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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25588 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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The progressive movement that exists today is overwhelmingly sex negative: they are in favor of raising the age of consent (to 25), against age gaps, against workplace relationships, against flirting in public, or in bars, or everywhere except designated dating apps, against prostitution, against pornography (except onlyfans), against sex comedies, against sexy women in video games, against revealing clothing in movies.

The progressive movement that exists today can be summarized as "Straight male sexuality bad, everything else good!". They are in favor of raising the age of consent, but deny that women actually need to get consent from men. They are against age gaps, but deny behavior of older women toward younger men is sexual. They are against men flirting with women unless the women desire it, but think women should be free to flirt with men whenever they wish. They are against any media that panders to the sexual desires of straight men, but are okay with media that panders to the sexual desires of others.

"Sex positivity" has always been tied up in Feminism and thus has always only cared about ensuring sexual outcomes are positive for women.

Sex postive feminists existed at one point, it's just that after they lost the feminist sex wars, the sex negs flayed them and wore their skin to hide their puritanical, hypocritical nature.

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.

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.

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