First published at
http:\/\/goodmenproject.com\/featured-content\/is-sex-positive-ever-negative\/<\/p>\n
Lili Bee interviews Dr. Robert Jensen about what\u2019s at stake when talking about our sexual differences.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Recently me and one of my best male friends, Lance, who happens to be gay, were talking about our love lives and then about work, when I detected a shift between us. As I spoke about my work with people who found themselves partnered with sexual compulsives, he grew quiet.<\/p>\n It was hard not to notice that the room seemed suddenly darker, lifeless; the air wasn\u2019t charged any more with the sparkle that Lance always delightfully brings in with him. When I finally asked if he was ok, he replied, \u201cI just hope you\u2019re not going to turn into Anita Bryant on us.\u201d<\/p>\n After getting over the shock of hearing my work with sexual compulsion being conflated with a fundamentalist, conservative, religious, homophobic political leader of yesteryear, I asked why he\u2019d even make such a comment. His response was that Anita Bryant and Co. seemed terrified of their own sexuality and needed to control everyone else\u2019s as a result.<\/p>\n Lance and I always trusted one another with details about our intimate histories. I suspected he trusted me with his<\/em> sexual details because he could tell from mine that I neither blush easily nor do I condemn others easily. He knew I had a secular<\/em> education site specializing in often badly-needed resources when there is sexual compulsion\/ addiction present and he knew we work with all<\/em> sexual orientations. Anita Bryant?!<\/p>\n He went on to say,\u201cI\u2019m only talking about how the anti-porn groups always lobby to get politicians into office who are totally right-wing assholes, who hate gays and anyone who doesn\u2019t fit their picture of mainstream, and that\u2019s a no-win situation for us.\u201d<\/p>\n My center doesn\u2019t advocate for legislation against pornography and we certainly don\u2019t shill for any religious groups. I created my business precisely because<\/em> I could barely find resources that weren\u2019t religiously-based, when I desperately needed help myself years ago and searched everywhere. How ironic Lance might find it, then, that when people call us who require religious reinforcement for their beliefs that what their husband (or wife) is doing is morally wrong<\/em>, we send them to another site that is overtly religious in their approach.<\/p>\n \u201cGoogle \u2018sex positive\u2019 and read everything you possibly can,\u201d Lance said, \u201cit\u2019ll help offset anything puritanical out there while you\u2019re doing your work on helping people who are freaking about sexual practices they don\u2019t approve of. And remember, Lili, you<\/em> might be cool, but just be careful because all this anti-sex stuff just ends up damaging people. Those conservative movements would be happy to get gays back into the closet and besides creating otherwise restrictive environments. Everybody\u2019s sex life should be their own business.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo\u2026what, Lance, if someone doesn\u2019t want the stigma of being called \u201canti-sex\u201d, does that mean they have to condone porn use in their relationships, just as one example?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know, but\u2026\u201d, Lance offered, getting more frustrated by the minute, \u201cI moved to New York because I want to live in a sexually free environment. I just feel that sexual conservatism is so, I don\u2019t know\u2026.backwards, so puritanical. \u201c<\/p>\n \u201cOk! But then, who gets to decide what sexual \u201cconservatism\u201d even is? Your \u2018sex-positive\u2019 peeps?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah! Why not? I\u2019ll take Anthony Weiner over Anita Bryant any day!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you really think there\u2019s nothing in between?\u201d<\/p>\n But Lance wasn\u2019t interested in any further questions; he was firmly entrenched in a belief system, one I\u2019d like to know more about.<\/p>\n Why couldn\u2019t we work our way towards anything even resembling a constructive talk? Why was our conversation breaking down reliably into overly-simplistic categories of bad\/ good? All the myriad distinctions worth discussing were being lumped into polarized categories: black and white, right and wrong. This was as bad as my childhood religion, and that was not a good thing in any way.<\/p>\n Whenever I tried to zoom out to discuss the big-picture implications of pull-out-all-the-stops, in-your-face, commercialized sexuality that many didn\u2019t want questioned, he\u2019d drop into using personal anecdote to shore up his point of view. I\u2019d no sooner join him there in the personal realm, when he\u2019d swoop back up into the higher strata of how my views would hurt the politics of the country. It seemed to me that trying to collect spilled mercury off the floor with a spoon would be easier than having this conversation.