Female Chauvinist Pigs : Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

Great Debates
1

Female Chauvinist Pigs : Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

I came across this book today, which apparently discusses a pet peeve of my own, having come of age during the feminist movement of the early 1970’s. I’ll quote from two reviews, because they explain the viewpoint better than I can. (I am not advertising the book, don’t know the author, etc., but am suggesting using this as a springboard for SDMB discussion).

From Booklist Starred Review: “With the rise of such magazines as Maxim and FHM and the popular video series Girls Gone Wild, raunch culture has never been more mainstream. The reason, Levy posits, is because women are getting in on the act and participating in their own exploitation. Levy takes a hard look at this new pop-culture phenomenon to see how smart, intelligent women buy into sexual stereotypes. She tags along for a night of Girls Gone Wild filming during which college girls strip down, fool around with each other, and regret it all in the morning…A piercing look at how women are sabotaging their own attempts to be seen as equals by going about the quest the wrong way, Levy’s engrossing book should be required reading for young women.”

From Publishers Weekly:Starred Review: “What does sexy mean today? Levy, smartly expanding on reporting for an article in New York magazine, argues that the term is defined by a pervasive raunch culture wherein women make sex objects of other women and of ourselves. The voracious search for what’s sexy, she writes, has reincarnated a day when Playboy Bunnies (and airbrushed and surgically altered nudity) epitomized female beauty. It has elevated porn above sexual pleasure. Most insidiously, it has usurped the keywords of the women’s movement (liberation, empowerment) to serve as buzzwords for a female sexuality that denies passion (in all its forms) and embraces consumerism…”

While I’m no prude, I share these concerns, especially as my son (12) is growing up watching MTV gangsters and their Ho’s and “dating shows” :eek: as the culturally accepted way of going about knowing women, of choosing a girlfriend. My level-headed daughter is a freshman in college now, and will be coming across a lot that will conflict with what she fortunately knows about her own self-worth and healthy sexuality.

I’m not crusading against Porn, just worried about the effects of the “raunch-culture” upon women and men, how they treat each other, and the treatment they will accept from others.

How do you feel about these ideas?

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I think it’s a very interesting topic. It seems like nothing is sacred for young women anymore. The culture of sex is so ingrained in our society that there are no longer any taboos. Nothing is shocking anymore. Women feel they have to do more and more to be accepted.

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I posted about something similar a while back. Here’s what I wrote:

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Oh, yeah. Those young kids. They like sex. In ways you don’t approve of. Terrible, terrible. They’re not like we were when we were kids.

(Repeat every generation for 10,000 years.)

5

I think it’s like a flood analogy…

The waters of female sexuality have been held back for such a long time that now the barriers have finally been breached, the waters are flooding down and swamping society.

In less than four generations we’ve from saying “all women must remain covered up” to saying “the female body is glorious should be freely celebrated”, so it’s not a suprise that women feel that flashing their bazoombas for every bloke with a digicam is no big deal (and can even represent “empowerment”).

It’ll take another generation or two before women find a point of equilibrium, but I think the current trend for young females getting their kit off needs* to continue for a while longer to “get it out of society’s system”.

*and as a twenty-something male I fully support this need :wink:

6

The book’s on my “books to acquire” list but I haven’t read it yet.
It’s not breaking new ground (from the sounds of it) although it is delving into unfinished feminist business (again from the sounds of it).

It’s not simple to distinguish between women expressing their own sexuality and women being exploited for their visual appearance for the feeding of men’s sexuality, especially when the immediate topic is “women’s behavior”.

A *lot[ of/i] the hostility towards feminism (especially on this board) comes from feminism’s criticism of sexual objectification of women, and, more specifically, of porn. (People tend to forget that Greer (The Female Eunuch) was a feminist and that feminist perspective on sexuality wasn’t all Andrea Dworkin).

A lot of it comes down to power: to whatever extent women are not free to do as they please, what they do end up doing can be viewed as a locus of exploitation that they need to be protected from. It’s an argument you’ll run across in other subtopics of feminism, such as the question of prostitution (if women suffer no structured consequences for not choosing to be prostitutes, then hey, it should be legal, the laws against it disempower women; but if it is vulnerable, poor, easily-exploited women with few resources who get pressed into prostitution, then hey, prostitution exploits women), and you’ll also encounter the same argument outside of specifically feminist topics, such as child sexuality (if it weren’t for the powerlessness and vulnerability of children, we might argue that laws against child sex oppress children, and in some places the laws have indeed been modified to ease restrictions against children having sex with each other while retaining the protective laws against adults having sex with minors, etc).

