Something I keep seeing

[ritaxis]

One of the things I can't square with my experience is the "feminist sex problem." The one where feminists of my generation were suppoosed to have turned their backs on sex, to have equated seuality with patriarchal oppression--where we were supposed to have abandoned our sexual bodies and turned our backs on anything flirtatious and fun.

Because we all cut off our hair and threw away our underwear and wore nothing but generic "masculine" clothes, don't you know, and we were just horrified at the idea of rambling around in bed. Yes.

I see this coming from people I would think would know better than to spread such nonsense. People who I think generally have good ideas. But they weren't there then, so they are free to make up history as it suits their current prejudices, I guess.

This is not how I experienced those years. I was (and am) a fairly plain-dressing person, fond of jeans and loose shirts, and not fond of silky undies (to mke they are sweaty and cut into my skin, not sexy feelings). But for me, these clothing choices were always highly sensual, and the little decorations that I did wear (remember the lace-trimmed henley tee? the embroidered chambray shirt?) seemed sexy to me. And to the nice fellow, oddly enough. As for hair--I kept mine long, mostly, but it was a pretty fancy deal the couple times I had it short. Either way, my hair was simple, but it was part of the sexual body I had. My choice: not to repel the patriarchy, but to be comfy in my body and therefore freely sexual. In my terms.

There are a lot of nuances to sex and sexuality, and really truly telling people that the young women of forty years ago were anti-sex if they weren't into whatever body presentation you have currently decided is the accepted sex-positive one is not helpful in any way: not helpful to anybody's feminism, and not helpful to anybody's sexuality.

Comments

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Oh dear god in heaven no no no. I remember there being people who were anti-sex, and people who equated all sex with rape, but they were in the minority then, just as they're in the minority now.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

As a very young horny woman living in those times those times were the gddmbesst most sexy, sexual, sensual times ever!

We HAD RELIABLE BIRTH CONTROL! The stigma of being preggers w/o marriage had gone -- great for the historical horrors by which 'bastards' were regarded socially and politically!

We could control the birth control!

Before STDs.

AIDS killed that for all of us, even when we weren't homosexual males.

But I lived within that very small window in which women really could explore almost risk free their own sexuality -- that NEVER had been the case in the history of the world. I loved it. And I am so sorry that it was so short.

But of course it had to be short. Women can't have that. Good lordessa, the world will come to an end if they do.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I always knew that people who told me that era of feminism was sex-negative were full of shit. Thank you for confirming my hunch with your actual lived experience. :)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

What you said, I absolutely agree. If anything the anti-sex feminists were younger than us. Though of course attitudes varied then, just as they do now.

[pameladean]

Oh, good grief. My experience largely comports with yours, and in fact I will very explicitly state that for me, the standard so-called feminine accoutrements of the time -- the nineteen-seventies, dear heaven, the horror -- were so repellent to me and so uncomfortable that they stifled sexual feelings and behavior; but when I determined my own comfortable clothes myself, I was extremely interested in being sexual. Those accoutrements were being used in the service of anti-feminism, and I don't think the fact that some women flung them from us rather than trying to reclaim them in any way means we were sex-negative.

I think reclamation is a valid choice. But it is not the only choice. Especially for something as individual and fraught as clothing and appearance.

P.