Vast agreement. We're not going to get anywhere on the issues that have gotten attached to sex (like violence and self-image and exploitation and all that) until women can own their own bodies and sexuality.
Of course I have a very Marxist view of how we got to where we are now, so I look at this idea that should be simple and obvious, and then I look at the history of wealth and ownership and inheritance and bloodlines and marriage and, well, property... and then I have to go have a drink. Because there's a shitload of historical inertia behind the idea that sex=reproduction and reproduction=inheritance and inheritance must be dictatable by the owners and therefore the property owners own the entire chain of reproductive logic, including the sex.
And, now that property ownership can be shared by the women, the emphasis has shifted. The material underpinnings of the whole structure have been knocked out (thanks be) and the fogeys try to justify the top layer (virginity at marriage=insurance, and none of this belongs to the woman herself) in moral terms. Which is made quite feasible, doctrinally speaking, by the parallel history of religious rules proscribing sexual pleasure, written by a lot of sex-deprived monks.
So, yes. Women very much need to own their own sexuality and bodies and pleasure. And it's not gonna be easy.
no subject
Date: 3 Dec 2005 06:31 pm (UTC)Of course I have a very Marxist view of how we got to where we are now, so I look at this idea that should be simple and obvious, and then I look at the history of wealth and ownership and inheritance and bloodlines and marriage and, well, property... and then I have to go have a drink. Because there's a shitload of historical inertia behind the idea that sex=reproduction and reproduction=inheritance and inheritance must be dictatable by the owners and therefore the property owners own the entire chain of reproductive logic, including the sex.
And, now that property ownership can be shared by the women, the emphasis has shifted. The material underpinnings of the whole structure have been knocked out (thanks be) and the fogeys try to justify the top layer (virginity at marriage=insurance, and none of this belongs to the woman herself) in moral terms. Which is made quite feasible, doctrinally speaking, by the parallel history of religious rules proscribing sexual pleasure, written by a lot of sex-deprived monks.
So, yes. Women very much need to own their own sexuality and bodies and pleasure. And it's not gonna be easy.