Disability and Sex Work II - More Thoughts after watching 'Sex on Wheels'

I wrote about the issues surrounding the intersection of disability with sex work earlier this year, and got to thinking about it all again last night when I watched the Channel 4 documentary 'Sex on Wheels'. The immature and often downright cruel reactions to the hashtag #sexonwheels implies that a lot of people's thinking about disability and sex has not evolved beyond 'disabled bodies, EWWW, they're freaky, I don't want to see that shit' and 'crips having sex, how hilarious!' (this ableist language was actually used on Twitter). And I thought in terms of depicting explicit matters sensitively and tastefully, the documentary didn't do too bad a job. A lot of people seemed surprised/disgusted that a show about disabled sexuality would show a disabled man trying to give himself an erection (their reaction wasn't so much prudish, rather 'eww, gross, I've just had my dinner!'), but what exactly did they expect? The effect of spinal cord injuries on sexual function is an oft-ignored issue, but having cared for men with SCI, I can attest that it is indeed a problem, and one that can result in a lot of humiliating and undignified situations. Perhaps I'm a bit immune to the shock factor, having cared for a tetraplegic man who had to give himself an erection in order to put his catheter sheath on every morning (I would discreetly leave the room at this point), but I don't think it's a bad thing for able-bodied folk to see what disabled people actually have to go through, especially after a body-altering injury.

 

However, perhaps the facepalm-inducing reaction of idiots on Twitter was evidence of why the men in the film (and perhaps tellingly, the documentary focused on 3 men and only 1 women) felt the need to use escorts and/or pay for sexual services. When people's reaction to your sexuality is "I'm scarred for life after watching that...need therapy" (genuine Twitter comment), it's small wonder you might feel less assured about seeking a sexual partner than 'normal' people (I use this in quote marks but the phrase did come up several times during the programme). Even though Leah, a female wheelchair user with brittle bone disease, was shown going out to pubs/clubs and interacting with men, the reaction of one of her prospective partners was disheartening, implying he saw her as an 'experiment' or a box to be ticked ("I've never done that before, so..."). On the one hand, Leah seemed to be 'ahead' of her male counterparts in terms of being able to go out and seek sex without paying for it, but, if the only takers she got were (as a disabled Twitter user phrased it) 'creeps wanting to have a go on a crip', it wasn't a particularly positive picture of the disabled sex life either.

 

The justifications for disabled men paying for sex all seemed to be along the same lines - that disabled men couldn't get to pubs and clubs to meet women (none of the men portrayed were housebound or indeed seemed to have any problem getting around or meeting people), that their conditions made either interacting with women problematic (in the case of learning disabilities) or sexually engaging with women difficult (in the case of SCIs). There was talk of the need for skin-to-skin contact. But it all seemed framed by the assumption that the male desire to have sex is a need or a right which must be unquestioningly met, by any means necessary. And as both a care worker and a feminist who still struggles with the ideologies used the justify sex work, I really question that assumption. Even the description of the programme on my FreeSat box used this language, calling sex 'that most basic human need'. Er no, folks, I think we'll find oxygen, water, food and shelter come under 'basic human needs', not sex. Yet we saw the poignant struggle of the mother of John, a young man with a learning disability, who'd decided that the best way to deal with her son's 'loneliness' was to hire a sex worker for him to lose his virginity with. We weren't told if she'd considered other ways of helping John meet a woman - helping him to do online dating, or to access the community. He certainly wasn't housebound or incapable of socialising - we saw him playing football with other able-bodied men his age, and working at horse-riding stables. Yet for whatever reason his mother felt that his journey to discovering sex was one that had to be paid for.

 

While John's mother came across as incredibly well-meaning (not to mention pained and conflicted), and I don't judge her at all for her actions, I feel her quest was misguided. She was conflating female affection and company with sex, and assuming that sex would make her son 'a man'. As John himself pointed out, laughing 'I've been a man since I was 18!' - but the implication was obviously that until he had had sex, he was not, as a 26 year-old virgin, a 'normal' man. While the sex worker who visited John came across as sensitive, level-headed and compassionate, it all just seemed so contrived as she got ready in thigh-high boots and lingerie. How exactly was this going to relieve John's 'loneliness'? If he went on to make acquaintances with non-sex worker women, I didn't think that this experience was setting him up with particularly realistic expectations of what women act like or dress like in the bedroom. Also, the punchline was that after losing his virginity to the sex worker, John did go on to start dating a girl he met at a Christmas party. So, one couldn't help but wonder, was any of this actually necessary? Perhaps his first sexual experience had given him the confidence to approach the girl, but are we to believe that he would have been incapable of doing it as a virgin? By assuming that John was so socially incapable (a notion belied by the fact he actually went to a Christmas party in the first place) and that his first sexual experience had to be manufactured in this way, I feel that his mother ended up indavertently doing John and other learning disabled individuals a great disservice. There was also the somewhat offensive implication that virginity is a burdensome badge of unattractiveness that you should be eager to be rid of.

