Column Over the past year, women and men have fought to make sure the general public could understand an important fact: rape culture is real. Luckily for the movement (and for the victims in the following cases), it looks like the tide is finally turning and people from different walks of life–not just feminists–are beginning to recognize that when a person says he/she was raped, he/she should be taken seriously.

During the past week, social media and news sites have bombarded us with images of the crying cop who was convicted of multiple counts of rape. The pictures of Daniel Holtzclaw are getting a lot of play (and laughs) because the former Oklahoma City police officer is, let’s be honest, a total, sadistic, entitled asshole–and for once, an asshole of his stature actually was brought to justice.

Holtzclaw’s crimes are terrible on the surface (because, duh, rape), but the officer’s actions are especially nauseating because he purposely picked victims who would not be taken seriously.

“[Holtzclaw] was a police officer with the Oklahoma City Police department (he was fired in January after the accusations surfaced),” Time reports. “His 13 victims were black women. The youngest was 17 years old, the oldest was a 57-year old grandmother, and many had criminal records or histories of drug abuse. Prosecutors said he deliberately picked women he thought were marginalized and vulnerable because he thought they would be too scared to come forward against him, and ran background checks to select victims who had run into trouble with the law. Holtzclaw’s crimes were based on assumptions of privilege and credibility that have eroded beneath his feet.”

Now, we’re well aware that just because Holtzclaw is super-duper sad about getting convicted of 18 counts of sexual assault, his misery won’t bring peace to his victims. However, this conviction does send a message to all the entitled dingbats who prowl the streets: You can’t get away with rape just because you’re an authority figure (unless you’re Bill Cosby). And if you try to get away with it, you’ll probably get caught and end up serving a lot of time. (For Holtzclaw, that number is a satisfying 263 years in prison.)

The second “victory” came recently, too. A few weeks ago, Stoya, porn star, accused her former boyfriend, James Deen, also a porn star, of rape. According to Time, the rape accusation came via Twitter.

“James Deen held me down and f–ked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword,” Stoya tweeted. “I just can’t nod and smile when people bring him up anymore.”

Now, I think we all know the typical treatment women in the sex industry tend to get when they accuse someone of rape — it’s something akin to the following: “well, you’re a sex worker so it doesn’t count,” or “you were getting paid for it, what’s the big deal?”

While we’re not saying Stoya got awesome treatment all around, we can say that we’re pleasantly surprised by the amount of support people and organizations are giving her. In fact, news outlets, such as The New York Times and CNN, have reported on the subject in-depth, and are reporting on how uncomplicated rape, sex, and consent are.

Time reports that, almost instantaneously, the porn industry “turned against” Deen. And according to Buzzfeed, Kink.com, a well-known fetish company, cut all ties with Deen “as a performer and a producer.” Evil Angels, another porn company, also reported it would “suspend its relationship with Deen until more information is available.”

Since Stoya has accused Deen, other women (Tori Lux, Joanna Angel, Ashley Fires, Amber Rayne, Kora Peters, Nicki Blue, Lily LaBeau) have also come forward about their experiences with Deen.

This is a big deal for a few reasons: (1)people are respecting Stoya and her experience. While I have heard a few people say things like “she’s lying,” “she deserved,” the majority are not, and (2) most organizations reporting this news are, yes, saying Deen is innocent until proven guilty (as it should be), but not very many are disparaging Deen’s accusers. (Honestly, I think we have Cosby’s accusers to thank for that.)

It finally looks like we’re seeing a culture shift and although it’s very slight, we hope it will help bring justice to all who deserve it.

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The post Slowly but Surely, Rape Culture is Being Destroyed: #NowWhat appeared first on EcoSalon.

A German artist created a brilliant anti-rape campaign that uses one of things that makes men stand aghast in horror: sanitary napkins.

Elone, the German artist who got the idea to “post” all sorts of anti-rape, pro-feminist messages (for example: “Rapists rape people, not outfits”) atop sanitary napkins throughout her German city after she saw this hilariously true tweet from @cutequeer96:

Elone embarked on this artistic journey to show that feminism is all about equality and not about hating men. To promote her project, Elone posted photos of her work across Instagram and Tumblr and, surprise – she’s received a lot of attention.

