Source: Bringing the Red Light District Home | Columbia Spectator

I think this student at Columbia nails it about sexual shame–rah! Here’s the last paragraph, which oughta start his eventual dissertation, if you ask me

From Eliot Spitzer to a teenager coming out as queer, our inability to deal with sexuality can alter the course of lives. The very notion of a gay pride parade illuminates the deep sexual shame which makes it necessary. While Disney will probably dominate Times Square for many years to come, we each have the individual power to create strong, open, informed, publicly accessible, and wild sexual spaces. A constant intellectual discourse and discussion of sexuality and sexual acts, along with a vigorous engagement in diverse and enjoyable sex, can only lead to a more fulfilling world.

Now days the saying “grow old gracefully” has a whole new meaning. Forget about celebrating your inner beauty and accepting the wrinkles around your eyes and the sagging body parts. For women–and increasing men–these are the signs of involuntary asexuality. And anyone going through this would hardly call their state of being “graceful”. No, awkward, embarrassing, even depressing is more like it.

Here’s where the lady in the photo comes in. From the looks of it, Mamie Van Doren isn’t going down, or getting old, without a fight. Face lift, check. Breast augmentation, double check. Hair extensions, hmmm… well if she’s not wearing some kind of hair piece, kudos to her.

You see, Ms. Van Doren is 77. Okay, she’s not exactly “growing old gracefully” but she sure looks happy. She puts most average boomer girls to shame. With all the anti-aging products and procedures, anyone who doesn’t at least dye their hair or watch their weight is simply old. And that’s not sexy.

How did we get to this point? We should be ashamed.

As a feminist, I should probably be ashamed of how much I love VH1’s “Rock of Love” starring Bret Michaels of 80s hair metal band Poision. A show that depicts women as catty, sexually obsessed drunks probably shouldn’t be on the list of shows a thinking feminist watches. Oh well, too bad, I still tune in every week to see Amber, Laci and Brandi F., Brandi G. and Brandi H. fight over an over-the-hill faded rock star who hides his receding hairline under a doo-rag.

What I find so interesting about the show is how the women divide themselves into two very distinct teams almost instantly upon arriving in the house: Sluts vs. Virgins. See, like shows like The Bachelor or Joe Millionaire, these women all live in the same house as the apple of their eye (Mr. Michaels). Like most reality shows, these women are constantly given full access to any alcohol their smitten hearts desire: tequila, whiskey, brandy (not to be confused with Brandi), beer — you name it. There are also strategically placed stripper poles around the house for that impromptu poledance session where a girl proudly displays her gymnastics.

Once a girl gets up on the pole, the division is created. The Sluts cheer her on and anxiously wait their turn to show off their skills. The Virgins hold back, huddle around and whisper about the said girl. Usually somebody says something along the lines of, “Looks like SHE knows what she’s doing” or “I bet she’s never done THAT before” and the loudest, most pure of them all proclaims, “SHE’S A SLUT.”

And so the war begins. The Virgins talk about how much class they have and how they don’t NEED to throw themselves all over Bret and they don’t NEED to show their breasts constantly. The Sluts laugh at the Virgins’ prudishness and say that THEY are the ones having fun and the Virgins are just jealous, miserable hags. The Sluts have no respect for themselves while the Virgins have no self-confidence: so who wins?

Well, according to the most important opinion in “Rock of Love,” Mr. Bret Michaels, neither of them really do. Last season, Bret chose one of the Virgins, a sweet girl named Jess, who proudly proclaimed at the end of the season that she won his heart without having to act like a skank. A few months later, on the reunion show, she told a baffled Bret that he chose the wrong girl (Virgin) and should have picked Heather (pretty much the queen of the Sluts).

In real girl world, this sort of phenomenon happens all the time except we don’t divide ourselves into two even teams so much. Girls have been using sexuality to assert heierarchal dominance over each other since the beginning of time. Even if there’s no factual evidence of whether a girl has been sexually promiscuous or not, she can still be determined a slut by her peers if they decide they want to shame her. Fortunately, this tends to fade out after high school as we disperse into larger communities and don’t feel the need to “compete” so directly with one another.

On “Rock of Love,” the women are into their 20s and 30s, are put back into this high school-like microcosm and rather than being in an unspoken competition (high school), they are in an actual competition. Girls in these sort of settings simultaneously feel the need to be catty, but also have support and back up and thus the division into teams.

Season 2 has just started and the girls have already started to pick teams. Will Bret pick a Slut this time only to realize that he should have gone with a Virgin? Will their be a rogue competitor who is neither a Slut or a Virgin and perhaps proudly proclaims her sexuality without trashing other girls? I sincerely doubt it, but I’m going to stay tuned.

