Ellie Lumpesse's Open Salon Blog

Loose Woman

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:10:35 -0400

This post originally appeared on my blog at lumpesse.com in February of 2007.

***

Character
by Taslima Nasrin

You’re a girl
and you’d better not forget
that when you step over the threshold of your house
men will look askance at you.
When you keep walking down the lane
men will follow you and whistle.
When you cross the lane and step onto the main road
men will revile you and call you a loose woman.

If you’ve got no character
you’ll turn back,
and if not
you’ll keep on going,
as you’re going now.

I read this poem with my students today and asked them to think about the phrase “loose woman”. They brainstormed synonyms on the board - promiscuous, slut. I asked them if it was a positive or negative phrase - negative, definitely. I asked them to read the poem again and imagine that “loose woman” was neutral and without any particularly loaded connotation.

They looked at me blankly.

I read it aloud another time.

“How did that feel? How is it different?”

More blank stares.

“What if a woman called herself ‘loose’? Does the phrase lose any power then?”

They would think that she was a slut and wonder about her character.

“What if all women looked at this phrase as neutral, then what?”

The promising one raises her hand and volunteers that the poem is irrelevant without that phrase being negative. That it defines the experience of the poem and the message.

I ask her what it would say about one’s character to not just ignore the insult but to refuse to see it as one? “What happens,” I ask, “to the second stanza when being a loose woman is neutral?”

But it isn’t neutral and my moment of instruction failed.

Why? Because I am a coward. The woman I reference, who doesn’t pass judgment on this term, who embraces it or at least tolerates it is only an abstraction to them. I deftly avoided the opportunity to out myself, and for that reason my question must have seemed nonsensical and without grounding.

Now, all I feel is a sense of mild shame. Here I have judged this room full of 18-year-olds as being prudish and judgemental when I, too, conform to this standard. Indeed, I am not the mythical loose woman. It is not neutral. But I’ve called myself out and I will keep walking so perhaps I’ve at least maintained my character.

ugly, ostracized and socially inept

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:10:55 -0400

That is how the clients of sex workers are being characterized in the comments on this post. I don't have a lot of time to react to that right now but it troubles me deeply. In a post about compassion and fighting repression drawing that sort of line in the sand just heaps stigma on the people that patronize sex workers for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes other sex bloggers come to me and ask how they can get into the phone sex business. The number one thing I tell them is to respect their clients, deeply and truly, as human beings. They will get that respect echoed back to them ten-fold. I've had a few clients that were real turds but we all meet assholes every day of our lives.

The problem present in discussions like the one I'm linking to above is that it rests on two assumptions:

1. That the clients of sex workers cannot and are not having sexual activity other than with the sex worker.

2. There is something inherently wrong with paying for sexual fulfilment and paying proves that you cannot "get it for free."

The experience of countless sex workers I've spoken to implies that this simply isn't the case. So, just like I bristle when activists paint sex workers with a broad stroke as a huddled mass of the most depressed, exploited, and disenfranchised parts of humanity, I am equally concerned by similar stereotypes about sex worker clients. They are neither all abusive, hateful, patriarchs nor are they ugly, ostracized and socially inept. Some may appear from either of those flavors but the rest characterize a full spectrum of human conditions and personalities as well as motivations for paying for sexual gratification.

A few less sweeping generalizations might do us all a bit of good in this situation and a few more people that are willing to step up and proudly discuss their experience with sex workers.

4 Symptoms of Bi-phobia

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:10:27 -0400

I've been having run-ins with biphobia lately in a place where I expect it but still wish I could feel safe, the kink community. So, it got me thinking about some of the ways in which bias against bisexuals is displayed. I write this with the understanding that there are more fluid terms that exist currently such as pansexual, hetero-flexible, and genderqueer. While I've used each of these terms for myself in the past, I tend to use bisexual more often because it has a firm grip in our society and people think they know what it means.

So, here are my top 4 symptoms of biphobia that I come across quite commonly.

