sexual freedom

This month, I bring you a guest post which sheds light on current events, events that literally hit home for me when the Planned Parenthood clinic closest to my university was attacked by arsonists. I welcome back Jennifer Rothchild, Ph.D. Associate professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies (GWSS) Program at the University of Minnesota, Morris, she is one of the founders of the American Sociological Association’s section on the Sociology of Development. She currently researches gender and development, health, childhoods, and social inequalities by examining the intersections of gender, sexuality, and reproductive health in the United States and abroad.

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“Choose mercy! While there is still time!” A man shouted to me as I walked into a Planned Parenthood office. I couldn’t see him, which made the comment oddly affecting. I kept my eyes forward and pushed through the front door.

More than 20 years ago, my friend Kat had told me about her first trip to Planned Parenthood. As she left that building, a woman standing outside approached her, grabbed her shoulders, and cried, “‘DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE JUST DONE? DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE DONE?’”

I will turn 45 this February, and yesterday was my first visit to Planned Parenthood. Shame on me: a self-proclaimed activist, and a gender and sexuality scholar. Until now, my privilege had allowed me to get all the women’s health care I needed through medical clinics and private practice physicians. All covered by insurance. But I knew Planned Parenthood was always there, should I ever need their services.

I had a health problem, and this time I chose Planned Parenthood because that is what it is: a health clinic. The woman at Planned Parenthood who booked my appointment warned me: “You should know that this clinic will have protesters. Turn into the parking lot, and a volunteer will help you get by the protesters, and then park.”

There are many misconceptions about Planned Parenthood; here are some facts:

• Planned Parenthood services include STD/STI (sexually transmitted disease/sexually transmitted infection) testing and treatment for both men and women, cancer screenings, contraception, abortions, and other health services.
• Abortions make up less than 3% of the services provided by Planned Parenthood.
• Federal funding for Planned Parenthood is only for Title X: restricted to family planning and STI testing.
• Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortion services do not receive any federal funding, even if those particular clinics also provide services that meet Title X criteria.

On a rainy, cold morning, I arrived at Planned Parenthood, and a volunteer waved me into the parking lot. Next to this volunteer stood a protester, holding a sign about texting a certain number before “aborting.” I wondered if these two women talked to each other as they stood together in the rain?

Once inside, I was overwhelmed by a need to express gratitude to everyone I met. I assumed that most Planned Parenthood patients felt same way, if not always vocalizing their sentiments. But I was wrong. My intake nurse told me that just that morning a patient told her, “I hate who you are. I hate what you do. I don’t want to be here, but I need birth control pills.”

Her story made me wonder about the level of denial and disconnect that must be actively maintained to keep those ideas working side by side. In 2012, Frank Bruni wrote in the New York Times about a doctor who performed abortions:

He shared a story about one of the loudest abortion foes he ever encountered, a woman who stood year in and year out on a ladder, so that her head would be above other protesters’ as she shouted ‘murderer’ at him and other doctors and ‘whore’ at every woman who walked into the clinic.

One day she was missing. ‘I thought, ‘I hope she’s O.K.,’ he recalled. He walked into an examining room to find her there. She needed an abortion and had come to him because, she explained, he was a familiar face. After the procedure, she assured him she wasn’t like all those other women: loose, unprincipled.

She told him: ‘I don’t have the money for a baby right now. And my relationship isn’t where it should be.’

‘Nothing like life,’ he responded, ‘to teach you a little more.’

A week later, she was back on her ladder.

That morning, security was at a premium at the Planned Parenthood clinic: a guard stood at the front door, and I needed to show him identification. I was given a name tag that read only “Jennifer.” A few minutes later, “Jennifer R.” was summoned from the waiting room. I wondered how much money could be saved and put to better use if Planned Parenthood didn’t feel compelled by threats and attacks to spend on security measures.

In the waiting room I saw young and old women, white and black and Latina. There were men, too. I couldn’t imagine the individual stories that brought them to Planned Parenthood. But, I might have assumed they all shared was a lack of access and means to the kind of health care that should be their right. According to a 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office, 79% of people receiving services from Planned Parenthood lived at 150% of the federal poverty level or lower (that comes out to around $18,500 per year for a single adult). These people live in vulnerable conditions, where an unplanned pregnancy could result in future burdens, unfair and disproportionate in consequence.