A lot of folks (including a lot of nubile young women who consider themselves hot) are going to be uninclined to view sexy young women as socially disempowered nowadays, and hence, that their displaying of their bodies and engaging in sexualized conduct is their expression of their own sexuality, and that folks who have a problem with that are anti-sex prudes.

Not having recently been a young sexy woman myself, I don’t know to what extent a few years of that leaves a woman with the sense of having been used, or a concrete set of experiences that can be laid out as illustrative of ongoing sexual exploitation, ongoing oppression of women, ongoing sexual inequality in the arena of sexual expression, etc.

I will note that the described behaviors do still put the focus on men’s appetites and women as the desirable item, though. Unless women wish to claim that the bulk of their own sexuality is wrapped up in feeling desirable and much less of it in finding someone else desirable, this makes it suspect to me, so — old-line feminist-theory camp-follower that I am — I’m inclined to think the author probably has a point.

Looking forward to the read.

7

I haven’t really spent a lot of time thinking about this, but off the top of my head, I can tell you that when I know my guy thinks I’m sexy, I sure feel better about myself. I’m not saying my worth is wrapped up in what he thinks of me (though probably more of it is than should be) I like to feel desirable. So that means if I’m getting feedback that I’m sexy, it helps me believe that I am.

I’m divided on raunch culture. In a way, it lets women be dirty, flirty, sexy, whatever. They don’t have to be demure or prim and proper. But as with anything, it can be taken too far. Or it can then become “the expectation”. I mean, if all the magazines are showing women in skimpy drawers, must I feel compelled to wear them in order to be sexy? The answer, of course, depends on whether you buy in to what the media tells you or not.

I’m not going to rush out now and buy the book, but I think it could be interesting.

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I think maybe you’re missing the point. If it were just that, I wouldn’t have posted. It doesn’t make me a prude to be concerned that 12-year-old girls give blowjobs on schoolgrounds before they’ve ever been kissed. Third-grade girls imitate orgasm while singing their favorite songs that they’ve seen on MTV. I wonder whether that which is perceived as the cultural norm could potentially be grooming a generation of women to be victims.

The idea presented in the book resonates with many of us women who have experimented with our sexuality and our sexual power. While I grew up with 70’s feminism, I also grew up with the whole free love thing in SoCal, and struggled with sexual boundaries when suddenly there were no more social “rules” to go by. Since then, pushing the limits seems to have become the norm.

Sexual power is heady stuff, and can be exciting and fun, but finding and using it can diminish a woman’s personal power.

9

One of the blind spots for the feminist theorists of the late 60s / early 70s (in my opinion as a camp-follower thereof) is the ways in which not being a sex object — having sufficient doses of the experience of feeling that you’re deliciously sexy to the folks you yourself are attracted to, desirable — is unpleasant.

While some individual women had that experience and could testify to it, the feminists largely felt that it was a patriarchal value system that defined their fate as a sad one, just as it did for “spinsters”.

What they weren’t hearing from was the experience of men. And even now males don’t tend to gripe about it in a collective “gender-wide gripe” kind of way, although it’s all over the place if you read between the lines — we may not exactly be pining away for lack of being perpetually harassed by lady construction workers or honked at and catcalled to by female drivers, but collectively we’re jealous as hell that we don’t seem to inspire female sexual appetite with the same ease that females can inspire ours, i.e., just by walking past and being viewed.

I don’t disregard the points they were making about sexual objectification (especially when it runs afoul of being taken seriously as a competent skilled person etc) but it just isn’t a simple binary thing. Clearly (to me) the ability to inspire sexual appetite and be desired can be experienced as power, and its absence as powerlessness.

There may be no clearer analysis than scout1222’s “But as with anything, it can be taken too far”. It may all boil down to balance and moderation.

10

Trust me. I have seen many a hot man walk by that inspired lust in my loins. I’ve just kept it to myself. Should I be whistling and yelling “hubba hubba”? :stuck_out_tongue:

11

Feh.

