Today, as I think listen to radio announcers describe Pride as a fun party time for all who dare to revel and strut their stuff and as I think about the queers who insist on prioritizing a conservative, gentrified community agenda that foregrounds the right to participate legally in the institution of marriage as something of extreme importance...
I'm thinking about fucking and about what it means that queer people all over the planet have profoundly challenged the very foundations of social organization just...by...fucking...who they want...in the ways they want.
Fucking is fucking powerful shit. It's much more powerful than getting married because it's completely uncontrollable no matter how the state tries to define, limit, block, utilize it.
People who choose to fuck in ways that counter what they have been taught by their parents, by the society and by any kind of organized religion are dangerous.
I appreciate people who fuck intelligently and rebelliously against the grain. I appreciate people who are out about their desires. I appreciate people who can clearly articulate their desires. I appreciate people who do not hide their desires.
This is Pride weekend. It doesn't look like I will be able to engage in any no holds barred bacchanal style fucking in tha flesh. Nonetheless, I understand Pride to be as much about asserting the right to fuck against the grain as it is about the dour conservative middle classing marriage folks so eager to settle down into governmentally sanctioned lives of porridge like sexless mundanity. :)
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Sexual Conservatism...I should probably copyright this as it took me a while to write it. In any case, I wrote in 2006 while I was pregnant with Shmolee....
I wrote this piece this afternoon while my daughter was at the library attending a reading group and taking her afternoon nap. I edited this while she slept and later, after she woke up, with her snoozing in my lap, as I've written many pieces since she was born.
BEWARE THE TYPOS...
Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" has been an invaluable reference and a guide for so many white folks interested in dealing with their white privilege since she wrote it I think in the late '80s.
Entering the blogosphere, I realized that McIntosh's writing had spawned a whole genre of privileged invisible knapsack writings about all sorts of things from social class privilege to the invisibility of class privilege, to non poor privilege, to fat phobia, to able-bodied privilege and others.
Joining the ranks...
Since her template is/was so complete, I've decided to follow the lead of a good few other folks on the internet and write a Privileged knapsack piece a la Peggy McIntosh about sexual conservatism.
This is something that has come up really powerfully for me upon entering the blogosphere and registering who will link to my site, who will define the work I do as feminist, who will make polite sideways remarks about my use of nude imagery in my template and warn others to think twice before opening my page.
I thought I would do something useful with my annoyance, amusement, impatience at the limited analysis i'm encountering around the politicized erotic in the blogosphere.
I'm a writer.
I write.
I think and write.
I think and write and speak and write.
I think and write and speak and write and resist through words.
So here I am doing my thing...
As I indicated earlier, this whole piece is predicated on the seminal work "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege" which I first read about 15 years ago, i think.
Dear reader, This piece is riddled with McIntoshisms which as a white woman, she responsibly linked back to the work of feminists of color like The Combahee River Collective and that I link back to the work of wimmin warriors like Audre Lorde and sex radicals like Patrick Califia-Rice and writings in anthologies like Home Girls.
Any quotes you encounter in this piece below means that I've fully crossed over from utilizing McIntosh's piece as a base line for this work and moved right on over into direct quoting. Even when you don't see quotes it's best to just keep in mind that I transplanted a lot of her ideas over into a critique of sexual oppression and that the basic sentence structure of the points on my list of privileges is completely hers.
Also, please note, I'm referring to "he" and "she" and know that these pronouns are completely inaccurate and that they actually hint at the ease with which I can linguistically exclude a whole segment of the earth's population. Unmaking my gender binary stuff is another facet of the work I've chosen to take on and to pursue. Bear with me. Pronoun corrections to this piece are inadequate, but coming nonetheless.
Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Sexual Conservatism
Daily effects of conservative sexual privilege:
Sexual conservatives are not taught to recognize erotophobia, only individual acts of extreme persecution. The majority of them do not acknowledge invisible systems conferring dominance on people who share their views as oppression.