If Planned Parenthood clinics are shut down, we will see not only tremendously diminished reproductive health but also epidemic numbers of unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortions, as well as greater needs for social services such as WIC. Concerns for women’s health aside, Planned Parenthood delivers mercy upon people who benefit from its services.

The nurse practitioner spent time talking with me, getting to know me. I told her how grateful I was for the work she did. She graciously explained, “I started working here 15 years ago to educate women about their bodies. Women don’t know their bodies.”

Driving out of the parking lot, I stopped and rolled down my window to thank the same volunteer who had stood in the rain when I arrived, waving me into the parking lot. There was now a different protester. This woman was young, white, blonde, and wearing a pink raincoat. She could have been a twenty-something version of me. In her hand, she clutched a brochure limp from the rain. Her sad gaze followed me as I drove away. I wish she saw and knew the things I understood.

I also wish everyone understood that Planned Parenthood volunteers, nurses, and doctors risk their own safety and well-being because women’s health—and women’s lives—hang in the balance. These women and men are standing up and fighting for me, fighting for you.

“Choose mercy.” Yes, we should.

Reading Rachel Hills’ The Sex Myth was like reviewing my Sociology of Sexualities syllabus. Application of Foucault’s theory of power and social regulation? Check. Discussion of heteronormativity? Check. Mention Gayle Rubin’s charmed circle of sex? Three checks! Hills offers an analysis of contemporary sexual norms that is rich saturated with sociological research. She touches on many of the issues I unpack with my students at City College, but adds her own journalistic flare, making this book not only an informative but enjoyable read.

Hills argues that in this age of supposed sexual liberation and unprecedented freedom, sex has actually become heavy with significance, warping our perceptions and expectations. For instance, pressure has shifted from not having sex to having sex – and lots of it. Thus, the social denigration of virgins after a certain age or those with few sex partners. Hills finds that people tend to assume everyone around them is having more sex than them, and this becomes a race to keep up. She refers to this as a “gap between fantasy and reality.” One consequence is that folks become pre-occupied with whether or not they are having enough sex. The measurement of “enough” is based on assumptions and occasional check-ins with close friends on how much sex they are having. A better barometer of sexual satisfaction, though, would be asking yourself whether you’re having all the sex that you want. This may vary depending on what else is happening in your life.

This is just one of the many examples Hills offers us of the consequences of “the sex myth” – the belief that sex is all important, powerful, and indicative of how we’re doing as individuals and a society. She also points to the troubles caused by holding too precious ideas of “normality” when it comes to sex as well as the influence of masculinity and femininity in shaping sexual expectations.

Overall I found The Sex Myth to be a great read. I appreciated Hills’ generous use of sociological research to ground her arguments as she weaved in personal narratives from her life and the lives of people she interviewed. It was also refreshing to read many of the concepts I teach in academic settings covered with the delightful writing style of a journalist.

My only critique is the limited age range represented in the stories Hills highlights. One of the lies the sex myth promotes is that your sex life peaks in your twenties and it’s all down hill from there. Unfortunately, Hills inadvertently reinforces this myth by only featuring the stories of twenty-somethings. There were only two interviewees over the age of 30 featured, and one of them was experiencing a lengthy sexless period of their life. Perhaps selfishly, as someone migrating my way through my 30s, I wanted more representation of sexual experiences across the lifespan and how these experiences are shaped by or counter the sex myth. If Hills wanted to focus on sex-pectations for twenty-somethings, that’s fine, but that frame should be made clear from the start.

Other than this age caveat, I recommend without reservation this book to anyone looking for a fun subway read, an introduction to thinking critically about contemporary sexuality, or a book to offer your undergrads in human sexuality classes.

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society invites submissions for a special issue titled “Pleasure and Danger:  Sexual Freedom and Feminism in the Twenty-First Century,” slated for publication in the Autumn 2016 issue. The deadline for submissions is April 1, 2015.

