before we sincerely start calling ourselves ‘sex negative’ feminists because we
don’t like gay men very muchare kink-critical andvalue respectability over the self-determination of actual trauma survivorspro-recovery, we should perhaps consider contemporary ‘sex positive’ feminism as a historical response to certain radical and cultural feminist readings of sex and pornography.consider the 1990 collection the sexual liberals and the attack on feminism, a single volume which manages to argue:
- pregnancy is pornographic because it displays to men that a woman is not a virgin (twiss butler, “abortion and pornography: the sexual liberal’s ‘gotcha’ against womens’ equality”)
- sex between gay men—and butch/femme relationships between gay women—is sadomasochistic, concerned with dominance and submission, and thus, somehow, oppressive to women (sheila jeffreys, “sexology and antifeminism)
- gay men raping other gay men is an act of violence against women, and sexual abuse of children by women is either non-existent or not something we should worry about (florence rush, “the many faces of backlash”)
- prophylactic mastectomy for BRCA-positive women, in vitro fertilization, hormonal birth control like depo-provera, and apparently surrogate motherhood all constitute graphic violence against women (gena corea, “the new reproductive technologies”)
- presented without interpretation: “we believe that homosexuality, pedophilia, lesbianism, bisexuality,
transsexuality, transvestism, sadomasochism, nonfeminist celibacy, and
autoeroticism have the same malevolent relationship to conceptual and
empirical male force as does heterosexuality” (a southern women’s writing collective, “sex resistance in heterosexual arrangements”)like, the primary association of a ‘sex positive’ feminism shouldn’t be erica moen, it should be resistance to the adoption of homophobic, misogynistic, and otherwise conservative protestant sexual ethics under the banner of women’s liberation.