First, a primer, from a person with only a very basic understanding of the subject.
“Sex-positive” feminists (self-described) are often placed at odds with purported “sex-negative” feminists (not a word they use themselves; they just call themselves “feminists”) over subjects like sex work (ie, prostitution and pornography). There is lots and lots of overlap between the two groups, but it can be grossly simplified into the idea that sex-positive feminists approve of sex work, and believe that it is a job like any other that should not be criminalized or stigmatized, and might benefit from government oversight and regulation. Non-sex-positive feminists believe that sex work institutions are harmful to women, as individuals and as a class, and fight against legitimizing it. “Sex-negative” is a pejorative term for this group of feminists and not a label they use to describe themselves. They may, in fact, like sex, and may not, actually, stigmatize interpersonal sexual relationships; the harm they attribute to sex work is political and cultural, and very often violent at the individual level. The way they describe the consequences of sex work makes people feel bad about prostitution and porn, and when conversations turn to prostitution and porn, they can be real buzzkills.
Lots of men prefer talking to sex-positive feminists rather than feminists (according to the differences denoted above), because lots of men like prostitution and porn, particularly when the financial transaction makes it easy to pretend that it’s just business and there are no victims (at least when prostitution and porn are done correctly). Prostitution and pornography come up as topics fairly frequently within skeptical communities (frequently, that is, for a scientific and technical interest), largely because of the large proportion of men within the community (men are the primary consumers of the sex trades). It comes up because people within communities are social and talk to each other about lots of different things, and porn is a common bonding experience for men online. It’s when women get involved in these conversations (about porn or prostitution) as analyzers (rather than as providers) that you then start to hear about “sex-positive” and “sex-negative” feminists. Sex-positive feminists don’t mind porn in theory; “sex-negative” feminists do. The use of these labels delineates to women which types of feminists are welcome to participate within that skeptical environment. Hint: “Sex-negative” feminists are told to like it or leave it. Sex-positive feminists are told to explain why porn and prostitution are really OK if done correctly (and they usually will).
End primer.
This entire business about the fake category of “sex-negative” feminism keeps the number of women participating in active skepticism to a minimum. Is it a conspiracy to keep porn around? I dunno. Scapegoating a less visible population is certainly a tried-and-true tactic of vilifying an “other” to promote in-group bonding. More or less demanding (by misrepresenting the women who vary from the rule) that women be sex-positive or be elsewhere means that women who are put off by the incorporation of sex into skepticism will stay out of your community; the risk comes in not knowing what percentage of women feel that way. Is it a majority of women? I dunno. Is the percentage of women in skepticism an indicator at all? I dunno (but the majority of women are not actively involved). But defining in narrow terms which women are welcome in skepticism is going to work against your efforts to recruit more women to the cause.
And this is the most astonishing thing: Who cares about sex-positive feminism within skepticism? Why on earth does a woman have to be a sex-positive feminist to help you with your letter-writing campaign to keep creationism out of textbooks? How is tolerating pornography relevant to the anti-vaccination movement? What does the politcal topic of regulating prostitution have to do with collecting data for human-caused global warming? And why do you want women to give you permission to mix up sex with skepticism in the first place? Why are you trying to bring sex into the business of skepticism? Which do you care about more? What does sex-positive feminism have to do with skeptical anything, outside of skeptical inquiry to the effects of sex work? The answer is nothing. There is no legitimate skeptical reason to invent and deploy (and then dismiss) a category of women who won’t overlook your non-skeptical, sexual behaviors within the community except that you don’t want to give the behaviors up and you don’t want to examine the reasons why. Like I said, buzzkill. And for some reason, separating sex business from skeptical business never seems to be an acceptable option.
I mean, it’s one thing to have a discussion about the potential harm of sex work or the possible benefits of legalizing or regulating sex work, and for people to discuss philosophy and data to support their arguments. (And these types of discussions might occur more often as more women become leaders within the skeptical movement, but they are not common now.) Supporting or decrying potential legislation, for example, based on evidence and reason falls well within the skeptical umbrella, but to fully explore the topic you’d need sex-positive feminists and other feminists and people who haven’t thought about it at all. Drumming out non-sex-positive feminists before the conversation can even be had would institutionalize biases and preconceived notions, and prejudice the group to conclusions about it. That’s not good skepticism. And if you’ve gone out of your way to denigrate non-sex-positive feminists beforehand, the ones you invite to participate in the discussion you’ve already predisposed your community to take less seriously.
The only place sex-positive feminists and non-sex-positive feminists come into conflict is within the scope of sex work and the politics of sex. Manufacturing conflict within non-sex work topics because you want to keep the sexytime in skepticism is going undermine your efforts to bring more women into the fold. Non-sex-positive feminists are not enemies to the skeptical movement. Requiring sex-positive feminism–be it officially or by casting aspersions on and creating strawmen about non-sex-positive feminism–unnecessarily alienates potential allies. There are a lot of women out there who could help you. Don’t pit them against each other over sex.
There’s no admission test, skeptics should be open to criticism of all their ideas. If that puts off fairy-believers or porn-turns-men-into-rapists nuts, so be it. I find that porn haters are a tiny minority among nonbelievers — most porn haters are religious conservatives.
Are you sure? How do you know this? Have you ever actually investigated who objects to porn?
I agree that skeptics should be open to criticism of all their ideas.
What is this referring to?