According to Care2, her anti-rape campaign has been replicated in other countries, such as Brazil, Sweden, and the United States.

While this project is great for one obvious reason (it gets people to take notice) it also “Touches on two very important feminist issues: Shame around women’s bodies and menstruation as well as sexual assault,” reports Care2.

As Care2 points out, this piece of activism is just one instance on a growing list of attention-worthy social media campaigns that support feminism and women who have been raped. Other recent cases of hashtag activism include the following:

1. #BeenRapedNeverReported: This hashtag was started after Lucy DeCoutere, a Canadian actress, said she was one of the women who was assaulted by Jian Ghomeshi, a former CBC host. Other women who had been raped but never reported the instance took to Twitter to defend DeCoutere and her all-too-common story.

2. #RapeCultureIsWhen: This hashtag popped up as a response to “right-wing narratives that claim that the idea of rape culture is not real but rather is an idea that has been blown up by feminists,” Care2 reports. As a woman who has been raped and was told that my rape wasn’t “real” because it wasn’t “that violent,” I can report that rape culture is, indeed, alive and well.

Do you have a favorite hashtag to use to promote women’s rights and equality? My two favorites are #FuckYeahFeminism and #StrongWomen. Also: What do you think about Elone’s project? Would you replicate it in your town?

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The post The Recipe for a Great Anti-Rape Campaign Includes Sanitary Napkins and Social Media appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnLately, it seems like there are too many stories of women being battered, harassed, trolled, stalked and threatened, both online and off. It’s enough to make us feel like there is no such thing as safe space, especially when it comes to expressing and enjoying healthy sexuality.

No matter what your actual exposure to such threats are, these stories have a way of invading our psychic space and making us all feel vulnerable (even as they may make us also feel angry). This can happen even if your life is a veritable advertisement for the idea of “safe space” – maybe you have a great relationship, plenty of stability, and a well-lighted entrance to your front door.

For the purposes of this column, I’m assuming that you’re not currently involved in a domestic violence situation, being stalked, or otherwise facing any of the traumatic situations outlined here.

From Ray Rice beating his fiancee in an elevator and avoiding consequences for months, to the hoax in response to Emma Watson’s speech at the UN, to feminists harassed and stalked by aggressive trolls online, to the Columbia student who is carrying a mattress around campus as a symbol of her sexual assault, to a teen girl’s brutal rape shared on Snapchat, to nude celebrity photo leaks — there is a long and growing list of awful threats to women’s bodies. In the same way that the media’s relentless focus on terrorism can make your heart rate go up when you descend into the subway, awareness of the dangers women face can subtly affect your otherwise healthy sexuality.

The lesson many have absorbed from the recent celebrity photo scandal is that women shouldn’t share naked photos even with their intimate partners — it’s straight-up slut-shaming. Of course, anyone with a brain knows that no woman is responsible for the hacker that stole her photos from the cloud, nor is she responsible for the ex who sold her photos to a magazine. This is the equivalent of telling women not to drink at frat parties, or not to wear tight clothes lest they invite unwanted attention. Rape culture insists that women are responsible for avoiding lecherous glances — not that men are responsible for their actions. This is the “boys will be boys” approach to creating safe space, and it’s utter BS.

Is there any part of you that buys into that? If yes, don’t be ashamed — it’s the basic narrative of Western culture, part and parcel of patriarchy — if you’ve never thought it to be true you’re a rare out-of-the-box radical. I didn’t get it until my twenties, when a few awesome women’s studies classes helped me begin to peel the Madonna-Whore complex off my skin, and kick it out of my bedroom.

Creating a collective safe space for women to embrace healthy sexuality is a work in progress, and there’s much to do before we can rest. But you can take control of the project of creating safe space in your own bedroom right now. I can’t promise to make you feel safe if you have to walk down a darkened street late at night, but I can suggest ways to feel safe and empowered in your body and in relationship to your sexuality. The reason the collective project is so complicated and long in coming is that male gaze is embedded into almost everything we are and everything we do. We’ve got to tease it apart, separate from it, and figure out who we are and what we want – not just that we want to be wanted.

