The "F" Word

Not THAT one, silly. I'm talking about a different dirty word: feminism. I say this because some of you (you know who you are) just got put off from reading this entry. You're not alone. In sadly many circles, the idea of feminism is considered negative. Many women the world over shy away from calling themselves feminist; yet, when asked, will say that they definitely agree that women in the same job positions as men deserve the same pay, and equal respect. Uh, hello? That's what feminism is.

So here's a link to an article from one of my favorite bloggers: feministe (where the “e” at the end still stands for “Everything Else that is tangentially related to feminism at best”). This one's a commentary on an article the author found on female sexuality, and definitely does a really good job of expressing how I've always felt about the objectification/sexualization of the female form. If you're feeling lazy/uninterested, I put the part I found most pertinent right here in my blog entry. Otherwise, I really encourage you to go check it out. Please? You'll feel smarter.

Shocking, absolutely shocking, that when women are raised in a culture that equates the female body with sex itself, that positions the female body as an object of desire, and that emphasizes that being desired is the height of female achievement, women will see sex as a process primarily centered on male attraction to women, and will get off more on being wanted than on wanting.
Shocking, too, that when “naked chick” is cultural shorthand for “sex,” women will look at naked chicks and think “sex.”
It’s not narcissism. It’s a lifetime of experiencing the world secondarily, and seeing ourselves through male eyes; it’s the lack of agency and power that comes with being an object to be looked upon.
...
Women are sexual objects. Unlike men, we aren’t taught to have the same actor mentality; that is, we aren’t sexual agents, and we don’t dictate the heteronormative* sexual narrative in the same way that men do. Sex itself is constructed with women on the receptive end: Men penetrate, we’re penetrated. That isn’t just biology, it’s culture. It sounds ridiculous, but there are other ways that we could talk about and understand sex. I had a professor in college who suggested that maybe men don’t penetrate women, women envelop men. We all laughed, and I still think it sounds silly, but her point wasn’t lost on me — how we discuss and understand sex, and all the social and cultural baggage we throw onto it, influences what we believe to be hard, scientific, biological facts about how our bodies work and what our bodies do.

*heteronormative = the view that heterosexuality is the normal sexual orientation, and the subsequent marginalization of non-heterosexual lifestyles.

"Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at."
--John Berger, Ways of Seeing