 

The attitude towards women and sex that this way of thinking promoted was pretty depressing to see. Watching John's friend flick through lists of available escorts on a computer reminded me of doing one's Tesco shop online, and made it feel distinctly as if the women were products to be selected. Much as I have tried to get on board with the defence that sex workers mount when accused of selling their bodies - namely that they sell their labour/services, not their bodies, just as everyone sells some kind of labour under capitalism - I don't think you can honestly divorce the job from the body. After all, escort sites are all about pictures, pictures of women dressed up and posed in the kind of way men are expected to like (lots of black and red lingerie, bending in various positions and lots of pouting and come-hither eyes). If sex work was really just about 'services', presumably the picture would not be necessary and you could just list the services offered. I think my biggest ideological problem with sex work is that it contributes to and endorses a picture of female sexuality that has nothing to do with female pleasure, and everything to do with male desire. While I'm not naïve enough to imagine that there aren't sex workers who enjoy what they do and exercise a great amount of control and choice over who they see, what they do and what they wear, my problem is that nothing about the concept of women selling sex to men promotes those things. In my view, it actively erodes it. The sexual desires, clothing choices and personalities of the women on those escort sites may have been partially present in their profiles, but I'd imagine were largely manufactured to flatter the ego and cater to the desires of the particular men considering the escort. As a feminist, I find it difficult to defend this, when I believe one of the most important tenets of feminism is fighting for free expression of female sexuality, unimposed upon by male demands (although this is not the same as saying I support hating on, shaming or imposing draconian laws on sex workers, as I believe that is equally anti-feminist).

 

All that said, it was interesting to see the experience of Karl, a man who had lost a great deal of his physical fitness after a spinal cord injury, and had seen his previously active sex life compromised by SCI-induced erectile dysfunction. Convinced that getting his erection back was the only way he would truly be happy (which I do think says a lot about how damaging prescriptive models of what constitute good sex can be), Karl ended up going to see a sex therapist/surrogate/healer. What actually took place between the two was tastefully glossed over, but we did see both Karl and the therapist completely naked together, and a lot of touching/stroking/cuddling which he clearly enjoyed. Divorced from the tacky-feeling tropes of naughty lingerie and seedy hotel rooms, this portrayal of a disabled person seeking sex came across as a lot less depressing, couched as it was in the kind of imagery we're more used to seeing in, say, reiki healing or reflexology. A friend of mine who is anti-sex-work said to me during a debate on the issue that she approved of this kind of holistic therapy, but not the dominant model of hiring someone just for mechanical, impersonal sex. I asked her at the time if that wasn't just making false distinctions, implying there's a 'right way' to do sex work and it's OK as long as it's all spiritual and touchy-feely and compassionate? Obviously I was making that value judgement myself, by virtue of the fact I felt less uncomfortable, and had fewer objections, watching this example of sex work than I did with others portrayed in the show. Maybe it was because the therapeutic angle was clear - Karl was being helped with a concrete problem and the therapist was not moaning, writhing or faking orgasms to make him feel good, but instead was engaging with his body much like a masseuse or reiki healer might. That said, we didn't see if any penetration took place, and if it did, that part might have looked a lot less 'therapeutic'.

 

The documentary raised a lot of questions for me, in terms of assumptions we make about sex. I object to the assumption that there is a 'right' to sex which permeated it, because I do believe that being intimate with another person's body is something you should have to work for. And I don't mean 'work for' in terms of buying drinks, expensive meals or jewellery, but rather work for by engaging with that person on some level. That engagement might only be a quick chat, or it might involve months of slowing getting to know someone, but I do think it should take more than a click of a button. Because otherwise, for all the insistence that sex workers don't sell their bodies, being able to order sex online like a bag of salad does seem pretty close to suggesting women are purchasable. I don't buy the excuses given about it being too hard for disabled men to meet women, because all the men in show were able to go out and about (we saw one doing karaoke), and as I've said above, one did a meet a girlfriend during the filming of the show. With online dating (which is what one of my disabled female friends uses), meeting people from the safety of your home is also easier than it's ever been, and if my experiences with online dating are anything to go by (and I mean the offers I received as well as the few I acted on), there are plenty of people who are up for no-strings-attached sex if that's all a person really wants. So the justifying of sex work via the 'needs' or the 'rights' of disabled people - and in the case of this documentary, it was only disabled 'men' whose needs for sex were justified thus - just doesn't ring true for me, based on this documentary or my real-life experiences with disabled people.

 

You might ask, what's really the difference between a one night stand and paying a sex worker? Probably not much, in terms of the interaction that actually takes place. But my objection is that one enshrines the entitlement of a man to sleep with a woman, whereas the other only reflects the freedom of two individuals to sleep with, or not sleep with, whoever they want. And yes, I know many sex workers would argue they are free to choose their clients, but that argument only extends so far in a job where turning down clients is obviously going to decrease your earning potential. It's also not the 'choice' to do the work that I'm denying. What I'm objecting to is about the social structures that this work feeds into - the still all-too-dominant idea that says men NEED sex at all costs, women must supply it regardless of their own wants and desires, and women who are lonely or horny will just have to live with the fact nobody wants them, and head to Ann Summers instead.

While the documentary unfortunately probably did little to change the minds of those who view disabled people as gross or comical (and who talk about the sex workers who visit them in slut-shaming terms), it did raise a lot of interesting questions about how we frame and view sexuality in this society - the pressures heaped upon men to assert their masculinity through fucking, the propagation of myths about the male sex drive, the often-invisibilised sexuality of disabled women. But it was disappointing in its assumption that sex must be obtained via any means necessary, and its failure to question why the obtaining of it must automatically, for disabled men, involve paying for it.

Pointing The Finger

One of my very first posts on this blog, back in the heady days of 2008, was titled 'Who To Blame and Where To Aim', a question that I think remains very salient for feminists. I feel like recently I've encountered a lot of feminists asserting that any kind of critique of women's behaviour is not feminism, and that what we should be defending is women's right to choose to behave however they want. A reworking of the famous quote (wrongly) attributed to Voltaire, if you like - "I may disagree with every thing you do, but I'll defend to the death your right to do it."