So take a few moments to think about how much you’re affected by the pervasiveness of rape culture and toxic masculinity. Say you have a male partner who is a feminist and great in bed to boot — let’s just assume you’re that lucky. Despite his all around awesomeness, you’re partly reacting to his touch based on what you’ve learned about what it means to be a woman in this world.

Work on claiming your authentic desire by stripping away the layers of cultural dross about what you’re supposed to look and feel like. Of course, all sexuality is a dance between nature and nurture, and our early sexual experiences are imprinted on our brains, entwined with our hormones and sexual response cycle. But it doesn’t have to be rote — you can own the process whenever you’re ready to. It can be better,  safer, healthier and hotter — all at the same time.

This is all very subtle and not necessarily easy to wrap your brain around. Some readers are doing the #30DayOrgasmChallenge to better understand their sexuality and connect to their intimate partners at an ever deeper level. They’re challenging their ability to access ever deeper wells of pleasure. I believe that getting down to the brass tacks of your barest, deepest longings must first be done solo. This is perhaps the safest space of all.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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ColumnWhat is date rape? It’s rape. If only that was all that needed to be said.

I really feel like the question, “what is date rape?” was answered very effectively in a number of after school specials and very special episodes of TV shows back in the ‘80s and ‘90s. But it’s a question that seems to keep befuddling some people.

The most recently confused person to kick some rape knowledge our way is Richard Dawkins with this tweet: “Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”

The statistics about rape are disheartening, to say the least. In January, in response to an alarming rise in reported rapes on college campuses and an alarming trend in colleges shaming women to protect their reputations, a government task force formed. It found that one in five female college students in the United States has been assaulted on campus. One in five is a huge number, and it doesn’t include unreported assaults or men who have been sexually assaulted by women or other men. And, we’re only talking about what happens on college campuses.

Okay, let’s pause. For those of you out there wondering who the hell Richard Dawkins is, here’s a brief introduction excerpted from his TED Talk bio: “As an evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins has broadened our understanding of the genetic origin of our species; as a popular author, he has helped lay readers understand complex scientific concepts.” He’s also well-known for conceptualizing the idea of the meme.

As we’re learning from his recent tweets, he’s not all that bright, scientific credentials aside. Before the date rape tweet, he offered this gem: “Mild pedophilia is bad. Violent pedophilia is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of mild pedophilia, go away and learn how to think.”

Mild? What the hell kind of pedophilia is mild? And why in the world is he bringing us back to the 2012 discussion sparked by Todd Akin’s use of the phrase “legitimate rape?” How many times do we have to explain that all rape is legitimate? And why is it necessary to rank rape in terms of what “kind” is the worst?

I think what he might be getting at is that, in his opinion (which he seems to confuse for fact), being attacked and raped by a stranger would be scarier than being raped by someone you know. Maybe that’s true for him. I hope he never has the occasion to compare those two experiences to test his theory.

I’m truly trying to figure out how people don’t understand the difference between rape and sex. And it’s not just politicians and washed-up scientists who are confused (or who are masking their lack of concern with confusion), it’s leaders at our nation’s colleges, it’s women against feminism: it’s a lot of fucking people.

We have to change the cultural conversation about rape. Stop asking, “what is date rape?” In fact, stop using the word “date” in relation to the word rape. Rape is rape, whether it happens on a date, at a party, or any place else—and regardless of the sex of the attacker or the victim. Let’s just agree not to use any kind of qualifier before the word rape. Violent rape. All rape is violent. Legitimate rape. All rape is legitimate. I could go on, but I think you get where I am going with this.

So why do we care what Dawkins thinks? Because he’s not alone, and every time another person with an iota of power or influence starts this conversation, we have to respond, because for every step forward, there’s a Dawkins that seems to be saying, “Hey, let’s not take this too seriously, it’s not real rape.”

