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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24890 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Sex positive feminists won the feminist sex wars though. Sex positive feminists were never supportive of male sexuality except so far as it could be exploited by women.

No, that's what "they" say. My conspiracy theory is that the sex positive feminists actually lost. Modern feminists do not like porn and prostitution. They are very fond of sex negative terms like rape culture and objectification.

I think you are misunderstanding what "sex positive" and "sex negative" refer to. The schism between the two groups basically revolves around how one answers the question "Is heterosexual sex oppressive of women?". Sex negative feminists hold that it is and thus heterosexual sex must be eschewed, leading to things like political lesbianism. Sex positive feminists hold that it is not necessarily oppressive and that women should be free engage their sexuality so long as it is empowering to them. Sex positive feminists still often oppose the sexual objectification of women because it is not empowering. That doesn't make them sex negative however.

I don't think anyone self-describes as "sex-negative", and I kind of agree with the "skinsuit" theory on what "sex-positive" means in practice, i.e. feminists feel a need to publicly identify that way whether or not it actually fits. Even from feminists who self-describe that way, the overwhelming majority of the messaging seems to be "sex hurts" and ideas about "rape culture" et al that I would characterize as extremely paranoid. (Granted, I'm mostly around people with upper-middle-class values where sexual violence is quite rare and any appearance otherwise is largely an artefact of expanding the definition beyond reasonable limits. But so are most feminists. These are mostly academic-adjacent notions we're talking about here.) When I deal with these people I'm constantly asking, or at least thinking, "If you're so sex-positive, why do you never seem to have anything positive to say about sex?"

I would say it’s generally a position on (straight) hook up culture and promiscuity more than it’s a conclusive position on heterosexual sex. If you limit ‘sex negative’ to only political lesbians and/or others who think all heterosexual sex is rape and/or generally oppressive, you’re limiting it to a few thousand old women at most, essentially a tiny subset of second-wave radfems.

Many or even most older ‘sex negative’ radfems are married (to men) with kids, I’d say. It’s more of a position on whether promiscuity, porn, casual sex and sex work is empowering or not.

Sex-positive feminists

The terms pro-sex feminism and, later, sex-positive feminism were inspired by Ellen Willis.[14] From 1979, feminist journalist Ellen Willis was one of the early voices criticizing anti-pornography feminists for what she saw as sexual puritanism, moral authoritarianism and a threat to free speech.

The Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce (FACT) was set up in 1984 by Ellen Willis in response to the Dworkin–MacKinnon Ordinance;[17] in 1989 Feminists Against Censorship formed in the UK, its members including Avedon Carol; and Feminists for Free Expression formed in the United States in 1992 by Marcia Pally, with founding members including Nadine Strossen, Joan Kennedy Taylor, Veronica Vera and Candida Royalle.

Note the heavy emphasis on free speech. Does this sound like modern feminism to you?

Sex positive feminists still often oppose the sexual objectification of women because it is not empowering.

It is the sex negative side that adopted and developed the concept of sexual objectification. If they were truly sex positive, they would deny that ‘objectification’ was even a real thing .

The majority of the thinkers discussing objectification have taken it to be a morally problematic phenomenon. This is particularly the case in feminist discussions of pornography. Anti-pornography feminists Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, influenced by Immanuel Kant’s conception of objectification, have famously argued that, due to men’s consumption of pornography, women as a group are reduced to the status of mere tools for men’s purposes.

edit: The true heirs of sex positive feminism are 'individualist feminists', like Wendy McElroy, Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, who are basically considered anti-feminists by feminists nowadays.

Note the heavy emphasis on free speech. Does this sound like modern feminism to you?

Yes, it does. Sex positive feminism maintains women should be free to engage in sex, in pornography, in sex work, etc without being shamed or otherwise punished for doing so. That seems to be by far the most prevalent form of modern feminism to me. This is completely separate from whether or not men should be able to take advantage of that freedom to satisfy their own desires.

If they were truly sex positive, they would deny that ‘objectification’ was even a real thing.

Hmmm. I thought they denied it was necessarily a bad thing, not that it exists at all.

EDIT: Grammar.

Sex positive feminism maintains women should be free to engage in sex, in pornography, in sex work, etc without being shamed or otherwise punished for doing so. That seems to be by far the most prevalent form of modern feminism to me. This is completely separate from whether or not men should be able to take advantage of that freedom to satisfy their own desires.

That seems incoherent to me, or at least to have some obvious and serious internal tensions in practice. What, women should be free to engage in sex work but shouldn't have any customers?

That's right. For an example, see the nordic model of prostitution. Only the buyers are punished . It's clearly sex negative, even though the women are "free to engage in sex work without being punished".

This approach to criminalising sex work was developed in Sweden in 1999 on the debated radical feminist position that all sex work is sexual servitude and no person can consent to engage in commercial sexual services.[7] The main objective of the model is to abolish the sex industry by punishing the purchase of sexual services.

Notably, the National Organization for Women supports it.

Are we talking academic feminism or popular understanding of feminism (“it just means ‘women are people’, equal rights, etc ”)?

Because I think the wider population is far less anti-pornography, anti-prostitution and anti-free speech than committed feminists , so modern feminism as a political player is hardly on the pro-side of these issues.

Hmmm. I thought they denied it was necessarily a bad thing, not that it exists at all.

Well it’s the original objection to kant. Are you ‘objectifying’ a baker by buying his bread? If yes, we are constantly objectifying others, I can’t see the problem with it, the concept of ‘objectifying’ loses all negative valence, so may as well not exist.

Are we talking academic feminism or popular understanding of feminism (“it just means ‘women are people’, equal rights, etc ”)?

Because I think the wider population is far less anti-pornography, anti-prostitution and anti-free speech than committed feminists , so modern feminism as a political player is hardly on the pro-side of these issues.

I'd say somewhere in the middle. I think the primary political power of feminism stems from people who have a deeper understanding of feminism than the "pop feminism" you reference, who accurately refer to themselves as feminists, but aren't directly involved in academic feminism. For example, consider a lawyer who graduated with a degree in gender studies in addition to whatever pre-law degree they sought and then entered a career in government. I think these feminist are largely sex positive and the instances where they appear not to be are usually due to them reacting to a situation framed in such a way that the impact on women's agency is not obvious to them. I don't think it is fair to dismiss them as "not real feminists". Meanwhile, academic feminism has a lot of perverse incentives that drive it to produce...less popular views, but I don't think those views hold much power until they are distilled and accepted by former group.

Hmmm. I thought they denied it was necessarily a bad thing, not that it exists at all.

Well it’s the original objection to kant. Are you ‘objectifying’ a baker by buying his bread? If yes, we are constantly objectifying others, I can’t see the problem with it, the concept of ‘objectifying’ loses all negative valence, so may as well not exist.

Consider the difference between 'homicide' and 'murder'. Does the fact that 'homicide' lacks the negative valence of 'murder' mean it may as well not exist? To the contrary, the fact that it lacks a negative valence is the reason it does exist because we sometimes don't view killing someone as a negative and thus require a more neutral term. I think '[sexual] objectification' is more similar to 'homicide' in the eyes of a sex positive feminist, who use it to describe something without passing judgement on it, and more similar to 'murder' in that it is passing judgement in the eyes of a sex negative one.

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