Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (3 page)

There’s a popular feminist shirt these days that reads: THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE. Ashley Judd wore one at the 2004 pro-choice March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. Margaret Cho wore one on the Spring 2003 cover of
Ms
. magazine. I wear one, too; I love this shirt. Because you never really do know what a feminist looks like. And believe me, we’re everywhere.

I’m better in bed than you are. And I have feminism to thank for it.

There’s nothing more hackneyed than the notion that feminists hate sex (but I guess if you buy the ugly, man-hating stereotype, hating sex follows). Feminists do it better ’cause we know how to get past all the bullshit.

Women’s sexuality is often treated like a commodity, a joke, or a sin. This is especially true for us younger women who end up getting totally screwed up by social influences telling us what “hot” or desirable behavior is. (Generally, it’s flashing boobs or faux-lesbian make-out sessions. Never been a fan of either.)

When you’re getting abstinence-only education during the day and
Girls Gone Wild
commercials at night, it’s not exactly easy to develop a healthy sexuality. You’re taught that sex before marriage is bad bad bad, but that if you want to be a spring-break hottie, you’d better start making out for the camera.

While these two messages are seemingly conflicting, they’re actually promoting the same idea—that young women can’t make their own decisions about sex. Whether it’s a teacher telling you not to or a cameraman telling you how to, having sex that’s about making yourself happy is a big no-no these days. Shit, you can’t even buy vibrators in some states!

To get unscrewed, you really need to take a close look at all the insane things stacked up against women having a good old time in bed. And after marveling at the ridiculousness of things like the sexual double standard and the faux-sexy crap that’s forced down your throat, you just learn to say fuck it.

Women are taught that we’re only supposed to have sex under these bizarre arbitrary guidelines: only if you’re married; only if it’s for procreation; and only with another girl if guys can watch. So unless you’re going to do it the way other people want, just don’t.

Nothing freaks me out/pisses me off more than abstinence-only education. Basically, it’s the most naive form of sex
education you can get: Sex is bad, don’t have it until you’re married, contraception doesn’t work. Somehow educators think this will convince kids to not have sex. Compare that to comprehensive sex education that teaches abstinence but also makes sure that teens have medically correct information about contraception, STDs, and the like. It’s reality-based sex ed that understands that no matter how many scare tactics you throw at people, they’re still going to do what they want.

This isn’t to say that I think holding off on sex is bad—abstain all you want, ladies. But if you’re holding off, do it because you’re waiting to have sex on your own terms. And don’t
not
have sex because you think you’re worthless if you do—which is exactly what these classes are saying.

As it stands now, the government is spending $178 million a year to tell young women they’re big whores if they give it up,
¹
and various other untruths. Most (80 frigging percent)
²
abstinence-only education programs give out false information about sex—all of it sexist, most of it bordering on the ridiculous.

The medical misinformation is not just untrue—it’s straight-up dangerous. For example, these programs teach not only that condoms don’t protect you from pregnancy or STDs and HIV, but that they could cause cancer.
³
(Condom cancer?) After kids are exposed to this bullshit, they are less likely to use contraception—’cause it doesn’t work anyway, right? Because of abstinence-only education, we’re going to have a generation of sexual dum-dums.

It seems unfathomable, but, somehow, teaching the truth about sex and contraception is just too scary for some folks. Conservatives and right-wing religious groups think that it’s going to make us all slutty. I know proponents of the all-holy abstinence agenda bristle at the idea of girls being taught how to put a condom on a penis, even though studies show that real sex ed (you know—the kind that tells the truth) significantly reduces teenage girls’ STD rates. Not to mention comprehensive sex ed actually delays teen sex and ensures kids are making informed decisions. Isn’t that more important than being afraid that your kid isn’t a virgin?

Apparently, not so much. Schools that get federal funding for abstinence-only sex ed
can’t
teach safe-sex practices. You heard right. They can’t even talk about it. Because god forbid your kids have safe sex. Much better that they resort to only-a-slut-would-use-a-condom sex. But what’s just as disturbing as the bad science behind these programs is the unapologetic sexist crap they’re spewing.

One program teaches that women need “financial support,” while men need “admiration.”
⁴
Another tells students:
“Women gauge their happiness and judge their success on their relationships. Men’s happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.”
⁵
Yeah. I’ll just let that one sit for a bit.

Another program tells a faux-fairytale that isn’t so much about sex as about how women need to keep their mouths shut. One book used in abstinence curricula,
Choosing the Best,
tells the story of a knight who saves a princess from a dragon (original, I know). When the knight arrives to save her, the princess offers some ideas on how to kill the dragon. Her ideas work, but the knight feels emasculated, so he goes off and marries a village maiden, “only after making sure she knew nothing about nooses or poison.”

The curriculum concludes with the moral of the story: “Occasional suggestions and assistance may be all right, but too much of them will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess.”
⁶

Hear that, gals? Shh . . . if you let on that you’re smart, your prince on the white horse is likely to run scared!

