In the new wave of feminism, we still have a long way to go, baby.
“You’ve come a long way, baby.”
That was the slogan that launched a 1968 Phillip Morris ad for the very first cigarette brand marketed specifically to women. It was more than a statement of observation; it was a sign of the times. A new wave of feminism had begun and, goddammit, a woman was entitled to puff on a cigarette like a man, if she so desired.
It was Betty Friedan, in 1963, who began turning the status quo for women on its head. Her groundbreaking bestseller, The Feminine Mystique, described what Friedan defined as “the problem that has no name” — the widespread unhappiness of women across America in the 1950s and early 1960s, women who, despite living in material comfort and being married with children, were largely unhappy.
Friedan challenged women’s magazines — yes, they were a problem from back then — magazines whose editorials were conceived and executed mostly by men who seemed bent on portraying women either as happy housewives or unhappy careerists. Such “gems” like the now-infamous 1950s article, The Good Wife’s Guide, contributed to the “feminine mystique” — the idea that women were naturally fulfilled by devoting their lives to being housewives and mothers.
It’s important to note that Friedan’s observations were largely about white women. Black women and other women of color have, for the most part, always worked outside the home, juggling careers and family. They were also not by-products of suburbia; they were not welcome — not to set up homes, anyway.
Nonetheless, Friedan noted the sharp deviation from the 1930s, when women’s magazines featured confident and independent heroines. Many white women were involved in careers, likely due to the financial hardships precipitated by The Great Depression. Often times, they were the sole breadwinners, a fact that had seemingly been forgotten or was, perhaps, too much of a reminder of the “male-emasculating” economics of the time. Friedan didn’t stop there. She challenged the education system women were offered. She challenged advertisers for propagating an erroneous image of women. Friedan contended that the new cultural ideal relegated women to domesticity and caused many to lose their identities as women; they were not solely wives and mothers.
Perhaps, nowhere is that loss of identity still more manifest today than within the area of women’s sexuality.
Some would argue that it’s a different world now. Women have long been liberated sexually by the Pill; they are sexting; there’s Tinder and, well, vajazzling. And indeed, there are liberated women who now refuse to be “slut-shamed” for behaviors that reflect that of their male counterparts.
However, I still see female coaching clients who, well into mid-life, have never experienced an orgasm, clients who think masturbation is “sinful” and self-exploration, therefore, taboo; clients who have the advice of sexually repressed — or, frankly, sexually inexperienced — mothers and the voices of well-intentioned but misguided grandmothers still ringing in their heads.
Their bedrooms are hella crowded!
In a recent article, attorney and writer, Lauren Levy — a millennial — bravely articulated her coming-of-age story, which led to a renunciation of the “purity culture” in which she had been indoctrinated.
“Let us recognize,” she wrote, “that, in ‘Biblical times’ — and cultures still dominated by patriarchal religious dogma — women were considered property, classified with no regard for their sexual agency. Exodus 20:17, in fact, classifies women as chattel, alongside other ‘belongings’ such as servants, oxen and donkeys.”
Rightfully, Levy expounded, “[Now] I put no pressure on myself to prematurely race to the altar. And I no longer see “purity” through the lens of sexual experience — or lack thereof — as if that is a barometer for one’s morality.”
Today, women are taking back their sexuality as an indispensable vehicle of expression and fulfillment. And it is imperative that we move away from male-dominated indoctrination that sees sex as something that’s more important to men than it is to women. We are long past the age when sex, for women, was solely about pushing out progeny.
Sarah Barmak, a Toronto-based freelance journalist and author of Closer: Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier of Female Sexuality, noted in a recent Ted Talk:
“Straight women tend to reach climax less than 60 percent of the time they have sex. Men reach climax 90 percent of the time they have sex. To address these issues, women have been sold flawed medication, testosterone creams … even untested genital injections. The thing is, female sexuality can’t be fixed with a pill. That’s because it’s not broken; it’s misunderstood.”
“Sexuality itself was defined back when men dominated science,” Barmak expanded. “Male scientists tended to see the female body through their own skewed lens. They could’ve just asked women about their experience. Instead they probed the female body like it was a foreign landscape. Even today, we debate the existence of female ejaculation and the G-spot like we’re talking about aliens or UFOs … ‘Are they really out there?'”
As in all other areas of empowerment, knowledge begins with self-awareness. Moreover, we cannot effectively teach what we don’t know. Therefore, it is women who must learn about their own bodies so that they can educate their men how to please them in bed. It is women who have to dispel the ignorance and false notions about their bodies, which go back centuries to the fathers of anatomy who poked about between women’s legs, trying to classify what they saw.
The leading anatomist at the time, according to Barmak, saw the clitoris and declared that it was probably some kind of abnormal growth and that any woman who had one was probably a hermaphrodite.
No, seriously.
Then, consider the fact that this little pea-sized organ, crucial to the female sexual experience, which actually extends deep into the body and contains almost as much erectile tissue as the penis, was only fully 3-D mapped by researchers in 2009. That was after we finished mapping the entire human genome!
Which is to say, female sexuality has never been a priority for men. Therefore, it is up to women to make it theirs. Girls are still subject to genital mutilation as a rite of passage in some parts of the world. And that, clearly, must end.
“For anyone who still feels this is a trivial issue,” Barmak contends, “consider this: understanding your body is crucial to the huge issue of sex education and consent. By deeply, intimately knowing what kind of touch feels right, what pressure, what speed, what context, you can better know what kind of touch feels wrong and have the confidence to say so.”
Indeed, if sex is recognized as the significant contributor it is toward female health and well-being, then empowering women and girls to fully own it is a crucial next step toward equality.
We may have come a long way, baby. But we’re not there yet. Let’s pick up the pace.
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© Copyright 2019 Donna Kassin. All rights reserved.
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