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Since then, there have been growing signs of young women rebelling against a culture that prizes erotic license over empathy and responsibility
This is the academic / journalistic equivalent of "many people are saying this!" The US hegemony is so wildly anti-sex that if you think it suffers from excessive 'prizing (of) erotic license' I just don't know how to reply. Maybe certain erotic tastes are allowed / amplified to an excessive degree, but this is against a backdrop of millions more 'erotic licenses' getting repressed.
generational battles over free speech are often about whether freedom should take precedence over sensitivity.)
weird framing of the issue. "We aren't discussing how language reifies certain power relationships, and manipulates the ways we understand ourselves, our desires, and opportunities. No, it's the freedom-speaking older generations versus sensitive young adults!"
The author doesn't describe the experience of producing or using porn, except to blame porn for exposing men to stuff that women don't want to do. This article strikes me as what :citations-needed: would describe as the descriptive to normative shuffle. I mean by the end of it she's literally calling for new taboos.
The article is conspicuously lacking in research -- one quote from one woman at BuzzFeed, a vague TikTok trend (when? how many views? users involved?). weak
This is the academic / journalistic equivalent of “many people are saying this!”
I was going to say this:
who is quickly becoming one of the most high-profile feminist thinkers in the English-speaking world
is code for "we, the pre-eminent English-speaking newspaper, would like this to be the case and are sending the signal to the rest of the media class to give this person a platform."
But I found 3 tiktok videos and 3 tweets about it, so clearly, the reason I am not showing you tens of thousands of these, is for the sake of brevity, in the article I am writing
i actually remember the exact one they quoted showing up on my fyp back in the spring, as well as a few others like it. All i can say is it had a ton of likes and comments, and considering the rest of my page is all queer/progressive/communist etc I assume thats who was interacting with it but who knows
I'm not commenting on that, merely saying that it was in fact a thing on tiktok and was appearing in "young progressive" spaces
The article is like a "Who's Who?" of weasel words that would get you marked down in English class.
Not even crypto, this is puritanical garbage barely disguised with feminist language.
Lol this article isn't even about exploitation within the porn industry, it's complaining about culture pressuring women into being more promiscuous and stigmatizing traditional relationships. It's the same persecution complex you see on hardcore right-wing outlets.
DAE trad hetero-mononormativity is the new counterculture??? :PIGPOOPBALLS:
Cool, now we're onto the ableism part of the discourse I see. It really doesn't take much for you wreckers to out yourselves, does it?
No, this is just reactionary drek that doesn't make its own case. There's probably a case to be made there, but it isn't present in the text, and there's certainly no reason to trust Goldberg to represent any position other than reaction.
I think this goes entirely the wrong direction.
Sex positivity was initially fought against by the dominating patriarchal assholes that wanted to control women. They eventually learned however that sex positivity benefits them and they changed their behaviour in order to exploit it.
Now everyone in my gender has experienced some rapey asshole using sex positivity as an excuse for their behaviour, and accusing anyone of rejecting their advances of prudish conservatism. "That's not very progressive of you" being a line I have specifically heard from someone who would not leave me the fuck alone.
When people have held personal experiences with sex positivity being weaponised by the very people they feel oppressed by of course it ceases to feel liberating. They have experienced it as a tool of control, coercion and sexual pressure to perform for these men.
Counter revolution against sex positivity is an obvious natural result of these experiences. If you experience something negative attached to something, you become negative about it.
Now everyone in my gender has experienced some rapey asshole using sex positivity as an excuse for their behaviour, and accusing anyone of rejecting their advances of prudish conservatism. “That’s not very progressive of you” being a line I have specifically heard from someone who would not leave me the fuck alone.
This has happened some with "kink culture" too, almost any woman can tell you about some man she started dating just suddenly trying to choke/insult/spit during sex without any warning.
And there's a real big issue with "Doms" who really are just abusive and controlling men who want a 1950's sex slave, not just some roleplay.
man she started dating just suddenly trying to choke/insult/spit during sex without any warning
Too many times. If you don't get consent for your kinks before doing them to someone, then what you did wasn't consensual. It's waaaay better to get consent before the pants come off in case that is a trigger for your partner. I've had men ask "can I choke you?" mid thrust and been able to enthusiastically say yes, but I'm also like that and told them that was cool earlier.