And this week, we are seeing a big step forward. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced first-of-its-kind legislation that, according to the New York Times, “would require schools to make public the result of anonymous surveys concerning assault on campuses, and impose significant financial burdens on universities that fail to comply with some of the law’s requirements.”

While, according to Dawkins’ logic, there should be distinctions made between “different kinds of rape,” it appears that this ground-breaking legislation is treating all rape as the singular criminal act that it is.

This is a good start, but we need to keep the conversation going because, unfortunately, rapes and rape culture don’t end after graduation.

That Happened is Libby Lowe’s weekly column for EcoSalon analyzing media, news and pop culture through a feminist lens. Keep in touch with Libby @LibbyLowe.

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The post What Is Date Rape? That Happened appeared first on EcoSalon.

Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” crew are on point about sexual assault on college campuses. Jessica Williams just nails it here…It’s funny in that OMG-she-is-spot-on kinda way. Now, go enjoy your weekend. Remember to bring some mace.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Few words irk me more than “slut.” It’s incredibly rude (and totally lazy) to use a crud word to police what a person does with her body. Sadly, though, slut shaming has already crept its way into America, and it’s being used to describe nearly everything a woman, or girl, does, says, or wears.

Unfortunately, grown ladies, such as myself, have probably experienced a few instances of slut shaming through our lives. Just recently, I was told that I looked “a little slutty” because I chose to wear platform sandals and a tank top on a late-spring night out. The horror!

Now, while I can take the comments and the sneering because I’m A) sadly, used to it, and B) an adult with a pretty decent self image, it troubles me that young women are having to deal with being called sluts more, and more often.

In the past few months, there have been more than a few instances where high schools have shamed young women into not wearing certain types of clothing because the young women’s attire could, potentially, distract young men. Come on.

Here are just a few examples of some of the weird lengths some schools have gone to, to censor female students’ attire:

• It was recently reported that administrators at Wasatch High School in Utah decided to Photoshop some female students’ bare shoulders in the yearbook. According to XOJane, the school claimed that the students were dressed inappropriately.
• According to ThinkProgress and Bust, a Minnesota high school’s principal sent an email to parents in which he asked moms and dads to discourage their daughters from wearing clothing, such as leggings, yoga pants and tight pants, that could be “highly distracting” to other students.

While schools are allowed to monitor what students’ wear, this obsessive form of body and clothing policing isn’t helpful to anyone, and it puts all the blame on the girl.

While the above examples may seem a bit trivial, they are not. This type of policing plays into a culture that teaches students that it’s a woman’s fault if she gets harassed. It’s that whole, she-was-asking-for-it, rape-culture problem that has reared its ugly head in American culture in recent years.

So, I beg of everyone – can we stop with the slut shaming already? Let’s just respect everyone’s bodies and get on with it.

Follow Abbie on Twitter or Instagram, or read more about her on ginchy.

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“25 Everyday Examples of Rape Culture,” EverydayFeminism

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The post Stop the Slut Shaming Already! appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWhat political pundit and professional asshat George Will doesn’t understand about rape could fill a book, and if you want to avoid domestic violence, just get married!

It’s been a really special week for promoting rape culture, blaming victims and spewing misconceptions about domestic violence.

Before we dig into what happened, the takeaway is this: Women want to get raped (or at least say they were raped) because they like attention. If you don’t like attention, get married—because married women are never assaulted.

You Lucky Rape Victim, You!

George Will, a respected-by-some political commentator often seen on Sunday morning news shows, wrote this in the Washington Post: “In colleges, more rape victims are coming forward because victimhood has become, ‘a coveted status that confers privileges’.”

He is arguing that all of the “special treatment” people who have been raped receive is endangering a generation of nice young men who are just boys being boys. AmIRight, GW? Oh, and it’s Obama’s fault for “riding to the rescue of ‘sexual assault’ victims.”

(Quick note: While we mostly talk about women speaking out against male assailants, this isn’t always the case. Imagine how cool it would be to be male rape victim? I bet there are even more privileges.)

