Guilt and Awkward Confessions and Weirdness and Guilt

You guys know I'm fairly kinky and generally all proud and vocal about it--I'm usually the first person to get upset and insulted and angry when BDSM is portrayed negatively in the media or dismissed as weird or creepy or wrong. If you've been reading here, you've read lots of entries where I've done just that.

But then, as a woman and a feminist--a woman who has been sexually assaulted, a woman who is freaked out and disgusted by our sometimes rapetacular culture, who gets upset and offended by song lyrics and TV shows that imply blurred lines and lack of consent...well...a song came on the radio the other day, a pretty standard, unremarkable blues song, with lyrics that pretty much boiled down to "If you don't give me what I need, woman, I'll take it from you." And it bothered me, kind of a lot. Jack and I sat there in the car talking about rape culture and sexual assault statistics to a third party who kept saying things like "I don't think you're supposed to take this seriously."

I once read this book called Citizen Girl (warning: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!). It's a pretty simple little book about a 20-something EveryGirl struggling in the Corporate World in New York City. She gets hired by a sketchy company that lies to her, she gets used by them, she faces a world in which all other women are beautiful and vapid, or beautiful sellouts to the patriarchy, or (in one scene) butch, unshaven feminists. There are no in-betweens in Girl's world, no shades of gray.

Girl goes to a burlesque show, and it is Horrifying and Wrong! Girl goes to a woman-friendly, woman-run sex party, and it is A Phallocentric Tool of the Patriarchy in disguise. I don't think the authors ever actually use the term "patriarchy," but the attitude throughout the book is that everything either puts women down, brutalizes them, objectifies them in the worst way, or it is good and true and holy and pure. Penises are Bad. Dildos are Worse. Burlesque is the Enemy. Mascara also may partly be the enemy. Actually, kind of the only thing that isn't the enemy is Ms. magazine.

The climax of the book is a double-whammy:

1. Girl's boyfriend nonconsensually ties up her hands with some silk bondage rope from the goodie bag they gave her at the aforementioned Evil Sex Party.

2. It turns out her job was all kind of a scam, and the website she was working for is being redesigned as a rape-fantasy porn site where men can watch actresses dressed as high-powered business executives get fucked. Roughly. They even talk about men choosing the clips with the actress who looks most like their boss. Because women don't ever watch porn.

I cried when I finished this book, and I felt screwed up about my whole life for days afterwords. And this was years ago, before I moved to New York or started going to kinky parties or got especially educated or informed on feminism beyond the 101 level. I still feel kind of screwed up about it, even though I can tear it apart now as simplistic and devaluing the voices of sex workers and sex-positive feminists and women who wear make up for being the wrong kind of women.

But it still bothers me.

The problem is, how can I be upset by rape culture, by objectification of women, by images of brutalization, when I am sometimes aroused sexually by these images?

I mean, where do I draw the line? Clearly it's not okay to just say that whatever turns me on is okay. I mean, I delight in the clips at the end of Kink.com previews where the model smiles and talks about what a great time she had--yay! Consent and sexy times! But what about things like...The Story of O, which I've read and found hot and also pretty fucked up most of the time? Or stuff like some of the Wonder Woman art posted here, which I agree is creepy and fucked up in many ways, but I also find kind of hot?

It gets to a point where I start to wonder if there's something wrong with me.

I don't hate myself. I have some body image issues, I was in an abusive relationship for a while where I really did hate myself, and it took me a long time to get over it, but these days I mostly think I'm pretty awesome. I don't actually think that when Jack ties me up (which he does with my explicit, enthusiastic consent, because negotiation and communication are awesome, authors of Citizen Girl) it inherently makes him a misogynist and me a helpless collaborator with the Patriarchy to oppress all women everywhere.

But sometimes, while I'm simultaneously railing against people who treat women as objects and for my right to sometimes think of myself, a woman, as a sex object in certain situations because I think that's hot...well...I know that it's all about consent. I know that consent is the thing that makes all the difference in the world between rape fantasies and real rape, between kidnapping scenes and real kidnapping, between SM and actual torture...but sometimes I still secretly think I'm maybe a little bit fucked up.

The problem, for me, is fiction. Fictional things--movies, books, what-have-you--in which BDSM is depicted often don't bother with explicit and continuous and enthusiastic consent. It's a fantasy, is often the argument, so why does it matter? I mean, the scene in 9 1/2 Weeks where Mickey Rourke convinces Kim Basinger to stay with him by raping her squicked me the fuck out, but I've heard it described as hot and defended this way--it's fantasy. It's fiction. But I'm turned on by the idea of extremely bad things, so does it make me a hypocrite to also think that these images can be damaging to our view of women on the whole?

I think I'm really worried that something may be wrong with me after all. I sometimes am scared of the Patriarchy, I sometimes feel so hopeless because of rapey song lyrics or upsettingly sexist movies that I feel like the whole world is against me and nothing will ever change and we'll never win. And then I worry...is the enemy in my head, too? Is the Patriarchy so completely in my thoughts and my brain that it controls my sexual preferences, my responses, what turns me on? Am I kinky because I've internalized the world's fucked up view of women in general?

I don't know. I don't think so, but I don't know.

I do, however, think that it's probably really good to examine and talk about this stuff. I actually feel less fucked up and filled with guilt and confusion for writing this.