pizza in a stoner’s basement, it had to fight violent opposition. For someone like me, the term boring is a little offensive, so I think what Hess was trying to say to Annie Sprinkle was, “shut up you attention seeking slut.” 

I was also a little amused by her statement, “it’s condescending to the feminist movement that we have to bring orgasms in to be taken seriously.” What kind of, “I’m cooler than you because I listen to bands that no one has ever heard of ever before” bullshit is this? Headliners fill seats and offer incredible exposure to new ideas and new people and there were a lot of presenters there that had a chance to speak in front of many more people because of the keynote speaker. 

There is undoubtedly going to be many more waves of feminism ahead of us. There were many that came before. We tend to get attached to our own paradigms and we don’t give them up easily. The old guard lives in us all. To Amanda Hess, I recommend the phrase, “your kink is not my kink.” It’s ok if you don’t like everything but stop trying to rain on my parade of orgasms.