gender and sexuality studies.. oh, and women, i guess.

september 30th 2023 (crossposted on dreamwidth.)

i'm in a fourth year practicum course for what is now called women, gender, and sexuality studies (when i enrolled, it was called women and gender studies. this was a recent change). the professor of this course is a man, and so is the department head. there are only eight students in this class, so the prof made a whatsapp group chat with all of us in it. i've already complained about this course before [see it here]. so you might remember me blogging about it.

the professor sent a message to us mentioning a different prof who he needs to report to. i asked "is he the head of the wgs department?" and he said yes. so i responded to express my disapproval: why is the department head a man?"

one student responded with a link to the department head's profile on our university's website, and said that they found it very impressive. so i clicked on the link and skimmed his four most recent publications. only one of then centered women... while two of them centered men. the fourth didn't even seem to be about gender at all. i brought this up in the group chat, saying that i was disappointed but not surprised. i said that the women's studies department head should center women in all their publications. then it was just me, up against three other students who were disagreeing with me. and no wonder they were disagreeing with me! they spent the last three or more years being taught about feminism by an institution that thinks it's totally acceptable to have a male wgs department head.

i'm sure you can already guess what their arguments were: that feminism is for all oppressed people, that i'm "hyperfocusing on the sex portion and not including the other lenses", that we should be more inclusive, that it's "women, gender, and sexuality studies" and not just "women's studies." i can't say i'm that surprised, but you'd think that at least one person would agree with me, no? every time i've told someone outside of the wgs department that our department head is a man--i've told my friends, parents, coworkers, therapist--they've reacted with outrage and disgust. as they should! which just goes to show that the men in power in the university have fucked with wgs students' minds so severely that they don't even see feminism as women's liberation anymore.

here's the thing: i'm all for using an intersectional analysis in feminism. but if it's going to be called feminism, it must center women and female people, and analyze the identities that intersect with womanhood/femaleness and are affecting their experience of misogyny/sexism. wgs has completely forsaken class consciousness in favour of what they call intersectional feminism. making broad statements about the ways in which all women and female people are oppressed is frowned upon. i know because i've been frowned at, accused of essentialism, dismissed, argued against, and told i'm not intersectional or inclusive enough. why are we, as self-proclaimed feminists, refusing to acknowledge that all women have one thing in common: that every single one of us is oppressed by men in very similar ways?

anti-racism, anti-classism, and anti-homophobia have completely taken over women's studies, at the expense of feminist analysis. the people who see no problem with this are forgetting something: we have a sexual diversity studies program at our university. we have transnational and diaspora studies. many other universities in our city have indigenous studies, asian studies, black studies programs. these programs also lack a feminist analysis. so why are they seeping into wgs, while remaining unaffected by wgs?

imagine for a moment that you used the "intersectional feminist" arguments in any other context: we should talk about how accessibility benefits abled people too, because everybody is differently abled. we should talk about how socialism benefits rich people too. you know, anti-racism should include white people, because racism harms everyone!

feminism has a barrier around it that's only permeable from the outside. every other anti-oppression ideology has seeped into it, pushing women aside and claiming feminism as their own. but when has feminism ever seeped into some other discipline, and pushed other minorities aside for the sake of a women-centered analysis?  
feminist discourse and the fear of moral contamination

september 27th 2023 (crossposted on dreamwidth.)



we're all people living in the same world, so no matter what you believe, there will be some overlap with other people. nobody can ever be the exact opposite of anybody else. but something i see a lot, and even hear from professors, in academia, and in irl activism, is the automatic assignment of certain ideas with certain ideologies, which are then used to dismiss or dispute certain arguments. there's one example of it that has been plaguing feminist discourse since the dawn of the sex wars:

"radfems are against porn, and conservatives are against porn. therefore radfems are conservative."

let's break this down.

conservatives are against porn because they think that women are evil temptresses that are trying to corrupt good men. they think that female sexuality is dirty, and that sexuality is accurately represented in porn, therefore porn is dirty. conservatives want to protect society from female sexuality. they look at sex workers with hostility.

radfems are against porn because of the exploitation of women and the separation of sex from intimacy... [i already went into detail about this in another post]. radfems want to protect women from exploitation. they look at sex workers with compassion, and understand that swers are among the women who are most hurt by patriarchy.

even if, reading this, you don't understand what the difference is, or you disagree that there's any difference at all... hell, even if conservatives and radfems are against porn for the exact same reason: you can't reasonably deny that they are opposite in nearly every other way. radfeminism wants to destroy patriarchy and is very critical of marriage, intercourse, the nuclear family, capitalism, religion, and every form of oppression. conservatives cling dearly to all these things, and hope to preserve them at all costs.

so spend a moment thinking about it. if radfems and conservatives seem to agree on something, is it because radfems are actually conservatives? or is it because both radical feminism and conservatism are fully developed ideologies that aren't very concerned with appearing to disagree with each other on all fronts?