 

A lot of my feminism falls down on this side of the fence, insofar as I've spent a lot of time writing in defence of kinky women and have also tried to examine and challenge my own assumptions about sex work and its implications for feminism by reading blogs by sex workers and listening to what they have to say on social media etc. I'm very aware that there are radfems out there who would condemn me for 'doing feminism wrong' because I enjoy and practise sexual submission with men, and that those same radfems have also done a hell of a lot of hating on trans women and sex workers, and that's not a brand of feminism I want any part of. I do want a feminism that's broad, and open, accepting of difference, and able to reckon that, while we may be all be conditioned by social forces, we are all doing the best we can to live happy and fulfilling lives within that context.

 

But. I do come unstuck when feminism seems diluted to simply mean 'supporting women's right to do/say whatever the fuck they want.' Because by that logic, we'd support pro-life women. We'd support Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. We'd support Equalities Minister Maria Miller, who has voted against adoption rights for gay couples and who has spoken in favour of reducing the UK abortion limit. We'd support hateful troll Samantha Brick, who wrote a misogynistic, body-shaming article that I refuse to even read because I've seen the massive trauma it has caused to countless women who have suffered from eating disorders.

 

And presumably, we don't support those women. We support a free society where they can say things that we may disagree with, because it's important to know their views exist so we may address them, challenge them, and maybe even try to educate those promoting them. But I know that I, for one, am not going to unquestioningly endorse those women in the name of feminism. Yet, I feel like certain feminists leap upon any criticism of another woman's behaviour as divisive to the sisterhood, and I'm not going to be railroaded into that. Yesterday I was criticised for using the term 'self-defeating women'. I can see why it might have pissed someone off. It would piss me off to be called that, especially by, say, a radfem describing me as thus because I'm kinky. The person in question suggested that all I meant by this phrase was 'women who disagree with you', and to an extent they were right, but that's not all there is to it. I do deem certain behaviour by women as making life harder for themselves and other women - pro-life women would be a very good example of that. How can you tell me that female senators who sign off bills making abortion more difficult to access for other women are doing anything but attacking their own rights, and the rights of every other woman unfortunate enough to live in that state? If that's not self-defeating, I don't know what is.

 

But OK, that's an extreme example, involving laws which obviously affect people's lives. Other examples are more nebulous. I may feel Page 3 girls make life harder for other women by normalising the trivialisation of women and their bodies, whereas those who defend the glamour models' right to work or who find boobs in newspapers unproblematic would disagree. Radfems may feel I make life harder for other women by 'eroticising violence against women' (I use quotes to show I do not believe this for a second) when I participate in kink, publicly or privately. Obviously I'd feel that radfems are making life much harder for me by imposing huge guilt and shame on a part of my life that brings me pleasure and peace. Abolitionists may feel sex workers make life harder for women by sending out the message that the female body is purchasable, and that  the male right to sex is all-important. Sex workers may feel abolitionists make life harder for them by advocating draconian laws, stereotyping and patronising them, and refusing to listen to their voices or acknowledge their ability to choose/enjoy their work. Ultimately, we can all call each other self-defeating, and I don't suppose we'd ever reach much consensus. Nor, as has been noted with regard to constant Twitter battles over the last few months, will this in-fighting do much to advance the fight against the patriarchy.

 

But I suppose that's the exact crux of the issue. Wherein lies the patriarchy? The person I was debating with yesterday stated that they supported women's right to do whatever they wished, and that their beef was not with female behaviour, but with patriarchy.

 

So are we to believe that patriarchy never influences women?

 

Anyone who's read that Samantha Brick article, or one by Liz Jones, or Melane Philips, or Phyliss Schlafly, might beg to differ. So how do we argue against their poisonous views if we're not going to consider the idea that some of us may make choices that are damaging to women? If 'choice' is our answer to everything, then do we have to respect that Christina Hoff Sommers' claim that rape reporting in colleges must be hugely exaggerated as a result of a feminist conspiracy is as intelligently arrived at as our own belief that rape is underreported and not taken seriously enough? I mean, she's presumably an intelligent woman with agency of her own which I as a fellow feminist should respect as much as I respect my own. So where do I find where I'm allowed to say that Sommers' views are toxic, damaging, and very likely influenced by a culture which encourages women not to challenge sexism, without being accused of just pissing all over someone I happen to disagree with? If all-encompassing courtesy to women I think are behaving harmfully prevents me from saying Sommers is wrong and harmful in the first place, then how can I hope to get to a point where I can debate with her and try to show her alternative viewpoints? I'm not going to accept that her view has equal weight to mine, just in the name of sisterhood. I accept that her right to hold and state that view is equal to mine, but other than that, I think she's fucking wrong, and I'm going to say so.

 

I can get on board with a feminism that reminds us finger-pointing isn't one way, that we have to look back at ourselves and our own prejudices before we criticise others. But I can't get on board with one that purports to erase and bland out all potential objections to female behaviour in the name of supporting choice. That leaves feminism fragmented to nothing but individualism - something many of us criticised the late, famously anti-feminist, Margaret Thatcher for promoting. That doesn't mean we shouldn't also be criticising male behaviour, damaging patriarchal traditions and structures, and influences that mean women may engage in shitty behaviour as a result of lack of a better alternative. That doesn't mean we shouldn't support the right of women to do things we find distasteful, difficult to understand, or downright bizarre. But if we have no standard against which to measure what moves feminism forward and what holds it back, then feminism means nothing.

And I want my feminism to mean something.