At the heart of the feminist project is a persistent concern with thinking through the “powers of desire” (Snitow, Stansell, and Thompson 1983) and expanding the potential for sexual and gender freedom and self-determination at the same time that we combat sadly persistent forms of sexual danger and violence.  Exemplified in the US context by Carole Vance’’s landmark collection, Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, feminist debates over sex, gender, and society have been incendiary.  First published in 1984, as proceedings of the infamous “Scholar and the Feminist” conference at Barnard, which initiated the equally infamous “sex wars,” this volume reproduced intense dialogue while also contributing to a much broader investigation of the politics (and pleasures, and dangers) of sexuality within feminist theory and culture. Articles that threw down gauntlets were subsequently canonized and celebrated.  Much has changed since that explosive conference and book. Even the subtitle, – “exploring female sexuality,” – would now be more deeply interrogated (biologically female? presumptively heterosexual?) and certainly pluralized.  But however reframed, the paradoxical joining that is “pleasure and danger” remains poignantly relevant.

For this special issue, we invite transdisciplinary and transnational submissions that address questions and debates provoked by the “pleasure and danger” couplet.  Submissions may engage with the historical (how different is our moment from that formative “sex wars” era? have the sex wars moved to new terrain such as trafficking and slut-shaming?); the representational (how does the digital era transform our sexual lives? what does “livestreaming” sexual assault do to/for feminist organizing? what possibilities are there for feminist and queer imagery in an era of prolific porn, commodified otherness, and everyday inclusion?); the structural (how do race, ethnicity, religion, and national cultures enable and constrain sexual freedoms? how do carceral and governance feminisms frame and perhaps contain earlier liberatory impulses?); and/or the intersectional (how do we analyze the mutually constituting relations of sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, class, nationality, ability, age, and so on?). There are local and global questions to be asked and strategic arguments to be resolved.  And the very terms are themselves constantly debated (whose pleasure are we speaking of and for?  who is the “we” doing that speaking? who is imagined to be “in danger?” how does “gender” signify differently in that couplet from “sexuality?”).

We particularly encourage analyses from all regions of the globe that address pressing concerns and that do so in a way that is accessible and, well, passionate!  We encourage bold and big thinking that seeks to reckon with the conundrum still signaled by the pleasure/danger frame.  We especially seek submissions that attend to the couplet itself, to the centrality of pleasure/danger within the project of making feminism matter and resonate in ways both intimate and structural, deeply sensual and liberatory, simultaneously championing multiplicities of pleasures and a lasting freedom from violence and abuse.

Manuscripts may be submitted electronically through Signs Editorial Manager system at http://signs.edmgr.com.  Please choose the article type “Pleasure and Danger – Special Issue Article.” Guidelines for submission are available here. This Call for Papers is also available as a PDF. Please email the journal office with any questions.

References

Snitow, Ann Barr, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson. 1983. Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality. New York: Monthly Review.

Vance, Carole. S, ed. 1984.  Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Hooking up is getting lots of video and academic attention. Plus, it’s Spring — and Spring Break — so it seems timely to re-post the following (with permission from the Ms. Magazine Blog).

The days are finally longer. Birds are chirping and green leaves are starting to bud. This can only mean one thing. Spring Break! And with Spring Break comes hook ups.

Some folks are freaking out about this “new phenomenon” of hooking up, but I’d argue it’s hardly new — check the lyrics from those 1975 disco heroes, KC and the Sunshine Band:

baby, babe let’s get together
honey, honey me and you,
and do the things, oh, do the things
that we like to do.

oh, do a little dance, make a little love …
get down tonight…

Translation? Hey, shorty, let’s hook up.

The 1960s had Free Love. The 1980s was about the cazh (as in casual sex). Today we can knock boots, hit it and quit it, find an FWB or a ONS. Call it what you want, it’s still consensual sex outside of a committed relationship. And while the language may change, the moves remain the same.

What is new on the sexual landscape are debates about whether casual sex is all about fun and free will, or if hooking up is linked to sexual assault and women’s objectification.

The fact is that young adults ages 18 to 24 who have casual sex do not appear to be at higher risk for psychological fall-out compared to their partnered peers. In so many words, Score! says Jaclyn Friedman of Yes Means Yes. Research from the University of Minnesota “reveals the truth that neither Hollywood nor the Religious Right want you to know: Casual sex won’t damage you emotionally. Not even if you’re a girl!”

