Rarely are we confronted with the reality-bending clarity that, like a sledgehammer, wields the power to shatter the illusions of yesterday. Perhaps, the trickiest part of clarity: we were not prepared for its truth, yesterday.
Recently, I had one of these blue-moon moments scrolling through my Twitter feed. I came across a thread challenging the third-wave feminist theory of sex positivity, that spoke with a haunted knowing to 18-year-old me.
I was off to University, mainstream feminism catapulting me onto campus like the contained explosion underneath a rocket. A rocket with landing coordinates just shy of accurate.
I was bound for the dark side of the moon.
Sex positivity, arguably one of the most visible and easily accessed values of third wave feminism, subverts the patriarchal stigma placed on female sexuality. The theory posits that when defined by the male gaze, female sexuality is reduced to a passive receptacle for a much more biologically and socially legitimate male sexuality. Sex positivity provides a vital counter-culture to women – largely young, budding feminists idealistic enough to embrace it with abandon – who have been socialized to view their desires as shameful. The author of the thread, @fuckxlee, expressed the danger that lies within the theory: “Shoutout to young girls who co-opted hypersexuality and frankly…endured abuse in the name of sex positivity I love you and I’m sorry liberal feminism lied to u.”
The thread was retweeted over 4,000 times.
Young women tweeted replies of their own stories of toxicity, most of which mirrored the author’s identically. Some women were also drawn to the tweet in defense of what they perceived as an unfairly attacked facet of feminism.
I was one of the 4,000 who retweeted because I, too, had fallen down the slippery slope of having something to prove. Of allowing the seductive glow of liberation to lead me into spaces too dark to be illuminated by the glow alone. I grieved for the girl I was at 18 – foolish and enlightened to the point of martyrdom. I believed that the only way to live in a world where girls like me would be safe, was to build it myself. To spit in the face of rapists, to dream up and live out sexual fantasies of my own creation, because, see, women like sex, too. I don’t believe sex positivity is ill-intentioned. And I reject the notion that radically embraced female sexuality is dangerous on its own. It is simply unaligned with the non-participation of these young, revolutionary feminists’ chosen sex partners.
Sex positivity encourages young women to explore their sexuality, despite the stigmas enforced by the miniature patriarchs they pursue. The danger: their partners never consented to such a safe, egalitarian exchange. Young feminists are left with a half-baked, “free the nipple” sort of feminism that fails to prepare them for the vitriol they are likely to face from the men they are simultaneously sleeping with, and trying to get free of.
The critics drawn to the thread arrived with valid points, even if a bit misguided: rape culture is the problem; criticizing a proposed solution deflects from that and acquits the culpable actors. Admittedly, I can understand why these women felt that @fuckxlee’s critique of sex positivity itself, and not the rape culture that it attempts to subvert, was misled. But a rejection of rape culture, misogyny, and patriarchal notions of sexuality were implicit in the thread. Awarding sex positivity and its subscribers righteousness in their victimhood does nothing to change the hazardous social dynamics these young women are left to navigate. Yes: misogyny is wrong. Patriarchy is bad. And rape culture is the venomous fruit of their union. And just for the hell of it, “Knowledge is power.” But women’s sheer acknowledgement of these truths is not powerful enough armor to send them into the field.
To preach sex positivity responsibly, we must acknowledge that while we are working to raise healthier (read: less entitled and abusive) boys, our sex-positive girls have to be prepared to be met with resistance. They must understand that although their way of thinking is enlightened, righteous, and free, they don’t have anything to prove to stupid boys.
To the stupid, dangerous boys who interact with them as disposable receptacles for their own desires – regardless of the feminist theory that combats this.
From the time I graduated from pre-pubescent androgyny to a distinctly-feminine girlhood, my mother and I disagreed on this. We were debating sex positivity versus her (relentlessly pragmatic) survivalist approach to womanhood, before third-wave feminism gave us the theoretical language.
We disagreed existentially.
“But Mom, women get raped in burqas. Were they ‘asking for it?’ But Mom, rape isn’t about sex, it’s about power. If a man gets off on hurting women, he will do so without provocation. But Mom, your focus on my choices is victim blaming. Why aren’t you on my side?”
My mother retorted with the calm of her 31 years lived before my arrival: “You have to protect yourself. Niggas are crazy out here.”
In my early college years, I clung to my arguments biblically. I was right. And I was righteous. But I also bore the welts and wounds of toxic exposure. Hurtful words uttered by the disrespectful men with whom I shared my body left an invisible film over my self-image, like the bitter coating encapsulating generic M&M’s. Shadowy near-misses, and acrimonious rejections left a trail of emotional scars along my person, like track marks on an addict. Or cigarette burns. My mother was right. Not because women should bear the responsibility of survivalism in a world where men rape and pillage for sport. But because sex positivity is a joke of a hazmat suit. And once inhaled, the misogyny toxin lingers in the body until it is detoxified.
This essay is for all of the young feminists, emboldened by sex positivity and righteousness; enlightened and curious to the point of martyrdom: You are, indeed, right. But I promise, you don’t have to prove it.