I always struggle a bit with this term, because I think a lot of people don’t generally understand what a ‘sex-positive’ feminist is, as opposed to any other kind of feminist. Anecdotally, I would say that most people I meet think all feminists are awful, buzzkilling harpies, and then when i describe what my feminist values are they realise that actually, they agree with me. Then they freak out about whether or not they are feminists…
I consider myself ‘sex-positive’, but in a much broader sense than sex-work. My views on sex-work is that every case is individual and it is too complex a subject to describe so generally. But then, I also consider myself ‘pro-choice’ in many other ways than abortions, even though that falls into it too.
To be honest, I tend to just describe myself as a humanist, and if people query what that means, THEN I launch into my impassioned speech about a woman’s right to choose her sexual partners and the fact that god more than likely does not exist!
For some reason, the local server will not allow me back onto the “#40 Misconception:” thread, so I will remain ignorant of any advance in the argument until I get to a more “open” server. I say this as an explanation as to why this might seem off-topic:
I know someone who is unable to see the similarity between her saying about a man, “Isn’t he dishy,” and her husband saying something similar about a woman. “Ah, but he means it in a sexual way,” she says, in her defence. “And your way is?” “Oh, because he is just so dishy!”
She openly admits she watches tennis (especially Wimbledon, for some reason) as she likes to ogle the men’s legs; she will say this in front of her husband, and makes no concealment of feasting her eyes when any male “sex symbol” is on TV. Her husband is rather dumpy, and balding, apparently way off the scale of what his wife admits to finding attractive. He once made the mistake of saying, “What a bonny lass,” (or something similar – the actual quote, though given, eludes me) about a young girl as they were walking past a school; she is still convinced that he is a paedophile, and watches him like a hawk.
This is not an unusual situation; I have observed it in many other couples. So, who is the more “downtrodden” here?
Getting more O/T, the idea of “sex-positive” and “sex-negative” is intriguing, and one I had never considered before. A lot of women moan, “Men only want women for sex,” which I do consider to be a very sweeping statement, and one that is not always correct, though I have heard one man admit, “Men’s bits,” [men can be rather coy around women] “are always producing, so a certain back-pressure builds up. In a sense, it’s like having to go for a wee; once it’s done, that’s it, you’re okay for a while longer.” “Men only want women for sex,” is also a statement that implies that women have no interest in sex, which I know to be wrong.
Obviously, some women recognise this, and use it for their advantage, be it pleasure or financial, or both – they, I assume, are the “sex-positive”. However, this does not mean that there are no victims in the sex industry (and there are males as well as females in the trade) but there are a lot of women who are glad to be able to use their talent for their personal gain. In most cases, the talent is that of beauty (though not always). I have spoken to a few (certainly not a huge number) women working outside the more blatant sex industry (perhaps one might call it the “visual sex” industry – the beautiful-women-draped-over-expensive-cars industry) who say that they enjoy it, and do not feel in any way demeaned, used or abused; it’s just a great way of earning money, and a lot better than sitting in a stuffy office all day. I can only take their word for it, as I am no oil painting myself; even if I was, I doubt it would be my chosen vocation. However, what is most often the case is that any women demonstrating their disgust at women being “used” like this are, as one man described them, “right munters” (a term that both appals and amuses me). Curiously, the “munters” are not prepared to listen to the beauties putting their views across – in other words, treating them with the same disdain as the bosses are claimed to be meting out.
It does appear to me that a lot of women want to have their cake and eat it.
“There is no legitimate skeptical reason to invent and deploy (and then dismiss) a category of women who won’t overlook your non-skeptical, sexual behaviors within the community except that you don’t want to give the behaviors up and you don’t want to examine the reasons why”
This sounds a lot like the anti-atheist argument theists give: that we don’t want to believe because then we’d have to give up our sinful ways.
Sex – negativity is not a pejorative any more than pseudoscience is. It’s an accurate description of feminists AND conservatives who make irrational and unjustified claims against the act of sex. The same supposed skeptics against pornography would not rationally use the same arguments against gay male pornography despite a sheer lack of difference between gay male and straight porn.
My favorite example of this dilemma in the movement is the sexual images in the anime Ghost In The Shell. I’ve heard people criticize these images as “objectifying women.” However, the woman in the image is a character who is the protagonist and who is also a leader in a future police force. What’s more, those female sexual parts of her actually are just objects. Only a fraction of her nervous system is still human. The rest, cyborg. The feminine beauty of her body “shell” was her personal choice.
There’s no denying that the show uses sex to advertise to it’s target male audience, but is that the concept of objectification and misogyny that we should be fighting as feminists? I personally don’t think so, but many feminists would disagree. So, which is it?
As a straight male with a strong attraction to the female body, you can have the thickest clothes you can find on a female body and somehow my mind will still desire her soft skin against mine. Does that infringe on her or objectify her just because I have an attraction? I don’t think so. I still treat such women as equals and behave professionally around them.
As more female protagonists enter popular culture, is it really a surprise that they would be depicted sexually? You going to tell me that Superman wasn’t depicted sexually? In tights? How many other male heroes out there wear tights or even go shirtless? And how right is it to suggest that bodybuilding men are the ideal of male beauty?
The only way to depict a woman which would not draw out my desire for women sexually, is wearing a burca. That’s the irrational direction that the argument against objectification eventually treads. The argument itself is weak unless coupled with clear signs of dehumanization towards the woman in question, like in the case of rape, which as it has scientifically been established, is not about sex. It’s important to note that the real problems with the sex industry which harms people are not connected to the objectification of people. Rather, they are connected to the fact that sex-negative culture has forced the industry into unregulated black markets. That’s why sex negativity is a real thing and not just an insult to your ears. It deserves to be called out.
The premise is fine, that skepticism requires all points of view to be taken seriously. however I am a bit concerned here about the generalizations and the over all tone of the piece,