Monday, October 29, 2012

Talking Point # 9 - Sex Positivity

Sex-positive movement: "an ideology which promotes and embraces open sexuality with few limits beyond an emphasis on safe sex and the importance of informed consent." After reading the Wikipedia page about sex-positive feminism and Rachel White's blog, sex-positivity is being comfortable with what you find sexually attractive, or even if you don't find anything sexually attractive. It was a little confusing.

The politic issues on the Wikipedia is what really stood out. The movement started in response to anti-pornography, many feminist thought that pornography was one thing that oppressed women. Gayle Rubin says "that anti-pornography feminists exaggerate the dangers of pornography by showing the most shocking pornographic images." The page then continues to say how by showing these images anti-pornography feminist give the wrong message to people. That these images are portrayed differently when taken out of context, and look like rape or other things are taking place. The sex-positive feminist believe that pornography is important to women and to men. They don't believe that it is hurting anyone to see it. The Wikipedia then continues to talk about sex work, BDSM. I like how it also talks about sexual orientation saying that "sex-positive feminist believe that accepting the validity of all sexual orientations is necessary in order to all women sexual freedom." I that everyone should be able to feel comfortable with who they are so they can figure out their sex-poisivity.

In "The Frisky", I do like how White goes through her blog. Most of her points I completely agree with. I believe that we glamorize sex all the time. Society trains us to do this, and sex is everywhere today. White continues with Slut-shaming. She says that people do this all the time, and that most of the time we don't even realize it. When people say that some is a slut because they take the pill (this is so frustrating, because women take birth control for many more reasons then just to not get pregnant. It's annoying how people think if someone is on the pill they're a crazy sex animal). But we don't just do this when we talk about the pill, we slut-shame when we say it was someones own fault when their nude photos got released without their permission. We say they shouldn't have taken them in the first place. We judge people all the time, and we really shouldn't. We don't know why people do things, but it's really only their business anyway. Finally, when White talks about how intimacy is complex. I like how she explains how sex can be easy for some people and harder for others. That is can be a big deal to share your body with someone else, and so on. I don't think many people take this into consideration, and this is because of our culture being so full of sex, that it almost feels expected that sex should be easy, but everyone is different, and needs to find these things out for themselves.  

2 comments:

  1. i like how the first thing in your blog was a definition of something that was overlooked in the articles.. it was a veer off of the sex positivity..
    i do agree i think that Wiki had a lot of politics and political terms and was politically correct and whites article was more down to earth.. i also said something along these lines in my own blog. you dont sound too confused in your blog so i think you got the point of the two articles (well, coming from my point of view)

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  2. i agree with you too, I thought my post might have been a little confusing as well but after reading your, I feel better about mines. And can see that we pretty much thought the same way

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