1. Having different standards for men and women.

Female bisexuality tends to be fetishized in our society and therefore marginally more accepted than male bisexuality. It is common for people to make assumptions about gender and how it relates to choices and monogamy.

2. Thinking that bisexuality is a phase or a process.

There are some bisexuals that will stop seeing either women or men during their lives for a variety of reasons. They may enter to a lifelong, committed, and monogamous relationship or they may decide that one type of attraction no longer exists. But, that doesn't mean that they are not bisexual or that they have passed through it. Unless someone tells you that they are now straight or gay (or any other label they may choose), honor the decision they have made about how to describe themselves.

3. Believing that bisexuals are "easy" or promiscuous.

The old joke is that bisexuals are greedy and will be with anyone. In reality they obviously have standards and limitations just like any gay or straight person that is looking for a partner or partners. That said, why not also question the fundamental assumptions of this bias? Consider what you think the problem with promiscuity is and ask yourself if there is any real grounding for it. Even if bisexuals (or any category of people) were more promiscuous, why is that threatening to you?

4. Assuming that people who are in a same-sex relationship are gay or in an opposite-sex relationship are straight.

Bisexuals often feel invisible because, if they are monogamous, they cannot easily signal their sexual identity to others based on their relationships. This is similar to the predicament that many non-monogamous people experience when they appear to be in a single, committed relationship. The reality is that the display of one relationship choice is not enough to define the identity of a person.

***

What are some other symptoms of biphobia that you may have encountered or perhaps even had yourself?

Suburban Ennui Leads to Needle Play

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:10:05 -0400

This post originally appeared in a blog I contribute to called Junkbuzzed. It chronicles my first time trying a form of BDSM edge-play that involves needles.

So, a few weekends ago I did something that was profoundly stupid. I laid down naked on a massage table of questionable origins in a garage in the rural South surrounded by my boyfriend in drag, a sadist, and a trained and licensed body piercer. I’m not even to the stupid part yet. I then let a man I had met two times before poke needles into my flesh like I was so many feet of fabric destined to be his drapes. Did I mention that the body piercer wasn’t the one doing the poking? She was just handing the sadist the supplies.

In fact the fabric analogy was helping me at this moment as I tried to pretend that there weren’t pointy hypodermic needles slowly tearing through the top layer of my flesh. Despite being nervous, the actual process didn’t hurt too bad. I’m sure there are cancer patients that get stuck with needles in the hospital many more times per day. But this got me thinking (in-between my tourette’s-style strings of explatives everytime he twisted a needle into my back) that I needed to scrutinize this experience. Why was I voluntarily replicating even a portion of the agony any inconvenience of someone with a terminal illness? Who the fuck in their right mind lets a man that looks like David the Gnome and who is wearing a kilt jam needles into them?

I looked around the room. The other sadists and masochists were in full tilt. I tried to imagine that the needles felt like a flogging. That full, sensual, thuddy and stingy pain that makes me wet.

“Fuck, shit, cunt, bastard!” emitted from my mouth as I pondered this. I wasn’t powering through this pain like I did with others. It was then that I started laughing.

It started as a giggle. I tried to stiffle it. My boyfriend, the Sadist, and the licensed body piercer all looked at my quizzically.

“What is wrong?” asked the Sadist.

I giggled some more. Then it turned into a chuckle.

“If you don’t stop laughing” he implored, “I’m going to have to stop sticking needles in you.”

That was all I could take. The chuckles turned into guffaws. Deep, rolling laughs that shook my entire body. The needles shifted and poked with each laugh but I couldn’t stop.

Everyone stood around me stunned.

My laughter got louder and a few other bystanders showed up to find out what was so funny. The Sadist was scratching his head and muttering about how he never got this sort of reaction before.

While gasping for breath, with tears running down my face, I managed to start sputtering out an answer to his question. What, indeed, was so funny?

“What. . .the fuck. . . is wrong with all of us?”

Everyone had confused looks on their faces.

