"Coming To Terms With My Rape Fantasies After Being Assaulted", by KS Woodmansee

This piece was originally posted at The Establishment, on 16 November 2016, but it has since disappeared from the web (with that whole site), and does not seem to be archived at the Wayback Machine. I have found it worth reading myself, so I'm reproducing it here.

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Coming To Terms With My Rape Fantasies After Being Assaulted

KS Woodmansee

I first learned about rape fantasies when I was a naive 17-year-old who had never even masturbated, much less considered power dynamics in sexual relationships. A friend told me that a girl he was interested in wanted someone to sneak into her bedroom and “force” her to have sex. I was intrigued, but quickly dismissed my interest in the topic. I saw it as aberrant, and the last thing I wanted was to be seen as weirder than I already was.

New Paper: Sexual Fantasy and the Eroticization of Evil

Abstract

Many people have sexual fantasies about being forced to have sex, or forcing someone to have sex. Several authors have argued that it is wrong to enjoy such fantasies: They lead to harm, or reinforce oppressive social structures, are liable to corrupt our character, or, mostly interestingly, are wrong in themselves, because they involve the eroticization of things that are wrong. I argue here that all such arguments fail properly to distinguish between fantasy and desire (despite authors' acknowledgement of that distinction), and between objects of desire and sources of arousal. The broader significance of this point is also discussed.

This paper is intended, in part, as a defense of claims about sexual fantasy made at the end of "Does Pornography Presuppose Rape Myths?".  

Download it here.

New Paper: Does Pornography Presuppose Rape Myths?

Abstract:

Rae Langton and Caroline West have argued that pornography silences women by presupposing misogynistic attitudes, such as that women enjoy being raped. More precisely, they claim that a somewhat infamous pictorial, “Dirty Pool”, makes such presuppositions. I argue for four claims. (i) Langton and West's account of how pornography silences women is empirically dubious. (ii) There is no evidence that very much pornography makes the sorts of presuppositions they require. (iii) Even "Dirty Pool", for all its other problems, does not make the presuppositions that Langton and West claim it does. (iv) Langton and West misread “Dirty Pool” because they do not take proper account of the fact that pornography traffics in sexual fantasy.

Get it here.

The Tumblr Porn Ban

Yes, there are a lot of other horrible things going on in the world these days. But the recent decision by Tumblr to ban 'adult content' from the site is still extremely depressing. For one thing, as Violet Blue put it, it's clear that there's now a full-blown war on sex on the internet. And it's not going to make sex on the internet go away. What it's going to do is solidify the dominance of large corporations like MindGeek (the owners of PornHub, etc, etc).

What Tumblr and its ilk offered was an opportunity for people whose sexuality is usually marginalized, fetishized, or denied to express and explore that sexuality on their own terms. Stories abound of young, disaffected, confused, lost people who discovered who they were in large part because of their discovery of people like them on Tumblr. No one has given better expression to that than the wonderful and inimitable Vex Ashley, in this piece on Medium.

Among the 'marginalized' groups in question we find, frankly, women, who seem to have made up a large percentage of various Tumblr porn communities. Mainstream pornography rarely troubles itself to portray women's sexuality except as it serves men's. (We'll explore that and related issues in my graduate seminar this spring.) And it's not just men directors who are responsible. Most women directors struggle to break out of that mold, too. Among many other things, Tumblr provided a place for people to share the alternative pornographies they'd discovered and to try to construct some kind of counter-narrative to what's being peddled by PornHub (now that they've killed and then swallowed much of what used to be the mainstream pornography industry).

Probably all of that will migrate to some new location. (See here and here for some reporting on this.) But in so far as Tumblr's decision was a reaction to the imminent activation of FOSTA/SESTA, it's hard to know whether any platform that allows freely posted adult content can survive.

It's a lesson that's been taught over and over, but that never seems to be learned: Restrictions on sexually explicit expression always affect most directly and immediately sexually marginalized people. In part, that's because it's always up to some authority or other to enforce those restrictions, and the discretion that's built into the system makes it inevitable that they'll clamp down first and hardest on the already marginalized. But, in part, it's just because the marginalized are always the folks who get screwed (and not in a good way).

When Canada implemented MacKinnon-inspired restrictions on pornography in the early 1990s, for example, they were immediately used to shut down gay and lesbian bookstores, while the sex shops catering to straight men were left untouched. When Britain implemented new restrictions on online content a few years ago, they banned any display of female ejaculation while permitting 'facials'; banned women sitting on men's faces for oral sex while permitting rough fellatio to gagging; etc, etc. And whom did the agencies tasked with enforcing the law decide to go after? Women who ran BDSM sites. Anyone want to guess who age verification laws will actually affect? Not the big corporations that can afford the exorbitant fees the credit card companies stand ready to charge for the service.

Depressing? That barely scratches the surface.

UPDATE: Another excellent piece on this, from HuckMag.

Anne Koedt, "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm"

Anne Koedt's essay "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" (1970) is a classic of second wave feminism, an important example of the concern feminists of that era had with sexuality, but also an intellectual precursor of political lesbian and the divisive debates that surrounded that topic. One can find 'reprints' all over the web, and the essay was reprinted in a collection of essays, Radical Feminism, edited by Koedt that was published in 1973. But the version published in that book, and (from what I can tell) 'reprinted' elsewhere, is not quite the same as the original.

I know this because I was fortunate enough to find a copy of the original on abebooks.com. It was published by the New England Free Press (operating out of Boston) on two double-letter (8.5"x22") pages, printed both sides, and folded into a letter-sized (8.5"x11") pamphlet (with no staples, at least in mind). Cost: 10 cents, about 70 cents in 2018. It's the kind of thing one would have found in 'radical' bookstores back in those days.

Because of the historical importance of this work, it seems worth making a copy available online. So here's a DjVu and a PDF.

(If anyone should have good reason to object to my making this available, please let me know, and I'll be happy to remove it.)

If sexual desire is coded as male....

If sexual desire is coded as male, women begin to wonder if they are really ever sexual. Do we distrust our passion, thinking it perhaps not our own, but the construction of patriarchal culture? Can women be sexual actors? Can we act on our own behalf? Or are we purely victims, whose efforts must be directed at resisting male depredations in a patriarchal culture? Must our passion await expression for a safer time? When will that time come? Will any of us remember what her passion was? Does exceeding the bounds of femininity – passivity, helplessness, and victimization – make us deeply uncomfortable? Do we fear that if we act on our most deeply felt sexual passion that we will no longer be women? Do we wish, instead, to bind ourselves together into a sisterhood which seeks to curb male lust but does little to promote female pleasure?

Those words were published in 1984, by Carol Vance, in "Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality". That is the introduction to the extraordinary volume Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, which is basically the proceedings of the famous 1982 'Barnard Sex Conference'. But it strikes me, in the midst of #MeToo, in all its various manifestations, that those words could just as well have been written yesterday. There are all kinds of ways in which women's sexual desires are questioned, not just by slut-shamers but also by a certain breed of 'feminist'. Of course, there are all kinds of ways in which (sexual) desire is shaped by culture. But, as the women who contributed to Pleasure and Danger understood, we need to find a way to reconcile that fact with the reality of the desires we have: to allow ourselves to enjoy what we enjoy while simultaneously fighting against the culture that shapes us. There's no contradiction in that.

Fascinating Reflection on Transexuality

My friend Anne Eaton directed me to this fascinating but in some ways deeply puzzling essay by Andrea Long Chu, who is (I take it) a graduate student in Comparative Literature at NYU. It's a lengthy investigation of the fraught, and too little discussed, relationship between identity and desire in the experience of trans women, specifically. Probably, Chu rightly restricts her discussion to that case: the one she knows from the inside. But I strongly suspect that her reflections have something much broader to teach us about gender, and our experience of it. Certainly, as someone who is genderqueer, it rang a lot of bells with me.

Great (and Funny) Video on Consent

Amazing Reflection on Sexuality and Sexual Violence

On Feministing:

When I started having sex, disposability was the first thing on the menu. Fuck you, ignore you, make fun of you on Facebook. Even now, it is the public penance exacted from women who dare.
A friend of mine said as much at the end of our first semester of college. ...“Boys aren’t going to want to date you if you keep having sex with them,” my friend said. The words smashed against my face like ice or glass.

And that's just the part about sexuality.

Rape By Fraud?

There's a myth out there that no law, program, or action designed to counter rape can be too extreme for feminists. Well, here's proof to the contrary, an article by Amanda Marcotte decrying a bill introduced in New Jersey by Assemblyman Troy Singleton that would criminalize "sexual assault by fraud". Which means, as Marcotte puts it, "[lying] your way into someone's pants".

As Marcotte notes, this a terrible idea:

...[T]his law is so vague and wide-reaching that it's easy to see how pretty much everyone could be considered a rapist, because, as any quick perusing of OkCupid can tell you, representing yourself as someone you are not is a universal behavior. All of us are claiming we woke up like this, and we are all lying.

But at least the dude's heart is in the right place.

Good Reads: Bisexuality

There are many things that puzzle me. But in the realm of sexual politics, the discrimination suffered by bisexuals, even in the queer community, is near the top. Here are a handful of articles on the topic.

