. . . because it's hot, and it's for ME.

[jlh]

I read two newspaper articles this weekend that fit together in my head, perhaps because I read them somewhat back to back. Both are features, both written by women who felt a level of discomfort about their subject, both about very specific ways in which women can express their own sexuality.

One was in the Guardian, and was about HP Slashers at Lumos.

One was in the LA Times, and was about the "Girls Gone Wild" videos.

I was talking to slytherincess the other day about the Guardian article and one of the things I said was that the active expression of sexuality by women that is not for the ultimate pleasure of men (like the videos are) or even in that context is incredibly frightening for—well, for lack of a better word, the patriarchy, because I don't mean just men, since there are plenty of men not threatened and plenty of women who are threatened. And it isn't just about slash; it's that entire stereotype of the middle-aged woman, either in a traditional marriage or single and living alone with a cat, who wants to escape through reading romance or erotica. Middle-aged, I think, because she would clearly be past the age of being attractive to men, and therefore has to find another channel for her sexuality—if single, she's doomed to spinsterhood; if married, she's doomed to her husband losing interest in her as he fantasizes about some 20-year-old actress. So this middle-aged woman reads romance novels (which have always had plenty of fairly explicit sex in them) or the superheated pulp of Jackie Collins et al, and it's this funny thing that your mother does that you don't think about too much.

And that's sort of cute, as long as she doesn't try to talk to her friends about it, or meet friends doing it, or take men and make them into sexual objects that aren't "hunks" easily dismissed by regular men. It's fine, even a bit of a joke, for the ladies to faint over vaguely feminized matinee idols that appeared in "pictures for women", like Rudolph Valentino or Rock Hudson, or to appropriately worship square-jawed heroes like Kirk. But put Kirk with Spock and you tap into an undercurrent of that infamous WriterCon report: "How dare you take my hero and make him into an object of your pleasure!" scream the old-line fanboys, which is just another way of saying, "You took my toy and got girl cooties all over it!" How dare we want boys to kiss other boys for our pleasure—never mind that the lesbian scene has been a standard of straight porn for aeons. How dare we, indeed, we middle aged women, openly proclaim that our sexuality is anything but adorable, and in the face of a culture that isn't giving us what we want, make it ourselves, with no apologies.

(I'm leaving the lesbians out, I know. So do they. Women having sex with other women who aren't hot girls playing with a dildo until the man comes along are so frightening as to have been kicked off the reservation entirely. Gay men are okay so long as they know their place (sort of); but they'd rather pretend that lesbians simply don't exist. I'm also leaving out the other insulting undercurrent in the Guardian article, which is that it doesn't "do" to think about things too much, which is another rant for another day.)

But women in their "sexual prime"? (And by that I mean, of course, their prime in terms of being conventionally attractive, because the irony is that it's the middle aged women who have the higher sex drive.) They express their sexuality by taking their clothes off or wearing little clothing to begin with. They are liberated because they can get drunk and fuck some guy they've never met over spring break and no one will call them a slut. Well, not as an insult, anyway. Go to the right party, flirt with the adorable cameraman, flash a nation of late-night television viewers. I mean, at least strippers get paid, and paid well, rather than having to beg for three pairs of low-quality cotton boyshorts after they've been date-raped out of their virginity by the king of soft core voyeur porn.

It's easy, and tempting, to dismiss these girls, and the wonder of the LA Times writer is that she doesn't. She doesn't say well, these are just loud-mouthed exhibitionists; she doesn't lay all the blame at the feet of MTV. She talks of Girls Gone Wild as merely exploiting an already-extant spring break culture. She doesn't even bother to make the "gee, maybe getting drunk and going into a van by yourself with men you don't know is a bad idea" argument because she knows we're already making it, as a way to make ourselves feel safe; instead, she brings us back to our essential solidarity with these girls, to our less-confident younger selves who either made ourselves into that girl that the boys liked, or didn't and faced those consequences. When you're nineteen, you're either that girl in "Hey Nineteen" that an older man is wooing with tequila and coke, or you're not, and maybe it isn't so great to be that girl after all.

The Guardian writer is threatened by these middle-aged women and uses the words of some of the Lumos attendees to humiliate them. The LA Times writer doesn't have to humiliate these young women for "expressing their sexuality"; the "Girls Gone Wild" producers have done it already.

Comments

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I mean, I get that there is almost always going to be fandom bashing, and that's whatever. The sexuality thing, though, was so clearly an undercurrnet and is what led I think to the weird strain of misogyny that so many people picked up on.

Thank you!

[longleggedgit.livejournal.com]

That's what I said, too. And while I did take some of the fandom bashing personally, that's just part of the package that comes with being a nerd, man. If you don't grow thick skin, you can't make it. Misogyny, however, is something I don't think we should have to just sit back and deal with.

Thank you for writing this.