Human Sexuality: Puritanical Feminism and the Religious Right

Be forewarned, the following post contains adult content, a very frank discussion about sexuality and probably TMI about yours truly. Though remarkably, I managed to keep the naughty language to a minimum.

I also wish to clarify that while I firmly embrace sex positivity, I also embrace personal choices. Just as I abhor sexual repression, I also abhor the pressure that is applied to people who have made a choice to abstain. Human sexuality is a beautiful, wonderful expression. But it is all too often made ugly and painful by the choices people allow others to make for them. People should never feel that there is something wrong with them because they happen to want to wait or forgo the sexual experience altogether. Just as I believe there is nothing wrong with casual sex, there is nothing at all wrong with no sex.More...

I like Teh Sex. Back when I was a little younger, a whole lot prettier and had a band, I proved it by having a whole lot of it. Casual sex managed the balance between using a whole lot of drugs and playing music all the time. Not one for romantic entanglements, I rarely delved into the world of significant others. Like who I'd play music with, I had standards when it came to sexual partners, but they were really more of a loose set of guidelines, than a firm set of rules. Basically I wanted to sex people who were fairly literate and interesting conversationalists. I preferred women who met certain aesthetic standards as well, though mine have always been rather wide ranging aesthetic standards. And I preferred to have sex with women, as I just don't find men sexually stimulating. But ultimately, none of those standards were fast and solid. If a women was particularly intellectually stimulating, I could look past potential failures to meet my aesthetic standards. Likewise, if a women managed to hit my aesthetic idealism, I might look past her inability to meet my intellectual standards. And if a boy met a certain aesthetic ideal, coupled with an emotional/intellectual attraction, I could enjoy time spent providing them sexual pleasure - not to say that I wouldn't get some enjoyment as well, but as I said, it's really never been my thing.

I wish that I could say that I never played women, never lied to them for sex. But unfortunately I have. My only defense is that I never lied to a women about my feelings, when I wasn't also lying to myself. For the most part, I sought women who wanted the very same thing I was after - casual sex. And on a couple of occasions, I even got burned by women who were playing me. One of them, I believe was deluding herself as much as she was deluding me. The other was just straight up lying to me. But I figure it's all ok, because in neither case was I doing anything but lying to myself about my own feelings. The fact is that hurting others and being hurt is part of growing up. Trying to minimize the damage is about all anyone can ever do.

For a few months, when I was eighteen, I worked as a stripper. The club I worked was mainly a female audience two nights a week and a mainly male audience three nights. I absolutely hated the ladies nights. They were really obnoxious and didn't tip nearly as well as the horny, greasy old men. The men had their drawbacks, one being that many of them expected something more after the show, but they tipped well (often with large bills that had phone numbers written on) and the worse any of them might do is play with themselves while they watched. I can honestly say that getting a bunch of cash from people watching me dance rather poorly, but in the buff, fed my narcissism in a big way. I would even go as far as to say it was somewhat empowering. But mostly, it was just a fairly easy way to make good money, something I just didn't manage very well at that time of my life.

I also managed a fairly short stint as a gigolo. I mainly did it for the experience of it, to have the opportunity to live in pretty extreme luxury and hob-knob with people of pornographic levels of wealth. Being young, sexy, highly literate and very well spoken, I was well received when I worked as an escort for a very wealthy, very attractive women more than twice my age. I fulfilled her need to satiate social expectations, fulfilled other, more personal needs and was absolutely discreet about fulfilling my own more personal needs. In turn she took very good care of me, providing an apartment that was luxury I understood existed, but never knew existed.

According to the religious right, I am an abomination on a great many levels. Even though I am pretty tame, here in my early thirties, abstaining from sex and drugs, I make no apologies for who I have been. Not only making no apologies, but embracing who I was, taking ownership of it. Though I am abstinent, I still identify myself as a philanderer, a whore. The years that separate me from that lifestyle, do not change the basic fact: There is nothing inherently wrong with casual sex, selling one's sex or otherwise profiting from one's sexuality. So to the religious right, I'm downright evile.

But that's not where the persecution of people who, like me, embrace their sexuality ends. Oh no. Because there is a fairly sizable contingent of feminists who embrace the same puritanical repression of the religious right. Only instead of believing that open sexuality is a sin against their gods, puritanical feminists believe that pornography and profiting from one's sexuality inherently supports the patriarchy. Porn and sex work, by their very nature are inherently oppressive to women - both those directly involved and by extension, all women.

I grew up in the church. Mostly in pretty right wing churches. I was preached to about sexuality for many years. I heard it from Promise Keepers and many other evangelical organizations. The truly frightening thing in all this, is that the message that puritanical feminism pushes, is almost identical to that of the religious right. People who firmly believe themselves to be progressive, to be sticking it to the patriarchy are instead embracing the fundamental idealism of the patriarchy.Hardline repression is hardline repression, no matter who's pushing it. And there is little that more firmly represents the very worse abuses of the patriarchy, than the sexual repression and oppression.

Like I put it on a very old thread at Renegade Evolution;

Puritanical bullshit that sounds little different than something the American Family Ass, or Concerned Women for America would come out with seems more like sucking patriarchal cock, than getting paid to blow a rich white guy is.