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Got an interesting article to share, with a goofy-ass twist.
https://farhakhalidi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-male-centered-women?triedRedirect=true
So, my first thought is that it is rare to see a writer lay out so explicitly their hang-ups with sex positivity. She makes the case that heterosexual men exploit the “unwritten rules” of the dating game to string along women for sex, and in doing so, traumatize them through sheer carelessness.
I don’t completely disagree with her assessment of the situation, although I’m confused as to what her policy prescriptions are, and I think she’s in a “Be Careful What You Wish For” scenario.
If you’ll indulge me as I put on my over-analysis hat, the heterosexual dating marketplace can be viewed through an economic lens, with men and women modeled as agents within the marketplace.
The author is making the case that the current status quo privileges men’s interests at the expense of women’s. Even if women would prefer a longer “runway” towards consummating a relationship, it’s the men who get to set the timetable, with their implicit threat of walking away otherwise.
The optimal behavior for women, operating collectively as a self-interested guild within the heterosexual marketplace is to coordinate to demand maximal investment from men in exchange for romantic/sexual relationships. In other words, to collude, act as a monopolistic cartel and engage in price-fixing schemes.
Like every cartel ever, this is hard to enforce because every individual member’s incentive is to undercut the group-set price. It becomes especially hard to enforce in cases of romantic relationships, where people are not fungible economic actors with identical goals of maximizing profits, but flesh-and-blood human beings with radically different goals, desires, and libidos.
The solution that allows women to set a “price floor” for relationships, in spite of both those factors, is to use social technology to align their interests. In this case, that technology would be “slut-shaming”. Any woman who engages in behavior that undermines the interests of Women as a Collective (like being willing to be Chad’s booty call) is declared persona non grata at Mimosa Mondays and banished from the bookclub.
None of this will be new to the average Mottizen, although God knows we never get tired of re-hashing the gender wars. What I find especially interesting in this salvo is the delivery source. In another essay, the author explicitly rejects the patriarchal norms of the conservative community that she grew up in. Despite that, she still converges on advocating for basically traditional conservative sexual morality in women’s dating life.
My concern is that I’ve never really heard of a secular society with those kinds of restrictions on sexuality; the only places that successfully curtail premarital sex do so explicitly through a religious point of view. The Taliban has successfully prevented Afghan women from traumatizing themselves from Hookup Culture, but whether this is better for Women As A Class is left as an exercise for the reader.
The punch line to all this? The author, Farha Khalidi, is an Onlyfans star! She is the bête noire of conservative patriarchs across the globe, and every social system (that I’ve ever heard of) that frowns on premarital sex would consider what she does to be much worse.
So it begs the question: what, exactly, is she advocating for? Quite frankly, I’m not sure. If I had to guess, I think she wants a secular, sexually conservative sororiarchy, where women watch out for their gender’s collective interests and stop each other from undercutting their bids. Either way, an interesting point of view.
We might call her a "sex-communist," although I prefer "sex-conflict-theorist." Specifically, the faction that advocates for the woman's class interest is feminism. I think she has all her facts right, too. I didn't get through the entire article (or her first one) but I suspect I got the gist of it.
I admit I can't explain why "feminist" in the public imagination is sex-positive. Was it a shadow campaign by the Chadiarchy to trick woman into Hookup Culture? Did feminists falsely believe sex-positivity was in woman's interest?
My pet theory from last month is that sex-positive feminists are highly psychologically atypical women who are almost as interested in casual sex as the modal man is, and who erroneously attribute their interest in casual sex as evidence as their having transcended the internalised misogyny (read: false consciousness) that their peers fell victim to.
My guess is that this phenomenon explains quite a lot of feminism - and likely ideological activism in general. People who write essays and books and give lectures on any sort of transgressive ideology will almost inevitably be highly atypical members of whatever group they belong to. The typical mind fallacy is an extremely seductive one, especially if you're already drawn to thinking that other people are "sheeple" or "NPCs" while you are an enlightened independent thinker who has escaped from her programming. Hence you see feminist professors and entertainment writers pushing becoming independent girlbosses who pursue their favorite intellectual or professional endeavors over things like family as being the correct, enlightened way that women would behave if they were freed from the patriarchy (this is - often unintentionally - also obfuscated as part of a motte-and-bailey game as being about giving women choice rather than about pushing them towards this). Women who are happy staying in the kitchen aren't as likely to publish books or go on lecture tours about how great their preferences are and how it's only through society-wide brainwashing that more women don't share their own preferences (though the comedienne Ally Wong had a good bit about this).
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Boomers' cultural worldview of feminism is stuck in the '70s, which is the last time that was true.
The side of feminism comprising the modern #fightfor25/Junior Anti-Sex League wouldn't get back to the same rent-seeking position on sex it had in the early 20th century until after AIDS.
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I remember sex negative feminists growing up. Girlbosses but no bikinis, that sort of thing. I think it's just a generational barber pole.
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In my opinion and recollection feminist used to have a sex negative valence - it was associated with ugly women who hated men, bull dyke lesbians etc.
It seemed to switch valence in the 90s I think.
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Traditionally, woman will be shamed for being sex-positive while man will be prided.
The first few waves of feminism (in the west) try to combat this contradiction by pushing woman's stand closer to the man's side, likly due to this appear to give more power to woman instead of stripping power from man.
I think this is a mistake, in practice, this casued a conflict of interest for womon. On one hand woman are now free to have sex without legal repercussions and too much socal slut naming, on the other hand woman are now finding out the biological difference between both sex, namely man can fuck and go now, while woman might need an abortion or get a 18 years liability.
Purhaps feminism should instead goes for shaming man of pre-marital sex, but it is too late now
It is currently doing that right now; that's what "Rape On College Campus" (and related), #metoo, #fightfor25 is agitprop for.
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