Through my work to expand my horizons and to develop a comfort level with my own desires, I am often confronted with a general unwillingness on the part of many people to acknowledge that there is such a thing as erotophobia - fear of sexualness - that confers privilege on some even as it puts others at a disadvantage.
Some may speak about being "open" or about believing in free speech. They may want to wave flags to show their solidarity with the most conservative of gay agendas - marriage - while completely ignoring the fact that one of the main reasons queer people are oppressed in society is because of the uncontrollable nature of our desires and because of the threat we pose, not as people who get married :), but as openly sexual beings who fuck against the grain.
Folks may point out how many queer people they have on their blogrolls, how many queer friends or acquaintances or colleagues they have, but at the end of the day, they mostly reserve the right to make a great show of their discomfort should anything sexually queered rear its head in their vicinity.
They will not support the work of lessening the dominance of those who downplay sexual expression.
They will not incorporate or develop a feminist, lefty, radical or otherwise politicized view that questions societally acceptable visions of sex as inherently conservative and/or monogamous if not marriage linked.
They will not acknowledge the fact that oppression can also be based precisely on what happens in the bedroom...or outside it between sexual beings, for that matter.
Liberal denial reigns supreme. An unspoken injunction to "cover up", defines even self-defined feminist/liberal/lefty/radical spaces. Casual verbal abuse and stigmatisation of sex workers and sexual wimmin is an acceptable political norm even in spaces (online and real time) that are considered politically feminist/radical/liberal/lefty.
As a polyamorous, queer woman who has sat on the outskirts of various sexually radical communities for quite a few years, who has consensually played out rituals of pleasure and pain, bondage, submission and humiliation, who can't truthfully define as a sex worker but who has done one trick (body workship), who writes queer porn (when I'm in a good mood), who has engaged willingly and willfully in public nudity and public sex...
I understand that I walk with relative privilege as a mama in a society that dominates women who birth and rear children by attempting to empty them of any evidence of sexualness not related to procreation and the marriage bed...I understand that the sexualized racism I encounter as a Black woman and the shadeism I encounter as a dark(er) skinned woman of African descent contradicts and undermines the imposed "purity" of motherhood and reinforces my status as sexually accessible...
I understand that the simple act of walking with a man seen as my owner, my husband, my impregnator, walking with the small human being, my daughter, seen as his, offers me back some sexual conservative privilege especially in the eyes of other Black people so starved for Cosby-like images of nuclear, patriarchal, heterosexual, monogamous family, who falsely define this construction as THE most effective way to fight white people's racism and their understanding of us as lesser...
I understand that because of myths attached to who is smart and what it means to be educated (especially for Black wimmin and wimmin of color climbing career ladders in academic hierarchies), my intelligence and articulateness could buy me some more sexual conservative credits in Black, feminist, lefty, activist circles if I did not insist on messing that up by incorporating a critique of sexual oppression and expressions of sexualness into my writings and lived experience...
I understand that influential vestiges of Victorian era England and colonialism in general in the Caribbean mean that as an openly sexual daughta of those islands, a bajan by birth, I am considered "common class", "low class" for daring to speak and write about my sexualness in any sort of detail...
I understand that my existence as working class trash is closely linked to notions of sexual accessibility...people who are well off have more power and support to control their daughters' thoughts, dress, sexual education and sexual expression...look at the Bush daughters...
I realize that despite the contradictions of my social positioning I still have privileged space to manouever as presently able-bodied, primarily partnered to a man, as bio gendered female, as english speaking, as north american-raised, as university educated.
I claim a responsiblity to question and to holler loudly at the sexual assumptions so prevalent in political spaces. And so, I do...
Since power-based hierarchies in society form a matrix of domination, I understand that erotophobia occupies a supportive space adjacent to isms and phobias like classism, racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia.
Erotophobia when situated as part of the matrix of power and domination adds clarity to a lot of struggles being fought by the oppressed, the other, the colonized, adds clarity in ways that offers us a possibility to realize more of our visions for change.