Pleasure or Pressure? The Alleged 'Orgasm Gap'

I read this piece from Alternet on 'The Orgasm Gap' with interest. Subtitled "The Real Reason Women Get Off Less Often Than Men and How to Fix It", the piece considers how "Freudian echoes, anatomical mischaracterizations and gender stereotypes are part of the logic naturalizing the orgasm gap - but there is nothing natural about it." In it author Lisa Wade makes some very valid points, including her demolition of the pesky myth that women just don't need to get off as much as men do, that we prefer cuddles to orgasms, and that we're the more "giving" gender (spew). I do agree that she's bang on that "we often bifurcate the sexual experience in line with gender norms: men are sexual (they experience desire) and women are sexy (they inspire desire)" and that  this damaging idea of women as passive objects to be looked at in turn harms women's ability to be active sexual agents. 

 

(And Christ, if I hear one more person justify the constant objectification of women viz the notion that "the female body is just nicer to look at", I'm going to shove my thread veins against their eyes. Newsflash - the female body can be just as disgusting and fugly as the male body, and I should know: as a care worker I've seen more than my fair share of naked bodies, young and old. The female body that apologists for objectification refer to is a toxic stereotype not representative of the majority of women - it's airbrushed, often surgically enhanced, achieved through the kind of regimes a racehorse would baulk at, and very often fuck-all to do with real, natural femininity. Because Mother Nature actually designed our 'beautiful female bodies' to have cellulite, hair, wobbly bits and funny smells.)

 

Anyway, back to this old orgasm gap. I agree with Lisa Wade that there probably is a correlation between lack of female pleasure and the fact that women are still told that their "primary goal in sex is to deliver a sexy body can focus her attention on how she looks instead of how she feels." Although I have to say, if it really is true, as Wade spectates (without providing anecdotal or statistical evidence) that some women are afraid to have orgasms because their face or body might contort in a potentially 'unnattractive' way, then I find that sad beyond belief.

 

And this is where I find myself a little unconvinced by this study. Or rather, by the conclusions drawn from it. The first study the author cites is 13 years old, and I think it's fair to say that the sexual landscape has changed a lot since the year 2000. Not necessarily for the better, sure, but things move fast in this day and age. Who had heard of vajazzles, ass-to-mouth or read openly about bondage on the London Underground 13 years ago? So I'll be taking that one with a pinch of salt to start with, and as for the second study she cites, it's a study of college students. Hardly representative of the population at large in terms of age or class, and it was only a study of heterosexual students so we can't know how the orgasm rate of LGB students compared. I think this is a key omission in terms of the author's determination to paint women as orgasm-starved victims, because although in some cases this may be true, I think it's painting with far too broad strokes to imply we all are, and that this is because of some failure of feminism or victory of patriarchy.

 

Wade presents the fact that women are much less likely to orgasm during a single 'hook-up' than during a second or 3rd encounter, or a relationship, as some kind of shocking revelation. Personally, I thought the ratio of 3 female orgasms to every 1 male orgasm was actually pretty good going! Not because I consider the female orgasm less valuable than that of a man's - quite the opposite. Making a woman come is a bloody tough thing to achieve. I was put me in mind of an exchange in Kevin Smith's film Clerks, where Dante makes the (admittedly crude statement) "Making a male climax is not all that challenging: insert somewhere close and preferably moist; thrust; repeat...Now, making a woman cum - therein lies a challenge." Much as it is a generalisation, and I do think male sexuality can be oversimplified, I also think most of us would end up agreeing. I remember in my Sexuality & Society classes at university discussing why the female equivalent of Viagra hadn't been successful, and the gist was that female sexual response was still extremely poorly understood, and very difficult to measure. Our tutor summed it up thus - if male sexuality was depicted as a machine, it would be a box with a clear 'ON/OFF' switch. The female equivalent would  be a box covered in numerous mysterious wires, lights and switches without any clear labels or indications of what they did, and you might get a different reaction from flipping a switch the second time compared to when you flipped it the first. Or no reaction at all.

 

So with this borne in mind, why are we supposed to be so scandalised by the idea that when young women sleep with other young men (who we assume are less experienced in the ways of lady pleasing than say, their 30 or 40-something counterparts) who have never encountered their bodies before, they're less likely to come? To me it's less a sign of a patriarchal victory and more simply evidence that nature is a bitch. The female orgasm is tricky and elusive, and what works for one woman might leave another one completely cold. That's why it also makes sense that when a couple hooks up more than once, or gets into a relationship with each other, the woman's orgasm rate rises. Practise makes perfect, we all know that, and familiarity with your partner's body sure as hell helps too. However, Wade concludes that the lack of female orgasms during hook ups must be down to lack of men's investment in their partner's pleasure, backing it up with a statement from a male who says he's "all about making her orgasm" when with a long-term partner, but "in a hookup...I don't give a shit".

 

It's an unfortunate quote, and indeed may reflect many other men's attitudes, although it's important to remember we're not told this and Wade has just cherry-picked one depressing vox-pop out of thousands. The quotes she includes from women are also depressing - they speak of not expecting an orgasm out of hook ups, prioritising men's pleasure, and being too insecure to ask for their own pleasure. And yeah, that's a problem in itself. But Wade's article does seem to contain an implicit message that hook-ups are bad in and of themselves, and relationships are the answer to all. And on that note, frankly, I call some serious bullshit. I've been in very long-term relationships, and I've had hook-ups, and I can honestly say that my likelihood of getting an orgasm is increased by one thing and one thing only - me doing stuff to myself. Whether that's solo, or with the guy involved, that's the only way I've ever been able to achieve it. It matters not whether the guy has known me for four years or four weeks, that's the way it's always been. And to be frank, it has actually made me feel more uptight when the guy in question has decided he's going to be The One to manage to give me an orgasm on his own, because it inevitably involves him reading prescriptive sex manuals ('Do this and it'll drive her wild!' Oh really, will it? EVERY woman? All 3.5 billion of us?), trying out various techniques on me that do absolutely F-A for me, and generally decreasing my chances of being relaxed enough to get any pleasure, let alone a climax out of the experience.

