{"id":70940,"date":"2013-10-12T14:00:55","date_gmt":"2013-10-12T18:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=70940"},"modified":"2013-10-11T16:42:13","modified_gmt":"2013-10-11T20:42:13","slug":"an-open-letter-to-the-open-minded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/an-open-letter-to-the-open-minded\/","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to the Open-Minded"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Everybody: Open Letters are trending — don\u2019t be left out!<\/p>\n

How it started: Pop artist Miley Cyrus has been making videos and doing live performances that involve a lot of simulated sex acts and very hot behavior (to me). I\u2019m sorry; I\u2019m honest. I find her really hot. I don\u2019t find her ethical, but she is very sexy. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Her performance at the Video Music Awards involved some transgressions such as pretending to stroke her pretend cock, pretending to stroke others with one of those big foam \u201cWe\u2019re No. 1!\u201d fingers, and coming pretty close in reality to perform analingus on a woman. That\u2019s pretty far out there, even for cable!<\/p>\n

I think her performances at the VMA and in her \u201cWe Can\u2019t Stop\u201d videos are racist. They appropriate elements of the sexuality of women and men of color that are theirs alone to work with. (Some commenters have said, ‘hey, white artists always steal shit, what\u2019s the problem?’ I can only retch.) Here\u2019s just one thing I mean: all of her backup performers were black and there was endless focus on their asses, and I think some of them had fake big butts on. That shit is racist. Really. What do I have to say here.<\/p>\n

But the biggest discussion came around the sexuality issues. In another Cyrus video, \u201cWrecking Ball\u201d (in which she rides on a giant swinging ball and licks the chain, and licks a sledgehammer, etc., etc.), she runs a lot of close-ups of her own agonized face with a single tear. Whoa, she looks a lot like Sinead O\u2019Connor in that \u201cNothing Compares 2 U\u201d video, which you remember if you\u2019re an old lady like me!<\/p>\n

Sinead O\u2019Connor is gorgeous. And her voice — nothing compares. And she\u2019s ethical. But her recent views are way off base.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

She wrote An Open Letter to Miley Cyrus sharing her views on the performance. Since then, she\u2019s written two more as well as other communications. Here\u2019s where you can follow it all<\/a> if you like.<\/p>\n

… in the spirit of motherliness and with love. I am extremely concerned for you that those around you have led you to believe, or encouraged you in your own belief, that it is in any way \u2018cool\u2019 to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your videos. It is in fact the case that you will obscure your talent by allowing yourself to be pimped, whether it\u2019s the music business or yourself doing the pimping. Nothing but harm will come in the long run, from allowing yourself to be exploited, and it is absolutely NOT in ANY way an empowerment of yourself or any other young women, for you to send across the message that you are to be valued (even by you) more for your sexual appeal than your obvious talent …<\/p>\n

None of the men ogling you give a shit about you either, do not be fooled. Many\u2019s the woman mistook lust for love. If they want you sexually that doesn\u2019t mean they give a fuck about you. … You ought be protected as a precious young lady by anyone in your employ and anyone around you, including you. This is a dangerous world. We don\u2019t encourage our daughters to walk around naked in it because it makes them prey for animals and less than animals, a distressing majority of whom work in the music industry and its associated media. … Your body is for you and your boyfriend. It isn\u2019t for every spunk-spewing dirtbag on the net, or every greedy record company executive to buy his mistresses diamonds with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 1950s called. They want their preaching back. OK, that doesn\u2019t even make sense, but neither do O\u2019Connor\u2019s dire warnings. Back in the day, the pimp metaphor might have been true. Today, Cyrus and Spears and the rest get a nice percentage. What I found objectionable was the sex-negative, chiding and even somewhat shaming tone of the O\u2019Connor letter.<\/p>\n

So did artist Amanda Palmer. She wrote An Open Letter to Sinead O\u2019Connor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As much as we may not want to see it this way — because, from a far distant she looks like just another airbrushed hottie from a lite beer commercial — we gotta give Miley (and every female) space to try on her artist\u2019s uniform. It\u2019s like a game of cosmic dress-up, but the stakes are high. If we\u2019re allowed to play it, we\u2019re empowered. If we\u2019re not, we\u2019re still in a cage. …<\/p>\n

