In Defense of Sexual Freedom

Dirrrty girl Christina Aguilera has given up half-naked floor humping and even the fictional Carrie Bradshaw recently traded in her Sex and the City escapades for marital bliss. Apparently, there’s something terribly wrong with these developments.  There’s a “new backlash against casual sex,” says Jessica Grose in her latest piece for Slate, a “new wave of anti-orgasmic sexual conservatism that makes you hate yourself for what you did last night.”

Grose blames cultural conservatism and neo-Victorian morality for the latest iteration of what she calls “the shame cycle,” an era of sexual regret among women who participate in casual flings. Internalized conservative values, it seems, are forcing women to end their delightfully liberating one-night stands with the dreaded walk of shame, causing many to consider more chaste lifestyles.

The five or six celebrities and authors Grose says have jumped on the chastity bandwagon are hardly evidence of a cyclical phenomenon. But even if we are entering a period in which women are rejecting their inner Girls Gone Wild, why the blame game?

Shouldn’t genuine feminists celebrate women seizing their sexual destinies? Or is embracing your inner hoochie the only path to sexual freedom?

Grose answers that question by linking approvingly to a quote from Feministing.com: it is a “feminist duty to 1) seek pleasure and feel entitled to it and 2) to make the world a more orgasmic place for other women.”

Got that, ladies? If you’re not out there hooking up with every passing fancy, you’re shirking your feminist responsibilities.  You owe it to your comrades!  Is it any wonder that Feministing founder Jessica Valenti made an abstinent college student cry during a lecture on the myth of purity?

The problem with viewing sex as a “feminist duty” is that it muddies the waters between the personal and political in a way that is ultimately damaging to men and women alike. When casual sex is a feminist act, it’s a political act, not a personal, sensual one. And having sex out of a sense of political duty is disturbingly antithetical to the notion of sexual freedom.

Please visit NewsReal Blog to read the rest.

Published by Jenn Q. Public on March 13, 2010 at 4:41 pm

Filed Under Feminism, Liberal Absurdity, Women

Comments

2 Responses to “In Defense of Sexual Freedom”

  1. Janis on March 15th, 2010 5:04 pm

    I’m sick of being defined by my vagina by the right AND the left. I wish we’d all just grow up past the Disney princess model, the vagina dentata, the goddess junk, and the eater-of-mankind fears and just get the hell on with our damn lives.

  2. Jenn Q. Public on March 15th, 2010 11:28 pm

    Agreed, Janis. Unfortunately, as long as there’s political capital to be gained by using sex and gender as wedge issues, there will be people on both sides milking it for all it’s worth.

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