 

I'm not shy of asking for what I want, or demanding that my needs get met, or that I get to be the one lying back having fun stuff done to me. But demanding that my partner be able to give me the Big O makes me feel like my sex life has been boiled down to a bad Cosmo spoof. I don't necessarily want to come during penetrative sex, because the massive amount of concentration involved makes me feel totally disconnected from my partner, as if I'm using him as a dildo substitute. I might want to have my orgasm before penetration, or after, and that's something me and him can do together, which is all groovy. That said, regardless of the radfem sniffiness about such a claim, I also enjoy penetration in and of itself - it doesn't have to make me come. I might feel satisfied without an orgasm at all during the session (this is not BS - it does sometimes happen), and the prescriptive model of sex that dictates your sex is a feminist failure if both of you don't come is not any more helpful to me than the model that dictates male pleasure is all. A readthrough of Shire Hite's Report on Female Sexuality is telling, with women stating,"Now there is such much emphasis on orgasm, a person would feel abnormal not having one" and "I feel a lot of pressure both from men and from women's liberation, to have orgasms or insist on having an orgasm". One interviewees response to the pressure to be coming all over the shop sums up my exact feelings - "I'm not...a two-ring circus".

 

Wade's focus on apparent male selfishness also doesn't reflect my own experiences at all. Sure, my evidence is personal and anecdotal, but then so are the statements she uses to imply men 'don't give a shit' about female pleasure. As I mentioned above, I've had partners who are eager to a fault to try and resolve the orgasm gap between us - after my first sexual experience, the guy in question rather sweetly apologised for the fact I didn't come. I almost laughed out loud and snorted "I didn't expect to!", but held back out of politeness. But I was secretly thinking, 'C'mon dude, go read some feminist responses to Freud. What we just did may have been lovely, but my body ain't set up to orgasm from that'. I wasn't bothered - I had learnt at an early age that orgasms were a gift I could give myself, and let's just say I was always very generous with myself throughout my teen years. And me and this guy were young and inexperienced - yes, we were college students - so I hardly expected to be hitting heights of tantric amazingness anyway. While I agree with Lisa Wade that a model of sex where female pleasure is included and given equal weight to men's is certainly one that can never be promoted enough, I don't think measuring feminism's success by counting orgasms is accurate or helpful. Especially when you're focusing on a very skewed portion of society, who as well as being young and inexperienced, are often obnoxious, impulsive, selfish, insecure and crap at communicating. I might expect academic excellence from college students (sometimes), but I sure as hell don't expect maturity from them, and that includes in sexual matters.

 

As a commenter in the Hite report put it, the 'right' to have orgasms "has sometimes turned into an oppression". And in a society where there's far too many forces dictating How We Should Be Fucking, that's hardly better than when women were considered to have no right to an orgasm at all.

Peter Sagan, Podium Girls and Objectification

When I saw a picture in this morning's paper of cyclist Peter Sagan grabbing a handful of the bum cheek of a 'podium girl' while waiting to be awarded his second-place prize at the Tour of Flanders, the only thing that surprised me was how unsurprised I felt. We're all aware of the icky tradition of young, slim, large-breasted, long-haired (and usually white) women being used as window dressing to celebrate the achievements of male athletes, especially in motorsport. So it kind of felt like only a matter of time before someone took the treating of women as decorative objects in sport to its logical conclusion. Because if you reduce a person to an object, with no feelings, thoughts or autonomy of their own, then why would you see anything wrong with publicly grabbing them? I doubt Sagan is the first athlete to let his hand wander over the deliberately appealing flesh of a young woman in hotpants paid to fawn over him, but it looks like he's the first who got caught doing it on camera.

 

Of course the inevitable attempts to make light of Sagan's actions followed, with puns a-plenty about his 'cheeky gesture'. Apparently the fame and fortune of the professional athlete does make a difference when it comes to applying the law - if Sagan was an office worker who had been PHOTOGRAPHED molesting a female colleague, he'd be suspended for sexual harassment so fast his head would spin. Possibly dismissed on the spot, possibly even arrested. But because it took place in that crazy, hazy world of sport where women are nothing but window dressing and men's actions, opinions and compulsions are respected regardless of whether they're domestic abusers, rapists or murderers, so far we've only seen a social media firestorm and no threat of legal action. Hearteningly, most of the responses - from both men and women - have criticised Sagan for his actions, although there have been a few depressing defences. And even those who question the whole tradition of 'podium girls' have managed to do so without placing the blame at the feet of the girls themselves. But it's still concerning that an act of sexual assault that took place in front of the world's eyes has not attracted a whiff of police attention. Is this because harassment of women within male-dominated sports is seen as a) not a 'real' problem, just 'laddish banter', or b) admittedly obnoxious, but still something women should just expect? I suspect a bit of both.

