Ode to Narcissism
I am 23 years old and past my prime.
True story. Not that it matters.
kateapproximately@gmail.com
AIM: kateapproximated
Parsing Sex Talk: Ladies, We Need a New Schtick (Irene pointed this one out, frustrated with Sheila’s assertion that “sex writing is so over,” but what I think she’s really saying is, “Why are women who aren’t really bringing anything new or passionate to the conversation about sex trying to build a career on sex, and doing so faux-frankly?”) (via melissa) (via jessicagoldharalson)
As a female writer who’s currently undertaking a massive research project on the subject of sex, I worry about this. In fact, I resisted making sex the subject of my First Big Work for a while because I didn’t want to be The Girl Who Wrote The Sex Book.
Problem is though, this is the subject where I most feel I have something new and important and (hopefully) ground-breaking to say, so I’ve decided to, if not discard, then at least overcome that fear.
It’s true that sex is a topic well overdone by female writers, though. I wonder why we are so compelled to write about it.
(via miss-r)
Not that anyone asked me, but I think this has a lot to do with the relationship between women and sex. Historically, sex has been used against women through rape, marriage (specifically, the responsibility of the wife to provide the husband with sex), procreation (the role of woman as baby-maker/propagator), etc. The whole “Sexual Revolution” was a counter to that archaic repression. And these comments concerning women being overly talkative about sex is the backlash to the “Sexual Revolution.”
I also think that women are still trying to deal with a sort of problematic relationship with sex. Just because premarital sex, and sex for pleasure rather than procreation, have become acceptable, that doesn’t mean that women are sexually “free”. We’re still stuck being viewed as these sexual objects (not all the time, but a lot of the time - just watch your television - a certain Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s/whatever it’s called on the East Coast commercial comes to mind - not to mention the double-standards in terms of the number of sexual partners). We have to deal with being viewed as sexual objects, and I think that part of dealing with this is through desensitization. This seeming preoccupation with talking about sex might be an attempt to desensitize ourselves. Better to have sex mean nothing, or to have sex “just be sex” than to have sex be this thing that can be held over our heads forever.