Cold Fish, Part I

This is going to be a blog on a blog on a blog, but I found on The Stranger’s blog, Slog, and entry referring to a blog regarding the article on the cover of the New York Times’ Magazine. Follow?
The original article covered female sexuality. The same ideas are covered in the responding blogs: women don’t enjoy sex and that it is a feminist ideal to reject sex. Also, they explore the idea of women being attracted to other women as sexual objects. This will be a three part response, because I’ve got a little bit to say as the resident nympho.

Early feminist thinking cast women as the unwilling commodity. The woman was an object desired for sex, for comfort, and for the propagation of the species. She, as well as her wants and desires, were unimportant. The initial feminist response was a rejection of men, which led many women to reject sex or turn to lesbian relationships for an outlet. Later, revolutionary new feminists reclaimed heterosexual relationships, focusing on their own desires and needs, making sure that their sexuality was expressed. Now, it seems that we are in a back slide, with women’s magazine covers proclaiming that their magazines hold the secrets to how to catch a man, how to keep him, and how to perform insanely sexual acts to blow his mind. In the same way as the description of modern Japanese sexuality in the love hotels post, it seems that once again as women we have been suckered into this idea that male sexuality is dominant.

In Sex in Crisis (by Dagmar Herzog), the author states that the basic female and male fantasies are complimentary. The female fantasizes of being pleasured and the man fantasizes about giving pleasure. But even in this, on the basic level, the psychology of the female leads her to be passive. In the blog responses that inspired this post, there is an argument that it is a situation of nature vs. nurture. And it makes sense. In a patriarchal society, there is a fundamental flaw. While a woman always knows that a child is her offspring, a man has no guarantee. In order to make sure that the wealth of a man is correctly passed on to his biological children, restrictions must be placed on female sexuality.

This is where the hymen and concept of virginity get it’s special place in the male imagination. If a woman comes to you with a guarantee that she couldn’t be carrying someone else’s child. If you carefully regulate her sexuality afterward, your chances of fathering the children in your household are much improved. This is the beginnings of the male shaping of female sexuality--the Madonna/whore complex. A man wants to experience pleasure with a openly sexual woman, but at the same time, can’t trust that woman to have only his children. So you have sex with the whore, but you marry a Madonna, a woman who exhibits much less sexuality. Therefore, you can be mostly sure she won’t run around on you, because her interest is less anyway.

Because the desired situation in most cultures is marriage, then that shapes the way that females are treated and taught about their sexuality from birth. If you want your daughter to grow into the kind of woman that can be married, then you must teach that daughter to be the Madonna. This is becoming a less important idea in modern American society now that women are capable of building their own lives as adults, but in the past, and in other cultures, it is tantamount. Be virginal and pure minded, and you survive. Otherwise, it is a life of expressing your sexuality at the whim of men looking for whores (and the set of behavioral rules that goes along with that).

I know as a woman from the Midwest, I have struggled with this set of cultural rules. I was raised in the Madonna tradition. As an adult, after a marriage that failed in large part to my being unable to fit the Madonna role, I struggle to fit into the dichotomy. At times, being the whore is divine, but I can’t support the image completely. I’ve proved that I’m not the Madonna. I’m stuck with the curiosity and knowledge that has led me to discover what I want, but the old-fashioned upbringing that inhibits me from being fully confident and able to explore the things that I want. I question my sexuality, from my drive to my desires, and fear that from a societal standpoint, I’d be found deviant.