AMERICAN SEXUAL BIPOLARITY: PURITANISM VERSUS EXPLOITATION

From AlterNet, an excerpt from The Rise of Enlightened Sexism by Susan J. Douglas:

Despite the controversy surrounding the Klein campaigns, they were a harbinger of two trends that gained considerable steam in the late-1990s: the rampant return to the often degrading sexual objectification of women, and the increasing sexualization of children, especially girls. Books with titles like Striptease Culture, Pornified, So Sexy So Soon, and The Lolita Effect have documented the mainstreaming of pornography and its lopsided negative effects on females. Here’s what our increasingly pornified media have been telling girls and women: dress like a streetwalker but just say no—or dress like Carrie Bradshaw (what were some of those outfits?!) and just say yes. Old-fashioned American prudery has always been an important component of keeping women in their place. So has pornography. A culture that is prudish and pornographic—how’s that for a contradiction to navigate?

The pornification continued to expand and to move down the age chain. The Bratz dolls, launched in 2001, with their Sunset Strip hooker outfits, make Barbie look like a priss (although a very stacked priss); the selling of thongs that read “eye candy” to 7-year-olds; the transformation of Britney Spears from teen pop star to midriff -baring, breast-implanted hootchie mama; the promotion of pole dancing as a great new exercise regimen for women; “Little Diva” make over parties for girls as young as 5—well, even those of us who truly believe that sex is and should be a healthy, normal, pleasurable part of life started getting very uneasy.

More here.

On more than one occasion I've made the observation that our sexually dysfunctional culture is in the state it's in due to two diametrically opposed extreme ideologies: the sexual Puritans, who want to control our sexual choices along narrow religious lines, and capitalists, who want to make as much money from exploiting sexuality as is humanly possible. Most Americans don't fully subscribe to either point of view, but virtually all public sexual discourse tends to be in terms of the two extremes, leaving no room for sensible conversation about the topic without the pious and the greedy looking over our shoulders interrupting us.

Of course, because I've got an axe to grind, I've spent far more column space here at Real Art railing away on the Puritans; I've made relatively little effort, however, railing away on the capitalists, at least in terms of how they exploit and commodify sex. Maybe this post can ramp that up a bit.

The excerpt from Douglas' book is obviously from a feminist perspective, but it could just as easily be from the anti-exploitative point of view I have. That is, we're decades removed from what I consider to be the early and crude attempts of the feminists back in the 1970s to take on misogyny in pornography--as a man, when I read some of that stuff, like from Andrea Dworkin and others, I shudder. But there is no male-bashing in Douglas' work. Rather, she simply lays out, for all to see, what the mass media are telling us we're supposed to do with our sexuality, and it isn't pretty. Indeed, in some ways it is almost as disturbing as the Puritans' anti-condom rhetoric, or gay bashing, or the creepy implied father/daughter incestuousness of "purity balls."

Go check it out.

Maybe some day there will be enough cultural momentum undermining this pathetic and bipolar discourse such that we can actually start talking about healthy sexuality without the skewing from these two perverted extremes. Until then we'll have to content ourselves with healthy sex talk on the down low.

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