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Is sexual liberation possible?
I support women 100% for wanting to be treated equally on the subject of sex, yet I fear that if women acted without concern for societies sexual boundaries put in place by men, they would be viewed as sluts, and it would be totally counterproductive.
Am I missing something integral to the process of sexual liberation?
"Man's inhumanity to man" is not the last word. The truth lies deeper. It is economic slavery, the savage struggle for a crumb, that has converted mankind into wolves and sheep.
-Alexander Berkman
Comrade, our politics go against the societal boundaries, put in place by the bourgeoisie, and we can be considered traitors. Does that mean we should stop being Communists, Socialists and Anarchists? No. It means that we know we are right and we must push for our goals anyways. Do not let society bog you down with its patriarchal expectations.
"I just can't pledge allegiance to shit and that goes just the same for your gods and your empires
and your scene politics." -Pat the Bunny
Economic Left/Right: -10.00
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.51
sexual liberation is impossible unless the ugly power dynamics behind this wretched world get abolished, libido carries with it so much shit related to status and tradition that it cannot stand in a vacuum
Formerly dada
[URL="https://gemeinwesen.wordpress.com/"species being[/URL] - A magazine of communist polemic
All things being equal, why would men care about or want to prevent other people, specifically women from having sex freely? The social boundaries put in place are done not because men in the abstract feel the need to control the sexual lives of women, but because class-based systems of rule need moral guidelines in order to keep everyone believing that the behaviors necessary under a given system are not socially necessary but "good" or the "best".
The easiest way to see how "morals" are just a way for the rulers of society to exert their ideas and influence behavior is the idea of hard work being a virtue. Although "toiling" was also seen in the feudal system as a virtue, it wasn't until the rulers of society began to need profits and could increase profits by increasing the rate of work done that you really begin to see in culture all these ideas about "idle hands being the devil's playground" and that laziness is bad and hard-work is rewarded.
Our ideas about women are also influenced by the need of our rulers to keep people on board with their program. If society were run on a democratic and cooperative basis, then there would be no need for a minority of the population to encourage behaviors that helped them but not the people that these morals are pushed on. "Bad behaviors" would be more obvious and so more practical arguments could be made.
I guess I forgot to address the main question:
In society, women are expected to "put out" and be virgins which is obviously a contradictory social message that doesn't make rational sense. But it does make sense for ruling classes to promote the idea that women's value is in her body, specifically her reproductive parts, not in her labor (not as in giving birth).
Marriage and faithfulness for women in relationships (whereas it matters less for men in society) is stressed in our society for various reasons that have helped ruling classes over the decades and centuries. It makes a fetish of sexual intercourse and gives it a special power: that power being that women's most important asset is her ability to get married to a successful man. To "sleep around" with too many people figuratively (and in the past literally) "devalues" the worth of a woman as if women were used cars.
Of course this concept doesn't fit reality since most workers in the US are now women and mens wages have been decreasing faster than women, so in the next few decades (despite ongoing wage inequality where women still get paid much less than male counterparts) more working class women than men will have decent jobs. But that myth helps put pressure on women to be "supermoms" - to work but also raise children (free privatized childcare to make sure there are workers in the future) at the same time. The myth that women are naturally neutering also is social pressure so that working class women are guilted into raising kids for free after putting in hours at work. Rich women (and men) hire childcare and nannies and that's the only real way to both work and give children the care that they need, so if working class women weren't guilted into caring for kids because of supposed inherent drives, then they might demand free child-care provided by their employers or the government. Imagine if suddenly men had to take care of kids - you bet people would say, "hey, this doesn't make sense, how can we really be expected to do all this". But if men had been told since birth that getting married and having kids (rather than getting a good job) were the pinicle of success, then they also would work and be guilted into free social child-raising for society.
Also by downplaying women as workers and presenting the idea that women are "naturally" neuturing and really want nothing else but to raise a family in the post-one bread-winner society also helps justify keeping wages for women low as if they don't need to really work, they are just in the workforce to meet a hubby.
So the first things after a revolution that workers, men and women, could do to help build the possibility for sexual equality is to allow women to control their own reproduction, provide free healthcare and childcare for all children from birth, and get rid of gender pay inequality. With the systemic pillars of women's oppression knocked out, and with women working cooperatively with everyone else, attitudes would also beging to change potentially and if women are not just seen as baby-making machines for society, then sex and virginity would loose their weird social meanings and people could just enjoy the act as people have for hundreds of thousands of years (before class societies) without moral concerns.
