“Throughout history, sexual objectification has been one of the key tools men have used to suppress women. Women were bought and sold through prostitution, but also through marriage where pairings were not about love, but about the exchange of virginity for financial security.” My professor, a middle-aged woman, flips through her notes.
It’s Thursday morning, and I’m sitting next to Alex in Gender and Sexuality. My head is pounding, thanks to a long and eventful Wine Wednesday at Sigma Alpha, followed by staying up half the night fooling around on Connor’s futon.
I dig through my bag and find a bottle of Advil, but it’s missing the cap and is empty, of course.
“Do you have any ibuprofen?” I whisper.
Alex stops taking notes and shakes her head, mouthing, “Sorry.”
I go back to listening to the professor. “I’m sure none of you have ever viewed pornography, as it is so hard to access in the age of the internet.”
There’s scattered laughter throughout the room. Unfortunately for Professor McKinley, an auditorium class at 9:00 a.m. is a much less receptive audience than the Laugh Factory on a Saturday night.
“But if you had viewed it, you might have noticed that the images are often of dominance and near violence. Sex under the patriarchy is not about sensuality or romance, but about degrading and dominating women.”
I grope around the bottom of my backpack until I find two only slightly lint-covered pills.
Thank God. I down the Advil and a fair amount of water and already feel a bit better.
“As you already know from the reading, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon viewed male sexual dominance as the root of all female oppression. Many second-wave scholars have suggested remedies from this poison. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz promoted celibacy, while others advocated political lesbianism, suggesting that even heterosexual women engage only in same-sex relationships or remain celibate.”
Next to me, Alex’s hand shoots up.
I look around, searching for the fire. This is a two-hundred-plus-person lecture class, and no question was posed. Which means you sit there and take notes or play on your phone, but you definitely do not interrupt the teacher.
Professor McKinley looks as surprised as I am. “Um...yes? Miss in the white blouse.”
Alex stands up. Her white tank top—commonly known as (and if this doesn’t convince you that the course I’m taking should be a graduation requirement, I don’t know what will) a “wife beater”—shows off most of her tattoos.
“What about sex positivity?”
“Excuse me?”
“What about sex-positive feminism? The notion that men can enjoy sex without guilt, so women should, too? The idea of removing shame from sexuality so that a woman can make the choice to have sex with one hundred different people or remain celibate, and be afforded the same respect as a man.”
“I really do not have time to diverge into this. Office hours are on Mondays, and I have material to get through. But the fact is, sexual liberation often distracts from real feminist issues.”
“The right to exercise ownership of my own body is a fundamental feminist issue. It’s a fundamental human rights issue.”
“Sex-positive so-called feminism is a way to structure your feminism in a way that pleases men, and that is not feminism at all. Those of us who follow in the footsteps of the suffragists have no time for Beyoncé feminists who took up the movement when it became trendy, who live in liberal cities where sex makes you popular and crying feminism makes your pleasure politically popular, too.”
My jaw drops.
Alex keeps her face blank. But I can see that she has a death grip on her pen.
I want her to tell this woman that we went to schools where sex ed consisted of “don’t do it—it’s a sin.”
How neither of us knew what a period was until it happened and we thought we were dying because God help you if you used the word vagina in a health class.
How I was told never to wear short skirts unless I wanted to attract the wrong kind of attention, like the pervert dads looking at the thirteen-year-old’s legs at a birthday party weren’t the problem.
How we were told that losing our virginity meant “giving him all you had” and that “no one buys the cow when they can get the milk for free,” so if you had sex, you weren’t deserving of love. Keep your legs closed because your worth is your virginity.
How I didn’t even know the word clitoris until I was seventeen and in biology class, and Alex didn’t know female orgasm was possible until she had one.
That’s some patriarchy bullshit if I ever heard it.
Alex begins to speak again but the professor holds up her hand to stop her before she can get a word out.
“You can leave my class now,” she says to her.
Alex silently picks up her messenger bag and moves swiftly up the stairs. I grab my backpack and follow.
“What bullshit!” she says when we’re barely in the hallway.
The door slams behind me.
“Arghhhh!” She throws her bag across the hallway.
I walk over and pick it up, looking inside to check for the shattered remains of a laptop, but luckily there are only some papers and books.
“Here you go.” I hand it back to her.
She’s slumped over on the floor, her face red. Looking up at me, she blows her bleached hair out of her face.
“Wanna go get coffee?” I reach for her hand.
“A better use of my time than this shit.” She lets me help her up.
We sit on the grassy lawn in front of the main quad, sipping coffee and sunning ourselves, our book bags as pillows, still a half hour left till class gets out.
“It’s just annoying, because this isn’t some random asshole. This is the person who’s, like, supposed to be our voice in academia.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“It’s just classic second wave versus third wave.”
I nod and sip my coffee.
“If I enjoy giving my boyfriend a blow job, isn’t it feminist to do that despite what men in power may think of me?”
“You should write a book. How to Give a Feminist Blow Job.”
She nods thoughtfully. “I really should.”
I think of all the negative comments I hear around the house from the guys about girls who probably think they’re just expressing their sexual agency.
I turn to Alex. “But how do you tell the difference between the ones who respect your sexual agency and want to have fun, too, and those who’ll tell their friends the next morning that you’re a slut? The ones who’ll treat you like trash after? Because even if I shouldn’t care what men think of me, it doesn’t help when the one I hooked up with calls me a slut.”
“Well, first of all, you wanna avoid frat houses.”
I roll my eyes, but I can’t argue with that. She sighs. “I feel like it’s because they assume we don’t really want it. They can’t picture a woman having sex because she wants to, because the way they see it, they’re the hunters and we’re the hunted. So they assume if we get with them it’s cuz what we really want is a relationship. And if they don’t want that, they think they have to be extra shitty to us so we know that door is closed. Or they’re just straight-up assholes.”
“Ugh, I hate when they assume we want a relationship.” I stir my iced coffee. “We’re smart fucking feminist women. Don’t tie me to the husband-search narrative just because I don’t want to be demeaned.”
She sits up and shields her eyes from the sun. “Well, there’s always the potential for a hookup to end in hurt, because one person might just be into it more than the other one, even if respect is totally there.”
I nod.
“But that’s personal, emotional,” she says. “There’s also some ingrained shit. Men even talk about their wives, the loves of their lives, like they’re some kind of burden, the old ball and chain, when they’re bro-ing out with the guys. So when it comes to a woman they have casual sex with, are they gonna say, ‘Oh, she’s not my girlfriend—she’s this chill girl I’m only physical with,’ or are they gonna say, ‘She’s this slut who blew me’?”
“God.” I shake my head.
“But I think that means we have a tough road to travel to create change,” she says. “Men have taken control of our sexuality for so long. Turned us into sexual objects, then told us to hate sex except for when it’s with them, as if our only purpose is to give them our bodies, but then we’re worthless once we do.”
“So there’s no way to be sexual and please the patriarchy?”
“Basically.”
“So what do we do?”
A smirk creeps onto her face. “Well, I think we do whatever the hell we want. I mean, it’s called women’s liberation for a reason. What’s the point of feminism if it doesn’t mean we’re free?”