Like it's good to be open minded, but to have an open mind someone has to fucking talk to you first.
Also during sex kind of blurs lines of consent. A stronger bigger man has you naked and vulnerable. The idea that a real consent can exist in a situation like this is pretty weak. Sexual boundaries should be done in a fair safe and neutral location where all members feel they are fully free to leave without any possibility of backlash or violence.
Elsewise you risk issues with people saying yes, but only because they don't want you to go even further past that.
Yeah, I agree. I hesitated about including that even though I told him we could both ask as we went. I also already trusted him. It probably isn't a good idea for most women.
This is written so fucking well you are an amazonian word sniper.
“That’s not very progressive of you” being a line I have specifically heard from someone who would not leave me the fuck alone.
The /r/Vaush School of Dating
ok SWERF
"the liberals want all women to be capitalist sluts" is puritan trash. should have left that idea at plymouth where it belongs.
against callousness and cruelty.
wonder what set of incentives are driving the callousness and cruelty
yeh sounds like the kids are mad at the state of sexuality in a crushing neoliberal state
You should start this off by affirming support for demi people and then asking your question. I'm not demi, so I can't answer that. If you want to learn more, I'm sure there are some good demi subreddits you could read through (but not post in).
Thanks for deciding what is or isn't a valid orientation for the rest of us.
I support aroace individuals (I am one :hexbear-aromantic: ) and people who are assholes to them should get bodied
Yeah, sorry, you already disqualified yourself from being listened to when you decided to be a giant dick.
And I'd rather not deal with self-important sexuality-police like you at all, but we all have to tolerate some difficulties in life, I guess.
I don't mean to keep this going but the author - who again is a reactionary - is literally playing sexuality-police.
Yes, and so is this jackass. They may not agree with each other, but the two of them are a match made in hell, nonetheless.
Yeah, ace people are kinda used to being everyone's least-favorite coalition-mate. The problem here is that the misunderstanding you and Goldberg seem to have is that you think demisexuality is just a preference for liking your sex partner. It's not. Most demisexuals I know are far closer to ace than they are to your understanding. They are capable of wanting and enjoying sex in a relationship as an emotional thing, but not in what people who aren't ace think of as the physical sense.
And part of this is made more difficult because you're taking the entire category of asexual people and now using a subsection to determine what is or is not a sexual minority. Now, ace people are used to that, because we're used to being made into something we aren't because non-ace people can't accept that we just don't experience sex or sexuality the way they do or that we are alienated by being expected to think about sex and sexuality the way they do. But like all micro-aggressions, the issue is mostly just the constant reminder that our world and our perspective doesn't matter. Eventually, that gets to the point where your response goes from "please stop" to "shut the fuck up, reactionary, I swear to god", because it just isn't worth it to listen to another non-ace person decide they know us better than us.
But fine, I don't give a fuck. I don't care about being in the LGBTQ+ representation tent. That tent is worth jack-all to many of the people in it because of horseshit like this.
You are in the tent and this bigot should get the wall. Full support.
So are arguably asexual men in most countries. Trying to pit parts of the whole LGBTQAI+ thing into oppression Olympic to decide who gets to stay doesn't seem like a winning strategy. What the harm with demisexuals identifying with the "Stonewall crowd". Is there really a chance of them highjacking the movement?
I'm not sure we need to focus on government as the sole source of oppression, but I'm guessing an asexual woman living in particularly patriarchal place is likely to have a really bad time. Hell, here in Russia my heterosexual female friends have struggled with the pressure from everyone around them to get married as soon as possible.
Then you started "trying to learn'" by shitting on the people you're trying to learn about.
Frankly, it doesn't matter if you understand it. Just start with support and listen to people. You can fill in your understanding later.
You should already get this. Go self-crit after you get banned for being a bigot.
You are a worm. Your alienation comes from your bigotry and it is your own fault.