 

I've had a tiny bit of experience with real-life podium girls, although not in a setting anywhere near as glamorous as the circles Peter Sagan moves in. But I've been at competitions at major UK motor racing circuits and watched as the podium girls were trotted out at the end of the races, and more than simply finding it sexist and obnoxious (which it is), I also found the whole tradition really embarrassing. What's 'glamorous' about standing shivering, covered in fake tan, squeezed into hotpants one size too small so your buttocks are hanging out, in six-inch heels that wouldn't look out of place in Spearmint Rhino, in the middle of the tarmac? And that's not slut-shaming - I celebrate, and regularly demonstrate, a woman's right to dress however the fuck she wants, and by that I mean as sexually provocative (or not) as she wants. But we can't deny that clothing speaks to power structures, and when you're the scantily clad one amongst a group of 30 fully-dressed men (plus a few of us token women), it's fair to say you're not coming from a level playing field. The podium girls were there to be looked at, to provide 'eye candy', to be visually pleasing and sexually appealing. I was there in jeans, a t shirt and a much-needed hoodie (I've never been to a race track when it was anything near actual hotpants weather) - it didn't matter what I looked like, because I was there to report on the race. If I was judged at all, it would be on my writing. Whereas we all knew what the girls were being judged on. A man on my team made dismissive comments about 'those tarts over there', but not because he was objecting to the sexism of the tradition - rather he thought they were not sufficiently attractive, and remarked that you get a more sophisticated class of podium girl at Silverstone. So these girls couldn't win - they were there for nothing but their appearances, but even those were found to be wanting. And so goes the message to women - remember to look perpetually sexually available, even a little bit 'slutty', but never, god forbid, must you look 'cheap'.

 

Still, as I watched the two girls finish up, get back into more comfortable looking clothes and drive away, I reflected that it didn't look like too tough a job. It was certainly a briefer day's work than my 8 hours spent inhaling petrol fumes - not that I was complaining, as I actually really enjoyed reporting on the races, but if you wanted a way of making easy money without having to know anything about motorsport, theirs was certainly the job you'd pick over mine. If I had the height, bustline, waistline, backside, skin tone, hair length and appropriate wardrobe to fit the podium girl template, would I be picking the podium over the pit wall myself? Who knows - it's too big an 'if'. It's depressing, though, that this is how women's roles are still divided. Either you're 'useful' - like I was that day - or you're 'decorative', like podium girls. You're not allowed to be both, because that might muddy the waters. And whichever side of the coin you choose, you'll be punished for it. Ugly girls have to be clever and funny because why else would men pay them any attention, right? And pretty girls don't have to bother being anything but, because their worth is only skin deep, isn't it?

 

In this sense Peter Sagan's actions have been helpful, if only because they spurred on commentators to point out "the absurdity in still having podium girls in 2013". Much like the 89,000 supporters of the No More Page 3 campaign, people are finally coming out of the woodwork to point out how dated, cringeworthy and insulting it is to still treat women like 'dolly birds' in an era where we pay endless lip service to the notion of sexual equality. And it's great that sports writers have used this opportunity to challenge the sexist tradition - Matt Seaton has a great piece in today's Guardian, asking "Does professional cycling really need to award winners kisses from "trophy" females? The whole spectacle is unbecoming - not just tacky and embarrassing, but retrograde and demeaning." It's just a shame that a woman had to be assaulted for the conversation to happen.

Sex, Scaremongering and Teen Girls

It's been a while since I was a teenage girl. Nearly ten years, and I'm quite content with the growing distance between myself and the era of insecurity, depression and terror - not that any of those things disappear with the onset of adulthood, but anyway. I do read a lot about how intensely awful it is to be a teenage girl today, and I imagine an existence something like my own teen experience of body-hatred, paranoia and unrealistic attitudes toward the opposite sex, but with slim sleek smartphones and buttock-skimming hotpants instead of chunky Nokias and those baggy jeans us nu-metal-listening, 2001-era teens loved so much. So are we really so different? A quick skim over The Daily Mail would have you believe that yes, it is so much more terrible to be a teenage girl today, because you are going to be pressured and sexualised like never before, treated like a disposable object by boys raised on violent pornography, and generally set upon from all sides by consumerism, the diet industry, the music industry etc etc etc, to turn you into a pornified, pouting, passive sex doll.

 

So it's something of a relief to finally hear a dissenting voice in this Guardian article. Showing how the statistics on teen pregnancy and first time sex don't tally with the notion that all girls are now being pressured to be sexually active earlier than ever, Stuart Jeffries also quotes American sociologist, Danielle Egan, who says "Sexual violence is real. But to portray girls as only victims suffering from false consciousness and therefore as trapped in a sexualised culture that they can't change is a mistake". In an article which questions paranoid columnists' automatic assumptions that all 14 year-old girls are being forced to perform oral sex (and shows that legendary teen 'rainbow parties' were just that - a legend, which never actually took place, but which the media seized upon anyway as a sign of teen debauchery), Jeffries identifies how this 'moral panic' renders girls passive objects in the same way that pornography is alleged to do: "Better panic than find out, better to disempower girls rhetorically than suggest they might be forces for change in their own lives."

 

That's the part that always gets my goat the most. Teenage girls may often be silly, shallow, self-obsessed and lack self awareness and judgement (and my God, don't even get me started on adjectives describing teen boys and all their deficiences). But they're still people with brains, desires and agendas of their own. I know, because I was one. And I spent a lot of my late teens feeling that I'd been sold a complete pack of lies when it came to boys and sex. No one ever pressured me to do anything I didn't want, or made inappropriate advances to me. I'm sure this was partly luck, partly going to an all-girls' school. This didn't, however, stop my own sexuality from forming. I spent most of my teen years masturbating like mad and fantasising about the sex life that I was convinced my horrendous ugliness would prevent me from ever enjoying. I wanted to get laid. Does anyone ever acknowledge this about teen girls, that they might want sex?

