I once met a drunk girl that proclaimed her love of sex.
"I love sex so much," she said. "That's why I don't have kids."
I didn't tell her where babies come from. I think it will be more fun for her to be surprised.
I went to an gallery opening tonight, there was a picture of mine displayed (hooray!). There were also poetry readings all themed around women.
I will share two lines from a poem that was read,
"You are a flower to beautiful to pick. Your fragrance to wonderful to leave alone."
The man reading had written the poem for his wife and when he finished I applauded, not to him but to his wife, because his poetry is to awful to have to be married to.
I found through most all the art (painting and poetry) was about sex.
I do believe that woman are very sexual however I feel that exhibiting woman with sex is a bit cliche.
Why is it that people do not explore other aspects of femininity?
When people continuously combine woman and sex, is it treating woman as sex objects?
I feel that it was also a maturity issue. Many of the people there looked like undergraduates.
So what do any of you think about this? I really am curious do you agree or disagree?
6 comments:
Sadly, it seems that a lot of feminism today is focused on sexuality--that somehow liberating women equates exclusively with doing away with all sexual restraint.
I totally agree that it would be well, healthy, and intellectually inspiring to explore other aspects of femininity that are just as important as sexuality.
I think part of the reason people focus on the sexual aspect is, well, duh. It's the most obvious. There are still sexual double standars, ie: sowing his wild oats vs. being a slut, as well as sexual violence used to demean and oppress women - even consensual sex is often used as a means to assert male power and domination: http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2007/07/15/anal-is-the-new-third-base/
Whether or not you (the general "you") think sex is an "appropriate" way to expess feminism, the point is that feminists want to be in control of their sexuality, and for centuries they haven't been.
I, for one, would like to explore the science/math aspect of femininity. How come I can't think of a single female physicist? I doubt it's because women are just naturally bad at science (I am AWESOME at science. Take THAT, patriarchy!).
PS to Brian Holdaway: I have never once - not one single time EVER - heard anyone who claimed to be a feminist say that liberating women equates EXCLUSIVELY with doing away with all sexual retraint. EVER. That's totally ridiculous assertion.
rebecca: Thank you for calling me on my hyperbole.
rebecca: Thanks again for your comment--it's caused me to really think about why I made the assertion that I did, and for that I couldn't thank you enough.
My exposure to feminism came mostly in college. I majored Ancient Near Eastern Studies (which was really a fancy way of saying Biblical Studies). I spent a little time studying Biblical Feminist Criticism, which is a reading of the text of the Bible from a feminist point of view.
Maybe it was just the selections and scholars that I read (I can't remember any names right now), but it felt as if the idea of sexual liberation was primarily the focus of the feminist critics. It was frustrating to me because I think that there is so much more in the text that celebrates other aspects of femininity, but sadly I think I was mostly introduced to a few agenda-driven scholars who chose to make that the all-in-all of their writing.
You wrote:
"Whether or not you (the general 'you') think sex is an 'appropriate' way to express feminism, the point is that feminists want to be in control of their sexuality, and for centuries they haven't been."
That's dead on.
Rebecca wins again!
I was talking to my professor, Kate, who has taken me under her wing and taught me the ways of academia, and she had an interesting analogy. I talked about how Chrissy was frustrated that so much of the art was entirely focused on sex, and I said, "I think part of it is just the fact that it's being done by undergrads." Kate said, "Yes, they're discovering the world is round again and again."
Okay, now that I look at it, it doesn't seem to make much sense, but it did at the time.
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