But Occidental College professors Lisa Wade and Caroline Heldman might disagree. Their forthcoming article, “Friends with Benefits, Without the Friendship Maybe?” points out that college hook-up culture often involves drinking — a known factor in sexual assault. Young women and men alike say the sex is often unpleasant and meaningful connection is elusive. Many students offer harrowing descriptions of assault, sexually transmitted infections, emotional trauma and gendered antagonism. Yet hooking up — with its risks, missteps, and possible mistakes — is still a chance to explore sexual boundaries.

Determined to get to the hot-and-bothered heart of the matter, Heather Corinna from Scarleteen.com is launching a new study on multigenerational experiences with casual sex. Corinna hopes to find “a more diverse, realistic and non-prescriptive picture of people’s sex lives and ideas about sex.”

Yet, according to Salon.com’s Kate Harding, “the problem that needs solving isn’t hook-up culture, but the intense pressure on girls and women to focus on getting and keeping a guy, rather than on getting and keeping whatever they want.” Documentary filmmaker Therese Shechter of The American Virgin gives a nod to this point:

What’s actually bad for women and girls is treating us like victims who need protecting [and] ignoring that our sexual experiences, good or lousy, can contribute to our growth and development as human beings.

“I’m all for sexual freedom as long as you’re safe,” says Jacob Levy, an 18-year-old student at California State University, Long Beach. “[But] there should be a warning label on hooking up,” adds 20-something Stefaney Gonzalez. “Something like WARNING: proceed with caution.”

As Nancy Schwartzman documents in her gripping film, The Line, there is potential for both pleasure and peril with sex, casual or otherwise. Hooking up doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but against the backdrop of crime rates that show one in six women (and one in 33 men) statistically likely to face sexual assault in their lifetime.

Hooking up also has a gendered hue when girls are taught that being sexy is about performing instead of about self-pleasure and expressing what feels good. It’s what philosophers call “illocutionary silencing” — when girls and young women fail to say what they want. As Heldman wrote in Ms. magazine, self-objectification has serious impacts on girls’ political efficacy and sexual pleasure. Getting off becomes tied to seeing oneself through the eyes of someone else, or through the lens of an imaginary porn camera.

The issue isn’t imaginary porn cameras, though; there are lots of items that clutter the sexual imagination. But here’s a thought, and it’s not a new one: Reducing sexual harms like assault, coercion, and slut shaming means maximizing sexual pleasure. Let’s kick forced power disparities and nonconsensual objectification out of our everyday lives in the bed and beyond. That’s when the girls will really go wild. On our own terms.

Photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gaelx/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

This interview originally appeared in the Ms. Magazine Blog and is re-posted with permission.

Move over dot-com, dot-org, and dot-gov. There’s a new domain on the block: dot-xxx. With 370 million sites and $3,000 spent for online porn every second, the industry’s revenues surpass earnings by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined.

This is author Gail Dines’s point: Porn is about profit, not pleasure. Some people make a buck; many more are harmed, argues Dines in her new book PORNLAND: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality (Beacon Press).

Gail Dines calls herself an anti-porn feminist, but she is quick to clarify that she’s not anti-sex. Unlike Dines—and in the interest of full disclosure—I am not anti-porn. I oppose censorship and unproductive arguments pitting sex-positive feminists against anti-porn activists. This keeps rival groups in far corners of the Sex Wars boxing ring. We need more conversation—not less—which means asking tough questions across ideological divides. To that end, I interviewed Gail Dines, curious about our agreements and differences on The Porn Question.

Ms./Shira Tarrant: You wrote Pornland for a mainstream audience. What is your primary hope for this book?

Gail Dines: I wrote Pornland to raise consciousness about the effects of the contemporary porn industry. Many people have outdated ideas that porn is pictures of naked women wearing coy smiles and not much else, or of people having hot sex. Today’s mainstream Internet porn is brutal and cruel, with body-punishing sex acts that debase and dehumanize women.