“I’m in a garage. . .hahahaha. . .of a stranger. . .and you’re putting needles in me!”

I continued to laugh, because, this was the funniest moment of my life so far. If all of my journey with BDSM to this point had been a set-up. This was, finally, the brilliant punchline. I saw it clearly.

“I mean. . . hahahaha. . . don’t we all have a book to read, or something?”

I had figured it out completely. Kink is just about ennui and mine had clearly topped out in the moments before I told the Sadist he could stick needles in me.

After my revelation, I calmed down and stayed still (with a few giggly outbursts) long enough for him to put the rest of his needles in me. The laugh had been cathartic but I think it put him off his game. When he went to take the needles out, he only had the heart to make one removal hurt extra bad. Or perhaps the fact that I growled angrily about punching him in the balls was a convincing reason to be gentle.

Am I a shitty submissive? I’m not sure. I might not even be a shitty pin-cushion. But I know that a moment of clarity like that can’t be pushed aside or ignored. It doesn’t matter how many nitrile gloves or antiseptic pads he or she is weilding. There is something a little fucked about people sitting around shoving needles in each other.

Fortunately, I’ve never minded being a little fucked.

***

In other news, I wish I could see the comments on my post yesterday! I am getting email notifications but I can't view them, hopefully this one will be different.

What’s wrong with sex work

Thu, 9 Oct 2008 14:10:47 -0400

I stay away from a lot of feminist blogs because, well, reading them often hurts my soul. In fact other than perusing Feministing and Feministe, I leave it up to Ren, Trinity, Amber, and Caroline to keep my up to date on what is happening vis-a-vis sex and feminism. These ladies have the patience of saints because they manage to spend a lot of time reading the same angry arguments about sex work and responding to them over and over again.

For a long time I knew that there was some fundamental lack of clash in the debate. An ideological space where the competing ideas could not be resolved because they are operating on different planes. Many radical and second wave feminists take a strong social constructionist view of gender and violence against women. Many sex positive feminists see this as lacking in nuance and denying the autonomy of individual women. But, that distinction has been on the table for a long time.

Today I started thinking about another one when I was reading this post of Caroline's. She links to a blog where a very brave woman discusses her incredibly damaging and negative experiences in the sex industry. That woman believes that she is dismissed by sex positive feminists as being a "sad case" - that her experience is the exception and does not invalidate sex work. On the flip-side, many former sex workers that had positive experiences feel their voices are drowned out and silenced by radical feminists who claim they are apologists for the patriarchy.

The problem is that these arguments still aren't truly clashing with each other. Two claims are being debated as if they are a single one even though they are neither directly related nor mutually exclusive.

Claim #1: Sex work is wrong.

Claim #2: There is something wrong within sex work.

The "within" is very important in that second claim. It distinguishes the idea that sex work is on face something to be rejected from the claim that there are problems in sex work that need to be remedied. I don't know a single sex worker that would not concede the second claim. Of course there are individuals, perhaps even the majority of individuals, who are severely adversely affected by sex work. But, one claim does not automatically support the other because Claim #2 is a quantitative claim that describes a current problem whereas Claim #1 is qualitative and makes a value judgment. The material conditions of sex work can change and Claim #2 would be eroded but for those that support Claim #1, no change would be sufficient. By definition sex work is wrong and no number of pleasant personal experiences could change that.

So, yes, I desperately abhor the abuse and mistreatment of sex workers. I loath the deeply disturbing and violent treatment that sex workers face. As a separate issue I am, of course, concerned about the trafficking of human beings or the exploitation and rape of children that cannot consent to entering the sex trade. I can see all of these things and I can still say that sex work should exist and can be healthy. I can believe that it will never disappear and so it must be prepared, not just to make the best of a bad situation but to create joy out of a vocation that should be honored instead of denigrated. I honor the voices of women that have experienced pain or violence in sex work and I don't think that they are tokens. But, I think that their experiences provide a backdrop for an important change and (r)evolution, not for a dismantling of an eternal system.

(Also, go read the 11th Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy)