Glosswitch says sex education should include teaching boys not to be sexist. That seems reasonable.
I am a mother of sons and the thought of them growing up within a culture of rampant male sexual entitlement terrifies me. Right now they are six and seven – still innocent, still able to see their female peers as fellow humans – but as adolescence approaches, I fear that a deluge of misogyny will engulf them as they encounter the adult world and so-called “normal” attitudes to sex.
I am very much in favour of them being granted access to as much accurate, open-minded sex education as possible. Nonetheless, I doubt such teaching will ever be effective as long as we are in denial about the real problem: the widespread, culturally sanctioned dehumanisation of women as the price for male sexual gratification.
There is no point in explaining consent to boys, as though it is some peculiarly complex social exchange. It isn’t. What confuses them is the fact that our pornified, misogynist culture treats female bodies as soulless objects. They witness this everywhere: on TV, in the news, online, on the streets, in the words of their peers and elders.
Isn’t that just being sex-positive?
[S]tudent unions and fem socs across the land will organise consent classes for male students while condemning all criticism of the sex industry as “whorephobic.” The inconsistency escapes them. They haven’t noticed that, as Dworkin pointed out thirty years ago, male-dominated right-wing moralists are no more bothered by the exploitation of women’s bodies than left-wing sexual libertarians. They’d much rather put their energy into policing women’s access to abortion than men’s access to torture porn, just as left-wing warriors for sexual justice would rather spend their time attacking anti-porn feminists instead of asking how, and why, men across the world learn to treat women as objects into which you insert other objects, again and again, perhaps until they die.
Let me tweak that a little: left-wing warriors for sexual justice would rather spend their time attacking anti-porn feminists and women who try to talk about how we think about gender.
No, why would it be?
Citation Neeeeeeded! 🙂
Actually it’s just complete obvious bullshit.
“Whorephobic” in the post is a link to the citation.
It was a joke, Brian.
The inconsistency escapes them. They haven’t noticed that… They’d much rather …
Oh goodie: I just love social critics who can read minds.
PRB:
The full extract is:
Not so much mind-reading in that as observation of human behaviour.
@sambarge
The link doesn’t give evidence for the claim that:
The mentions of “whorephobia” at the link don’t resemble that claim at all.
Omar Puhleez @ # 5 – Yes, I can and did read those words in the original post.
I still maintain that Glosswitch picked her words as if she knows her subjects’/opponents’ inner thoughts.
And that still pings my bullshit detector.
If you want to teach your children about bodily autonomy, don’t start with gender.
Start with, “Don’t touch anyone without permission.”
.
This also includes,
.
“Go give Aunt Mary/Uncle Bob a hug.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Hug them, dammit!”
.
and continuing to tickle a giggling/screaming 3-year-old, who says, “Stop it!”
.
I know that children are very physical and enjoy bodily contact and may be conflicted about where pleasure becomes discomfort but once they are verbal, “Stop!” should mean STOP.
You can discuss it with them from there.
Pre-verbal kids … try a little empathy.
How would you feel if someone did that to you?
The author says anti-sex work campaign(er)s are called “whorephobic” and the mention of it in the linked article is as a descriptor of anti-sex work campaigns; “[w]horephobic anti-sex work campaigns.” Isn’t that exactly what the article is claiming?
Are you saying that one use of the word doesn’t extend to the author’s submission that pro-sex work student campaigns don’t condemn ‘all criticism of the sex industry as “whorephobic”‘? (Emphasis added.) It’s certainly not a term I’ve ever used or heard used in a conversation about the legalization of sex work but it’s a good one, as far as getting the point across. It also does describe the usual criticism of anti-sex work campaigns but in North America we seem to prefer words like puritanical or slut-shaming. Perhaps whorephobic is a term more commonly used in New Zealand, where the linked article is from and the role of puritans in settlement isn’t as identity-forming?
“continuing to tickle a giggling/screaming 3-year-old”
My personal bugbear is playful screaming in swimming pools. It’s just another way that teenage girls show teenage boys how much they enjoy things that make them scream. Anyone who playfully screams like that should be resolutely rescued and sent home.
There’s no way the linked resolution “condemn[s] all criticism of the sex industry as ‘whorephobic.'” Under ‘UCLU Believes’ item #1, they assert that sex workers are entitled to “holiday and sick pay, pensions, union representation and a safe and secure environment in which to work.” Based on that, they would be perfectly fine with sex workers picketing brothels for failing to provide those things.
On the other hand, it’s hard to tell if there’s any way to criticize the existence of the sex industry that they would not regard as “whorephobic.”
I really don’t get your claim that modern intersectional feminists are interested in attacking “women who try to talk about how we think about gender.” They are constantly talking about how we think about gender. The women they attack are the ones who are promoting ideas that they think should be outside the bounds of reasonable disagreement. For example, they attack right-wing women “feminists” like Christina Hoff Sommers who think that we should think about gender in essentialist, patriarchial terms. They also attack women feminists who think that we should think about gender in ways that exclude or marginalize trans women (i.e., anything other than an unqualified acceptance of trans women as real women).
I didn’t make that claim. You re-worded what I said.
@sambarge says
Well, you must be parsing it differently than I did, and I suspect your interpretation of what each author actually meant may be more accurate than my initial interpretation. So this “criticism” is about the entire industry existing or something. Of course that also makes the journalist’s words of far less consequence than I initially thought. The link already defends the position she’s hollowly deriding.
Also, the accusing article says:
But there is no logical inconsistency. The writer doesn’t seem to have a case that I can discern (though the article is a mess, so maybe I’m just not good at piecing it together). The writer might not even know how to write a coherent case, who knows.
The article goes on:
Who says you can’t attack that? Citation? Is this another deepity? Or is it (as I suspect) a more severely wrong equivocation?
Just to be clear: shaming people for the kind of above described scenario is the correct thing, even if it is in a sexual context. And the shaming of ethically done BDSM activities is something obviously very different from that.
Also, I really do wonder what the author thinks the term “hardcore porn” refers to. I suspect she thinks it refers to violent porn (otherwise I have no idea why she singles out this type of porn). It doesn’t. It just refers to porn that clearly shows private parts interacting (here’s a wikipedia link).