I heard this at Smith College..What does this mean?
Smith College is a womens college in Northhamton Mass
Printable View
I heard this at Smith College..What does this mean?
Smith College is a womens college in Northhamton Mass
That's not a new term. I've been hearing it for years. It's sort of like "white slavery" or "male slut".
/:O
Well white slavery is a 19th/early 20th century term that refers to prostitution. I see no connection, linguistic or otherwise, with "male slut"
I have also been hearing it for years. It is, in my opinion, creating a false dichotomy between feminists and sex that doesn't really exist, and operating to make feminism all fuzzy, and cuddly and man-friendly by limiting it to sexual liberation.
hehe, Smith College is my alma mater...and I'm a stripper.
coincidence?
I think it means a woman that embraces her sexuality instead of making a stigma out of it.
just out of curiosity...what were you doing at Smith?
It means exactly that - "Sex-Positive Feminist," as opposed to a so-called "feminist" like Andrea Dworkin or Catherine MacKinnon, those crazy ladies who wrote, "All sex is rape" and said that heterosexual sex "is not banal when compared to Auschwitz and the Gulag." Most feminists are pro-sex. I myself am a sex-positive feminist.
Google Wendy McElroy, who has written numerous articles and books. Her book XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography is a very interesting read.
Okay, so what's up with the white part?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jenny
Ehh, I always thought it was redundant to put those two words together.Quote:
I see no connection, linguistic or otherwise, with "male slut"
In the 1970s/1980s there was a branch of feminism that explored the possibility that penetrative sex was inherently degrading to women. The antithetical movement was called "sex-positive feminism," as directly opposed to feminists who thought that it was impossible to have heterosexual sex without perpetuating the oppression of women.
Related: Lesbianism as a political choice:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_lesbianism
I think now it has a more general meaning of recognizing feminist issues, but being open to a a very broad range of sexual options, including being interested in adult entertainment and BDSM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-positive_feminism
Sorry to resort to wikipedia, but I'm being lazy.
I have a new respect for you I didn't have five minutes ago, Em. ;)Quote:
hehe, Smith College is my alma mater...and I'm a stripper.
<S> Emily
IMHO, probably the best category for a stripper to be in: strong and comfortable with herself, nobody's pushover, knows her value and will get it. Yet also comfortable with men, not afraid of her own sexuality, willing to tease and have fun.
Certainly the type I look for in a club.
Wow,did you just get inside my brain and type that???That is EXACTLY how I feel about myself.Quote:
Originally Posted by casaubon1
Just the best kind of dancer, in my experience. Lots of fun to talk to and sexy also.Quote:
Originally Posted by onlythebest
Not just the best dancer,but a woman period.I have absolutely no problems with being a sexy woman and love to display that quality all the time.Quote:
Originally Posted by casaubon1
Quote:
Originally Posted by Casual Observer
well, thanks...I guess! I'm proud to be a Smithie.
I might be confused about what you are asking. There was some concern at this given period about women being forced, either through economic or physical coercion, into prostitution. At the most extreme pictures were painted of women being kidnapped and and held hostage, forced to perform these acts. The term "white slavery" was an analogy (I assume - but for the record, I am sure of the rest) to "classic" slavery. I somehow doubt there was much concern about black prostitutes, if that is what you are asking, and it was a Anglo-American term.Quote:
Originally Posted by doc-catfish
So you think males are inherently sluts, and whites are inherently... slaves? And Feminist are inherently sex positive? Well, that's nice.Quote:
Ehh, I always thought it was redundant to put those two words together.
Nevermind, I'm just giving you a hard time. ( :):):) - I insert smiley faces of non-confrontational-ness). I think I see what you are getting at.
Interesting thing though - a lot of the self-labelled "sex positive feminist" work follows very naturally from work like Andrea Dworkin's and Catherine MacKinnon's. I mean, in academia, particular American academia, it is some kind of badge of legitimacy to swipe at your peers, but in Susie Bright's "obit" for A.D. she does actually say that she felt her work dovetailed with Dworkin's (although not that Dworkin had any appreciation for her work) and that she was surprised and disappointed that Dworkin didn't see that. It is not really a repudiation of all that went before.
sex positive feminists, like myself, might also adopt the term to differentiate themselves from those who are against everything in the sex industry- not only do i not think stripping and porn are degrading to women (well, at least not any more so than life in america in general), they are some of the few jobs that an uneducated poor woman can get and make significantly more money than any man! now there's some social justice for you. like anything else, sex can be misused... but that doesn't make sex antifeminist.
I'm a sexpositive feminist and an avid reader of Susie Bright, Wendy McElroy, Betty Dodson, Patrick Califia, Annie Sprinkle, Eric Albert, Tristan Taormino and Rachel Kramer Bussel. Sometimes though I feel as if we live in a post-feminist society where most issues are fait accompli. I think it's gone from being grass-roots organizing to being largely theory based and confined to academia. Notice how the original poster had never heard of a sex-positive feminist. My biggest complaint about feminism is that it's way too splintered. There are too many branches and they all disagree with each other on most issues. How do we expect to reach out to Americans about feminism if we can't even agree amongst ourselves?