I stand against the constant dismissal of asexual people as real people with a real difference in how they engage with sexuality by non-ace people. Asexuality, even demisexual/grey-asexuality is based in a very different experience/engagement with sex and sexuality. Quite-frankly, there are few things as alien (and often alienating) as listening to a non-ace person explain how they experience horniness or attraction, for example. In particular, I stand against judgmental non-ace people deciding for us who and what we are in order to fit their preferences.
this is some absolute chud shit and you should try to educate yourself on asexuality, since you don't seem to understand it at all but feel very strongly about denying people on that spectrum a place in the LGBTQIA community.
people aren't just telling you to fuck off for fun
See, you literally just said "No one is doing the thing I'm going to now do" and then did it. The patronizing dismissiveness you're engaged in is exactly what pisses ace people off.
Ah, yes, the "cool kids club" which treats half the letters in its membership as inconveniences. Between bisexual erasure, trans-medical trans-people, and the way intersex and asexual people are treated, it qualifies as a "with friends like these who need enemies" situation. There is no "cool kids club" and no one is trying to get into it. We're supposed to be here to protect each other, but the reality is still just high-school lunchroom bullshit.
What feels like mockery is being constantly told which box you fit in by people who have no idea what your lived experience is.
Bluntly, it's about everything you say around dismissing demisexual people as part of the LGBTQIA community that I'm annoyed about. The actual "you aren't part of the club" shit couldn't matter less to me. It's the failure to recognize that there is a fairly uncommon experience of asexuality that is more than just "a preference" even if it isn't part of "club" and that shapes peoples' lives in a way that they are better able to speak to you that makes me so mad at you. Particularly because you think it's all about being "part of the club" when, like I've said: fuck the club. The club shits on bisexual people, intersex people, and nonbinary people all the time. I don't give a fuck if we get to sit at the cool kids' table. I've never wanted to be there before and I sure as fuck don't now. I just don't want to listen to a bunch of people who know nothing about my life experience dictate what it does or doesn't mean to me.
I don't care whether it interests you that I take offense at having my life experience trivialized by an outsider. I don't care about your club. I don't care about the stupid game you're playing with membership or not. If you can't let ace people speak for themselves, then just don't talk about us. It's really easy.
The 'A' in LGBTQIA stands for both full asexuals and grey-ace/demi people. Generally, we're considered to be a set.
As a queer trans person, the inclusion of demisexuals in LGBTQ+ does not at all dilute anything. Stop pearl clutching over nothing
As another queer enby trans person, demisexuals absolutely do not "dilute" the "queer identity". Are you really accusing a comrade here of creating an identity for clout stealing aesthetics?
If you're not a part of this community you don't get a vote in this topic at all.
Demi people diluting queerness is quite a take from you, I gotta say. Queer folk all want sexual and gender liberation, right? That's like the whole point so I dunno what you're on about
But I don't think the point is to make some pie bigger or smaller or share a pie. The point is to make sure people are no longer persecuted, disowned, killed etc due to shitty societal views about sexuality and gender which take a specific form. Of course someone can talk about all the other stuff but I don't think it is the right framework.
A label shouldn't determine whether your sexual preference is valid or not. I also didn't say anything about validity. Just saying this reactionary authors usage of demisexual is contradictory and low key exploitative.
Not calling you out. Calling out the reactionary I replied to.
The thing is you're agreeing with the author - who is a reactionary..
Jissus did some fucker actually say that? Fucking hell, get the :ban-hammer: for whoever said that
I can't believe we're still having this many problems with LGBTQIA acceptance this far in.
Also if I see that person's comment I'll be banned for the shit I want to say...
It's got to be some dingleberries who stuck around after TERFmas. Hexbear is very accepting of LGBTQIA , unlike these nobodies.
Hook up culture and the prolificness of porn I think flaty disproves many claims it's the norm to be demi
I don't think hookup culture is the norm, I think it just has good marketing.
Young people: "We don't like how sex is commodified, and how some weasels use fake sex positivity as a way to try to coerce sex. Alienation is something many of us are struggling with, and more long term relationships than hookup culture sounds nice to some of us."