Back to George Will’s horrifying, hurtful comments. In his column, he goes on to do some super special math in an attempt to diminish the problem of sexual assault and rape on college campuses.

Sorry, but the cat is out of the bag here—this is a really, really massive cultural problem.

The fact that 20 percent of women on a college campus will be a victim of sexual assault is hard to prove, not because it is based on fiction, as Will would have you believe, but because despite the fact that more people are speaking out, victims are still scared to come forward. Sadly, the number is probably higher.

People fear they will be blamed. They fear they will not be believed. They fear they will lose friends. At times, because our culture is so fucked up, they fear it’s their fault.

Don’t Want to be Assaulted? Get Married!

Okay, I am about to blow your mind with my problem-solving skills. If you REALLY don’t want to get sexually assaulted (being the victim is like sooo 2013, yea?) here’s the plan: Skip college and get married really young—and don’t get a job because in 2011, 11,364 people filed formal complaints of sexual harassment at work, according to The American Association of University Women.

Following close on the heels of George Will’s terrible column, The Washington Post published a lovely little gem co-written by conservative think tank geniuses W. Bradford Wilcox and Robin Fretwell Wilson. They claim the best way for women to avoid being victims of rape and assault is to quit being such whores and get married.

I would like to pause and comment on the choice of stock art here. A couple walking on train tracks in a seemingly desolated “True Detective”-esque area captioned: “Marriage, the safer route.” Lord.

In this piece, written in response to the popularity of #YesAllWomen, the authors write: “This social media outpouring makes it clear that some men pose a real threat to the physical and psychic welfare of women and girls. But obscured in the public conversation about the violence against women is the fact that some other men are more likely to protect women, directly and indirectly, from the threat of male violence: married biological fathers.”

So, let me get this right: To be safe from being sexually assaulted, you need to be in a heterosexual relationship and have babies and be married to your babies’ biological father?

Let’s pretend, for a second, that we live in a world where that’s a scenario that we’re all interested in. If we were able to live that dream, would we be safe? I think you know I’m about to say no.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Violence Against Women Survey:

• You are married straight woman, just like the article says: Do you have it made? Nope: More than 30 percent of women who married or lived with a man as part of a couple reported abuse at the hand of said husband or partner.
• Ah, but I’m a gay lady! Sorry. Eleven percent of women with female partners reported being raped, physically assaulted and/or stalked.
• Gay man? You’re not safe at home either. Fifteen percent of men who had lived with a man as a couple reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked.
• Finally, straight dudes. They’re always safe, right? No. More than 7 percent of men surveyed who had married or lived with a woman as a couple reported domestic violence.

And these numbers only reflect the number of people who responded, and who responded honestly.

What Does All of This Mean?

George Will and his cronies are not just ill-informed, they are liars, willfully spreading misinformation and saying incredibly hurtful, stupid shit.

This kind of media coverage validates the lie that the number of sexual assaults is exaggerated at best, fabricated at worst. It perpetuates the crazy notion that people who step forward and ask for justice after being raped are probably just trying to get attention and special treatment. It seeks to shut-up victims of domestic abuse by discrediting the very fact that such a thing is possible.

The good news is that people are pissed. The hashtag outrage is palpable (see #SurvivorPrivilege). But, to be honest, I am at a loss, and just feeling really angry. Angry at the people who wrote this crap, angry at the people who believe it and angry at The Washington Post for publishing it. I’m angry at people who rape and assault people. I’m angry at anyone who doubts victims who are brave enough to come forward and seek the justice and help they deserve.

What we’re dealing with is a cultural crisis that isn’t contained to college campuses or to one segment of the population. We are all at risk of sexual assault in the places where we should feel the most safe—on campus (a home away from home) and at home. Being raped or assaulted is never a privilege.

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Image: Wendy Nelson Photography. via Compfight cc

The post Rape Victim? Lucky! Don’t Want to be Assaulted? Get Married: That Happened appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWe’re in the midst of major teachable moment, thanks to the sheer awfulness of the recent Isla Vista event and #YesAllWomen, the viral hashtag that followed in its wake. Toxic masculinity is finally getting the analysis it deserves – but what does it mean for your love and sex life?