<\/p>\n I laid awake that night and wondered just how many educated, aware people like Lance linked anyone who had an opinion that didn\u2019t conform to the \u201csex positive\u201d ideology with that person being anti-sex<\/em>, or sex-negative<\/em>? What forces were at work, I wondered, that had all but obliterated any nuance, or even interest in all<\/em> of us having an authentic, expansive, respectful conversation about sex, rather than frequently resorting to vitriolic put-downs of those with differing views?<\/p>\n I decided to include \u201cSex positive as a term\u201d on my list of topics to bring up with one of my mentors, an educator and activist I most respect for his passionate, unapologetic and committed stance on politics, feminism, racism, patriarchy, classism and the military industrial complex, Dr. Robert Jensen. As Hurricane Irene barreled her way up the eastern seaboard, Dr. Jensen and I Skyped: me hunkered down at my storm-proofed lair in Manhattan, him out in Austin under a clear, blue Texas sky at the beginning of the fall semester where he\u2019s a professor at University of Texas, Austin Journalism School.<\/p>\n We talked about a lot of things besides the sex positive issue. We talked about masculinity, humanism, erotica vs. porn, power dynamics between the genders, and some of the more profound and personal insights into the heart of intimacy I\u2019ve had the privilege of hearing a man share with me. I\u2019ll post those other portions of our talk next week.<\/p>\n Lili\u2019s talk with Dr. Robert Jensen Part I <\/strong><\/p>\n Lili:<\/strong> So, Bob, let\u2019s talk about sex. In particular, let\u2019s talk about what I\u2019ll call a movement with a cheery sounding name, the Sex Positive movement.<\/p>\n First, let me just say I find the term challenging. For all it\u2019s implied positivism, there are problems with it, such as who dictates which activities are accepted, or not accepted within that movement\u2019s sanctioned forms of sexual expression? To me, it comes across as a movement that just grants carte blanche to any and all sex acts\/ sexual lifestyles and the only real issue seems to be, well, if you have an issue with any of it.<\/p>\n Premised on that, then, if one is ok with many or even most sexual activities, but expresses objections to, let\u2019s say, one activity in particular, there are those within the Sex Positive movement who are very quick to dismiss that person, to call them a conservative, a rabid feminist or a religious fundamentalist.<\/p>\n Can you speak to the term \u201cSex Positive\u201d because I\u2019m more aware of the divisiveness of the term?<\/p>\n Bob:<\/strong> I think the whole notion of it is absurd. The notion of a \u201cSex Positive\u201d category or a sex-positive feminism is truly ridiculous since no one I know of in these arenas is sex negative. The only people who might be truly sex-negative are extreme religious fundamentalists who believe that sexual conduct is somehow inherently shameful.<\/p>\n Within feminism I know of nothing that one would call sex-negative; in fact, the term sex negative isn\u2019t a meaningful category, it\u2019s an insult and an attempt to undermine a critique of the underlying power dynamics in sex.<\/p>\n I come out of a tradition called \u201cradical feminism\u201d and anti-porn feminism, feminism that\u2019s critical of the sexual exploitation industries, critical of the oppression inherent in men\u2019s buying and selling women\u2019s bodies. That movement is sometimes called \u201csex negative\u201d and I\u2019ve never understood what that means. I\u2019ve met literally hundreds of people in that movement and I\u2019ve never met anyone who\u2019s against sex or who thinks sex is a bad thing.<\/p>\n Lili:<\/strong> I live in sexually progressive New York City and everywhere I look, I see so many varied forms of sexuality being openly expressed. I also grant that New York is not an accurate litmus test of how sexual mores are received elsewhere in the country. Let me say that up front.<\/p>\n The people who call themselves \u201csex positive\u201d seem to be advocating a sexual freedom that\u2019s a response or even a rebellion against any kind of sexual repression. Where do you see us at this point in time with regard to repression?<\/p>\n Bob:<\/strong> Well certainly there are elements of contemporary culture that are repressive sexual arenas, especially conservative, religious trends for instance which have problems with all sorts of sexual expression. To me, the question isn\u2019t about sexual liberation versus sexual freedom, the question is:<\/p>\n How do we construct a healthy sexual culture that understands sex in the context of fostering healthy human relationships?