As a woman, as a Black, Diasporic African person, as a queer, as an aging adult, as a mama, as an intellect, I understand the many ways my identities are considered sullied by those who do not critique sexual oppression as part of what the dominated experience regardless of whether they understand themselves to be sexually conservative or not.
There are many who will not critique the ways that the sexual conservatism they were taught as children, teenagers and supported to perpetuate as adults, puts them at an advantage even in communities of resistance.
Sometimes this sexual conservatism is the only advantage some of the oppressed can call on and make their own. I think that most people in most cultures are taught to not recognize the sexually conservative teachings they encountered as children growing to adulthood, as damaging and limiting social indoctrination. They are taught to normalize it as a way to have it continue unfettered from mother to daughter, from father to son.
As a resistance fighter with multiple identities that include being feminist and lefty, I have had no choice but to put my lived experience where my politics are. I have had no choice but to make mad links all over myself, making my political personal and understanding my personal as political.
This has included understanding the ways a societally based fear/fascination, attraction/repulsion with sex has been an intimate bed partner with all aspects of the oppression I have encountered and internalized over the course of my life.
Sensing discomfort in various areas of my life as a young dyke, I began to ask my own self questions about sex and sexualness that have led me to gain a better understanding of (my own) sexual conservative privilege and erotophobia.
From there, I began to mount carefully thought out acts of sabotage and subversion specifically designed to embody questions volleyed into the society at large.
Utilizing the phraseology Peggy McIntosh coined, I have come to see sexual conservative "privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets" that some people can count on more than others cashing in on safety, validation and a general sense of acceptability each and every day, in private and public space.
This is privilege they can deny even as they participate in making the lives of those who don't have quite as much cachet, who can't access quite as much sexual conservative privilege, hell on earth.
This privilege is an "invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks" that even the most sexually conservative can out-and-out deny being in possession of.
This is convenient because claiming this privilege means being accountable, which then leads to the question: "Having described it, what will I do to lessen or end it?"
Much sexual conservatism is learned, taught by rote, reinforced by the media, the family and various institutions including schools and child services. This sexual oppression is learned and so it can be unlearned. Although it can take years to break down and jettison what it took a life time to insert into the consciousnesses of those who benefit from it.
Those with sexual conservative privilege who may also define as on the left, as liberal, as feminist, as progressive, as politically radical are taught to think of sexualness as a private choice, "morally neutral, normative, average, and also ideal".
When they create spaces either online or in real time, they create spaces that perpetuate the sex negative ideologies they were raised with and/or have not fully critiqued. They define these same spaces as for the benefit of all who are political.
They utilize their privilege to define away, erase, render insignificant or not part of "the cause" any sexual "differences" they might see in those who come, in effect utilizing the unearned power they gain from their positioning as sexually conservative to define, dominate and control.
Their "neutral" and open spaces are actually experienced as problematic and troublesome by people who believe in the political significance of sexual radicality.
Attempting to work on the host of sexual conservative issues in my own life has proven insufficient as no matter how aware I become, I never fail to encounter people who bring their ignorance of the daily effects of their own sexual conservative beliefs and the attendant willingness to nonetheless maintain all associated privileges, aggressively or subtly to my door.
I have, therefore, decided to make challenging the oppression perpetuated by others a crucial part of my chosen work done simultaneously as I continue to unpack my own sexual conservative privilege and beliefs. Here's what I have so far...
1. Sexual Conservatives (from now on referred to as S.C.s) can if they wish arrange to be in the company of many people who outwardly demonstrate or speak about, feel uncomfortable with or hide away similar sexual habits most of the time.
2. S.C.s can avoid spending time with people whom they have defined as sexual deviants, people who they have learned to mistrust and fear.
3. If an S.C. should need to move, he or she can be pretty sure that renting or purchasing housing and his or her ability to find housing in a suitable area will not be predicated on whether his or her idea of appropriate clothing falls within acceptable social sexual norms, how many lovers he or she brings to see the house or whether he or she talks openly about what activities he or she will be using the the space for.