Let me start by saying that although this column is in part about finding compassion for the experience of men and boys, it’s not in any way excusing harassment and violence (both online and off).

Work must be done, legislatively and otherwise, to completely alter the landscape of male privilege — we must end all affronts to women’s bodies. Yet I want us to take this conversation to the next level – which is to say a deeper level. Let’s unpack what toxic masculinity means for your love and sex life.

Several men I know have recently teased me about how often I refer to patriarchy in this column – “What’s the question? I don’t know, but according to Stefanie, the answer is definitely patriarchy.” I don’t bristle at the criticism because I realize that I’ve mostly spoken about the way patriarchy, that all-pervasive personal/political bedrock philosophy of most of recorded history – affects women. But our boyfriends, our husbands, our fathers, brothers, cousins, sons and co-workers – patriarchy hurts them too. Not to mention the dudes and bros – the most entitled and unconscious first-world men.

An easy way to get inside of the raw angst of so many women in the wake of not just Isla Vista, but a growing global rape culture, rampant misogyny, the PUA and men’s rights movements, and unprecedented online harassment of any woman who dares label herself a feminist, is via this disturbing Margaret Atwood quote:

Men fear being laughed at by women. Women fear being killed by men.

Pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? Sixty-four percent of women who are murdered are killed by a current or past intimate partner. When men are murdered, it’s usually by strangers. Why are women so afraid of being killed by men, particularly men that they are/have been intimate with? A chilling quote from Elliot Rodger’s manifesto hints at it:

Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.

The operative word here is “gave.” Although this is the rant of a mentally ill sociopath, it’s also the underpinning of many of our assumptions about heterosexual relationships and about male “ownership” of female bodies. Even the healthiest of us are socialized to believe that women’s bodies are not truly their own. In this way, Rodger’s belief system is part of a continuum — he just took it to its most deadly extreme.

In this model of sexuality – let’s call it the “Don’t give the milk away for free” model – women possess a commodity that men need. Sex between consenting adults, whether it’s a casual hookup or sex within the confines of a traditional marriage, is best when it’s not transactional. Unless the transaction is agreed upon at the outset – most often with a sex worker. (Not that that there’s anything wrong with that!)

The deeply ingrained idea that men always want sex more than women want sex is part of the problem. We are objects, not subjects. We are cast in a role, not directing. It instantly objectifies us before anyone has been exposed to a perfume ad of a photoshopped woman’s torso. This myth of women holding their sex for ransom is older than Eve. Scientific data continues to reveal the true breadth of women’s desire, the fact that women get sexually bored faster than men do, and that our libidos and need for novelty are far more intense than we’ve ever acknowledged. Our capacity for pleasure is still a secret to most of us.

Women are not merchandise in the marketplace of sex – we are sexual beings with agency. We have desires. We teach our girls that only boys have needs, and that as girls, it is their duty to fulfill them. We don’t give girls the chance to chart the map of their own desire. And what of the boys?

We pathologize sex and yet teach boys that they’re supposed to be sexual aggressors. We tell them that they will want girls more than girls want them. We tell them that this wanting will rule them, that if they don’t feel it all the time, there is something wrong with them. We tell them that their desire is not just ever-present, but that’s it’s a dangerous threat. (This is the ethos behind the veil in Middle Eastern countries – women are such tempting, delicious treats that men cannot control themselves – so they must literally be hidden from view.)

Having your emotions shut down when you’re a young male child, being taught that crying is “gay” or that compassion makes you a “fag” – that kind of early patterning can cause some serious damage. It’s bad enough when a person’s actual sexual orientation is in the crosshairs of bullying, but even for young boys who will be straight men – being taught not to feel can do long-term damage. Stop for a moment and think about what may have happened to the men in your life when they first understood that sensitivity was for suckers.