 

The way our conservative media frames things, you'd think teen boys were the only ones with a sex drive and that sex only ever takes place when girls reluctantly give in to the unstoppable male desire. And again, in my own life, that turned out to be another lie. When I finally did find someone I was powerfully attracted to - and again, the force of my own desire came as quite a shock to me, because I was always taught it was my job to be desired, to be the cause of randiness, not the one experiencing the pangs of 'I must have this person NOW, or I will explode' - I was very much the aggressor, the one doing the persuading. If anyone was 'the girl' in that particular exchange, it was my male partner, who wanted us to stop and think about what were doing and be sure that it was right. And if anyone was the sly horndog who would've said anything just to make sure that sex happened, it was me.

 

So where is the media coverage that acknowledges girls like me, because surely I can't have been the first and last teenage girl to actually be in control of her sexuality and use it for her own, not others', pleasure? Am I to believe that I was the only 18 year old female who ever had sex just because she was horny and wanted to? Much as I'm troubled by the tales of abuse and coercion I hear occurring in teen relationships, I'm also sick of getting such a one-sided story. Not every teen relationship is a battleground in which the evil forces of internet porn and sexism are unleashed upon some poor unsuspecting young woman. As Heather Corinna writes in her brilliant essay 'An Immodest Proposal', we are guilty of sending out horribly mixed messages to young women, and the continuing focus on teen girls as 'victims' of evil sexuality is partly responsible. The 'black hole' that is so often missing in portrayals of teen sex, and indeed so much sex in general, is the woman's desire. Where is the story of teen sex that shows the girl"feeling that if she didn't do it soon, she was going to pounce on him like a hungry dog?". When I read Corinna's words, I was transported back to the sweaty dark of an October night in 2002 when I was exactly that hungry dog, and I felt like I was playing out a script no one had prepared me for. As Corinna asks, why are we still failing to reinforce the message "that women experience, initiate and pursue desire, and that it is completely acceptable to do so with great enthusiasm"?

 

And yes, the problem does lie in our sexualised society, but not in the way that right-wing commentators think it does. Rihanna can writhe around showing off the outline of her vulva all she wants and Beyonce can thrust her oiled butt-cheeks at the screen til the cows come home - women behaving in an overtly sexual way is not the problem. The problem is that girls are never taught to be sexual for themselves, only for someone else. If I believed for a second that Rihanna actually got off to S&M, rather than just decided to make a song about it for cynical marketing purposes, I'd be her biggest cheerleader. But I don't. I think she's making the best of her talents in an industry that isn't going to let her exist outside extremely narrow parameters, and that industry demands that she sexualise herself at every turn. Ditto 'B', ditto Nicki Minaj, ditto Nicole Scherzinger et al. You can tell me these women are 'smart', 'feminists', 'businesswomen' all you want. But until I see them say 'Y'know what? I've had enough of this shit, I'm wearing jeans and baggy t-shirt onstage tonight, and tell my marketing team to go fuck themselves', I'm not going to believe that they're not victims of a culture that tells women to constantly serve their bodies up as passive objects for consumption. Because yup, we all feel like dressing and acting sexy from time to time, but I fail to believe there's any woman who really feels like doing it 24/7. Yet we're supposed to be convinced that all that oiled-up heavy breathing and writhing from our pop stars is genuine? Please.

 

The real heavy breathing and writhing happens in private, under duvets, on sofas, in student residences, in jeans and t shirts and dressing gowns and all other manner of unsexy accoutrement, and my god it's wonderful. And yes, I'm troubled that teens may be growing up not realising this, and thinking that the plasticised version of sexuality that they're increasingly being sold, is the way forward. But just as I was able to appreciate the superiority of Tori Amos to Atomic Kitten, there are teen girls who will be able to see through bullshit now just as I was able to 10 years ago, and there will be teen girls who are owning and controlling their sexuality the way I was, and hopefully still am to this day. And those are the teen girls our cultural commentators keep erasing from our social landscape, and in so doing they reinforce the image of teen female passivity just as harmfully as any sexual myths. Perhaps what society really fears is not the misuses of power against teen girls, but that teen girls might realise their own power, and start to 'misuse' it against a society that would rather they sat down, shut up and looked pretty.

Friedan, Fowles, Feminism and Marriage

Today sees the release of the 50th anniversay edition of The Feminine Mystique, a subject which I've written about over at Telegraph Books. However, what got me thinking was not the book itself - that it was and is fantastic and groundbreaking hardly needs saying by this point - but this excellent essay by Stacey May Fowles questioning how much the role of 'wife' has really changed since Betty Friedan first bemoaned its limitations.

In her essay, Fowles articulates pretty much my every fear about marriage, which all sit under the umbrella of 'it will insidiously chip away at my identity and will result in anti-feminist cliches converging on me from every side'. She observes how, as young feminists, it's easy for women to assume that the bored, depressed housewife on whom Betty Friedan shone a much-needed spotlight in 1963 will never be them. "Her concerns were far removed from my life at the time," Fowles writes of her student self, and I'm reminded of the 17 year-old students who told me they wouldn't call themselves Ms. "because I just don't think it matters now". Friedan was certainly on the money when she said "'Rights' have a dull sound to people who have grown up after they have been won".

But when young feminists turn into 30something feminists, and approach the terrain of marriage and childbearing, they're often blindsided by the retrogressive forces that await them. Having felt able to reject toxic gender stereotyping during their teens and 20s  - we're outperforming boys in education, climbing the career ladder, having sex with whoever we wish - modern women suddenly come up against what Friedan called 'a tyranny of shoulds' if they decide to marry. And it is these 'shoulds', or as Fowles describes them 'tiny cuts of sexism', which accumulate into a giant wound of dissatisfaction which men will never have to contend with. It is also these 'shoulds' that largely explain why, even if I met someone I wanted to commit to for life, I would think long and hard about whether it was really worth it. Such as:

- the assumption you'll take your husband's surname

- the assumption that you'll want to be referred to as 'Mrs'

- the assumption that you require your partner to fork out a significant chunk of his salary to put a diamond on your finger, while you are required to buy him...nothing.