4. An S.C. can be pretty sure that his or her neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to him or her and that if his neighbours are unpleasant or standoffish, an S.C. can be certain that it's not because of the way the he or she has chosen to define his or her erotic identity, the sort of career choice he or she has made or whether the neighbours have seen a "dubious" individual entering or leaving his or her abode.
5. An S.C. can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that he or she will not be followed, harassed or looked down on as they enter or leave their favorite S.C. store, because of who he or she is, what he or she is wearing or what the store sells.
6. An S.C. can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see other S.C.s represented and not constructed as the sewage of society.
7. When S.C.s are told about society, about what makes society safe and good and worth carrying on, they are not told that them and their kind are deteriorating social mores and ethics, spreading disease and making it unsafe to raise children.
8. An S.C. can be sure that his or her children will not be kidnapped from their schools, daycares or from other caregivers by government/social services workers/officials who doubt the safety of their homes without any proof or substance to back up those claims.
9. An S.C. will not have to worry about having his or her children verbally abused, shunned or physically attacked because the teachers and/or other children find out what mama does for a living or what daddy's playtime looks like.
10. If an S.C. wants to, he or she can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for a piece about the joys of being an S.C., about monogamy, marriage or decrying sexual deviance.
11. An S.C. can be pretty sure of having his or her voice heard in a group in which he or she is the only S.C. present.
12. An S.C. can be casual, indifferent or completely unwilling about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which she or he is the only S.C. present and not have this defined as a deviant trait, a not nice way of being or something that he or she should suffer for.
13. An S.C. can go shopping in his or her clothing of choice without being given attitude or ignored by store clerks because of what he or she is wearing.
14. Whether an S.C. uses cheques, credit cards or cash, he or she can count on his or her favourite clothing and accessory choices to not work against the appearance of financial reliability and fiscal responsibility.
15. An S.C. can arrange to protect his or her children most of the time from people who might not like or BE like S.C.s and expect to be supported by the state, its laws and programs.
16. An S.C. does not have to educate his or her children about sex and sexuality as a way to protect them from people who are not S.C.s their own emotional, psychological and phsyical safety so as to defend against intense social stigma directed against their own family.
17. An S.C. can be pretty sure that her or his children's teachers and employers will tolerate them because their family's appearance, hobby's and interests fit societal norms; An S.C.'s chief worries about her or his children do not concern others' attitudes toward their the sexual identities of their parents.
18. An S.C. can be friendly, physically affectionate even slightly flirtatious and not have people around them make assumptions about their desires, morals or sexual health.
19. An S.C. can talk openly about his or her monogamous, vanilla sex life, buy interesting devices and gadgets for use in the home or invite people to their home without having people attribute these choices to moral decrepitude, disease mongering, pedophilia or violence against wimmin.
20. An S.C. can speak in public to any powerful group without putting other S.C.s on trial or exposing them to social judgement or ridicule.
21. An S.C. can do well in a challenging situation without being seen as a more acceptable and pleasant S.C.. He or she doesn't have to worry about being unfavourably contrasted and compared to other S.C.s.
22. Though he or she may choose to in order to uphold understands of good morality and conduct and to reinforce denial of privilege, an S.C. is never actually expected or requested to speak or come out specifically for the good of all S.C.s.
23. An S.C. can construct the existence of sexually radical people as extreme, uncalled for, shameful, diseased, immoral and apolitical while continuing to not see themselves and their ideas as part of any societal problem.
24. An S.C. can remain completely oblivious to the vernacular, beliefs, relationship constellations and rituals of sexually radical people and remain oblivious to the constructed superiority of their own vernacular, beliefs, relationship constellation, and rituals without facing any penalty for moving through the world in such a high level of ignorance.
25. An S.C. can criticize the government and the society as a whole and openly articulate in detail the different ways its policies and ideologies impact on his or her life and liberty without then being seen as a cultural outsider or a freak, without having the people he or she knows think about not being his or her friends anymore or having friends and family consider stopping their children from playing with his or her children for reasons of "safety".