i'm angry about this because i've had male professors dismiss me, censor me, and label me as conservative [read about it here] for expressing criticism against the sex industry. these profs never even asked me, "why do you think that?" before deciding that i must be a conservative. the same happened to dworkin and mackinnon.
pornography • prostitution • sex work

september 20th 2023 (crossposted on dreamwidth.)


i'd like to make a post to summarize my views on pornography, prositution, and other forms of sex work. it will be useful for me to have it all in one place, and i'll continue to update it as i learn more about the topic. i've broken down my arguments into three categories: demand, consent, and intimacy. there's a lot of overlap between the categories, but i still find it helpful to have it organized in this manner.

demand

sex work creates a demand that will be fulfilled with sex trafficking.

let's imagine the best-case scenario: a woman doing sex work because she wants to. she genuinely enjoys this type of work, and her clients treat her well. this is understood by some to be "ethical sex work."

as a business, sex work must actively encourage the demand for sex work to keep increasing. porn industries want to create porn addicts. they want to create a pornsick society. that’s how businesses survive. it's horribly optimistic to imagine that every person who wants to use pornography or prostitutes will do so ethically (assuming that ethical sex work is possible). but let's imagine for a moment that ethical sex work exists, and that everyone who wants to consume sex work does so ethically. would there ever be enough women who are willingly going into sex work to satisfy this demand? as long as there is a demand, there will be sex trafficking to meet that demand. the “ethical” sex worker is a very very small minority of sex workers who throws every other sex worker and prostituted woman/girl under the bus for her own gain.

sex workers need men to use porn and prostitutes, and they will encourage men to do so. is this good for feminism? do you think these are good men? do you think these men respect the women in their lives? do they have healthy sexual relationships, or are they sexually reliant on static fantasies created by strangers who they have no personal connection or intimacy with?

consent

consent can't be bought.

consent can’t be bought--in fact, the mainstream conception of "consent" isn't one that respects women's sexual desires. it's a copout that allows men to do whatever they want to women, as long as the woman agrees to having it done to her. sex is something you do with someone, not to them. so many women (including myself) have uncritically consented to sexual activities in the heat of the moment because our minds were clouded by confusion, surprise, or anxiety, and we didn't feel like we could take a moment to think things through.

think of it from the perspective of someone who uses a prostitute, in the best case scenario (in which the woman is pursuing prostitution of her own volition and not out of necessity): you found a woman who you're sexually interested in, but she isn't interested in you. instead of offering her a worthwhile sexual experience, you use your money to blow past her disinterest and buy her consent. you then begin to touch and penetrate a woman who wouldn't be interested in you if not for the money you offered her. you see no problem with this. since you are paying this woman, she is providing you a service. you have a one-sided sexual encounter where you use someone else's body to fulfill your own desires.
think about the men who do this, and the men who consume pornography. how do you think they view sexuality? how do you think they treat their own sexual partners, after consuming so many static sexual fantasies that are devoid of any personal intimacy?

intimacy

i've decided to put "intimacy" at the end, because it is the most subjective of the three. upon reading this, it may become quite clear that these views are influenced by my personal experiences with sex work, sexual trauma, and christianity.

porn misrepresents sexuality by completely divorcing sexual pleasure from love, intimacy, and vulnerability. witnessing such intimate imagery of total strangers will inevitably mess up the way you approach your own sexuality, and the way you interact with sexual partners.
sex work puts a price on sexuality and makes it into something that can be bought and sold.
book review: beyond the gender binary by alok vaid-menon

july 15th 2023 (crossposted on goodreads.)



this was a nice short memoir with good prose. it was quick, easy, and enjoyable to read. i liked the talk about normal vs normative, and about how certain minority groups are demonized so that their disappearance seems like an act of justice.

i have a lot of issues with this book, but i rounded up my star rating because it never claims to be a radical feminist text, and because it wouldn't make sense for anyone to expect it to be. it's a short feel-good story that stays very liberal and doesn't get too political or go into depth about much. if i hadn't loved it so much as a teenager, i'd have given this book a much more negative review. it meant a lot to me when i was younger, because i just needed to hear that it was okay to be confused about my gender. i remember really feeling the compassion coming out of these pages--compassion that i wasn't getting anywhere else.

in many ways, this book felt like it was trying to avoid saying anything too radical so it could stay in the good graces of educators and publishers. it uses typical "homophobes are secretly gay and insecure" reasoning and constantly mentions "people in power" without ever naming men/patriarchy as the problem. it seems as if the author is arguing that gender-conforming people are the problem, and that gender conformity harms men and women equally. it pushes the idea that gender is the way you see yourself (as opposed to gender as a way to describe your material reality + the way the world perceives/socializes/oppresses you), and there's also some talk of abolishing the sex binary. the author seems to propose that blurring the line between biological males and females is the solution to eradicating the gender binary.

tldr; there's a whole lot of nonsense in here, but it was short and fun to read nonetheless! just try not to take it too seriously...
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