Today, hate crimes legislation moved one step closer to becoming law when the U.S. Senate passed the Defense Authorization Conference Report which included the Hate Crimes Provision. Now, this legislation moves to President’s desk for signature. This vote was the 14th and final time there has been a floor vote on this historic legislation.
“I’m struck by the absence of discussion of abstinence from a sex positive feminist perspective. But isn’t it also important to reframe not having sex in sex positive terms? In [a] strange way, though, in all of these discussions you’ve started (at least on Bitch) about sex, it seems like you’ve revealed the most taboo option in the minds of many sex positive folks is not to have sex.”
“Lolita has become shorthand for a prematurely sexual girl – one who, by legal definition, is outlawed from sexual activity. The Lolitas of our time are defined as deliberate sexual provocateurs, luring adults into wickedness and transgressing moral and legal codes. But the original Lolita – the 12-year-old protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel – was rather different; a powerless victim of her predatory stepfather.”
“‘A girl at the edge of puberty has a naturally hairless body that demands no shaving, waxing or chemicals … Her body is naturally small, supple and nothing if not youthful,’ observes sociologist Wendy Chapkis. The western ideal of female beauty, she writes, is defined by ‘eternal youth’.”
“Young girls are increasingly posed as sexual objects of the adult gaze, while numerous clothing ads feature women dressed as little girls, sucking on lollipops, kneeling, crouching or lying in positions of subordination…. Childishness is sexy, these messages seem to say. Ergo, children – especially little girls – are sexy.”
“The highly sexual poses imply they are ‘Lolitas’ – knowledgeable, wanton, seductive. It sends a message that little girls should be viewed as sexy. The idea is that female sexuality is the province of youth.”
“If these little girls can’t feel sexual desire or understand much about it, why are we so obsessed with fetishising them? A possible answer is a backlash against feminism. Society has been forced to confront women as contenders in the social arena. This has generated resentment from men…. Little girls epitomise a patriarchal society’s ideal of compliant, docile sexuality. In the media, girls are reduced to one-dimensional, wholly limited figurines.”
“[A]s a culture, we have few ways to represent or acknowledge children’s sexuality, and we seem incapable of dealing with it outside the realm of sexual commodification and commerce. Sexual curiosity and even some experimentation are ordinary features of childhood. Realistic, strong, and non-exploitative representations of girls’ sexuality would be a progressive social step, but images of girls posed and styled as objects of the erotic adult gaze can’t be.”
A response: Why Sexualizing Little Girls Sucks For Grown-Ass Women
“‘the western ideal of female beauty […] is defined by “eternal youth.”’ This is bad for girls, who have better things to do with their youth than embody an ideal of beauty. But it’s also bad for adult women, who may no longer have the ‘naturally small, supple and nothing if not youthful’ bodies that Chapkis describes as the ideal.”
“[B]y placing young girls at the top of the sexual totem pole, contemporary Western culture gives the most ‘power’ (and whether being considered sexually attracted by men is actually power is another long, long debate) to people least able to think critically about it. Is it any wonder that girls and young women, told they are hotter and better than their older counterparts, sometimes fail to identify with women older than them? Or that they sometimes respond to America’s social and sexual ageism by vowing never to get old (I doubt I was the only teen with a beautiful friend who said she was going to commit suicide at 40)? When we fetishize youth, we cut young women off from the older women who could mentor and help them, by implying that these women no longer matter. And we send young women the message that they, too, will soon cease to exist, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
It’s not about Katy Perry. It’s about this song and its innocence on her part. To [Katy], it’s just this party song. But as a gay person, it’s like, ‘Oh, of course this straight person singing about kissing a girl goes straight to Top 40 and people buy this record. Who can give a f—- about real gay people?’ That’s what’s really painful about the whole thing. That’s what makes me laugh about ‘I’m not impressed.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, that’s what you think? Of course, because you never thought about what a real gay person feels, and the impact that a song like that has on the gay world in a time of crucial civil rights.’
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Beth Ditto, on why she doesn’t care if Katy Perry is “impressed” with her or not (via girlfriendisahomo) (via uoma) |
