I’m re-posting old blog entries that I wrote in 2006. Is that like a huge internet faux pas? I don’t care, it was just an old myspace blog that no-one read so I’ll add it to the tumblr tumble (they all seem so cute and optimistic! am I getting more jaded in my old age?):

My Ideal Sexual World

As engaged sex-positive, feminist, queer and kinky folks, we spend a lot of time talking about how crappy the world is.  My partner and I have taken up the habit of identifying, from time to time, key features of what we call our Ideal Sexual World.

In a time when something as tame as two people of the same gender legally marrying seems far off, I think it is important to make our dreams bigger, not smaller. 

Take a look at my list and tell me what I forgot! 

In my Ideal Sexual World:

1)      No one is ever raped or otherwise coerced into an unwanted sexual act through physical force, poverty, desperation, or addiction.

2)      Everyone appreciates his or her own specific body (with all its beautiful irregularity) for the pleasure it can bring to him/herself, as well as to other people.

3)      Everyone sees him/herself as a complete sexual being.  Of course we still crave sexual and emotional partnership, but the state of being single is celebrated, and masturbation is finally recognized as the true national pastime.

4)      No one feels objectified or belittled by the admiring gaze of other people, because everyone feels safe in the unquestioned autonomy of his or her own body.

5)      Everyone feels free and empowered to state his or her boundaries at any moment, from asking an unwanted admirer to stop looking at you as you walk down the street to telling your lifelong partner that you just dont want to have sex that night.

6)      No one feels hurt when someone else states a boundary.  Because of the frequency and simplicity of saying no and being told no by other people, we have ceased to feel that being told no diminishes our value as a sexual being.

7)      No one is ashamed of his or her sexual fantasies, because everyone understands that fantasies can exist in the mind without being acted upon in the physical world.

8)      Everyone is free to pursue the kind of relationship that makes them the happiest, healthiest, and most engaged with the worldbe it straight, queer, monogamous, non-monogamous, married, single, co-habiting or otherwise.

9)      Due to the high visibility of queer families, polyamorous families, and other non-traditional arrangements, young people understand that love takes many forms and that their own sexuality is a unique gift they should respect.

10)  Comprehensive, sensitive, respectful and humorous sex education is provided for all children beginning in the home and continued at schools through publicly-funded programs. Because of this early education in prevention, unwanted pregnancies are rare and transmission of STDs is low.

11)  Comprehensive sexual health care is available and affordable to all people, and researchers continue to improve vaccines, cures, and medications for all sexually-related disorders.   

12)  Men and women and who wish to work as sexual healers, surrogates, escorts and entertainers are free to do so, and are appreciated by the society and the state for the important role they play in a healthy and happy society.

I’m re-posting old blog entries that I wrote in 2006.  Is that like a huge internet faux pas?  I don’t care, it was just an old myspace blog that no-one read so I’ll add it to the tumblr tumble (they all seem so cute and optimistic!  am I getting more jaded in my old age?):

Clashing Waves

There is a lot of ideological dissent between second- and third-wave feminists.  This is probably most frequently played out between mothers who came of age in the 60s and 70s and their now adolescent and young-adult daughters (most of whom have never even heard of these silly waves but live them nonetheless). 

They fought for the right to wear pants to work.  We wear miniskirts.  They worked to break the glass ceiling in traditionally male professions like medicine and law.  We want to be burlesque dancers and make indie films.   They worked hard to be seen as more than just sexual beings.  We want to explore our sexuality.

Sometimes I get irritated hearing second-wavers criticize the sex-positive, self-empowered choices made by myself and my peers.  “We did all this work and they take it all for granted!” says my mom and her (totally baddass second-wave) peers

Well, isn’t that what you wanted?  To create a world where your daughters believe that they could be anything?  Congratulations, Mom, you did!  I know I could be a doctor, but it turns out I want to be a burlesque dancer!

I hope that my queer children will live in a world where they take their rights for granted.  “Well, sure, Mom, we could get married,”  little Joy Junior will say about her girlfriend, “But that’s so square!“  “Do you know how hard we worked for that?“  I’ll say, but then bite my tongue, happy to see her happy and proud that she has a wide scope of possibilities to choose from or reject.

On the other hand, I do think that a sense of history is important for social movements as lessons forgotten must be repeated.

Part of the project of patriarchy is to control women by separating them from one another.   One way that individual women can resist this is to join forces across the generation gap and join forces with their 2^nd or 3^rd wave compatriots. 

Institutionalized sexism is simultaneously a huge and subtle enemy to be fighting.  We need to be working on breaking it down from all angles!  We need feminist political organizers working to create a more just society.  We need burlesque dancers asking audiences to explore with them the performance of gender and the playfulness of desire. We need feminist doctors to help balance the focus of medicine and prioritize womens bodies. We need feminist filmmakers and lawyers and academics and prostitutes of BOTH genders changing the lives of individuals and shaping the structures of the world we live in so that everyones body, mind and spirit can be equally valued and respected.    It takes a lot of brains and hands to change this stumbling elephant of a paradigm, you grab the trunk, I’ll work on the ears!

I’m re-posting old blog entries that I wrote in 2006.  Is that like a huge internet faux pas?  I don’t care, it was just an old myspace blog that no-one read so I’ll add it to the tumblr tumble:

On Tag and Sexism

At age 8 I had my first recognizable experience of sexism.

A friend of my mother’s, along with her husband and three sons, one my age and two a few years older, were staying at our house as they traveled up the California coast.

As the parents cooked and drank beer, I took the boys out into the lush, mossy Redwood glen that is my backyard and a riotous game of tag ensued. Soon we were screaming and jumping over stumps and clover patches in a playful type of competition that I now recognize as flirting.