Last summer Hillary Clinton’s surprising (to some) display of cleavage on the Senate floor was big news. With primary season in full swing, now seems like an appropriate time to revisit this issue with an eye toward sexual shame.

The initial reaction was one of shock at what was viewed as an excessive display of sexuality in a setting that was not appropriate. Later critics, in response, rightfully pointed out that the reaction was not only too extreme, but also probably unfounded. If you saw a woman in an office setting wearing the outfit Ms. Clinton had on that day on the Senate floor, you’d most likely think nothing of it, unless you worked in the office of a nunnery.

Clinton has a long and documented history of unusually conservative attire, dating back at least until her time as first lady. She’s even been accused of trying to suppress her sexuality entirely, which is the what many suspect was her reason for wearing this particular plunging neckline.

It’s quite likely that Clinton’s strategy of pushing her sexuality to an almost imperceptible place did benefit her in her road to at least a 50/50 chance at the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. But it’s wrong to assume that the reason for her strong presidential bid is because people forgot, or aren’t conscious, of the fact that she is a woman. What did happen is that people stopped thinking of her as a sexual being.

Society’s fear or distrust of a sexual woman is what made her rejection of that aspect of herself a potential asset in her political quest.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to feel emboldened by Hillary’s actions. With this brief gesture, she appeared to be saying “no, I am not hiding my sexuality,” rather than “yes, I am a sexual being.” She answering rather than exclaiming.

A politician’s job is to reflect what society wants. Ms. Clinton reflects our own fear of sexuality.

MSNBC (yes, that MSNBC) has an excellent series on sexual health. And they’re right: America has a problem with old people getting busy. Too bad, I think they’re adorable!

Hi everyone,

Happy New Year!

As you may know our blog nights are third Thursdays of every month. (Email mark at shamefree dot org to know more about the free food for blogging deal.) In 2007 that ruled out both Thanksgiving and Christmas…a nice long break!

We look forward to bringing sexual shame to light in 2008!

Mark

Unless you just read an article about Stephen Colbert running for President, I’ll bet politics weren’t the first, second, or third thing you though of when you read the subject of this article. Perhaps to your disappointment, I’ll be writing today about the Sex Party in Canada, not an orgy.

The Sex Party is in the news lately because of a pamphlet the Canada Post refused to deliver.

The Sex Party is a relatively new sex-positive Canadian political party devoted to fighting and counteracting negativity regarding sex.

I looked up their wikipedia entry… oops! I mean, I looked up Sex Party, British Columbia’s wikipedia entry, just to be sure there wasn’t any NAMBLAesqe controvery brewing, but it appears that there is thankfully not. They are truly fighting to make sex something that is not viewed negatively.

In Sex Party’s response to the refusal by Canada Post to deliver their pamphlet and the resulting legal arguments struck me as very relevant to this blog:

Under Canadian law the only way a government agency can legally prohibit a communication is to prevent harm.

What evidence of harm did Canada Post provide?

It tendered a report of a psychologist that “some” children age 8-12 could get embarrassed or anxious seeing the material.

That’s it! In this mountain of documents, those words are the only that pertain to harm.

But what a bizarre form of harm!

In the current, unfortunate, state of affairs, sexual imagery of that sort would be likely to cause “harm” to most of the adult population of the United States!

The most bizarre aspect of this story is that these are not hardcore pornographic images; quite the contrary, actually. These aren’t quite at the level of anatomy textbook, but they’re just about as titillating.

This just follows the logic that has become that status quo: not only should children (and adults) be protected from “sexually explicit images” (whatever that means), they must also be protected from anything that even acknowledges sex in any meaningful way.

In most minds, Catholic school and sexual shame pretty much go hand-in-hand. As an institution, it evokes images of stern nuns with rulers warning of the sins of premarital sex and masturbation. After nine years of public school, my parents decided to send me to Catholic high school. When you grow up in a large city, parents who want their children to get a decent education but don’t want to dish out too much money often default to Catholic schools. Though I was furious to leave my secular world, the school wasn’t so bad. There weren’t any nuns and I didn’t have to wear a pleated skirt. And beside the daily morning prayer over the loudspeaker,* it was a lot like any other high school.

Well, except for the fact that all freshmen were required to take a course called “Christian Sexuality.” I was absolutely appalled by the notion of this not only because I was 14 and terrified of sex, but also because it seemed contradictory in some way. Oh, and I was also terrified of Christianity. Didn’t Christians completely oppose sex? What in the world were we going to talk about for an entire semester?

My ex-hippie teacher had an amazingly ironic name (rhymes with snow and starts with an H) and you could really tell that she struggled with this class. She wanted to make it a comprehensive sexuality class, but the confines of the Diocese made the curriculum incredibly confusing. She showed us how to put a condom on a banana, we talked about how it was okay to be gay and we even discussed transgender issues. But for every condom/banana and fill-in the blank contraceptive worksheet, she’d insist “DON’T HAVE SEX UNTIL YOU’RE MARRIED!!” and then start discussing spermicidal foam.

