Sex & Power

State of CI: I promise to keep to a Monday-Thursday update schedule, which I know for certain will carry through the summer because I've got a month's worth of scheduled posts ready to publish themselves (yay new features!) on the right days. Also, new banner, yay! Featuring my feet, Monica's, and Nahee's. I'm trying to tweak the layout so it's more comfortable to read, but I'm having a hard time fooling with the html - anyone wanna help me out?

I find the mini-analysis in this blog fascinating for the same reason I like reading movie reviews after I see movies (especially these ones) – I like looking at the world in different ways, and this offers a perspective on the images I see every day that is different than my own. Since I started reading it, I’ve found myself identifying subtle sexual/gender statements in media all around me. But I disagree with a lot of the feminist indignance inherent in a lot of the analysis.

The fact is that the female body is attractive, and both genders like to enjoy this. My girlfriends and I love an excuse to get dressed up, even when anything remotely sexual is not part of the plans – a group of us will primp and prep together, go out to eat, and head back to chill in the hot tub. We know that our bodies are beautiful, and that is fun. Driving a sleek, fast car is a rush even when you are not racing. Women like looking nice, and men like looking at women who look nice. This does not in itself create a power imbalance or exploit women. I wear tank tops and skirts on dates, but this does not objectify me. When women are sexually attractive, that does not strip away the rest of their identity and reduce them to a place to stick it.

There are a lot of recurring problems with the blog, which might produce some later essays, but one thing that really gets me is the fact that is lambasts any visual “inequality” between the genders. This post asks “And is it not possible to just have some images where men and women are equals and no one has to be dominant? Is that out of the question?” Well, yes,  images like that do exist in advertising. The thing is, though, that power plays are deeply sexual, and wherever there is sex, there is almost always going to be some element of dominance. This is why there are different positions and different practices and different costumes and such. For the most part, men are big and women are little, and this immediately makes men more powerful, even when that power isn’t being exercised. But even hinting at the possibility of a power inequality annoys the blog. Here, all it takes is size and position to evoke a power inequality, which the blog claims is only linked to sexuality because it’s been taught that way. I have to disagree. If sexual preferences could be so subtly taught and molded by advertising and what is socially acceptable, everyone would get off on missionary-in-the-dark and we would have no "sexually deviant" cultures (BDSM, furries, what have you), not to mention homosexuals. (They make a similar, equally outrageous claim in this post. Why would ads make extra work for themselves by re-defining sex, then using that to sell? It makes more sense to lean on what already excites people. Ads have no reason to "re-define" sex as more violent or unequal than it always has been.) When you think about it, sex lends itself to “power asymmetry” – you have a person reliant on another person for pleasure; extreme vulnerability; and the, ahem, “mechanics” of it. 

Or you could consider that social stereotypes may help make power plays sexy – the theory goes that since girls are taught that “good girls say no”, being “overtaken” can be sexy because they get to indulge in sex without the guilt of having said yes. Either way, it’s not the way the blog makes it sound – some unnatural, evil construct we have been brainwashed into. True equality is not about who’s bigger or who’s on top, true equality is about respect and understanding. By reducing the issue of equality to who holds who, and how (see this post), it actually trivializes the issue and it pushes sexual freedoms backwards. Let’s make women feel guilty for betraying their gender by engaging in (and maybe even enjoying!) sexual play that may involve them held in a “non-egalitarian” way. I’m a confrontational, self-respecting woman very proud of her X-squared chromosomes, and I am not offended by either of the two advertisements. Things would get pretty boring, awkward and annoying if a couple insisted on maintaining “equal positioning” at all time. This equality is just as stereotyped, hollow and contrived as the unequal gender roles in some of the other ads. (Note how the boy is bending down to make their heights equal, and how the girl has a short, boyish haircut.) Once people stop squabbling about images like the one at the bottom (can you imagine their positions reversed? That doesn’t work – she’s shorter than he is! And note how he’s only holding her hair softly, but she’s got a serious grip on his belt, implying a grip on something else – I honestly see very little inequality in that photo), they can get down to the real issues. Like this - wrong on so many levels.

P.S. I would also like to point out that sex blogger “Girl With A One-Track Mind” (not one I would recommend to everyone – pretty raw and graphic – but fascinating, hilarious, human, intelligent and interesting nonetheless) has been praised, as well as other woman sex bloggers, for advancing feminist causes and empowerment. But she herself describes scenes involving huge power inequalities (both genders), and sings the praises of male dominance in the form of “teasing” – an idea that should deeply offend the writers of Sociological Images, but their comrades in feminism seem to disagree.