Nobody is more pro sex then I am. Particularly for women. Frequently in ways a lot of people don’t approve of. But when I pass by a Girls Gone Wild video on television I still get depressed.

Because I don’t believe those girls are doing much of that because they like sex and got up that morning thinking how much they wanted to show someone their tits or make out with another girl. They’re doing it to be accepted. And becasue some guy with a camera is telling them to. And, I assume, for money.

Which is fine. If that’s what they want to do. And I don’t know maybe they are really getting off on it. Who am I to assume? But what I’m sure of is the attitude of the guys making the request. Which is that the women liking or not liking what they’re doing doesn’t enter into it…they’re there as a commodity.

And I think that’s ugly.

12

scout1222, I’m not sure anyone of any available gender should be whistling and yelling “hubba hubba”, but there’s got to be something between that and keeping it to yourself.

From a moderated mailing list called “Sociologists Against Sexual Harassment (SASH-L)”, Mar 7 1993:

"Peggy" wrote:

Yes, I do keep all my emails for all eternity, why do you ask?

betenoir:

Yeah, therein lies the proverbial rub. I like the idea of women doing “wild thang” stuff for their own reasons, their own pleasure or exuberance or whatever, but it sucks if they’re being pressured into doing it to fit in & get momentary applause etc.

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AHunter3:

Sorry, I’m not sure what you just said.

I was thinking about the terms “sex object” and “object of desire”. I think they get confused with each other. Perhaps “focus of desire” is a better way to say “object of desire”. I adore being the focus of a man’s desire, but don’t want to be objectified. I want to be desired for who I am, not just what I do. When a woman participates in her own objectification, it’s sad. I’ve been guilty of that myself.

What I find interesting is that in the effort to be blatantly sexy, the allure of the subtle tease is being ignored. Men I’ve talked to who think they’re only attracted visually (“men are visual animals, I can’t help it if nothing attracts me but a hot babe”), often are quite surprised at how responsive they can be to much more subtle seduction. And because it’s so unexpected it’s even more powerful. Women, take note. Try it sometime.

scout1222:

I’ll second that. Some of us get plenty inspired by a man walking past. Or by even less than that. A smile, a voice, a look.

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“Where Are All These ‘Loose Women’ My Pastor Keeps Warning Me About?”

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43709

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Meanwhile, in less than one generation we’ve made men cover up to the point where anything that’s not baggy or doesn’t pass the knees is considered risque. Never has the nudity taboo been so unevenly applied according to gender. I can’t help but wonder what effect this sort of thing has on gender relations.

16

In an age where a sigfigant number of women have never looked at their genitals in the mirrior and the vast majority of those that do pick “ugly” as the best description, we need all the female sexuality we can get.

For too long women have heard that “nice girls don’t ask for sex” and that sexual pleasure isn’t something that women enjoy just as much as men. They’ve been told that sexuality is something reserved for a select few- either the most beautiful or the most bad. Finally the geek girls and smart girls and the dumb girls and the chubby girls are all free to feel their sexuality and seek to fulfill it. Don’t think that raunchy sex can’t be good sex. If you are comfortable with it, it can be great.

In other words, these “smart intellegent” (read: good) girls arn’t buying in to sexual stereotypes. They are buying in to sex. More power to them!

The more bodies we see, the more we’ll realize that most women- even very sexy women- are not airbrushed playboy fantasies.

I’ve had some pretty slutty years. I remember once getting off of work at Blockbuster and going out to an underwear party only to run in to some people I had just rented videos from. I remember taking scissors to all my skirts so they’d be at barely-butt-length. The only bra I own has about four inches of padding on it. I used to go out dancing in next-to-nothing specifically so I could find people to make out with.

Good times. I don’t regret at thing. In fact, I wish my sexual response was still in that kind of overdrive.

17

Good point. Maybe it’s because I live in the Bible Belt, but I’m not seeing all these women dressed like whores (much less kids) everywhere. The only place I see them is on TV and in the movies. Maybe that’s because that’s the only place it’s really happening.

18

Yeah. But do you see any girls going wild where you live?

19

OK, lemme rephrase that: “I’m not seeing all those women (much less kids) dressed like whores everywhere.”

:smack: :smack: :smack:

20

Moved from IMHO to GD.