<\/em><\/p>\n The so-called sexual liberation of the 1960\u2032s did many positive things: it broke down some of those old, repressive mechanisms. Much of that had to do with feminists critiquing the sexual control, the domination\/ subordination dynamic in patriarchy. But that period of time also reinforced patriarchy in certain ways, especially in the way in which the sexual exploitation industries became more normalized and more mainstream. And by sexual exploitation industries I mean prostitution, pornography, stripping\u2014the primary ways in this culture that men buy and sell women\u2019s bodies for the sexual pleasure of men.<\/p>\n So, you have to look at how this played out. Some of it was positive, from my point of view, some of it was extremely negative. Some of it challenged patriarchy: the claim of legitimacy for lesbian and gay people was a challenge to the patriarchy, and it\u2019s constricting gender norms and sexual rules. The assertion that women are fully autonomous sexual beings and not simply objects or vehicles for male pleasure \u2013 that challenge to the patriarchy was extremely healthy and positive. But there was also a flip side to it that reinforced some of that patriarchal ideology.<\/p>\n So the question now is: How does one fashion a healthy, sexual culture and the question I use to frame that is to ask: \u201cWhat is sex for?<\/em>\u201d Sex has a role in human life. Obviously it has a basic role in procreation but it\u2019s much more than that. The question is, and at any given point in time, sex can mean many different things and what do we want it to mean?<\/p>\n To ask that question is not to impose a single answer, it\u2019s to recognize that not all forms of sex are consistent with healthy, human relationships. The most obvious example is sexual assault- that\u2019s a form of sex but no one would argue it\u2019s consistent with healthy human relationships. And so those are the kinds of things we have to ask.<\/p>\n How do you build a culture in which human beings flourish<\/em>? is the fundamental question \u2013 part of that question has to do with sex: How do you build a culture in which human beings flourish sexually? There\u2019s no one answer to that, but that\u2019s the conversation we have to have.<\/p>\n The sex positive or so-called sexual liberation perspective tends to assume that anything sexual is consistent with human flourishing but I think the evidence is quite clear that that\u2019s not true. So, we have to fashion a sexual ethic, and by sexual ethic I don\u2019t mean the assertion of rules that are imposed on people, but a sexual ethic that emerges from honest conversation. And as you\u2019re pointing out, when especially women in contemporary culture resist the pornographic nature of this culture, by saying, \u201cI don\u2019t want to replicate pornographic sexual scenes in my personal life\u201d, those women are often the targets of insults or pejorative labels like \u201csex negative\u201d and that\u2019s what we have to overcome.<\/p>\n Lili:<\/strong> When one looks at the tone of many of the comments following articles about porn use, one can really get a sense of the contention and hostility. So it leaves me wondering: Whom does it really serve to create distinctions like \u201csex positive\u201d? Why even create the distinction?<\/p>\n Bob:<\/strong> Well, it serves the people who want to undermine critique by labeling any critique as being \u201csex negative\u201d. That\u2019s the only function it serves as far as I can tell, which is why I don\u2019t use the terms and don\u2019t accept the terms in conversations or debates I might be in.<\/p>\n Lili:<\/strong> So let\u2019s talk about what I call the language of \u201cshaming.\u201d One of the questions recently posed to the Advice Columnist at GMP centered on a man who felt uncomfortable with the vast amount of attention his new girlfriend attracted by insisting on wearing very little on the beach\u2014\u201cthree half-dollar sized pieces of cloth\u201d, was how he put it. He was looking for advice on how he might share his request that she wear even a small bikini, vs. almost nothing.<\/p>\n And one of the female commenters told him, quite aggressively in my opinion, that he should stop \u201cslut shaming\u201d her and basically, to get over it. This kind of exchange appears frequently enough that I wonder if we\u2019re using the \u201cshaming\u201d term as a way to shut people up who have a different view of sexuality than our own. What are your thoughts on this?<\/p>\n Bob:<\/strong> I think there are two separate questions about shame: one that has to do with men and one that has to do with women. So the question isn\u2019t about shaming or not shaming in the context that you raise, the question is:<\/p>\n What leads people in an oppressed category to behavior that seems to intensify or deepen those oppressive forces?