Think about your boyfriend, your exes, your father, your brother, your male co-workers – all the cis-gendered, heterosexual men in your life. How many times have you seen one of them cry? With Father’s Day coming up next week, it’s a really opportune moment for us to examine the deeper implications of masculinity not just in our culture, but in one-to-one interactions with the men we know.

If you are a woman who dates and sleeps with men – examining your own assumptions about masculinity can help you transform your relationships. Start by looking at any gross generalizations that you have about the men in your life, and then work backwards – why do you feel that way?

I’ll get us started – mine has often been: “Men are 12.” I throw this one around casually, based on how excited one of my exes still gets about GI Joe at the age of 42, and how my father still likes to play video games. I often say this without necessarily examining the deeper implications of boyhood/manhood, and what it means to “be a man”.

What does it mean to be wounded but to have to cover up that wound so that no one ever sees it? The shame women feel about their bodies, about being not beautiful enough, is perhaps equivalent to the shame men feel about being perceived as weak.

What does it mean to always have to be dominant, aggressive, always the initiator? Not just in bars, where an old-fashion dating dance still seems to rule the roost – the men approach, the women decide. We sometimes choose to break through these boundaries and are called rebels for it – but what if we could move closer to overall equanimity here?

We want our men to understand why we are feminists, and why they should want to be feminists too. But the learning curve is steep, the reverse socialization fraught with psychological landmines. Boys are made to feel that being sexually predatory is not just required, but that they aren’t “real men” if can’t “get” girls.

What if we began to shift this language in our pop culture? We still talk about how our rom-coms are best when the guy “gets the girl” in the end. If girls are taught that they are not objects on the sales rack of sexuality, and boys are taught they are not consumers in this toxic marketplace, we’ll start to wring some toxicity from our relationships, our sex lives, and the culture at large. And it all begins with you.

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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The Madonna-Whore Complex in Depth: Virgins, Whores, and You

How To Start Your Own Personal Sexual Revolution

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ColumnYou can thank your old friend Dr. Freud for the oh-so-useful, yet staggeringly frustrating concept that is the “Madonna-Whore complex.”

Even though there’s much that Sigmund got wrong about women (hello, Penis Envy) the Madonna-Whore complex was one of his greatest hits, at least in terms of framing the male psyche, and through it, our culture at large. He coined the term close to 100 years ago, yet we’re still dealing with its daily ramifications. This is one cigar that is not just a cigar.

Defined by Freud as a complex stemming from Oedipal origins, he posited that heterosexual men can only truly love and admire women that they are not sexually attracted to, with a bitch of a corollary – these same men cannot love the women they want to boink. “Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love,” he said. Grossly and sadly, this is still overwhelmingly the case, except with the most conscious and progressive of men. I’m not, however, saying that men are responsible for all relationship ills — don’t send me angry emails. (Also: it’s the patriarchy, folks.)

Back in the day this meant that men wouldn’t marry women who’d been sullied by sex — it was a lot more straightforward than it is now, however wrong it was. You could only “snag a man” if you perfectly performed the archetype of the virgin, which in some cultures came down to blood-stained sheets on your wedding night.

Women, of course, internalized this and began to believe that there was only an either/or available to them – in order to survive, they’d need to learn the script. Either act like a proper mother/saint and never have pleasure, or get your rocks off but never marry. This fit comfortably within the construct of women as property sold from fathers to husbands. Society didn’t much care about the “sluts” cast out of this process.

Before there was birth control, there would be evidence of your slutty unmarriageable deeds, one of the reasons so many women were compelled to be “good girls.” The Pill was supposed to have set us free of such binaries, but we continue to struggle with them everyday, from rape culture to the intimate corners of our established relationships. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still far to travel, baby.

So much of this plays out in pop culture, where our complexes are mined for corporate advertising profits. The Madonna-Whore complex is the TV trope that keeps on giving, even as our small screen is increasingly diverse in terms of race and gender. We’ve got the gays (and they’re married), we’ve got women in positions of power, but still, it seems the sexually-empowered woman rarely gets the guy in our contemporary dramas. The bitch, the slut, the hardened lady cop who is too cold for a relationship, the frigid wife, the harried mom who has a headache — some of our favorite characters.