Michelle Goldberg: :is-this: "Young people are becoming old fashioned prudes."
It gave me the opportunity to make a terrible and worn out joke, so I think it was worth it!
Political lesbianism is not the same thing as just being a lesbian. It's an idea from within second wave feminism (particularly radical feminism) that in order to be a feminist you must be a lesbian, though you don't have to actually have sex with women, you're also allowed to be an asexual lesbian, or entirely celibate.
Lesbians as a group do not benefit from gaslighting straight women into fucking them, and arguing from that position is not a good place to be.
though you don’t have to actually have sex with women, you’re also allowed to be an asexual lesbian, or entirely celibate.
What you're saying is not only off-base but also really creepy.
Not the first thing you've said that sounds like /r/TheRedPill, I'm sorry to report.
Sentences like this tell everyone you're extremely single and think it's everyone else's fault.
:cope:
how does a bunch of straight women going into a bizarro lesbian closet benefit lesbians?
If anything it benefits lesbians if a bunch of straight women stick exclusively to dating women.
I... what? How is it a benefit that the dating pool has a bunch of people who aren't actually attracted to you in any way?
This is putting the cart before the horse. The idea is not that you cannot be a feminist without being a lesbian. But that refraining from heterosexual sex for political reasons is possible and desirable as a method of confronting sexism. At least that is what I got out of skimming some of the literature a while back
Most of its adherents get a bit creepy about sexuality being a choice so you can just choose to be lesbian imo
I mean yeah, you're not wrong, and it basically just blanket assigns a new definition of lesbian as just a woman that doesn't sleep with men, which is maybe not the most accurate definition. (I swear to god if anyone tries to turn this into a struggle session about bi/pan lesbians i will bonk them)
Political lesbianism also has deep ties to the concept of lesbian separatism which is where more of the "lesbianism is mandatory to be a feminist" concept comes in, and may not be covered universally in the literature. And of course, where would we be without the concept of explaining absurd concepts to people without taking those concepts to their ultimate conclusions.
I'm against sex work only in the sense that I'm against all work. Many sex workers are only in the job not because they truly want to, but because they have little alternative.
That's not to say all are, and sex workers who truly enjoy the job and want to do cam streaming or prostitution or whatever should be 100% allowed to. Just that as a society we can't accept sex work is work fully, because work itself is exploitative.
Kind of like that statement that retorts sex worker phobic claims of women selling their body being bad with hey all jobs sell your body just in a different way. In actuality that's a problem, no job should be forcing someone to destroy their body or their unwillingness to consent or anything else.
And a fair feminist and communist land, sex work wouldn't be sex work. It would be a sex decision. It would be sexual freedom. People would feel more inclined to turn down others that they weren't comfortable with, they would feel more inclined to be able to practice safe sex without losing out on money. They would be able to cam when they want, and not be forced on a consistent schedule or else they lose clients.
They will be free to do it not as work, but of true desire and consent.
One of my friends is a sex worker and 100% chooses to do it too, she does a lot of cam work and sex videos.
But this certainly isn't representative of everyone in the industry, especially if you take people who are interested in it but are forced into particular circumstances that they aren't wanting. Like a pornstar who is forced into a fetish they're not into, even if they do want to do general sex work.
This is what I mean by sex freedom instead of sex work, the ability to not just choose to participate in it but also the circumstances of what you engage in.
Yeah that's the other side of the shit sandwich. Men will find any angle they can to justify harassing women.
ib4 an "nOt AlL mEn" alt shows up: yes, very good sparky, get a cookie from the box and we'll put a gold star on the calendar.
you mean, when they are released from the chains of their boomer parents into the chains of rentceldom, they'll immediately turn against their anti-sex/porn positivity stances?
I think crab mentality/stockholm syndrome would actually apply here.
I'm not going to respond all this much because it's too long.
- Sex positivity is largely default for anyone under 40 living who isn't a chud.
- Feminism is more revolutionary now, even the progressive shit.
- Holding predators accountable isn't sex negativity and claiming it is shows a belief that predation is acceptable sex.
- Ditto for defining consent and enforcing it. Consent is sexy.