<\/em><\/p>\n So let\u2019s say you have a society in which women are routinely treated as objects for male sexual pleasure, that is you have contemporary patriarchy in which women are routinely bought and sold for male sexual pleasure and in which women even outside the sexual exploitation industries are encouraged to present themselves as sexual objects.<\/p>\n The question when a woman engages in self-presentation like that is: \u201cWhat is the motive force behind that choice of hers? Is she doing it because it\u2019s some expression of her authentic sense of her own body? Is it an authentic style of hers? Or is she simply buying into the cultural pressure to present herself as a sexual object?\u201d<\/em> Because there are certain kinds of rewards for that.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know the answer to that in the case of any specific woman. If one is going to engage a specific person in that conversation, one would do it as you would engage people in any kind of difficult conversation: with respect, and with a sense of true openness, wanting to understand. But when you step back from any individual case and you look at the patterns, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any doubt that women, especially younger women, increasingly engage in that kind of self-presentation routinely. And I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any doubt that one of the serious factors in that is the cultural pressure for women to present themselves that way. That has nothing to do with shaming, that has to do with inquiry into the nature of the society in which you live and how people shape their own sense of their own bodies, their own desires, and their own value in the world. Ok, well that\u2019s what a decent society would do, to step back and look at those patterns, and ask: \u201cWhat are the power dynamics in which those patterns are rooted?\u201d and ask again,<\/p>\n \u201cAre they consistent with human flourishing?<\/em><\/p>\n There is nothing new about this. Feminists have been critiquing the way women are pressured into self-presentation that objectifies themselves for male viewing\u2014that critique\u2019s been around for a long time, there\u2019s nothing new about it. It\u2019s just that, as you point out, in this particular moment, this fundamental feminist critique has been so marginalized, so beaten back, so buried, that it\u2019s not part of the cultural conversation and that\u2019s unfortunate from my point of view.<\/p>\n Lili:<\/strong> Yes, and when I do raise the question in conversation, it\u2019s not uncommon to get a considerable amount of pushback from women, who\u2019ll say, \u201cNo, I do<\/em> love walking around in a see-through dress with no underwear on in public\u201d, or \u201cI love when I know my man is out enjoying himself at strip clubs\u201d or any of these statements which I have to admit, sound bizarre to me.<\/p>\n And with the colossal amounts of money being made in what you call the sexual exploitation industries, I can\u2019t help but wonder if as women, we\u2019re being hoodwinked into adopting these stances that prove that we\u2019re cool, we\u2019re the fun girls that are down with whatever<\/em>, with the unspoken threat being that if we resist or question it, we risk marginalization or worse.<\/p>\n I believe in everyone dressing to please themselves, yes, but I also can\u2019t help think many of us would be much happier if we didn\u2019t feel this tremendous pressure to conform to the cultural standards of beauty which can be pretty fascist and plenty sexist. I really believe we would stop stressing about those extra five or ten pounds we carry around but which render us not \u201cporn-worthy\u201d as one man characterized the cultural ideal in conversation with me.<\/p>\n Bob:<\/strong> Well, that\u2019s right, and body size is another thing\u2014it\u2019s very difficult to have a sensible conversation in this culture because on the one hand, there are cultural pressures on women to be thin, cultural pressures on women to look a certain way, to have a certain body type and those are unhealthy. They lead to eating disorders and all sorts of things.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also true however, that the celebration of non-traditional body types in a culture that has serious obesity problems and health problems is also difficult. The goal isn\u2019t to impose a single body type on everybody. The goal is to ask, \u201cWhat kind of nutrition and physical activity is consistent with a long-term healthy body?\u201d It\u2019s pretty clear that starving yourself to be model-thin isn\u2019t consistent with that. It\u2019s pretty clear that eating lots of high-fat, high-calorie, processed foods is inconsistent with that. The question is: \u201cHow do we shape lives that are sensible, sane and consistent with both physical, emotional and mental, long-term health?