And then we watch Peggy, Betty, Meghan and Joan battle with these identities on “Mad Men” each week, imagining ourselves liberated by the waves of feminism that have saved us from their lives. But some archetypes hold so fast, so tight, that we must also break through them individually, even while the collective boundary-bashing is happening before our eyes. The myths we’re fed since babyhood are powerful things.

The intricacies of the Madonna-Whore complex are legion, and they seamlessly thread from the personal to the political and back again. There is the MW complex within your husband or boyfriend’s psyche, and then there is the one that permeates every pore of our simultaneously sexist and hyper-sexualized culture. And there’s the one that’s inside of you, and growing inside of the seven-year-old girls who already understand that in order to be liked, they need to be sexy – not smart.

The MW complex suggests that women are not fully human – that we are defined by our roles as either sexual or non-sexual beings. There is no grey here, only the black of the slut or the white of the virgin. Sex is vital, important, life-giving (quite literally). But when we are defined by it and nothing else, it’s harder and harder for us to take pleasure in it, to have it without shame. Before you’ve processed this, you enter any room as either the slut or the virgin, full stop.

When we are cast as virgins, we’re infantilized. We are still property, meant to be taken care of because we can’t really think for ourselves. When we’re cast as the whore, it’s because we dare to have desires, thoughts, and ambitions – like Eve, any woman wanting to eat of her own knowledge is a she-devil bent on destruction.

Here are some of infamous slogans of the Madonna-Whore complex:

Good girls don’t.

Don’t give the milk away for free.

She’s marriage material.

Be a lady in the streets, and a whore in the sheets.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Let’s explore that last one a bit more closely. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” We’re damned if we are openly sexual, because we’re told men won’t consider us marriage or even “girlfriend material” – they’ll never text again the morning after. And of course, we’re damned if we don’t, because then we’re not getting our own sexual needs met any time soon, and/or our husbands will cheat on us, especially after the kids are born.

Perhaps we’re condemning ourselves to damnation here, because we’re measuring ourselves by someone else’s standards.

Conservatives believe there is but one antidote to the oversexed state of the union: drive sex underground. They call for abstinence-only education, Purity Pledges, and Purity Balls, which are really, really creepy. And then there are the racial implications of Bill O’Reilly’s insane obsession with Beyoncé. Note that even when girls buy into the purity industry and talk about the fact that they’re not having sex, they’re still positioning themselves as sex objects.

Saint/sinner. Mother/whore. Are you one or the other, a little bit of both, or something entirely in between? You know that you contain multitudes, gradations on the scale from slut to Madonna and back again depending on your mood, your ovulation/menstruation, your relative horniness of the moment, your work deadlines, your relationship status, etc. You might even cycle through all these sensations in one afternoon. So why do you still feel like you need to fit into a neat little man-pleasing package when you interact with the outside world? That’s what bedroom role-playing is for — but these roles should never govern your place in the world.

Intellectually, you probably already tucked away everything I’ve written before this paragraph ages ago.

The question is, why don’t you feel that way deep in the cells of your body? You have a new opportunity to wake up and expunge shame every single day. With every casual interaction, with every potential sexual encounter, you can take back what you had before you had shame. What if we reintegrated our inner whores on our own, without waiting for our prospective/current or imaginary partners to catch up?

Got a question for Stefanie? Email stefanie at ecosalon dot com, and she’ll answer it in the next Sexual Healing column.

Keep in touch with Stefanie on Twitter: @ecosexuality

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 Image: porschelinn

The post The Madonna-Whore Complex in Depth – Virgins, Sluts and You: Sexual Healing appeared first on EcoSalon.

On 19 January 2014, the official One Billion Rising 2013 documentary short premiered at Sundance.

The campaign highlights the fact that one in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. That amounts to one billion women. So in 2013, one billion women and men danced together around the world to end violence against women and girls. The campaign is calling on men and women to rise again this year on February 14th. Watch the touching video below and for more info, visit OneBillionRising.org.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post This is What One Billion Women Dancing Together Looks Like [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.