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/Ideology
I grew up in the wake of Second Wave feminism, and my adolescence was saturated with the ideas of Dworkin and other proponents of the anti-pornography movement. I was taught that pornography reduces women to sexualized commodities, and while much of that rhetoric was tied to representations of women, the softer upshot was that sex should be de-emphasized. This is what played out in coffeehouse conversations, that it’s bad to be a slut, not because sluts are damaged goods but because sluts cow to the patriarchy. It was a broad ideology that led to a divisive tension between anti-pornography and sex-positive positions, and I grew up with this, the sex positivity drowned in the noise of knee-jerk epithets about my cunt and what I choose to do with it. I responded with apolitical resistance, believing firmly in the freedom to choose. To choose to be sexual. To choose to be pornographic. To choose to be a whore.
There was something neo-puritanical in the rhetoric that raised me, and by the time I took my first step into whoredom I was already an avowed slut. I’d rejected the assumption that I’d need to divest myself of my sexuality to be a serious woman, and replaced it with a strong desire to know myself and my body. I was raised to be intellectually curious, and my sexuality and its boundaries were as interesting to me as any academic subject.
When I first accepted payment for an hour of my time, time spent engaging in some transgressive roleplay, I was euphoric, not just from the fresh, strange experience but also from the compensation. I’d become part of a transaction, a commodity, I was objectified in a very literal sense, and that was exciting, in part because it was in direct opposition to the politics I grew up with. I’d crossed lines that had kept me restrained and I'd pushed boundaries that were socially condemned. For me, it was an inversion of the power relations I was expected to embrace. It was an act of independence.
There was something neo-puritanical in the rhetoric that raised me, and by the time I took my first step into whoredom I was already an avowed slut. I’d rejected the assumption that I’d need to divest myself of my sexuality to be a serious woman, and replaced it with a strong desire to know myself and my body. I was raised to be intellectually curious, and my sexuality and its boundaries were as interesting to me as any academic subject.
When I first accepted payment for an hour of my time, time spent engaging in some transgressive roleplay, I was euphoric, not just from the fresh, strange experience but also from the compensation. I’d become part of a transaction, a commodity, I was objectified in a very literal sense, and that was exciting, in part because it was in direct opposition to the politics I grew up with. I’d crossed lines that had kept me restrained and I'd pushed boundaries that were socially condemned. For me, it was an inversion of the power relations I was expected to embrace. It was an act of independence.
Piranesi, Carceri Plate VII (c.1750)
I consider myself a feminist, but only after a cat-scratch battle with diametrically opposed ideas about sexuality. Now I can hardly fathom an ideology that would ever limit a woman’s choice in her personal life, and when I think back on the feminism I was raised with, it feels distant, dated, and oppressive. Yet I still see echoes of it today.
When I sat down to begin my column, I was going to start with something else, but I realized that it would be disingenuous to dismiss my roots. Feminism led me to this, the whoring, the slutting, the quiet periods of careful consideration, because at its core, I consider feminism to be about varied perspectives, freedom, and choice. And while I prefer to keep my sex and my politics separate, it remains as the foundation to my own life choices, however strange they might be.
When I sat down to begin my column, I was going to start with something else, but I realized that it would be disingenuous to dismiss my roots. Feminism led me to this, the whoring, the slutting, the quiet periods of careful consideration, because at its core, I consider feminism to be about varied perspectives, freedom, and choice. And while I prefer to keep my sex and my politics separate, it remains as the foundation to my own life choices, however strange they might be.