- the assumption that you'll want to announce the (likely untrue) state of your hymen to everyone you know by wearing a white dress

- the assumption that you'll be 'given away' by your father at your wedding, reinforcing the ultimate patriarchal act of defining women only in relation to the husbands or fathers who own them.

- the assumption you will be reproducing soon after getting married, or indeed ever.

As someone whose stock response to all these assumptions is to raise my middle finger, I empathise with Fowles' distress at realising her identity had been transformed, and not for the better, by marriage, while her hsuband had sufferened no loss of self at all. 

People asked me why I hadn’t taken my husband’s name. When we met with a mortgage broker he wouldn’t look me in the eye or address me directly. Mail came to the house addressed to “Mrs. His First Name His Last Name” and “The His Last Name Household.” When I went to a job interview I was asked if, because I was recently married, I was planning on going on maternity leave. I would go to events and parties and people would always ask me where my husband was.

Eurgh. Exactly all the things I dread happening to me. Exactly why, even though I can certainly see the appeal of love, relationships and solidifying one's commitment to one's partner, marriage often appeals as much as stabbing myself in the hand with a fork.

I do wonder if, when it comes to an institution with such a dubious relationship to feminism, it's just a fact that you can't dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. How can we take a practice that was traditionally a) nothing to do with love and romance, but a business transaction and b) about owning and controlling women, and reclaim it as an egalitarian utopia? As Stacey May Fowles shows, we may be able to promote equality within the small world of our partnerships, but as soon as we go out into the big bad sexist world, we'll be rudely shown that 'wife' still equals 'property of a real person, i.e. a Man' to so many people.

I've always been glad that I've never had the inclination to be a mother, because as one of the least respected and most exploited roles a woman can choose, it can be incredibly hard to reconcile with feminism. As one interviewee says in Rebecca Asher's excellent book "Shattered: Modern Motherhood and the Illusion of Equality", "I am meant to be a feminist but I feel very much that I am taking up those traditional female roles [now I have children]. And often I don't challenge it and I can't handle the battle". This is echoed in Fowles' words about the unwanted roles that she feels marriage has pushed her into:

There was a new burden to perform a role I wasn’t accustomed to, and perhaps didn’t even want — it was promoted by every piece of media I consumed, whether women’s magazine articles, filmic portraits of perfect families or well-coiffed wives Swiffering floors during the commercial break. It paralyzed me, this sudden preoccupation with wifely duties and responsibilities, bedding sets and baking pies, to be good at things I never cared about. And while everyone, including, of course, my husband, said, “Well, then don’t care about those things,” there was still an inexplicable push to perform as perfect, a nameless pressure I found impossible to articulate.

Caitlin Moran, controversial and widely disliked by feminists as she may currently may be, was right on the money when she said that the feminist litmus test for whether an activity is oppressive or not is 'Do men have to do this?'. And when it comes to marriage, Fowles observes that while the burden of expectation placed on her shoulders has suddenly become enormous, her male partner has not experienced any change. 

My husband doesn’t wake up in the morning with the anxious concern that he hasn’t sent a thank-you card, RSVP’d to a baby shower or become a father yet. He doesn’t field questions about why he hasn’t impregnated me, or fret over how he will balance his career with housework, or whether or not he will maintain his culturally acceptable body shape by making it to the gym today. He certainly cares about these things, yet he doesn’t have the same ingrained aching need to please, to impress and to have it all together.

The women of our mothers' and grandmother's generations who were offered few, if any, options other than marriage and motherhood may wonder what all the fuss is about - didn't they fight so that marriage would be a choice, so why are women now complaining when that choice turns out to involve "tiny erasures of self, together carving out a loss"? No one has to get married any more, right?

No, they don't, and lordy am I glad that the days of marrying to legitimise children, open the Aladdin's Cave of sex or avoid the fate of being an 'old maid' are now over. But that doesn't mean that marriage isn't still held up as 'the ultimate accomplishment for women'. Why do so many women still change their names and don the title 'Mrs' - when there is no legal reason to do so, and many financial and bureacratic reasons not to - if not to make a statement about their new and improved status in society? And that's what lies at the heart of Stacey May Fowles' discontent with, and my suspicion of, the way marriage is still set up. We may have become feminists, but the institution of marriage didn't come along with us for the ride. It still so often represents erasure of one's identity, dependence on a man, and subservience to a breadwinning husband - and even if a woman enters marriage with the certainty that none of these descriptions will ever apply to her, it hardly matters, because as Fowles has demonstrated, society will go ahead and assume those things about her anyway.

I've wondered in previous blog posts if anything feminist can really be salvaged from the tradition of marriage - in 2008 I wrote "Gah, show me a 'tradition' and I'll show you an act of hatred dressed up as a respectable ritual by nothing more than constant mindless unquestioning repetition by enough people." But the part of me that wants to believe that it can be better, that rejoices when members of my friends and family find someone they want to spend the rest of their life with, doesn't want to give in so easily. Ultimately, I believe not that marriage is an utter anti-feminist writeoff, but that women entering into it still sadly have to be extremely vigilant to stop the sexist patterns of the past snapping at their heels again - because they will, and swiftly, given half a chance. And that itself shows, as Fowles concludes, "that we haven’t come as far as we like to convince ourselves we have."