I want to live in a world where Miley (or any female musician) can twerk wildly at 20, wear a full-cover floral hippie mumu at 37, show up at 47 in see-through latex, and pose semi-naked, like Keith [Richards] & co, on the cover of Rolling Stone at 57 and be APPLAUDED for being so comfortable with her body. …<\/p>\n

This is a push for more freedom, and in order to make it there, we have to jump massive hurdles and set assumptions. I\u2019ve been following you and the very candid writings on your site about sex and your own sexuality … . and I can\u2019t imagine you disagree with me on this point: women need more freedom to say what they want (double entendre there), express what they want (same) and be respected for their bravery, not reprimanded for endangering themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now we get to the root of the issue. Because what\u2019s happening here is a disagreement over sex-positive feminism. It\u2019s pushback on the anti-slut shaming movement, and extends back to the long, intelligent and enlightening discussion of issues such as sex work and whether porn is violence. Sex positivism can be as inclusive and as respectful of different forms of expression, boundaries and ideas as the person who\u2019s practicing and expressing it chooses to be. And it\u2019s right that it\u2019s undergoing some discussion and critique.<\/p>\n

One of the latest of these discussions to get some traction is \u201cSites of Violence: Why Our Notions of \u2018Sex Positive\u2019 Feminism are in Need of an Overhaul\u201d by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back<\/a>, which was posted on the Planet Waves Facebook page Friday as well.<\/p>\n

She describes a horrific experience of sexual abuse and the consequences of having this go uncared-for and never having justice. She goes on to say she experiences current sex-positivism, particularly as it\u2019s expressed through the Cliteracy Project<\/a> art interactive piece, as being \u201ca movement geared toward middle-class, mostly white, liberal, cis-women for whom liberation may indeed be a simple matter of achieving greater sexual satisfaction, ending the culture of slut-shaming, and re-appropriating femme aesthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a middle-class, white, liberal, femme-lover, I can only ask, well, what\u2019s wrong with that?<\/p>\n

She explains:<\/p>\n

For people who face more obstacles in the path towards reclaiming and realizing their sexuality, this sort of uncompromisingly positive and monolithic view of sex can come off as anywhere from frivolous to brutally alienating. During the long period of my life in which I felt that I was completely incapable of having any kind of healthy manifestation of a sex life, I often felt wracked by the guilt of not being a \u2018good\u2019 feminist.<\/p>\n

If we wish to construct a feminism that is truly \u2018sex positive,\u2019 it must address the myriad forms of oppression that violate women\u2019s lives and bodies on a global scale. \u2018Freedom in society can be measured by distribution of orgasms,\u2019 reads another slogan of Wallace\u2019s Cliteracy project — a statement that seems almost painfully ludicrous when we consider the millions of women worldwide whose freedoms, sexual and otherwise, are devastated on a daily basis by state violence, environmental degradation, poverty, racism, and the wide variety of other hardships women must tackle in the contemporary world, in addition to a lack of sexual gratification. Women\u2019s sexual empowerment is not an issue which can be separated from broader struggles for gender justice, and in order to support its realization, we must fight collectively for serious social and political change with the same passion and uncompromising desire we bring to our bedrooms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My reply is that it\u2019s not a zero-sum, either-or game. I can work as a stripper and protest human trafficking. I can call out racism and basically spread the word about what\u2019s essentially biology education (the clitoris and contractions are also important in childbirth — ask any woman who\u2019s been able to masturbate during labor if this made a positive difference!). I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan (as one old school feminist song has it). I mean, fuck it — we\u2019re stuck at all levels pretty much \u201cdoing it all\u201d anyway. But it\u2019s easier to do if we can have each other\u2019s support.<\/p>\n

Anyway, Cliff Pervocracy (\u201cgender is \u2018oh shit, you have to pick one?\u2019 and any personal pronouns are okay to use\u201d) has a blog post that says it <\/a>so much better:<\/p>\n

