Tag Archives: radical feminism

Open Letter to Michelle Obama: Cutting Calories at the Women’s History Museum

Debbie says:

Dear Mrs. Obama,

I wrote to you several years ago when you first announced your anti-childhood-obesity campaign, stating my opinion that opposition to childhood obesity both focuses on a red herring instead of a problem and encourages low self-esteem in all children (and people) who perceive themselves to be fat. I was sorry never to get an answer.

Last week, I was lucky enough to get to visit the Women’s Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, NY. I was struck by the opening of the Declaration of Sentiments which came out of the first U.S. Women’s Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls in 1848. The Declaration begins:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

I thoroughly enjoyed the museum, though I was sorry to see that it has apparently run out of money. Many of the computerized exhibits were not working, and the display of women’s history from 1993 onward was ironically blank. As a person concerned with body image, I was especially pleased to note some mentions of the way in which focus on appearance has been a hurdle for women trying to find our own strength.

One of my companions, a recovering anorexic, was triggered as well as horrified when she was buying something in the shop and found a handout from the museum entitled in large letters Burn While You Learn (.pdf at the link). I found its focus on calories disturbing and its presence in a women’s rights museum offensive. My friend, on the other hand, experienced it as a direct criticism of herself for having escaped from the near-death state that obsessively counting calories in and calories out caused her some decades passed.

When I challenged the flyer’s presence in a woman’s-rights museum, the woman behind the counter basically shifted the responsibility onto you, which seems fair since the flyer credits your  “Let’s Move Outside!” program. I was able to find at least one other flyer in an identical design on the Internet, which supports her claim. The Let’s Move Outside website, on the other hand, while it mentions calories and obesity in a few places, seems much more focused on what I believe to be the real issues: exercise for every body, healthy food for every body, and positive self image for every body.

Just to be clear about my objections:

1)  No one can calculate to any reliable degree the number of calories a person burns while walking a certain distance, even if you know that person’s weight and the speed at which they walk.

2) To the very limited extent that calorie burning is correlated to weight loss (if you haven’t already, please read the incomparably useful David Berreby article on this topic) these numbers are absolutely trivial, which anyone who has ever counted calorie intake is completely aware of.

3) As my friend’s reaction shows, this campaign is basically shaming; it’s designed to hit people’s–usually women’s–internalized oppression buttons and make us feel like we aren’t moving enough, walking enough, burning enough calories, paying enough attention. Basically, there’s no way this kind of message makes anyone feel better, stronger, or more capable, all of which are markers of both emotional and physical health.

4) It is a travesty to put this kind of message in front of women in one of the few places where focusing on our rights and our power is supposed to take center stage.

A body image rights convention would be well justified in “refusing allegiance to” a campaign with the goal of making us hate ourselves.Please rethink the entire “Burn While You Learn” campaign, and while you are doing so, please have your staff remove the flyer from the Seneca Falls and Waterloo sites.

Thank you for your consideration.

She’s Degrading Herself; You’re Performing Femininity; I’m Sex-Positive

Debbie says:

Usually I come to blog discussions somewhere in the middle, but I’m going to write about one that I saw unfold. (And now it’s almost a week later, so a year later in internet time.) This story “starts” with Jill at I Blame the Patriarchy (who is responding to a remark made by one of her readers about what people think of her). For those who don’t know the blog, I Blame the Patriarchy is one of the great bastions of “radical feminism,” and Jill and her co-blogger Twisty are kick-ass writers. (I put “radical feminism” in quotes because I believe there are lots of ways to be a radical feminist, and this is one of them.) I often don’t agree with them, and I almost never agree with them 100%, but I keep the blog on my reading list and I’m seriously glad that their voices are out there.

Today’s feminist, empowered by all those articles on vibrators in Bust magazine, chooses choices of her own free will. These choices mirror her own unique sartorial, sexual, and philosophical personality. That these unique choices happen to align precisely with standard male porn fantasies, and that they are therefore rewarded with positive attention, is purely coincidental.
Such a viewpoint is a luxury of youth. It is the great tragedy of the women’s liberation movement that fully-realized feminist consciousness is too rarely achieved by women who are still young and fit enough to take on Dude Nation in a knife fight. Too often, it’s only when a woman ages out of pornosity, and is too old to do anything but take pictures of cows, that she discovers what the world really thinks of her.

Towards the end of the post, Jill states the “radical feminist” position in no uncertain terms.

It would be many years before I would understand that femininity, the practice of femininity, and the fetishization of femininity degrades all women. That femininity is not a “choice” when the alternative is derision, ridicule, workplace sanctions, or ostracization. That femininity is a set of degrading behaviors that communicates one’s level of commitment to male authority and women’s oppression. That femininity is coerced appeasement, regardless of how successfully it is now marketed to young women as feminism.