Pornland looks at how porn messages, ideologies, and images seep into our everyday life. Whether it be Miley Cyrus in Elle spread-eagle on a table dressed in S&M gear, or Cosmopolitan telling readers to spice up their sex lives with porn, we are overwhelmed by a porn culture that shapes our sexual identities and ideas about gender and sexuality. Pornland explores how porn limits our capacity for connection, intimacy and relationships.

ST: What is it about Miley Cyrus in S&M gear that bothers you? Is it her age? Or simply that she’s wearing pseudo-bondage gear?

GD: The problem is that women in our culture have to conform to very narrow definitions of femininity and it’s defined by porn. Miley Cyrus’s performance is not about creativity but dictated by capitalism. She aged out of Disney and this is the carefully planned-out launch of the new Miley Cyrus.

My issue is about the market and about how pornography frames femininity. Women are either fuckable or invisible. Miley Cyrus wouldn’t make any money [with an unfuckable image].

ST: Are you opposed to consensual BDSM sex in real life? Or do you see this as a harmful and exploitative relationship?

GD: What people do outside corporate forces, or outside capitalism, is none of my business.

I’m critiquing the commodification of sex. That gets confused with the idea that I’m telling people what to do in the bedroom. It’s a much easier argument to make [but] it’s a refusal to take seriously a radical feminist critique of the culture.

ST: Some people working in the business argue that porn is a legitimate way to earn a living. I know you disagree, but that keeps us stuck in an us-versus-them sex war. Do you see a way to move past that stalemate?

GD: The industry frames the work as a choice, because otherwise that would ruin porn. Choice is built into the way men enjoy porn. Men I interviewed are convinced the women in porn really choose this and enjoy their job.

Increasingly, women are drawn to porn by the glamorization of the industry. Some women have made porn work for them—Sasha Grey, Jenna Jameson. Jenna Jameson was on Oprah, who was gushing about her. Oprah went to her house and showed the audience Jameson’s expensive cars and private art collection. This looks attractive to women with limited resources. Capitalism can only succeed if there are people around who will do the shit work. Women with law degrees are not lining up to do porn. The vast majority of women doing porn don’t make it and don’t get famous. They end up in low paid work as well as the brothels of Nevada.

We need a world where women have real options to make a living. This is a class issue and a race issue. To talk about choice is to ignore how people are constrained by their social and economic situations.

To be continued in Part II …

Above: pornographic film set, 2007. Photo by Larry Knowles for The Naughty American website licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

I recently blogged about hooking up at the newly launched Ms. Magazine Blog. I end the piece by saying that when it comes to sex:

Reducing sexual harms like assault, coercion, and slut shaming means maximizing sexual pleasure. Let’s kick forced power disparities and nonconsensual objectification out of our everyday lives in the bed and beyond. That’s when the girls will really go wild. On our own terms.

Writer-artist Karen Henninger wrote me to say she’d love to share some insights, experiences, and history about hooking up. It seems Karen and I don’t quite see eye to eye on the issue of casual sex among consenting adults. So, in keeping with the theme, I thought it would be cool to — yes — hook-up across blogs to keep the conversation lively. With that, I introduce our Girl W/Pen guest blogger who writes the following:

Are you aware that the Women’s Movement at the turn of the 20th century started with the idea of Free Love?

Free Love goes beyond “sex without commitment.” In the late-1800s the issue included marriage, women’s lives, and freedom from government control. Since the 1950s, especially, there has been success moving toward free love rather than forced love. But we won’t even know what is possible until we are given political freedom to live as we choose when it comes to sexuality and love.

I am for Free Love and Free Sexuality but this requires treating people without harm. I watch others go down the same old patriarchal road in their relationships over and over while I scratch my head thinking, Wow, there’s another way that is so much better for everyone.

No only is love free, but it is abundant. Love can’t really exist if it isn’t free. What makes hooking up harmful is the way it is done. The same goes for marriage and everything in between. Harm comes from the abuse of power and control. Love is simply freedom from harm. Yet harm is so entrenched in our everyday lives that we see it as normal. And then activism becomes necessary to experience something different.

Karen Henninger is a visionary visual artist, writer, and independent scholar. She holds a degree in Letters, Arts and Sciences from Penn State University and a Related Arts degree with concentrations in English and Women’s Studies from Kutztown University.

