interesting. they say the biggest problem is that there’s no language to talk about the *deep* issues around sex. that we can talk about things like “orgasm” and “facials” and “pussy” (they did not say this on the radio, just examples)—but we don’t have the language or the space to talk about things like: i love my partner, but they have never satisfied me. or: teaching kids how to masturbate. or: what’s the difference between sex and intimacy?
i think this is really really true. in the feminist world, you get all the “yes means yes” and “no means no” and “stop slut shaming!” and “is [specific sex act] disgusting or liberating?!?!”
but there’s almost no discussions on the “deep” stuff—the differences between sex before pregnancy and after. what being intimate can look like when your sick/disabled. etc.
that one essay that was written a long time ago about the woman who asked her partner to hit her while having sex to help her deal with PTSD? the thing i did love about that essay was how it *did* start to get into that “forbidden” territory. that area where an entire person was fucking, not just lusty genitals. cuz that’s what makes sex into intimacy—is when u can approach the act of physical closeness (cuz to me, intimacy is not always gential centered) as a whole person with all that messy crap (and many times glorious crap) a part of your physical encounter.
and i’m not saying it’s the christian romantic thing—i give my heart AND my vagina to you and now we are married! AND i’m not saying that it’s always necessary to be intimate when u fuck (cuz sometimes the genitals just need some relief, fuck the tender caring shit) and i’m not saying the only outcome of bringing your whole self into a physical act of intimacy is tenderness, gentleness, roses and chocolates in the morning.
but it IS interesting to me how far puritanical christianity has captured the narrative of intimacy as being “virginal” “tender” “sweet” etc.
why isn’t having debating over whether or not it makes sense the way simon put himself into an eternal time loop until you fall asleep with ur head on ur partner’s shoulder considered a profoundly intimate act of physical closeness? and how do we talk about this without creating a false dichotomy that genital centered sex is the new bad and debate is the new orgasm that we can’t stop doing until we’re sure everybody has had at least three orgasms?
but on the other hand—how can we make it clear that talking about facials (yeah, you know what I’m talking about) in public is not a brave act? that it’s not ground breaking, it’s not introspective, it doesn’t take courage, and it’s not like it hasn’t been talked about constantly since the beginning of time.
i’m just thinking about this story i read or heard somewhere—about how bruce lee is one of the most sexual actors even tho he never had a sex scene in his movies (again, don’t take my word on this, i don’t know if i’ve got the specifics correct, just know I have the general jist of the story)—because he was *intimate*—that is, he’d touch a woman on the arm—and it *meant* something. and everybody, including the woman, knew it meant something.
and there just isn’t the language in US culture to *talk* about the difference between bruce lee being intimate and a porn star cumming on a girls face. I don’t that one is inherently better than the other—i know which one I prefer most of the time (other times, i’m all for the other one)—but that doesn’t mean one is worse or better than the other.
but i feel like that’s where the discussion gets stuck. rad fems (and christians) think only “intimate” sex is respectful sex and *F*eminists think the only type of sex is genital centered sex (i SWEAR the only people who have more concern for christian girl’s virginity is *F*eminists!!)—and then there’s all the rest of us who are like—what if i don’t really *care* about putting a value on sex, i’d like instead to be able to have the language to talk about whatever the fuck my partner and I are doing right now because it’s confusing the fuck out of me.
anyway. yeah, i don’t know if that made any sense. i clearly have my own problems with language around this…
oh my god this.
the ever-brilliant and fabulous Molly Crabapple and I were talking one day and she came up with the wonderful phrase “Hearts are the new hymens.” Like now we can talk about fucking in explicit, entirely-too-much-detail but we can’t talk about feelings. We can’t admit to having them and having them be complicated and fucked up around sex.
(And the also ever-brilliant and fabulous Melissa Gira Grant and Meaghan O’Connell did an entire book of true stories about sex to actually get at the deeper feelings around it.)
So we can have epic feminist-blog arguments about whether blowjobs are feministically correct or whatever but not talk about the reality of sexuality, which is that each blowjob means something different, you can do the same thing with different people or the same thing with the same person two hours later and it be an entirely different world.
I spend so much time lately thinking about the places where mainstream feminism hasn’t worked for me, and then finding and reading these women who were writing about these things—like that passage I posted from Angela Davis the other day, the passage she wrote in jail in 1977, a passage that makes so much sense about women and emotions and the labor of emotions and intimacy and society—but have been written out of the conversation and overridden by something else, something not half so real.
(Source: marshmallowmegamama)
