Tagline: Little Light
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Heh. ;) Certainly I would never , ever want to resurrect the Hummer Wars. But, ya know… I think this in particular is an interesting topic, and, to my credit, I’ve thought of it in the past (before the Hummer Wars) but never written anything about it, so…. um, yeah.
Thanks for putting out the call. I hope someone remembers where that is!
Being a member of the Patriarchy and all, I may not be entitled to an opinion, but it seems to me anything can be liberating so long as the parties involved see it that way.
The more important question might be, “does it have to be liberating?”
Doesn’t going through life attaching deep meaning to so many details of life make those acts a trap rather than a liberation?
Poob — you’re omnipotent, you know ALL.
I think what happens in the discussion is that some people mean liberating as in: “if it’s liberating for me and I see my oppression as the result of a structured social oppression — like sexism — then by this act, I’m rebelling or experience a little freedom in a world otherwise constrained.”
But those who poo poo that say, “Wait a minute! This is about collective action, not individual action.”
They see the problem as a social problem and one that must be addressed societally, through radically rebellious and collective political practice.
——
but as to the more common issue here, it can work both ways. I’m a sociologist, so I think everything about our lives is negotiating meanings. (and for ilestre: negotiating them in a field of fundamentally inequitable power structures. :)
But more commonly, for someone like me, who was taught to have sex with people you loved and were in a committed relationship with, the first time I threw caution to the wind and fucked someone because I wanted to and was happy to drop him off at his place the next day, never to hear from him again, sex like that was liberating. I no longer had to see it as attached to a relationship with a purpose or goal.
I remember telling a feminist mentor this, a second waver who was relatively well-known in her day. We were on our way to a conference put on by the admin or our uni, so it was in the adirondacks at one of the most lush lodges I’ve ever been to. Gorgeous.
We drove the windy backroads of upstate NY, taking the long way to get there — the scenic route. This was, in part, so we could talk and she could enjoy her little convertible miata, a thing that every person walking the streets of the small towns we drove through just stared at. She beamed, pleased with herself for buying something so foolish and youthful and sexy.
For women in her generation and me, raised by them, this was indeed liberatory: to not feel the demand of being the ‘proper’ woman, to seeing men as people with whom one can share sexual pleasure and little else.
So, I dunno the answer.
I don’t see what I do in the bedroom as a blow against the patriarchy, but nor do I see it as necessarily a straightforwardly and simply determined inscription of the patriarchy. That’s where I get off the dominant feminist Klew Train.
And, reading this weekend, it’s where most published sexpos feminist do too. There’s a serious disagreement between these theoriests and writers and those in the other camps — and it has to do with sexuality, the psyche, and structures of oppression.
But, I’m rambling….
Ah, Bitch, you have made my point for me! Now I no longer have to write the post at my own blog!
Just kidding, I’m sure I’ll still end up rambling on about it anyway, and get lots of comments from people who just love to intentionally misread what I say. Alas!
But, yeah. That is exactly what I am getting at here. Breaking with an imposed standard that feels oppressive in order to move toward being true to oneself (instead of trying to live up to outside expectations) is extremely liberating, no matter what it is.
>the Hummer Wars
“what did you do in the War, mommy?”
Okay, Bitch, I’m here and I have an answer. How low can I go?
Shied Violet — well, if you have to ask…. :)
I don’t know what you mean: how low can you go in terms of being explicit — sexually?
how low can you go in terms of taking a critical position of the claim that sex is liberatory?