- Feeling an emotional connection isn't sex negativity and not feeling an emotional connection isn't sex positivity. Part of sex positivity is not justifying having sex on your terms.
- No one watches porn in a movie theater because the internet exists.
Incels have shown up as a reaction to women combating patriarchy. They're resentful that they have not been given a domestic servant to replace their mommy.
Most of the supposed evidence for "porn as a drug" is funded by evangelical christians. Lots of shit lights up the pleasure centers of the brain.
both myself and some of my friends have had really shitty experiences with shitty "sex positive" guys. it's good to enjoy sex, but it's also completely fine to set boundaries and not enjoy things
I think theres a lot of room for nuance in the sex worker/sex positivity discussion, IMO Im inclined to think of ethical sex work patronage under capitalism being impossible, but I dont know if this article is it.
Yea exactly, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the concept of porn or sex work, but I don’t see an ethical way for it to exist as I know it.
I guess similar to how I feel with the concept of law enforcement/protection vs the institution of police/policing.
EDIT: Do want to clarify that the people performing sex work are not equivalent to police in this comparison, and I fully support them as laborers.
Yea I quickly realized the problem with comparing policing to sex work.
Sex workers are the ones being harmed and exploited by the sex industry under capitalism, but cops actively enforce and uphold the negatives of law enforcement under capitalism.
Jesus. I have a lot of problems with mainstream porn too, but
“Liberal feminism telling young girls that hookup culture is liberating, conditioning them to think that if you don’t have extreme kinks at a young age then they’re boring and vanilla, and encouraging them to get into sex work the minute they turn 18.”
is just a gigantic fucking strawmen
Holy SWERF batwoman. The last two paragraphs sort of balance it out at least.
Before I write anything else: I've fought for years to assert my sexuality, but everyone's experiences are going to be different. I understand and support other women who feel differently about themselves. Walk your walk, you are valid.
Okay, it's dunkachino time.
a culture that prizes erotic license over empathy and responsibility
These things are not mutually exclusive. Erotic gratification is built from empathy and owning our bodies.
Mainstream pro-wrestling style porn can be alienating for some peeps, but the way for us to overcome that isn't by stigmatizing all porn. We should understand what the fuck that represents, that it isn't how most people make fuck. If you don't watch porn, you fill in the blanks with other shit anyway. You know, like soaking and jump humping.
Liberal sex positivity is like liberal feminism, it is watered down and easily hijacked by the patriarchy. No surprise sexist psychos try to gaslight women and invalidate their desires. They try to do that with everything.
SWERF brainworms show up even with leftists and it blows big fatty fucking chunks. I haven't read the other comments yet, but I'll bet there's at least one dude spewing out their resentment against women instead of facing their own self-loathing. They love to dress that shit up with "concern for women". Those guys are losers and should fuck off until they sort through their shit.
imo this article had real "why conservatism is the new punk rock" vibes to me.
:feminism:
"Sex for my students is what porn says it is,"
Well that's really fucking depressing.
I don't talk to people but yeah there probably are a lot of poor idiots who thought porn, industrial or homemade, wasn't someone's fantasies but what real people actually do.
In my experience, the amount of people like that is heavily exaggerated
I'm not sure. From most stories I've heard, male partners do seem pretty fuckin bad tbf. it's always shocking to me, but it seems prevalent. Like women routinely having to fake orgasms bc theyre afraid to slight their partner.. That is not good!
Oh definitely, they are bad in many ways, I just don't think they think "porn sex = irl sex." The problems are unfortunately probably deeper than that.
That’s like a lateral move from the past when men just didn’t care whether the woman had an orgasm or not.
Because women can’t find liberation from patriarchy under capitalism, so the liberal feminist attempts to do so always result in lateral moves instead of progress toward liberation.
I'm pretty skeptical that anyone who grows up in this culture actually thinks porn reflects real sex. I spent my entire young adult life being repeatedly told "porn is not reality" in every discussion of sex I encountered, whether or not anyone had brought porn up in the first place. The problem more seems to be people who want to have porn be reality and are angry that it isn't.