\u201d<\/p>\n These are difficult conversations to have in a society that\u2019s essentially gone mad, from my point of view.<\/p>\n People present themselves to other people in ways that have lots of different objectives, including the desire to be sexually attractive. There\u2019s nothing psychologically pathological about wanting to be sexually attractive. The question is, \u201cHow much of our time are we spending on those activities around presentation, and how are those gendered?\u201d \u201cHow are the pressures different on women than on men, for instance?\u201d<\/p>\n The other question is, \u201cHow much of that comes from authentic desire?\u201d and \u2018authenticity\u2019 is a difficult word in this context because all of our desires are in some sense, conditioned by society. I\u2019m not sure anybody has individual, authentic desires. What I come to desire is always going to be, in part, shaped by the society around me. But we have to be able to ask, \u201cHow are those social pressures sometimes healthy, or unhealthy? How are they sometimes connected to domination\/ subordination dynamics in oppressive systems like patriarchy? That also ties in not just to clothing and weight, but the growing prevalence of cosmetic surgery where people engage not only in dieting and such, to shape their bodies, but literally, to go so far as to mutilate healthy tissue to shape a body into some, what they think is socially desirable form. All of these questions, are, I think, profound indications of how disturbed this culture is.<\/p>\n Lili:<\/strong> And it\u2019s not just women. I\u2019m hearing more frequently now from men who feel pressured to conform to some often difficult-to attain ideal of male beauty. I\u2019m not really seeing much of that, though, not even an iota of what I see we, as women, put ourselves through. Especially disturbing to me is how young it starts, too\u2026.<\/p>\n Bob:<\/strong> Well, there\u2019s two points about the assertion that men are now under the same kind of pressure.<\/p>\n Number one, to some degree it\u2019s true. There are certainly more intense pressures on men to present themselves in ways to be sexually desirable. But, number one, as you\u2019re pointing out, are those equal to the pressures on women, especially girls\u2026and the answer is obviously no.<\/p>\n And the range of presentation that men can engage in and be in the category of attractive is far wider than the range for women. So these aren\u2019t equivalent. But, even if there are more pressures on men to look a certain way, that\u2019s not a sign that we\u2019ve reached equality. It\u2019s just a sign that the culture\u2019s degraded even further.<\/p>\n So then in patriarchy now, even though male dominance is still the defining dynamic, men have internalized some of the insanity themselves. I don\u2019t see that as something to celebrate; it\u2019s just another indication of the corrosive nature of this culture.<\/p>\n Here, we\u2019re not just talking about patriarchy\u2014of course, we\u2019re also talking about capitalism. These are trends fueled not only by the dynamic of male domination \/ female subordination\u2014they\u2019re also trends fueled by the relentless, pathological quest for profit, especially in late-consumerism capitalism when we\u2019ve been sold virtually everything we can be sold, so the market consistently tries to find new ways to generate profit, no matter how psychologically damaging they are to people. That\u2019s the cosmetic industry, much of the fashion industry, and the non-medically necessary plastic surgery industry. They\u2019re all a sign, from my point of view, of a culture in collapse, a culture in which human flourishing is subordinated to, in this case, the desire for profit.<\/p>\n About Robert Jensen, Ph.D<\/strong><\/p>\n Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of \u201cAll My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice\u201d (Soft Skull Press, 2009); \u201cGetting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity\u201d (South End Press, 2007); and several other books. Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film \u201cAbe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing,\u201d which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First published at http:\/\/goodmenproject.com\/featured-content\/is-sex-positive-ever-negative\/ Lili Bee interviews Dr. Robert Jensen about what\u2019s at stake when talking about our sexual differences. Recently me and one of my best male friends, Lance, who happens to be gay, were talking about our love lives and then about work, when I detected a shift between us. As I spoke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-241","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n