Abstinence programs are also
huge
fans of making sex the ladies’ responsibility. It’s up to us to make sure it doesn’t happen, because guys just can’t help themselves. One program actually advises girls:

The logic is laughable. Seems that girls don’t get horny, so it’s up to us to make sure that The Sex doesn’t happen. And if it does, well, you should have kept your legs closed, you big dummy. But really and truly, the following gem is my fave. It comes from an “educator” speaking at an abstinence conference last year:
“
Your body is a wrapped lollipop. When you have sex with a man, he unwraps your lollipop and sucks on it. It may feel great at the time, but unfortunately, when he’s done with you, all you have left for your next partner is a poorly wrapped, saliva-fouled sucker.”
⁸

Holy. Shit. Is that clear enough for you? Without your precious “lollipop,” you’re a piece-of-shit, dirty-ass, already-sucked-on candy. Which is supposedly why you have to hold on to your most precious commodity—your virginity.

I have never really understood what the big deal was about virginity. Really. Mine was lost without a great deal of fanfare to a high school boyfriend whom I dated for several years afterward. I expected to feel different—I didn’t. The whole precious-flower-virginity thing always seemed silly to me. So imagine my surprise when I found out that I was just a used-up piece of trash (or candy) without it.

Remember how back in the day, your virginity was a valuable commodity and your “purity” was pretty much what your dad banked on to get a good price for when you got married? You think that’s all in the past? Not even close.

One of the most disturbing stories I’ve ever heard was about Jessica Simpson and her dad, Joe. A gossip mag reported that during a ceremony when Jessica was twelve years old, Joe made her promise to stay a virgin until marriage. Wait, it gets worse. Jessica’s dad, who is also her manager, gave her a promise ring and said, “I’m going to tell you how beautiful you are every day . . . and I’m going to be that person until the day you find a man to do that in my place.”
⁹

If you’re like me, you’re probably in the fetal position on the floor right now, trying to make that image go away. But this isn’t unusual—there are virginity cards, rings, ceremonies, you name it. The one thing they all have in common is that girls’ virginity and sexuality don’t belong to them.

Not only are virginity pledges sooo creepy and wrong, they’re not exactly effective. Recent studies have shown that teens who take virginity pledges are actually more likely to have oral and anal sex.

Their logic is that because it’s not intercourse, it’s not real sex. Somehow I don’t think the folks who made up the whole pledge thing had sodomy in mind. (You would think the idea of good Christian girls taking it in the ass would motivate some change in the whole pledge system, but they’re sticking to their guns.)

What kills me is that we’re falling for this crap. Women feel so bad about losing their virginity that some of them are actually deluded by the idea that they can become “born again” virgins. Like a self-imposed dry spell. For fuck’s sake, there are even women who are getting plastic surgery to get fake hymens put back in! Who the hell wants their hymen back?

And the people who are just shocked—shocked!—that younger women are looking to oversexualized pop culture to define themselves are the very same ones that are shoving virginity down our throats. (Not literally, of course. Ew.) For folks who are trying to tell us we shouldn’t define ourselves by our sexuality, they certainly can’t get past the whole dick-meets-vagina thing. And really, if you want to attach young women’s worth to their virginity, you can’t be surprised when they follow suit and attach all their worth to their sexuality. You can’t have it both ways.

In addition to the fact that it’s pretty much never okay for women to have sex (unless you’re married and doing it to procreate, of course), there’s a special emphasis placed on younger women. We’re
really
not supposed to have sex.

The logic is pretty simple: Girls aren’t supposed to like sex, especially teenage girls. So if you’re having sex, either you’re a slut or you’re a victim who’s being taken advantage of. Neither are particularly attractive options. It’s like the virgin-whore complex on crack. The idea that teen girls
want to have sex is just too much for some people to handle. Girls are supposed to think sex is icky and make excuses about headaches.

I’ll never forget the first time I realized just how nutty people could get over the idea of a teen girl’s choosing and wanting to have sex. I was watching
Oprah
a while back, when Dr. Phil (pre-self-help empire) was a regular. He was discussing the “problem” of teenage sex. There was one seventeen-year-old on the show talking about how she and her boyfriend had oral sex. She was superarticulate and smart, and made her position very clear. She said she had been with her boyfriend a long time, and they loved each other but weren’t ready for intercourse, and so they had decided to have oral sex instead. Dr. Phil ripped into her like a maniac, saying, “A friend doesn’t ask you to go in the bathroom, get on your knees in a urine-splattered tile floor, and stick their penis in your mouth.” The girl looked at over at her mom and said, “That’s not what happened to me,” but she was ignored. Nice, huh? But insults and scare tactics against teen sex are par for the course these days.

One conservative Christian group, Focus on the Family, is so concerned about teens having sex that it came out with a study (a very dubious one at that) concluding that having sex before you’re eighteen makes you more likely to be poor and divorced.
¹⁰
I suppose I have a life of poverty-stricken solitude to look forward to. And that master’s degree I have must be a mistake of some sort. Oh, and just so you have some perspective on this, Focus on the Family also made a public statement that accused the cartoon
SpongeBob SquarePants
of promoting homosexuality to children.