#radical repression

[eldecameronnegro]

A very important message I got from hymnandher (in response to this post):

"I really, really appreciated what you had to say about the sex positivity movement. Like it made my eyes water up and my heart feel all soft and pungent. As a out spoken, out going, flirtatious woman who has never had sex with a man, I find myself constantly having to make excuses to feel like I'm "empowered". Usually its "I've never met a man who could convince me it was worth trying" or "When I have sex it'll be when I feel like it no strings attached" or more often then not these days, I just lie and say I've had sex. Really I'm terrified, and confused, and I've had a long string of negative sexual experiences that only contributed to that fear and confusion- experiences I had because I didnt want to be see prudish or un-feminist to my first year of college "look at this american apparel shirt with a vagina on it" friends.

Truth is, I'd need to be very emotionally intimate to share that with a partner all the things that scare and flummox me, and only through sharing those things would I be able to have the positive sex that so many feminists these days wax on and on about. I'll never be the type for casual anything, I never have been. I've always been loud and anxious and hungry and faithful to what I put myself into. But sometime's I need confirmation that this is okay, and your post just really did that for me tonight. Thank you so much for saying what you said, really, truly, it helped me."

[eldecameronnegro]

I had the impression that sex positivity supported everybody's sexualities - or lack thereof. Like, whether you had sex every day in super "deviant" ways or whether you were asexual, I thought sex positivity celebrated the whole spectrum. Do we just have different impressions of sex positivity or am I dead wrong? :/

Sex-positive movements often focus only on pleasure and do not want to analyze it. They don’t want to talk about things that get in the way of a healthy sex life (porn culture, rape culture, misogyny, hypersexualixation, etc.). They think that they can get away with engaging in fucked up sexual practices un-reproached by claiming sex-positivity and calling anyone who criticizes them “sex-negative” and “kink shamers”. 

It is just a sexually-progressive front. There are things that are more important than orgasms and I think a “progressive” movement upholding a set of standards that just happen to fall in line with a lot of things that are already expected in patriarchy is really suspect and in need of critique. 

[aloofshahbanou]

more on radical repression

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1EStBNlK0ol

[aloofshahbanou]

also we never said "women should be afraid of sex"

Julie said "it is okay to be afraid of sex"

she also wrote about agency

[eldecameronnegro]

(i tried to record this but my mic kept fucking up!)

here's pt. 1: http://vocaroo.com/i/s0PYoPKg8boP

I’ve read and listened to women’s stories about their first sexual experience, one-night stands, sex within relationships… There is a recurring theme – and that is girls and women having sex that is painful, awkward, uncomfortable, creepy, centered around men’s pleasure, etc.  Connecting it back to Girls, and full disclosure, I hate watched the entire first season so my opinions are based on actually watching the show and not just reading about it… There seems to be this idea that this is just the nature of heterosexual sex. That it’s just this weird, empty thing that you use to take up time or to signify your maturity as a young adult or to satisfy a partner. To me there is nothing fucking revolutionary about showing sex portrayed in this manner – even if it may be realistic for a lot of women.

Going back to sex-positive nonsense, this movement really pushes the idea that enjoying sex and having lots of sexy sex is the most liberating thing for women. Which is really dangerous because women are already taught to derive our worth from our sexual appeal to men, and we are also taught to doubt ourselves, our insticts, our feelings – and sex-positive feminism in a lot of ways is patriarchy disguised as something subversive.

I think it would be a lot more subversive if we had a movement that talked about how it is okay to be afraid of sex. It is okay to specifically be afraid of sex with men. It is okay to be repressed. It is okay for your sexual journey to move along slower than others. It is okay to have had bad sexual experiences. It is okay to talk about them. It is okay to end relationships over unwanted sexual advances and pressure. It is okay if you never want to have sex. It is okay if you want to have sex and are not ready. It is okay to wait for a person that makes you feel safe and comfortable. It is okay for sex to include emotions, intimacy, connection with another human being – and of course it’s okay to be afraid of these things and desire them also…

What is really important for sexual liberation is for women to have agency, true agency. There are already enough things advocating to divorce the emotional from the physical – we don’t need that in women’s movements. 

