The Goldberg column is titled "When Sexual Liberation Is Oppressive" (NYT).
She's bringing up a 1981 essay by Nona Willis Aronowitz, because Willis Aronowitz quoted herself in her new book "Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure and an Unfinished Revolution."
Willis Aronowitz is the daughter of Ellen Willis, who was — as Goldberg puts it — a "pro-sex feminist writer."
Don't you have to choose what to put first, sex or feminism? If you set out to put them on equal footing, what do you get? I must be a feminist and I must be pro-sex.
Well, maybe you thought it all out and began with feminism, let yourself think about it from all angles, and arrived at the conclusion that the true and best feminism entails active positivity toward sex. And then you carve back the concept of sex, so that only the sex that fits with feminism counts as the kind of sex you're in favor of.
Or maybe you start out with the sex. You want to be positive and enthusiastic about sex, to have an active and powerful sex life. And then, with that in mind, you craft a version of feminism that supports your primary goal of vigorous, plentiful sex sex sex.
There's a third option, where you keep sex and feminism at a rigidly equal level, and you really try all along to give them equal importance. Or maybe you just think freely and independently, and, over time, sex and feminism find a place in your thoughts, and they coexist and don't conflict, because you like them both, and you don't test them to see where the conflicts are or which is more important. It's more about your internal life of self-esteem in which, sure, you're a feminist, and sure, you're pro-sex.
See how long you can keep that going.
Goldberg writes:
Willis Aronowitz discovered that her mother was devastated by the infidelity of her father, the socialist organizer and scholar Stanley Aronowitz. Pregnant with Nona, Willis wrote in her diary of hoping that a baby would help heal her relationship. “It seemed to ‘tear my mother’s very vitals’ to look herself in the face and admit that what she wanted clashed with a politically perfect idea of herself,” writes Willis Aronowitz.
Yet Willis Aronowitz still sometimes hesitates to question whether her political ideas about sex are serving her. Philosophically committed to nonmonogamy, she’s taken aback by her overwhelming jealousy when a man she’s in love with and with whom she has an open relationship sleeps with someone else.
Oh, come on. Pick feminism and take a chance that you might be one of those women who aren't pro whatever the currently fashionable view of sex is. Pro-sex feminism ought to at least mean that the women gets to decide what kind of sex she's pro. If it's monogamous sex, why is she trying to convince herself that she wants nonmonogamy? As a thinker, she resembles the women who think that monogamy is the only choice and force themselves to believe that's what they truly want and believe in.
Ironically, that's not pro-sex and it's also not feminism!
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"Philosophically committed to nonmonogamy, she’s taken aback by her overwhelming jealousy when a man she’s in love with and with whom she has an open relationship..."
Adam: “H…hey, God?”
God: “Yeah Adam what’s up brah.”
Adam: “Go...got a serious question for you. It..it’s about Eve. ”
God: “Shoot.”
Adam: “Please please don’t take this personally…”
God: “Nah man we cool.”
Adam: “CAN I HAVE MY FUCKING RIB BACK!?!”
There's a whole genre of NYT articles devoted to reassuring the subset of women who need to be part of a group that whatever the topic, yes, there are a lot of women who feel exactly the same way as they do. I imagine that even extends to nonconformity: "There are a lot of women who don't want to fit in -- just like you!"
I expect there's some equivalent for the same sort of men, but I can't think of what it would be.
First, though, we need to figure out what a "woman" is.
protip: i you want to tie your man down.. think Twice about being Eager to have an abortion
Funny, the raid on Trump stories had me thinking about how the Ayers disciples, people who were literally militantly opposed to government oppression are now the oppressors. So it was never government oppression to which they were opposed, only that they weren’t the oppressors…and thus with that generations now creeky old feminists. They were never really opposed to the oppression of the patriarchy, just that they weren’t the matriarchy doing the oppressing…
…so go ahead and wallow in whatever bs you’ve cooked up for yourselves this morning….
This woman is insane. And lying.
At some point, you grow up, and sex isn't that important anymore. Nor are your fantasies about what mommy and daddy did or didn't do.
Or, you're a predator or a sociopath or just really sexually damaged.
I will say this: no sane person, no person unmediated by ideology, thinks about sex even when they are being raped. Excluding children, if you're not thinking about escape and/or surviving, you are not being raped.
If you don't run to the nearest police, if you're capable, of course, you're not being raped.
Pro-sex feminists are more like rapists than like other women. Especially the male ones. Grossly, they are imposing their sexuality on you using ... politics. What could possibly be more disgusting, other than raping a child?
Maybe even Andrea Dworkin found a few acorns.
With assorted sex, there's less opportunity for nagging. The guy just goes somewhere else. So feminism is defeated.
I am pro sex and so is my wife. That's OUR choice.