Holly at the Pervocracy had a response (which is the only one I didn’t read in the normal course of my blog reading, but it was picked up by Clarisse at Feministe, and I did read this one. Here’s Holly:

Most critics of sex-positive feminism have not bothered to figure out what sex-positivity is. It’s not the giggling, hair-twirling exclamation of “it’s feminist to be sexayyy!” It’s really not. I’m not going to defend that strawman. (I also think it’s funny how often I get accused of being a Hooters-girl-bot, when I’m about the least Hooters-looking-person ever.) Nor is it the demand that everyone be sexy or have sex. Nor is it the claim that everything that involves sex is beyond criticism. Nor is it the suggestion that sex will fix all the problems of feminism.

Instead, sex-positivity is the belief that sex and sexiness are… okay. It’s the belief that people shouldn’t be judged by the sex they have. It’s the belief that consent matters and social norms do not. It’s the belief that porn and erotica are valid media of expression (not that the current porn industry is hunky-dory, cause it’s not) and that sex work ought to be just work (not that it currently is). It’s the belief that neither “slut” nor “prude” should be an insult. It’s the belief that every sexual and gender identity is valid.

Sex-positivity is, in a nutshell, the belief in sexual freedom as a key component of women’s freedom and of having a better world in general.

A lot of criticism of sex-positive feminism is really criticism of sexy women.

Clarisse at Feministe picked up Holly’s post and ran with it without analyzing it. Clarisse is smart and sharp, and is trying to make some level of peace by talking about how much she respects Twisty and radical feminism, while quoting Holly at length (and not quoting Twisty or Jill, which is interesting in itself).

At Alas, A Blog, Mandolin comes in to talk about the relationship between sex-positivity and fatphobia:

… a lot of the sex-positive stuff I’ve read has been pretty deeply entangled with fatphobia, even the stuff that’s not trying to be. Which, lots of stuff is, so it’s not like I think sex-positive feminists are more fatphobic than other people or even other feminist activists (probably less as a whole!), but sexuality and body issues are really at a–I’m going to say it, “problematic” :-P –crux so…

Well, at heart, I guess, I think some of the assumptions of sex positivity run counter to my experience as an unattractive woman. I’ve tried to pornulate, my goodness. And I’m not trying to say here “I’ve tried to be sexy” or “I’ve tried to be feminine.” Because I am feminine! And I wasn’t trying to be sexy, I was trying to be “sexy,” to be the ideal pornulated female. (And the fact that I never could is one of the big pains of my life since it eventually drove me away from my chosen career.)

Mandolin has a later post on the same subject with some nuanced and thoughtful comments about performed femininity, which I recommend that you read.

So here we have three women I respect (plus Holly, whose writing I don’t know), all making “blind woman and the elephant” responses to a very deep social problem. Jill sees sex-positive feminism as inherently degrading. Holly and Clarisse see it as a woman’s right. Mandolin sees it as something she’s cut out from by her body shape.

But …

As Lori Selke helped me figure out, none of them are really talking about sex-positive feminism. They’re talking about performed femininity, about women making choices that make them/us more conventionally attractive to men, and specifically to men who are at least as acculturated as women to defining certain shapes, sizes, and accessories as “sexy.”

Sex-positive feminism is not historically heterosexual. It is not only possible to live a passionately and unmistakably sex-positive life without ever touching a man, plenty of people do it. Plenty more travel in the world where “gender is not binary” signs are posted at every turn, where at least half the people they/we meet and hang out with and go to erotic readings with and go to sex parties with are not simply categorizable as either male or female.

Holly’s sentence (quoted above) that criticism of sex-positive feminism is often criticism of sexy women completely sidesteps this issue, because she is effectively defining “sexy women” as women who are conventionally sexy in the heterosexual culture, and who make use of the trappings of performed femininity, from high heels to make-up.

Jill, unaware or unexamined femininity is coerced appeasement. With awareness, it can become a combination of coerced appeasement, theatricality, and turning the horrible hand women are dealt into something we can actually play with.

Holly and Clarisse, sex-positivity is in the body of the person who feels it. It’s not in the eye of the beholder. Don’t make the mistake of conflating how people see us with who we are or what we like.

[NOTE: From here in, this post is edited to add a distinction between personal and political sex-positivity.]

Mandolin, I get it that your body keeps you from pornulating but, as you say, you are feminine. And Your own sexuality is about what works for you in your bedroom (or your car, or the beach, or the elevator) and whoever you wish to share it with. It’s not about how other people see you. whether or not you are sex-positive is, to me, a matter concerning what you believe and what range of behaviors you want other people to be comfortable (and joyful) engaging in. Regardless of how we look on a continuum of socially recognized sexiness, sex-positivity is about what we think people should have the freedom to enjoy without social restriction. Sex positivity is the extension of that to other people: it cannot effectively be conflated with anyone’s idea of sexiness in other people, because it isn’t about how other people see anyone.

One of the best things about the sex-positive circle I travel in is the vast range of bodies I see at events–everyone at a Perverts Put Out! reading is there because they/we self-identify as sex-positive. Someone can have their own opinions about whether or not I am sexy, or feminine, or womanly, but any opinion they might have about whether or not I am sex-positive is useless, because the only person with any say in that particular issue is me.