26. An S.C. can be pretty sure that if he or she identifies his or herself and his or her partners by their chosen ritual/play names/roles/titles to the "person in charge", they will not be facing a hostile entity who feels it's okay to be disrespectful, condescendingly amused, "down", overly intimate, self-congratulatory or to walk away.
27. If a traffic cop pulls over an S.C., they don't have to lie or be vague about the party they came from or their relationships to the person/people they're travelling with. An S.C. doesn't have to worry that he or she will be imprisoned and/or have his or her children taken away if he or she is truthful.
28. If taxation audits the return of an S.C. he or she can be sure that documents won't be scrutinized because of expenses associated with the sexual nature of their work or recreation. If they work for a business that is explicitly S.C. they can be sure not worry about whether their records will be considered applicable or allowable by taxation or whether their records can be used as evidence against them in a court case related to them being S.C..
29. An S.C. can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, miscellaneous decorative items and magazines and openly display them to anyone who enters his or her home or workplace without worry about being fired, ostracised, attacked, or seen as disgusting.
30. An S.C. can go home from most meetings of mainstreamed organizations he or she belongs to feeling somewhat accepted, validated and understood, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
31. An S.C. can be pretty sure that an argument with an acquaintance, new friend or fellow blogger who is not an S.C. is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement, friendship, alliance, safety, employment than to jeopardize the S.C.'s. (I really like this one)
32. An S.C. can be pretty sure that if he or she argues for the inclusion or understanding of another S.C. that he or she will not be looked upon as asking for too much or as changing the tone or mandate of the space.
33. If an S.C. declares there is an issue of erotophobia at hand, or that there isn't an erotophobia linked issue at hand, his or her status as S.C. will lend him or her more credibility, more weight for either position than an actual sexually radical person will have. An S.C. can count on not being seen as hysterical, aggressive, freakish, immature, apolitical, judgemental, mean, too out there, if he or she should decide to speak solidly from a place of their being an S.C..
34. An S.C. can choose to ignore developments in sexual politics, sex radical writing, scholarship and activism, or disparage them, or learn from them, or surrepticiously incorporate them into his or her knowledge base, but in any case, an S.C. can find ways to be more or less protected from the negative consequences of any of these choices.
35. An S.C.'s culture and social positioning gives him or her little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people from other sexual communities and belief systems.
36. An S.C. is not made acutely aware that their desires, curiosities, childrearing, childbearing, dress, decor or manner of speaking/writing will be taken as a reflection on other S.C.s, that what they do or choose not to do will make life more difficult or easier for other S.C.s.
37. An S.C. can talk or write about being an S.C., about their life, loves, beliefs, actions, ideas without being seen as overly self-centered, immature, attention seeking, apolitical or flagrantly self-promoting.
38. An S.C. can take a job without having to worry about being fired if his or her coworkers see what's on his or her computer desktop, see who comes to pick him or her up after work and how that person is dressed or behaves, find out what he or she reads on his or her lunch break or invites coworkers over to his or her home or to family/community functions.
39. If an S.C.'s day, week or year is going badly, he or she doesn't need to check each negative episode or situation to ascertain whether it was because he or she was too uncompromising, too open, too critical or too clear about his or her desires and sexual beliefs.
40. An S.C. can usually find people (biological family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers) who would be willing to talk with him or her about professional or personal concerns as related to sex, love, relationships, personal interests and family.
41. An S.C. can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person who is out as an S.C. would be accepted, included or allowed to do what he or she wants to do. He or she wouldn't automatically have to start figuring out which parts of his or her everyday reality as an S.C. would need to be toned down in order to succeed or be accepted.
42. An S.C. can choose public accommodation for an overnight stay, a date or for a community gathering without fearing that people of his or her community who share his or her values and aesthetics, if they come as who they are, will be turned back or will be mistreated in the places he or she has chosen or that the other patrons will feel free to demonstrate their discomfort or that the police or security will be called.
43. An S.C. can be sure that if he or she needs legal or medical help, he or she will not have to tell a variation of the truth in order to protect self, family, lovers, partners, friends or community.