• Why Some Bisexual People Don’t Feel Welcome in the Queer Community (Everyday Feminism)
  
• 13 Lies We Have to Stop Telling About Bisexual People (Everyday Feminism)
• 8 Questions To Stop Asking Bisexual People (Role Reboot)
• Monosexism: Battling Myths About Bisexuality (Good Men Project)
• Being Bisexual Taught Me That Sexual Intolerance Is A Bigger Problem Than We Realize (Elite Daily, via Good Men Project)
• Becoming Visible: On Coming Out As Bisexual (Autostraddle, and lots of good articles if you search for "bisexual" on the site)

I meant to do this for bisexual awareness week, but got distracted.

If you've got anything similar, post it in the comments.

Jaclyn Friedman on How She Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Pleasure

Jaclyn Friedman has posted her piece from Yes Means Yes, "In Defense of Going Wild", on her blog. It's a sort of "confession" about Friedman's love of sex. Of course, in describing it that way, I'm almost buying into the idea it is fighting: the loving sex is somehow shameful if you happen to be a woman. Which, obviously, is an idea to which I do not subscribe.

Read it.

Do You Know About Jian?

Somehow, I totally failed to link to this amazing article by the extent to which people surrounding Jian Ghomeshi knew that he was "weird" about women. I meant to include it with these links (and now have).

I have since found another article in a similar vein, by Carl Wilson on Slate XX. And another, by Emma Healey, on The Hairpin.

Alcohol and Consent

I post a lot of links to what Thomas MacAulay Millar writes about consent, because so much of it is so sensible. And his recent piece "Draining the Swamp: Alcohol and Agency" is no exception.

Here's the first graph:

The way to handle the relationship between alcohol and alcohol-facilitated rape isn't to adopt some prohibition-lite approach that shames people (women; it's usually women that get shamed for pleasures of the flesh). Not only is it wrong, it doesn't even work. The way to deal with it is to recognize that shame and discomfort around sex incentivize the connection between alcohol and sexual situations. If we want to reduce the rate at which potential victims of sexual assault are intoxicated, the smart solution is to reduce the incentives to intoxicate.

It's hard to have this conversation without it devolving into victim-blaming. Why? Because too many people want to blame victims. But we need to have this conversation.

Thomas's piece is in part a commentary on another article about alcohol and consent on HuffPo by Yvonne Fulbright, who argues that "we need to address the fact that many young people feel like they need to get drunk in order to be sexual and sexually active". And what's striking is that her proposals have nothing to do with alcohol.

-- Schools implementing age appropriate, medically accurate, comprehensive sexuality education from kindergarten through the 12th grade.

-- Universities offering courses by qualified sexuality educators in the art of seduction, romance, desires, sex communication, and reciprocal pleasures, helping students to realize what it truly means to be sexually confident. As a new, catchy slogan says, "Put the Sensual in Consensual!"

-- College campuses hosting Intimacy 101 workshops, which provide young people with a reality check around the many issues related to being sexually active, and which challenge misconceptions around better sex, including those of drunk versus sober sex.

-- Medical facilities offering accessible, affordable, first-rate sexual and reproductive health services.

-- Community centers, churches/synagogues, media outlets, and schools providing parents and caregivers with information and guidance in how to have effective conversations about sex and relationships with youth.

-- Parents and other important others guiding youth around matters of sexual intimacy, equipping them with the knowledge and skills needed to evaluate their own sex-related values, attitudes and beliefs systems in making better choices for themselves.

But the more important point that Thomas makes is that we need to develop a culture in which women have the right to say "Yes", and not just the right to say "No". Those are, as he says, "inherently interdependent", and neither makes sense without the other. But the truth, culturally speaking, is that women still don't have a right to say "Yes".

Yet More About Consent

Kind of basic stuff here, but worth reading. The nice point is that one doesn't have to go so far as to satisfy the legal definition of rape to violate consent in a way that does harm.

• "Coerced Consent: When 'Yes' Really Means 'No'" (Harris O'Malley, Good Men Project)

This one is thought-provoking. I won't even try to say what it's about. Probably, as she suggests, men shouldn't read it.

• "Consent Is Way More Complicated For Women Than Just 'Yes Means Yes'" (Samantha Eyler, Role Reboot)

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

• "6 Myths About 'Yes Means Yes'" (Soraya Chemaly, Role Reboot)
• "Neutral Evil: The Problem With Refusing To Decide" (Thomas MacAulay Millar, Yes Means Yes)

Which means we should remind ourselves again why people have a problem with this.

Should You Buy Sex Toys From Amazon?

Some thoughts inspried by a nice article today by Dangerous Lily (possibly NSFW, depending upon where you W), which reminded me of a slightly older piece on Daily Dot.