This month The Man Files welcomes Sam Bullock writing his first guest post for Girl With Pen. In this personal account, Sam explains what happened when his Mormon religion collided with feminist politics.

My professor assured us there was no reason to fear The F-Word.

I was taking Intro to Ethics at a community college where we were assigned to read An Invitation to Feminist Ethics by Hilde Lindemann. It was my first experience with feminist theory.

The book is a basic overview about sexism, gender roles, homophobia, neo-liberal globalization, and stories about gas lighting and rape. Unlike other books, I couldn’t dismiss this one as “just another philosophy.” I couldn’t toss this book aside as I went about my daily life. It was consciousness-raising. Life-changing.

From reading this book I realized I wanted the freedom to choose what made me happy. I didn’t want to be constrained by psychological factors that may have been the product of early—and intense—gender socialization. And I knew that women deserved the same freedom.

Unfortunately, these feminist arguments clashed with my worldview: I was raised Mormon. For Mormons, gender roles are divinely instituted (for the most part) and homosexuality is always a moral evil.

In the Mormon Church, only men are allowed to have the priesthood. Women are effectively barred from positions of authority. No women bishops, no women apostles, no women prophets. Women can fill positions of leadership that are in line with traditional gender roles like young-women leaders, children’s group leaders, and relief society leaders (an exclusively female group).

I was told that priesthood, the power to act in God’s name, depends on individual worthiness. Every man can have it. The traditional Mormon rejoinder to any sort of criticism of this unjust stratification is that “women can bear children.” So … women can’t become priests because babies gestate inside of them? This argument is sheer nonsense.

The sexism of the Mormon Church became more and more apparent. In one discussion about parenthood, I dared to suggest that I was willing to be a stay-at-home dad. I was instantly assaulted by thoroughly archaic views about women. I was told that women were more virtuous than men and this virtue would be lost in the cut-throat business world. Working women were destroying the fabric of society (I actually heard this more than once). Needless to say, I was horrified.

At a different meeting, the discussion topic was female modesty and appearance. The bishop leading the group suggested that women needed to dress modestly because men couldn’t control themselves—or something to that effect. Really? Huh.

The bishop continued, saying that women should wear make-up because even an old barn could use a paint-job. The huge double standard leaped out at me. Male “barns” were not expected to paint themselves, so why should female “barns?”

As the sexism became crystal-clear, I attempted to reconcile my two conflicting worldviews. I tried to rationalize away the sexism, making arguments like, “the Church isn’t ready for gender-equality yet“ or “this sexist doctrine is not of God.” I looked for support online and found it at various feminist Mormon blogs including Feminist Mormon Housewives and The Exponent.

Enter California’s Proposition 8. Here, the second of the big offenders came into focus: homosexuality. In the Mormon Church, homosexuality is a sin. One can be an openly gay, but must remain celibate or enter a heterosexual marriage. Neither is a particularly happy option.

When Proposition 8 (opposing gay marriage) was on the California ballot, Mormon Church leadership endorsed it, and encouraged members to aid in its passing. This led to call centers, special meetings, and Photoshopped pictures of Book of Mormon prophets holding “Yes on Prop 8” signs. Most disturbing was the rhetoric. We were told that homosexuals were like drug-users. Homosexuals were destroying society. They were corrupting our children, our freedom of religion, and our schools. Homosexual-equality was Satan’s idea, an attempt to lure people down the path of destruction.

I am ashamed to admit that in high school I believed this nonsense. I distinctly remember telling a friend that I voted for Bush because he was against gay-marriage. I even wrote a letter to Bush celebrating his wise choice.

But fast-forward and feminism allowed me to see the Church rhetoric for what it was: homophobic, fear-mongering attempts to maintain a cultural hegemony. I still rationalized away the homophobia as yet another doctrine “not of God.” That is, until I read about Stuart Matis, a gay Mormon who committed suicide because of homophobic Mormon doctrine.

I could see the suffering so clearly. I could no longer rationalize away the Church homophobia. A crack had formed in the edifice of my beliefs. Mormons were not inspired by God to pass Prop 8. There was no Satan, no tempter out there trying to trick me into believing evil things. This was merely the ultimate fear-mongering device, a tool designed to silence dissent.

