For 2012, Pleasure is the Revolution We’ve Been Waiting For

Women like sex.

I’ve been thinking – buried under the crushing, exhausting weight of all the assorted indignities of the current war on women, maybe it’s time to flip the script and go back to the basics. My theory about why all of this inane madness is happening is this: elite white men are afraid that their god-given power is disappearing. After all, we have a black president, we’re on our third female Secretary of State, and apparently, women no longer “need” men.

I have a proposition: maybe what we do need is to get in touch with our most instinctual, sexual selves, the selves that could potentially make Rick Santorum’s head explode.

So what do women want? And why is it so necessary to ask that question right now?

The short answer is that women’s desire is a massive threat to men insecure about their own masculinity. Consider asking the question –  “What do I desire?” – and then pursuing the answer in the most pleasurable way possible. This may be more than just a fun, enlightening exercise– it may in fact be revolutionary.

Women who want to get inside their own desire must start by shredding some prevailing myths, beginning with the one about men wanting sex more than women. It’s been ingrained in us to accept that men are so man-like that they can’t help but stare at every pair of breasts within a one-block radius, watch porn in every free moment, and masturbate like monkeys. Then there’s the trope about how men cheat because they “can’t help it.”

Part exaggeration, part truth, but what’s true is that they have license to do this, and women culturally don’t.

There’s no shame in wanting sex, but women who express their desire at an early age are shamed as sluts. The only women who have the ability to not enter almighty slut-dome are those who are happily married, actively procreating, and (hopefully) have no desires whatsoever. Women are not allowed pleasure in this worldview, one that’s on the GOP platform in 2012.

Let’s tell Paul Ryan, Todd Akin, and their pals that we like sex and we don’t apologize for it. It’s not just for making babies. That if they want to take away our birth control, they’ll have to wrest it out of our cold, dead, hands. We’re not making more babies for them to recruit.

Feminist History 101

Women were literally property not that long ago. If you’re coveting or already have an engagement ring, note that it essentially evolved as a husband’s down payment on his soon-to-be-wife. Not only did we belong to our husbands like cattle or guns, we were not allowed to own any property, because we were not considered human beings. Since then we’ve gotten the vote, have been allowed to work outside the home, been set free by the pill, and presently find ourselves in a fraught conversation about what it means to “have it all.”

Second wave feminists did some great work, but the anti-porn bit missed one important fact: women like sex. Going all Lysistrata on men isn’t going to solve much except making us all really sexually frustrated. At the same time, we have to push back. We are not Eve, or Pandora, or some other hypersexual goddess seducing men to eat our poisoned apples. Nor are we their Virgin Mary. We need to be allowed to simply be women, and not be shamed or idealized for wanting what we want, when we want it.

Even though we’ve made ridiculous amounts of progress (and fought like fierce warriors for every victory) we’re still so very far from where our feminist forebears had hoped we’d be. And I think it’s because we haven’t allowed ourselves to have enough, desire enough, experiment enough with sex. There’s still too much shame. Many women who have a lot of sex are doing so without pleasure. It’s still in service of the ideal of wanting to be wanted – rather than understanding what we truly want.

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Ten Speed Press/Crown Publishing, 2010) and eight other books. Stefanie keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more for many publications. Learn more about her at ecosex.net, follow her eco-sex exploits on Twitter or join her on Facebook.

Image: Je@n

Stefanie Iris Weiss

Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of nine books, including her latest title–Eco-Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable (Crown Publishing/Ten Speed Press, 2010). She keeps her carbon footprint small in New York City, where she writes about sustainability, sexuality, reproductive rights, dating and relationships, politics, fashion, beauty, and more. Stefanie is a regular contributor to British Elle, and has written for Above Magazine, Nerve, The Daily Green, Marie Claire, EcoSalon and Teen Vogue, to name a few. Her HuffPost blog is sometimes controversial. Stefanie is an on-and-off adjunct professor when not busy writing and teaching about sustainable love. A vegetarian and eco-activist since her teen years, Stefanie has made her passion into her work, and she wouldn't want it any other way. She believes that life is always better when there's more pleasure, and sustainable satisfaction is the best kind. Learn more about her various projects at ecosex.net and follow her on Twitter: @ecosexuality.