^^^ My biggest gripe too. Im sex positive also and find it VERY frustrating that so many feminists are so anti. I think that's a major hurdle we need to get over!
Not an easy one either ;D
I love Annie Sprinkle! And Scarlett Harlot!
LMV - Thank you for listing some good authors to add to my reading list.Quote:
Originally Posted by LilSweetVixen
IMO - There are two underlying sets of feminist issues - public policy and reality - and two major environments where feminism has impact - the working world and the family/personal lives.Quote:
Originally Posted by LilSweetVixen
35-40 years ago, feminism made major strides in increasing women's control over public policies impacting their personal and family lives. I suspect that the splinters you see now existed back then, but they all had causes to rally behind (abortion, divorce, abuse)
Just 25 years ago, feminists could still rally behind public policy in the working world. Today, women have made significant strides in the workplace - making the ERA irrelevant.
Today, the reality is that women, in general, have garnered more rights and control over their personal and family lives than men have. The champion to this cause are what I call "strawfeminists" - the nosy assertive soccer moms who seek to control their family's lives and their working husbands without being held responsible for holding down their own job.
These "strawfeminists" are the same women who demonize the sexworker and modeling industries. They rail against the objectification of women not becauase of some greater cause, but due to their own insecurities of not being able to provide for the lifestyles they expect thier husbands to give them. The last tools they have to maintain some control over thier lives are shame and sex.
"Sex Positive Feminists" are women who don't look to use sex as a control tool in their lives - to control their man, their friends, their kids, etc.
I'm unaware of any feminist causes which are still relevant. I'm not trying to be a pain here, but would really like to know what women today think they need that they don't have?Quote:
Originally Posted by LilSweetVixen
Anything that is xxxxx-positive sounds like a disease to me. Gives me the creeps
The word play funny though in a black sarcastic way:
Sex-positive - HIV positive.
I don't know that "un-splintering" is a viable or even desirable solution - like I can't think that subsuming the nuances, particularly of academic branches to present a "united front" is a good thing. I mean, part of the point of having "grass roots" is that it DOESN'T do that, isn't it? And the bad aspects of second wave feminism show very clearly the problems with trying that.Quote:
Originally Posted by LilSweetVixen
I dislike the term "sex positive feminist" because it invents a dichotomy - like anyone who a) disagrees with a point of view or b) acknowledges a somewhat problematic nature of how some aspects of female sexuality is constructed are "sex negative". I think Susie Bright and Andrea Dworkin are actually somewhat closer together than most people realize (and S.B. in her eulogy of A.D. did acknowledge that to some degree as well).
I would be interested in your ideas on these "issues" and what is "fait accompli".
The idea of feminism or at least radical feminsim is complete Independence from Men. The Idea is to live your life as if men did not exist and to declare yourself free from all male domination. "A women needs a man like a fish needs a Bicycle"
Now stripping requires women to dance for no pay and entice men to tip them so that they can meet there needs. The problem with this job is that it requires you to beg MEN (or boys) to pay you by exposing your moves and female wares. Is this really independence?
^^^^ That seems a touch irrelevant to me. Feminism is not about men not existing. Perhaps in some extreme forms it is, but certainly that was not what the original movement was about, neither do most feminists feel this way. To state the obvious, plenty of feminist such as myself have sons and friends and loved ones who are male and really what is the problem with that?!
Now as far as the job goes - quite a high percentage of my customers are female anyway... not to mention the gay male ones... (-: And I certainly am not begging anyone for anything in regards to my work.
Besides its just a body, we all have one - who fucking cares about who see what?! Not me certainly.
When I compare stripping to other jobs I laugh that anyone could really think I am degraded compared to what they do. Reality check!
I shall add that yes I am lucky in that I work withing a country that has for the most part "favorable" strip club laws and a favorable social security system. As a feminist I would like to see this implemented everywhere so that we all had a safe and easy working enviroment to say the least.
It means that women get to bitch about being oppressed while using their sexuality to oppress men.Quote:
Originally Posted by trainfinder22
Burlesque -Yes Stripping for show -yes Air laps dances?-sure... But full contact full nude lap dancing?
No I belive that that seems a step backwards in that it is too close to prostition.. I know "sex worker" is the new buzz word but women by there very nature are put in comprising positions when a man pays her for sex or even dry sex. It creats a dependency factor. The idea is that women forcing themselves to have sex with men or even pretend sex that they dont like in order to pull themselves along the econmic chain sounds more like explotation to me.
----I mean for how many years did housewives have to prentend they liked there husbands so that they cound continue to live in there ranch houses in the suburbs because they knew that if they left they could end up on skid row?
--- We should be beyond that by now--