Dusk fell and I went inside, flopping down on the couch between my dad and the boys’ dad. “Those boys kept beating me at tag!” I said in mock frustration, though it was indeed true that they had run my ass off.

“Boys always win at tag, they’re faster,” said the boy’s father matter-of-factly.

And I have to interject here how much I love my eight-year-old self and the loving, rational parents who raised her, because at this, I laughed, thinking that he must be joking. And then I looked at him, and realized he was serious.

Now eight-year-old me knew pretty well that she was faster, smarter, taller, and more mature than most of the boys she knew, and if she wasn’t faster than them? Then surely Sarah Finney was, cause that girl was even tougher than me. Some boys were fast, some were slow, some girls were good at math, some weren’t. There were no rules like that. Like boys always win. That was silly.

And so I knew he was wrong. And I think somehow I got it then: that people were wrong about this stuff. If this guy thought boys were better, then others did. And they were wrong. Someone taught them wrong. There were a whole bunch of people walking around in this crazy world with wrong ideas about boys and girls.

I can still remember looking over my left shoulder at this big big man, three times my size, smiling at him and feeling strangely powerful, thinking quietly to myself: Nope. You’re wrong.

In an interesting footnote, I just learned that this man died recently of complications with cancer. I bear no resentment towards him, and wish him well in his next adventure. He clearly had an important role to play in my life.

But I think of his sons. You out there, boys? Wanna play tag?

This is my girlfriend’s amazing blog on consensual non-monogamous relationships.  It’s awesome.  Read it, share it, follow it.

so proud of my comrades!!!

bushwickcommute:

karaj:

looking at these pictures from my MA conference is totally making my day.

alice (beautifully) dancing scorn. barbara assuring elliott he could get naked for his final project. dwayne making us sit in some of the darkest dark ive ever experienced. aliza talking about rape kit fetishes. ann mesmerizing me with her agile, freudian response. joy on cuddle parties and emmanuelle being brave. hannahs beautiful photographic exploration of her body. (the founder of PS’s response: “was that an ass crack?”) karen tongson invoking the prince of tides (“lowenstein”?! “i wish i had two lives”?! STOP.)

I GOT TO TALK ABOUT FEMINIST BOREDOM IN PUBLIC.

(though, um, i think i need to work on my powerpoint signage.)

sometimes i feel like someone made up performance studies just for me. will you look at the pullquote from this story i wrote years before i even knew such a program existed?

i would also like to note that my class has been called A. the smartest in the history of the program and B. the hottest in the history of the program. really, i could not be more thrilled by these designations. more generally, i could not be more thrilled by the last year. i wish i was in summer school.

thank you kara! i was going to add a longish commentary to this…but i think i’ll only mention a few things:

1. i’ve been think about your thesis presentation a lot lately. and i feel like i need more than a ten minuet sample of it. Photography, performance art, and feminism. who could want anything more?!

2. yes. the ass crack comment. haha. I had someone say to me after the symposium, “don’t you think its so ironic that a sexist, horny, white man is the founder of this supposedly oh-so-progressive course of study?” to which i responded, “yes…but at least he actually bother to show up for the fucking symposium.” 

3. Oh, and Joys cuddle party presentation. I need her paper (and aliza’s paper…and alice’s paper! gah!) so desperately. I loved her discussion of “the beside” as opposed to “metaphor.” and i loved how she totally called out couples who deem significant others as metaphors for/ambassadors of individual identity. that shit has always made me queazy. (i also think its funny that joy is, in actuality, totally out-of-love and annoyed with cuddle parties now).

i’m going to miss PS so much. i’m starting to doubt that there is any other place for me…

ugh. this did end up being kind of long. 

It’s nice to have a Master’s Degree.  And  a beautiful girlfriend.  Both at once are especially good. Thanks @bushwickcommute for the photo.

jennykornuta:

Half of the world’s population have vaginas and periods, yet no one seems to ever talk about them. Our society has made what is natural to womanhood culturally and conversationally taboo. U by Kotex, a new line of feminine care products, intends to change this.

Kotex conducted a national study with 14 to 35 year old women and found that 7 in 10 think it is time to change how society talks about vaginal health. Sixty percent of respondents also think they are expected to keep vaginal health issues private, which seems off-balance considering the highly public way in which the media broadcast female “ailments.” The medicalization of women’s bodily functions has resulted in a highly skewed societal view of their natural processes as problematic. Though, despite this public discourse, feminine care advertising continues to represent women’s periods only with carefully crafted euphemisms, never really openly stating what problem they are selling a solution for. Fittingly, the tagline for U by Kotex’s new campaign and product launch reads: “Break the cycle.”

Kotex’s creative campaign emphasizes the absurdity in typical feminine care advertising by using parody to poke fun at what has been done in the past. Also, visitors to the line’s highly interactive website are given the opportunity to sign the Declaration of Real Talk and have one dollar donated to Girls for a Change. The Declaration promises such things as: “I will challenge society to think differently about what it means to be a woman,” and “I will talk openly and without embarrassment about periods and vaginal care with my friends and family.” These statements obviously showcase the brand’s desire to not only get people to buy into the brand’s beliefs but to also push a highly feminist proclamation for a new generation of women to latch onto and believe in. Even though this message is technically a marketing tactic meant to appeal to the consumers’ emotions, it remains a possibly revolutionary message for young girls to be aware of and share virally.

Though the campaign’s mission is certainly virtuous, the question remains: will Kotex be able to actually “break the cycle” themselves by eventually progressing from satirical advertisements to straightforward “real talk” ones? Or, will their bravado dwindle and fall back into unrealistic euphemisms? In other words, can they walk the walk?