Writes Michelle Goldberg reacting to this line in a 1981 essay by Nona Willis Aronowitz: "I secretly wanted monogamy, that I was just like every other woman who wanted to tie her man down."
The Golberg column is titled "When Sexual Liberation Is Oppressive" (NYT).
Well.
She just lied to the stupid women who wanted to believe in feminism then?
Feminism was designed and developed by one or more men. Just go down the list of the feminist platform.
It is exactly what a certain type of man would want. Promiscuous sex, abortions, and women working full time in the workplace.
Feminism has always been a sham and it hurt women the most.
Must have been tough for Willis, a feminist starting her profession as a rock music journalist in the sixties. Seems like an anti-feminist environment with all that creativity.
You keep writing about "feminism" as if it were obviously a good thing, even a necessity. Would "masculinism" be an obviously good thing? What would it look like? I'm guessing it would not have any conflicts with being pro-sex.
I am trying to think what "masculinism" would be like, using feminism as a template. I keep coming up with ideas that I immediately realize I have always labeled as "selfishness". Huh. All those shitty things I did to various girlfriends, I was just being liberated. Here I thought I was being a self-centered, inconsiderate asshole, when really, I was a Revolutionary! Blows against the Matriarchy!
Nah. Self-centered, inconsiderate asshole for the win, I'm afraid.
Then again, her daddy was an SDS Communist who helped extend the impoverishment of southern laborers by pretending to organize them in sham unions in order to extend the communists' power. Real unions fought them. He destroyed many lives and livelihoods and helped destroy our educational system. Meanwhile, his daughter views heterosexuality as a sort of necessary disease to come to terms with: "Straightness doesn’t have to be embarrassing or doomed, unequal or inherently toxic. If enough people take ownership of their straightness, they can start to change the harmful, limiting culture surrounding it. Eventually, heterosexuality itself could be redefined as something much more joyful, pleasurable, and hopeful—perhaps even with some of the radical potential for happiness as queer culture."
This was her advice to young women in Teen Vogue. Her Playboy work is even more empowering.
Listen to my mother? Lol. The parent who was "devastated" by her BF's infidelity, year after year?
She sincerely believed all that rot that men were only unfaithful because they didn't get enough sex at home. That was the common modern wisdom circa 1960. So she just didn't understand, when she was so good to him.
No, no matter how good it is, it's never enough. They either stray or they get bored and fat.
There is no answer.
Human nature trumps feminism.
Turns out fish really really want bicycles.
Aristophenes, in his play where women made the rules, had them make a rule that if a man wanted a nice nubile girl, he must first have sex with an ugly old lady.
Dang it. Biology has the last laugh.
There has been a split in feminism for a century. The original core was moralistic and puritanical. The suffrage movement grew out of the same moral revival that gave us abolitionism and prohibition. In the 20th century, ideas of self-expression and liberation from traditional moral constraints came to be more common, to the point where they prevail in today's America. Feminism, like other progressive movements, has found it hard to hard to reconcile moralism with liberationism.
Women, men, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
That said, equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature, reconcile. #HateLovesAbortion
It's always tough when you can't figure out which idol to worship.
I'm always fascinated by Michelle Goldberg's "Moe" wig. It always looks the same. I believe that underneath it, there is a smaller "Moe" wig, in case the larger one gets fed up with her and flies away.
The suffrage movement grew out of the same moral revival that gave us abolitionism and prohibition
Exactly. My grandfather (born 1870) supported all of those. He was once smuggled into a black revival meeting in Texas, hidden in the bottom of a wagon, in order to preach.
she’s taken aback by her overwhelming jealousy
Surprise!
Whenever I try to read something about feminism and sex, I can't help getting the mental image of one of those butt-ugly chicks carrying around a sign proclaiming she's not going to have sex until men agree to whatever the Current Thing is.
J'te lâche plus
Not yet, not yet, not yet, now. Matchmaking is a game of life.
Writing about feminism again? Seems so passé. More, it’s transgressive or worse in a time when the woke and up to date and inclusive thing is to disclaim the ability even to say what a woman is.
I would enjoy watching a rematch between Ann Althouse and Michelle Goldberg discussing current politics like the one on Bloggingheads 10-12 years ago. In discussing president Obama, Michelle insisted that Obama’s book had been “received” and the response from Althouse was magnificent! I thought to myself “Who is this Althouse”? I have been lurking ever since.
Paul Zrimsek: "Turns out fish really really want bicycles."
Filed under: Things I Wish I Had Written
Trying to conform yourself to a movement is like trying to preen yourself for the Ivy League. Does Harvard need violinists, or oboes? Should I switch from soccer to volleyball? Should I take AP Bio and risk my perfect GPA? Who do I need to be to get into Princeton???
At some point, don't we all need to grow up and be ourselves?
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