You could see her heart breaking when she announced that she would be showing an informational film on the “dangers of abortions.” We wide-eyed freshmen sat traumatized as the “vacuum” sucked a “poor little baby” out of a screaming women. There was no post-film discussion or Q&A session and we didn’t talk about the film for the rest of the semester. She did, however, pass out pregnancy crisis center business cards.

Honestly, I do respect Ms. uh, Snow for her efforts to give us a comprehensive education in sexuality. She did what she could and in actuality, it was a lot better than what most public schools offer. The most depressing thing was how little impact any of it made on my classmates. Sexual shame ran rampant in my high school as I suppose it does as most schools. The word “fag” was hurled frequently and girls constantly defaced the bathroom walls, accusing each other of performing certain sexual acts on certain football players.

I wonder if it would have been any different if Ms. Snow had free rein of the class. Imagine if we could have actually discussed transgendered issues rather than just being told that it was “normal” and moving on to the next topic. Would it have made a difference in the bullying and the shaming if the point of that class was to discuss sexuality with freshmen rather than half-heartedly mentioning it?

A couple of years ago, I was on a beach in Santa Cruz and for whatever reason, I uttered the words “Christian Sexuality.” A guy turned around and asked me what high school I went to. Turns out, we were a couple of grades apart and both had “Ms. Snow” for that class. We agreed that the condom on the banana demonstration had left a lasting impression on us. And from talking to my former classmates over the years, it is something they too will always remember.

It is impossible to imagine how much that one little demonstration has probably prevented.

*Side note: I initially had thought it was mandatory to cross yourself after the prayer, even if you weren’t Catholic, and I kept doing it in the wrong order until I got called on it.

Larry Craig is back in the news, this time to give his side of the story of what really happened in the then and now infamous bathroom stall at a Minneapolis airport. He set his suitcase down. Toilet paper got stuck to his shoe. His hand reached down to grab the toilet paper. And then, he was arrested. Craig spared no details on that front, but reiterated his blanket statement that, no, he is not gay or bisexual. And, yes, he kept the incident a secret from friends and family because he was “embarrassed”. Hmmm…it seems Larry Craig is a lot more distressed over the state of his sexuality than the public is. His interview with Matt Lauer this week failed to hit a ratings peak. In fact, according to the Washingon Post, the “Singing Bee” and “America’s Biggest Loser” regularaly draws bigger audiences in the time slot. Have we grown tired of political sex scandals?

Let’s hope so. No wants to go back to the days when a senator (i.e. Craig) could earn conservative support by calling the president a “bad, bad boy”. Shame on you senator for your reckless words. We couldn’t care less what you do behind closed doors.

Sometime around the age of 18, I can’t remember exactly when, I realized that it just wasn’t worth it. Virginity was becoming too much of a burden. As an out and proud asexual I didn’t appreciate being categorized by my lack of sexual experience. Not having sex didn’t make me any more innocent or any less self-aware, it didn’t make my any better or any worse or any different than anyone else, and the notion that it did was seeming increasingly absurd. “Virgin” was becoming a label of sexual shame, a way to define me by what I was not. So I gave it up.

I wish I could point to some ritual. I wish I had written the word “virgin” on a piece of paper and tossed it in the fire, or that I had waved my arms, taken a deep breath and felt the shame exhale from my system. Maybe it would have been good to exorcise one pointless ritual with another, but instead I just said “fuck it” and was a virgin no more.

And, despite all of expectations, losing my virginity DID change me. All my life I’d been told to either be ashamed of having sex or not having sex or both. I’d been told that whether I had sex and how I had sex would profoundly affect my worth as a person. Rejecting all of that beats 45 seconds in the back of a Yugo any day.

I can’t recommend this process enough for anyone out there who identifies as a virgin or non-virgin. There’s enough to worry about when it comes to sex. Between STIs, clear communication, emotional turmoil, pregnancy, gossip, roleplaying, safety words and finding the right toys, we can’t afford to spend time stressing over how thoroughly we’re flowered. Shaming virgins and non-virgins gets in the way of real, vitally important dialogue about sex.

So here’s my plan. You know how True Love Waits gives out those virginity pledge cards that kids sign and carry around in their wallets? Remember those draft card burning rallies in the 60s?

Let’s start a group called “True Love Now!” and hold rallies across the country. Let’s have everyone- virgin, nonvirgin and sort-of virgin rip up cards and say “fuck it” to sexual shame. Let’s hand out condoms and safer sex information and have workshops on exploring nonsexual intimacy. Let’s stop worrying about who’s doing what and start helping each other do sex, power, pleasure and intimacy on our own terms.