44. An S.C. can arrange his or her activities and those of his or her children and family so that he or she will never have to experience feelings of rejection or ridicule owing to his or her social positioning as an S.C..
45. If an S.C. has leadership ambitions he or she can be sure that being open about his or her sexual beliefs and choices will not have a negative impact on their career possibilities.
46. An S.C. can easily find academic courses and institutions which give positive and respectful attention to S.C.s and that these courses will always outnumber the ones that don't.
47. An S.C. can expect the majority of fiction and nonfiction, widely displayed visual art, media imagery, historical artifacts, government pamphlets and educational materials to attest to the superiority of his or her belief system.
48. If an S.C. should have an accident while engaging in sexual play with a monogamous partner, he or she will not have to worry about whether the play he or she was involved in will open him or her to not being treated with care, respect, dignity and understanding should he or she have to go to a hospital's emergency room. An S.C. does not have to carefully consider whether the accident and the damage it caused warrants a visit to the hospital out of fear of being charged with a crime or receiving shoddy treatment because of being an S.C..
49. An S.C. can travel and openly identify as who he or she is without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with him or her.
50. An S.C. has no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people do not utilize his or her household configuration, recreational interests or career choices as a reason to avoid or gossip about him or her.
51. An S.C.'s children are given texts and classes which implicitly support his or her kind of family unit, kind of community, kind of relationship structure and do not turn his or her children against his or her sexual beliefs or relationship choices.
52. An S.C. will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social and if he or she does not, it is not because of how he or she has chosen to construct his or her sexually identify, or how he or she chooses to dress or behave.
53. An S.C. does not have to worry about being laughed at, infantilized, attacked, verbally abused, disowned, institutionalized or kept away from the children in his or her family of origin should he or she choose to speak clearly and openly to parents and/or other family members about his or her life as an S.C..
Denial and Avoidance:
Chances are, the things I've listed up above are so normalized, so much a part of the cultures we live in and replicate that these privileges go unnoticed or are not even seen as privileges.
Having brought them to your attention, I realize there is a high probability that you, my dear reader, unless you're actually on the receiving end of this form of systemic oppression, will immediately feel enraged or indifferent and go from there to misunderstanding or forgetting my words. Because they don't interest you and don't have a direct impact on your life, you will sink back into privileged denial.
Erotophia exists best in a climate of denial and avoidance. As Peggy McIntosh wrote: "If these things are true, this is not such a free country; one's life is not what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues of their own."
And she was right.
Unpacking this particular invisible knapsack of unearned privilege is not at an end in and of itself.
This is the first time I've bothered to actually sit with what worries me about the oppression I face.
This is the first time I've bothered to catalogue what I face and what the people in my life face on a daily basis.
I have listed conditions of daily experience that most people take for granted and that they understand as the right way of things. These are privileges they simultaneously expect and take for granted.
Denial affords many the space to be completely clueless about the oppressive beliefs they perpetuate. They have the right, the privilege to be "ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive" at the expense of others who suffer and live in fear.
Fixed understandings of morality, healthy sexual behaviour, sexual health and normal relationships are enforced not natural.
The privileges I listed up above form the support mechanisms for sexually conservative people who understand only their ways and customs as normal, right, ethical and true. From this place of constructed superiority they can cause damage, fear, pain, general oppression, without taking responsiblity for the environments and social climates they contribute to creating both inside and outside of politicized circles.
Ironically, armed with the privilege they access on a daily basis, buffered safely in some ways, they actually have a better chance of critiquing the privileges I listed up above than do the people experiencing the oppressive flipside of sexual conservatism.
S.C.s have the space to deconstruct the moral and social "confidence, comfort, and denial they experience as sexual conservatives in sexually conservative cultures at the expense of other communities where people are likely to be faced with daily feelings of fear, discomfort, lack of confidence, lack of self-esteem and alienation.
They could choose to critique the ways that they're understood, constructed and received as sexually conservative and how this affords them much protection from the hostility, distress, and violence faced by people who are out or outed about being sexually radical or deviant.