There are lots of reasons not to want to buy from Amazon, which I'd link to if it weren't Sunday morning and I weren't so lazy. (And if I weren't so hypocritical.) But one reason that has bothered me more and more lately is piracy. My sense is that the stuff that Amazon itself sells is generally unlikely to be pirated—though I had an experience with a replacement battery for a cell phone that left me wondering—but Amazon seems to exercise almost no control over the sellers on its "marketplace". I have seen quite a few reports from retailers who have tried to get Amazon to pull counterfeit versions of their products, only to be told that they need to order the product first to confirm that it isn't authentic. Never mind that it is being sold in colors they don't actually make!

Nowhere does this problem seem to be worse than with sex toys. The Magic Wand (no longer the "Hitachi" Magic Wand) is counterfeited so often that their FAQ includes a question about how to tell a real one. The problem seems to be worst with 'high-end' sex toys, which isn't surprising, given the room that's available to "discount" a $125 vibrator. It doesn't take much time looking around on Amazon to find these sorts of "deals".

But seriously: If we're going to be putting these near our sensitive bits, do we really want to be using cheaply made knock-offs? I don't think so! The lack of a warranty is hardly the point. Besides, there are so many great progressive, sex-positive, often women-owned companies on the web to do business with instead, like Babeland, Good Vibrations, and She Vibe (in the US). And if you live in a decent sized city, there's probably some local store with real people you could support. For my homies: Boston's got a Good Vibrations off Harvard Street in Brookline; Providence has the quirky little independent store Mister Sister Erotica on Wickenden Street (which you really should check out if you're in this part of the world).

Good Reads: Consent, Ghomeshi, BDSM

This is an oldie but a goodie. The basic point is that people rarely refuse an invitation of any kind by saying "No". To the contrary, refusals are usually hedged in various ways, to soften the blow. The lesson is that people who violate consent don't "not understand". They don't want to understand.

• "Mythcommunication" (Yes Means Yes)

Another oldie about how communities "work around" the knowledge that one of their own is "sketchy on consent".

• "The Missing Stair" (The Pervocracy)

And this is a wonderful piece on a much older case explaining the fundamental difference between BDSM and abuse:

• "Not What We Do" (Yes Means Yes)

All of which brings us back to Jian Ghomeshi:

• "Ghomeshi: The Developing Story, And Predator Theory Observations" (Yes Means Yes)
• "Jian Ghomeshi Isn’t the First Alleged Abuser to Cite the Right to BDSM Sexuality" (The Cut)
• "Do You Know About Jian?" (Nothing in Winnipeg)
• "I Knew About Jian Ghomeshi" (Slate XX)

One of the really important reminders here is that "innocent until proven guilty" is a legal standard that applies to criminal prosecutions and not even e.g. to arrest.

While we're at it: Here's a nice cartoon that explains what the real objection is to affirmative consent.

(Via Everyday Feminism).

Good Reads: Feminism, Sexuality, Relationships

You may already have seen the post on HuffPo on which this is based, since it went viral. This is her husband's side of the story. It's about honesty and feelings and love and woundedness, and it is very much worth reading.

• "My Wife Told Me She Wants To Cheat: Here's How I Feel" (Nige Atkinson, Good Men Project)

I had no idea that it's completely legal to fire people for what they do privately in their sex lives. But apparently it is:

• "Can You Really Be Fired For Being Kinky? Absolutely." (Jillian Keenan, Slate Outward)

Probably seen this one:

• "The Problem With That Catcalling Video" (Hanna Rosin, Slate XX) 

(No, I won't link to the video itself.) But maybe not this one:

• "What My Wife Taught Me About Street Harrassment" (Damon Young, Good Men Project)

There's other good discussion about that out there, but I forgot to keep the links!
 

A Wonderful, Sad Story About the Shame of Masturbation

From Julia Boriss, at XOJane:

When I was eight years old, I stacked two layers of pillows across my bed to keep myself from masturbating. I figured that sleeping atop a pillow fortress would force me to sleep on my back, which would keep my fingers from wandering to my nether regions, which would prevent the soul-crushing shame that befell me every time I gave myself an orgasm.

I suspect (as she more or less goes on to say) that this affects women more than men. But, having been raised Catholic and in a very sex-negative household, I remember those feelings, too.

Some Truth About Abortion

A new book by Katha Pollitt, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, is getting a lot of attention in the left-wing press. What Pollitt most wants, it seems, is for us "to talk about ending a pregnancy as a common, even normal, event in the reproductive lives of women". These articles are a start:

• "Abortion: Not Easy, Not Sorry" (Laurie Abraham, Elle, from Feministe)
• "Abortion is Great" (Hanna Rosin, Slate Double X) 
• "Abortion Without Apology: A Prescription for Getting the Pro-Choice Groove Back" (Lindsay Beyerstein, American Prospect)

You might also check out:

• Not Alone, a website where women tell their own stories about their experience with abortion
• Emily's Abortion Video (yes, it's old, but if you haven't seen it, it's new to you)