My sex-positivity does not exist in opposition to non-sex-positive feminism. It exists in opposition to fucked-up social sexual norms. It exists in opposition to the people who attack any sexuality outside strict norms, the people who demand women and girls be sexy but humiliate them for being sexual, the people who treat discussions of sexual safety and consent like obscenity, the society that constructs sexual desire as something dark and dirty and secret and awful. That<\/em> is sex-negativity. That is the real reason sex-positivity matters. \u2026<\/p>\n

Some people are asexual. Some people are sexual but not all that into it. Some people are monogamous, heterosexual, and not into kink. Some people have physical or psychological issues that interfere with them having sex. Trying to \u2018free\u2019 any of these people from their \u2018repression\u2019 is ignorant, presumptuous, and the very opposite of promoting sexual freedom. \u2026<\/p>\n

Plus, there’s a lot of worthy feminist goals that just can’t be shoehorned into being about sex. I think promoting women’s sexual autonomy and respecting the diversity of female sexuality should be a part<\/span> of feminism, but I’m under no illusions that this is going to fix hiring discrimination or domestic violence. There’s a lot of unsexy work to be done in feminism, and sex-positivity shouldn’t eclipse that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, this is exactly what we should be talking about — and I truly hope you\u2019ll take some of your time to comment here, read the links and comment there, talk to your own peeps, whatever works for you. I\u2019ll just leave you with two things to think about:<\/p>\n

When I tell people that working as a stripper was far better than the other options I\u2019d tried that were open to me — waitressing, hotel maid and working in a library (!) — I often get a condescending smile and a comment to the effect that I couldn\u2019t possibly understand how exploited I was, or else some veiled contempt that I could be a blind cog in such an exploitive system.<\/p>\n

The other three options could not pay anyone enough (waiting tables can be very good work, but in the 1970s the lucrative waiting positions were owned by men). All but the library left me open to (unpaid) physical exploitation; in the strip club, they were not allowed to squeeze my ass, or the club could lose its liquor license, and you must believe they took that shit seriously. All the other options were undervalued (they knew they could get students to work in the library for next to nothing; it\u2019s indentured servitude).<\/p>\n

The strip club allowed more autonomy and understanding of working conditions — they wouldn\u2019t even allow us to work barefoot because it could present a health hazard they could get docked for by the city — than did restaurants, which presented enormous numbers of physical hazards ranging from no place to change to overcrowding to dangerous temperatures and equipment, to no break time, to needing to go eight hours at a time on foot without eating — oh, don’t get me started on how workers can be exploited.<\/p>\n

But my points here are: don\u2019t assume anyone hasn\u2019t done their homework, and getting at the root of how much most labor is exploited would be a better start than chiding strippers. I know brilliant IT professionals who are treated like sweatshop laborers and who are more enmeshed in a more damaging worldwide system than the local corner strip joint could ever be. I am really, really sick of child and adult caretakers getting paid and treated so terribly, and I have no idea what to do about it.<\/p>\n

And the second thing: one of the first comments on Pflug-Back\u2019s piece was from a man who had experienced sexual abuse. The lesson here is not that it\u2019s a not a real problem unless men get to be victims, too. The lessons are that looking at historic trends doesn\u2019t make experiences outside of those trends any less important or \u201creal,\u201d and that space has to be held for all gender identities on the spectrum.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a zero-sum game. If we can figure out how to work this thing, we all win. If we turn it into Victim Olympics, nobody does.<\/p>\n

PS: Meanwhile, Cyrus went full-ignoramus on Twitter, mocking O\u2019Connor for her struggles with mental illness. So very very not hot. Did I say “no losers?” Wrong. Cyrus qualifies as a total loser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila Dear Everybody: Open Letters are trending — don\u2019t be left out! How it started: Pop artist Miley Cyrus has been making videos and doing live performances that involve a lot of simulated sex acts and very hot behavior (to me). I\u2019m sorry; I\u2019m honest. I find her really hot. I don\u2019t find … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70940"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}