[aloofshahbanou]

Julie -- I want to write about radical repression again. I'm fucking angry as hell.

[aloofshahbanou]

It makes me happy everytime I see you blog something about compulsory sexuality and compulsory heterosexuality that sex-positivity promotes.

I’m just so bored with this motif in feminism, particularly mainstream Western feminism, which posits that sexuality per se is liberatory and thus the most necessary part of our struggle for autonomy. Don’t get me wrong — I think a sexual politic is vital. However, I think we need to really push ourselves to re-vision and expand the scope of that sexual politic. That is to say, we need to complicate what we, as feminists in this particular country, have been inculcated with, and that, to me, is the idea that sexual liberation and the so-called bodily autonomy that it supposedly always results in take precedence over spiritual liberation, economic liberation, intellectual liberation. I want us to discuss the ways in which all these struggles are inextricably bound to one another, how one cannot work without the other, how one is not the pinnacle of struggle/liberation vis-a-vis the other. I’m glad you sent this ask because my issues with sex-positive feminisms are most definitely compulsory sexuality and, even more specifically, compulsory heterosexuality. We can’t seem to discuss sex or sexuality without invoking phallocentrism, without prioritizing penetration or implicitly legitimating normative sexual practices. I want to have more challenging conversations about sex and sexuality. I want to hear about non-normative sexualities; I want to discuss asexuality, I’m sad that asexuality was excluded from my department’s curriculum. Anyway, sex and sexuality are complex and oftentimes sacred, and those two facts are not, in my opinion, given enough (or any) serious consideration by the sex-positive feminists of our lifetime. Let’s talk about both the presence and the absence of sex/sexuality, let’s talk about both sexual liberation and radical repression.

[aloofshahbanou]

lazy late-night thoughts on radical repression

if you take a second and really concentrate on all of the ideas and images you've consumed over your lifetime thus far, who were said ideas and images originally produced or constructed by?

I'm thinking of all of the ideas and images I've consumed and most of them have operated from the vantage point of the male gaze and, even more specifically, the straight, white, and oftentimes bourgeois male gaze. and then I decided to major in something that attempts to demystify, rip apart, and denounce the male gaze, but sometimes a professor would go off on a lecture about feminist appropriations of the male gaze. what's so fucking radical about that? you're not truly revolutionizing anything. you're picking up where the male gaze left off -- you're facilitating the legitimation of the utter objectification, desecration, and consumption of women by women.

"but, Farah, this is liberatory! WE HAVE AGENCY NOW! we produce images and knowledges! we're not buying into the heteropatriarchal commodification of feminized corporealities! this is our choice -- this is sexy and transgressive and enlightening."

empty gestures, I tell you. empty, depoliticized gestures.

Audre Lorde is turning over in her grave right now.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.

sensation without feeling

SENSATION WITHOUT FEELING

SENSATION WITHOUT FEELING

SENSATION WITHOUT FEELING

radical repression is and isn't everything that it sounds like. radical repression is resistance in the face of a society which is so profoundly fucked-up that it habitually segregates the mind and the body (h/t Cartesian split), physicality and soul. radical repression is a strategic move away from compulsory sexuality, period. radical repression is a mode of defense in a staunchly heteronormative world. radical repression recognizes the failures of sex-positive feminisms -- that is to say, the ways in which sex-positive feminisms set us up for failure, positing that we are both oppressed and liberated by the body. radical repression rolls its eyes at essentialism. radical repression does not see the body as the sole site of struggle. radical repression wants to go beyond "corporeality as epistemology." radical repression is a retreat from the sheer boredom of bodily obsession. radical repression is a deliberate rejection of the hypersexualization of every single facet of our lives. yet radical repression isn't a pathway to a sexless universe. instead, radical repression is a call to arms to defeat plasticized sensation and find other routes to the erotic, to the Divine.