Into this small crack rushed my entire philosophical training, all of my religion classes, my ethics classes, and my critical thinking classes. I no longer saw any reason to believe that Joseph Smith saw God when he founded the Mormon Church. I no longer believed that Jesus was the son of God, or that God even existed at all. My beliefs were gone. I was an Atheist.

I guess the message of this story is that feminism is undeniably powerful. It can alter consciousness. It can foster equality. It can even dismantle an entire worldview. And I would say these changes are for the better.

Sam Bullock aspires to be an attorney with hip jazz-piano chops, and is a self-proclaimed feminist atheist.

This month, The Man Files brings you Jessica Pauline — a writer and feminist with experience working in some of the dicey-er Los Angeles strip clubs. Lots of ink has been spilled on the sex worker debates. Are women oppressed by sex work? Liberated? Both? How is trafficking distinct from, say, dancing one’s way through law school? In this entry, Jessica leaves those debates for another day and instead turns a keen eye to her observations of the men who make it rain. (—verb: to throw wads of cash in the air for dancers to retrieve as tips.)

Like Jane Goodall and her chimps, I spent a good deal of time during my tenure as a stripper in some of L.A.’s seediest nightclubs observing the behavior of the primates. Not the dancers, mind you — the men who came to watch them.

Based on my humble observations, I came to discover that certain behaviors are both predictable and categorical, and that most hetero men, when confronted with a pair of boobs in a semi-public setting, fall into a few choice archetypes.

Let’s start with what I imagine to be the most common breed of American strip club patron: white, middle-aged men who golf and vote Republican. They swagger in to the club with an air of ownership, their masculinity stuffed into their wallets and tucked neatly into their pressed khaki pants. Observing the dancers with the same level of detached interest that one might imagine they’d use in selecting a prime rib-eye, they pick a girl, begin to talk to her in their most sensual voice while rubbing her back and her leg, and shortly thereafter are ushered back to the VIP room with very little to-do. This is the kind of easy sell around which strip clubs were designed, and for that reason, we’ll call this breed Strip Club Men (SCM).

Now, strip clubs have been around long enough for a type of strip club rebellion to brew amongst men. So imagine, if you will, if the SCM had a son. This son desires nothing more than to be the antithesis to his stuffy, conservative father, and so he becomes sensitive, wears ironic t-shirts to demonstrate the fact that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and quite possibly sports artistic, sentimental facial hair. Let’s call this breed Feminist Men (FM).

When forced into a strip club, maybe because of a bachelor party, or maybe in search of a place to talk quietly on a Tuesday night, the FM immediately seeks to set himself apart. Rather than sexualize the dancers, he opens with a nice conversation, carefully keeping his eyes above the neck. But as the FM gets less and less guarded, a strange thing begins to happen. He becomes more willing to let his eyes wander down. His friendly conversation becomes more imbued with sexual innuendo. And finally, often after spending copious amounts of money on what he has come to believe is a “real connection,” he tries to get the dancer to go on a date with him. (This, as an aside, is both insulting and never going to happen.)

The final subcategory of men falls deeper into FM territory, and warrants mention simply because of the unique validation that they seek. They’re easy to recognize, because no sooner does some indie chick start swaying her hips to Tom Waits, the King of Melancholy himself, then the Tom Waits Man (TWM) begins nodding in recognition. Before long, he’s dug a crumpled dollar bill out of his pocket and walked up to the stage where he will deposit it, but not until he’s made sure that the dancer sees him so he can compliment her taste to her face and thereby secure his place as profound, mysterious and, of course, different.

Maybe you’ll read this and think that I oversimplify. But since the most honest interaction in sex work is based on a respectful, fun partaking of the service provided, it can’t hurt for men to examine their own behavior with at least as much gusto as I examined it (don’t worry, I took some long, hard looks at myself, too). Without that, gentlemen, you are really just entertainment.

Jessica Pauline is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. An NYU graduate with a degree in music, her writing appears regularly on LAist.com, and has appeared in $pread Magazine, The Printed Blog, the Ventura County Star, and a number of other websites and local papers. She is currently working on a book about her experiences as a feminist stripper, and lives in Silver Lake with her fiance and their dog, Molly.

