There’s a New Prudishness in Feminism and I Hate It
I’m sick of being told that being sexual is bad. That being sexualized is bad, gauche and unpalatable. “When was the last time you heard a man describe a woman with an adjective that wasn’t dripping in sexual innuendos and defaming premises?” Author Lauren Martin asked in her op-ed for Daily Elite earlier this year, which has now had over 694,000 shares on social media, including the other day on my Facebook feed. “When was the last time you heard a man describe a woman as beautiful?”
Erm, I don’t know. Yesterday?
I know plenty of guys who lovingly refer to their lovers as beautiful. And smart. And sexy. And every other complex thing that made them fall in love with them. Of course, some men do describe women in rude, reductive ways. But that doesn’t mean that every time a man describes a woman as sexy that it’s a bad thing, or, indeed, that men never appreciate women for their beauty.
Martin, though, insists on creating a false dichotomy between those well-known polar opposites, “sexy” and “beautiful”:
"Hot is smokey-eyed; beautiful is bare-faced…
Hot is the way she moans; beautiful is the way she speaks…
Hot is a one-night stand; beautiful is sleepless nights…
Hot is bending her over; beautiful is baking her blueberry pancakes…
Hot is a facade; beautiful is a woman.”
What if she doesn’t like blueberry fucking pancakes? What if she’d prefer a good fuck? And what makes speech more beautiful than moaning? Is birdsong any less beautiful because it doesn’t express ideas? Because it’s a mating call?
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