The playing field isn't level. Everything in society works to disempower, negate and invalidate people who do not construct their desires, relationships, families and communities along sexually conservative lines. Everything in society incorporates erotophobia as a control mechanism to keep the many in their proper sexual places.
"Unearned dominance and power":
In her work deconstructing white privilege, Peggy McIntosh went on to draw lines of distinction between "earned strength and unearned power". She wrote that "conferred privilege can look like strength when it is in fact permission to escape, harm or to dominate".
She wrote that "not all of the privileges on my list are inevitably damaging. Some, like the expectation that neighbors will be decent to you...should be the norm in a just society".
In other words, the forms of oppression faced by people who make the choice to go against society's sexual norms are about taking away their very basic rights to fair and good treatment.
So, some of the privileges experienced or defined by people who are sexually conservative are actually things they could share as positive life enhancements everyone/anyone could enjoy.
There are artificial hierarchies for even the most minute of pleasures and access that form sexual hierarchies that could be broken down.
A general feeling of belonging and acceptance of who a person is shouldn't be a privilege experienced by a few who work really hard to guard it. It should be something everyone is born with and is allowed to maintain through the course of life's journey.
As a sexual deviant, as chosen family to other proud sexually radical folk, I'd like to feel completely welcome and supported in all spaces, but especially in feminist, lefty, liberal, progressive, radically politicized circles online (in the blogosphere) and in real time.
I'm not that far to the left of center on continuums of sexualness and deviance and I'm getting a taste of the exclusion, erasure, invalidation and ridicule faced by others who are more well developed as fully actualized and grounded sexual beings.
I am still waiting to encounter any sexual conservatives who believe in freedom of speech for sexually radical people.
I have yet to meet any sexual conservatives who seem visibly/morally outraged at the oppression of sexually radical people in society and who are willing to question and to undermine their own systemically conferred privileges in order to fight that power.
I’m not meeting anyone who is sexually conservative who seems to really give a fuck about anything except blocking what can only be described as an inexorable flow of change, moving not just through the larger monogamous, heterosexual vanilla sexing world but also in communities of resistance where theoreticians, visionaries and front line workers are being asked to redefine and to broaden their understandings of struggle so as to not participate in the crushing oppression of those they understand themselves to be allied with.
Allies in all sorts of struggles are being asked to actually mark the ways that sexual conservatism as a dogma wreaks havoc not just in the lives of people who define as in some way sexually radical, but also in the lives of those who don’t and (seem to) like it that way.
Much as with white privilege, male privilege, heterosexual privilege and the rest of the matrix of power and domination, where these can be understood as double-edged swords cutting both dominated and those who dominate, the narrowness of a sexually conservative existence actually chafes those who willingly occupy those identities in some really disturbing and saddening ways, too.
Peggy McIntosh points out that privilege takes “both active forms, which we can see, and embedded forms, which as a member of the dominant groups one is taught not to see”.
I’d like to point out that anything exerting influence on someone’s life and consciousness, that they’re taught not to recognize but to perform/think/say by reflex is dangerous and therefore probably damaging to their psyche.
Red pill or blue pill, babe?
Sexual conservatism as a mostly embedded form of privilege is dangerous not just to those on the receiving end, but also to those who blindly follow its tenets.
As a woman and a feminist, I recognize silencing when I see it. I’m sensitive to it. The silence around sex, sexualness and desire that permeates most people’s lives can be understood in terms of oppression that can be actively combated through speaking and sharing of lived experiences and desires.
This is necessary as passively clucking one’s tongue at one’s own sexual conservatism will not be enough to change systems of sexual domination. To pull down social systems will mean acknowledging their extensive presence functioning as a massive underpinning holding up our societies and cultures.
This is a challenge directed specifically at the feminists, lefties, liberals, progressives and self-styled radicals I'm encountering in the blogosphere and in real time. I've communicated with a precious handful of bloggers who understand the connections between forms of oppression including sexual oppression. I'm seeking to pervert some new ones over to the political dark side.
Can I say that? :)