Much as I want to think of myself as a feminist parent, sometimes I doubt my credentials.  After all, I don’t forbid Hannah Montana for my daughter or swordplay for my son even though both of these activities certainly do reinforce gender stereotypes (although I should probably add that my daughter took jui-jitsu for a time and my son happily watches Hannah Montana).

But I know that when it comes to discussions of loving relationships, this is one area where my feminism comes through loud and clear.  With the current setbacks—like yesterday’s California High Court ruling in support of the gay marriage ban and victories over gay marriage, I see this as an important social justice issue.  After all, I want my daughter and my son to grow up in a culture that will recognize and equally value their loving relationships whoever their partner may be.

Katy Perry as “Compulsory Heterosexuality 101”
My 8-year-old daughter loves Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl.” She’s especially familiar with the chorus, which goes like this:

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right

Recently after the song played my daughter asked, “Why is she worried about what her boyfriend will think?”  I explained that the song was about two girls kissing.  Perhaps not surprisingly, she had been listening to the song and singing the words without really understanding it.  When I explained the idea of two girls kissing, some predictable “ew’s” and “yuck’s” ensued (the standard grade school reaction to all romantic kissing).  I also explained that some people think two girls or two boys kissing is a bad thing.

I went on to tell her what I thought—that two people who love each other can kiss, whether they are two girls, two boys, or a boy and a girl.  I talked about the way that “gay” can be used as an epithet, and how in my view such a usage was inappropriate.

My daughter wanted to try the idea on for size.  What would be the difference between using gay in a “mean” way and in a “nice” way, she wanted to know?  She thought out loud, “I could say, ‘You’re gay, hooray!”

I loved this response.  Tolerance is one thing: plenty of research suggests that young people are more supportive of gay marriage than their older counterparts.  But celebration is another, and my daughter is right there already.  Dismantling heterosexism and homophobia are important parts of this mix as well: my daughter may not be there yet, but that’s where my feminist parenting comes in, and we’ll take it day by day.

While I don’t think Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” lyrics are especially feminist—heterosexual male enjoyment of “lesbian” sexuality has been around for a long time, it opened a great window of conversation and analysis for our family.  Now that’s feminist, so thanks, Katy Perry.

GWP, readers how does feminism influence your parenting?  I’d love to hear your stories.

Photo: Shira Tarrant, Jessica Pauline, Michele Matheson, Stan Kent, Jillian Lauren

On May 13, Hustler Cafe in Hollywood hosted its monthly In the Flesh Reading Series: L.A.. Topic of the Month? Feminist Sex.

The awesome Jillian Lauren read from her forthcoming memoir, Some Girls and regaled listeners with stories about her experience in a Brunei harem. The amazing Michele Matheson read from her upcoming novel, The Failed Suicide of Cooper Tin. (Michele is a recovering child actor from such TV faves as Mr. Belvedere.) The wickedly funny Jessica Pauline read about working a pole (or a lap) at night and working Planned Parenthood by day, an excerpt from her book-in-progress. The groundbreaking Michelle Tea phoned it in from Florida with provocative portions from her queer, postpunk novel, Valencia.

I read from my new book Men and Feminism (Seal Press) along with my recent Huffington Post piece, Hip to Strip? Or Is it Time for Men to Stop Watching?

Question: Why Hustler?
Answer: Why not?

The event was a great opportunity to talk about women’s freedom to do sex work and to also ask questions about why men pay for it — and I stand behind both topics. Jillian Lauren described the subject of men and feminism as the only taboo left in that particular setting. So all the more reason to speak up. The Hustler event on May 13 left out the subject of what gets women hot. You know … things like sexual agency, pleasure, feminist ethical sluttiness … but that’s a question for another radical day.

Thanks to all who came out for this record-breaking event. Word has it this was the largest turn-out yet for the In the Flesh Reading Series: L.A. That’s really saying something! And much appreciation to Stan Kent for spinning some righteous tunes and for being an all-around gracious and organized host. See you next time.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-662" title="hustler-cafe-2" src="http://shiratarrant.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/hustler-cafe-2-300×239.jpg"

Crossposted at http://shiratarrant.com