Are Whores “Proper” Feminists?
Sex and feminism seem to have a very uneasy relationship. I’m not a sociologist and I am not writing an academic treatise, I am writing my memories of my experiences and thought processes, so please read this post with the understanding that this is my personal grappling with this thorny issue. I have a jumble of thoughts to try and tease out and make sense of and hopefully by the end of this process you and I will have a stronger sense of my answer to this question and my reasons.
My first thought is that you have to define what you mean by the word “feminism.” Arghhh….how unbelievably dreary and pedantic – but words really matter and if your definition of feminism is totally different to mine then of course we can never agree on the answer to the question.
Until I was well into my 40s I didn’t consider myself a feminist. Mainly because my brain had wired “feminist” together with “non-sexual woman” and even “man hater.” I’d always found men easier to get on with than women, they’re generally more straightforward with fewer varieties of masks. Plus I went to an all girls’ school, I know what utter bitches females can be. So I wasn’t man hating.
Worse, from the age of 18 when I first felt a cock inside me, I have always loved sex. I wanted to make myself available to as many men as possible, as often as possible, to feel that blissful moment of penetration followed by the explosion of feel good hormones. Other students did drugs and alcohol to get high. I wanted cock.
Please note that at this stage of my life wanting something and allowing myself something were two totally different things. The point is that in my 20s and 30s I didn’t feel that I could possibly ally myself with feminists because I just enjoyed men and their genitalia far too much.
Like so many people, younger me understood feminism to be a rebuttal of men, older and wiser me understands it is a challenge to the patriarchal system that we are all trapped in.
Feminism was born in Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries – a period of increasingly suffocating control and oppression of women. If you read “Normal Women” by Philippa Gregory you will get a sense of how brutally women were treated and how urgently they needed to break free.
And clearly, in many ways, women have been very successful. We can vote and stand for elections, we too can lead our countries into war against other countries. We too can now slave away long hours in the office for the profit of corporate billionaires. We can choose what clothes we wear, corsets are a thing of the past and we can even choose if/when we want to wear a bra – you know all the things we can do, I don’t need to list them here.
But where we haven’t liberated ourselves is in our sexuality.
I guess it took thousands of years to tame women and make them believe that they are non-sexual or that if they are sexual then that part of them is nasty, bad, dangerous, slutty, shameful or lower class. It’s going to take a bit of time for the process to unwind.
What I’m trying to say is that the kind of feminism that fears sex, especially the kind shared with men, is an incomplete feminism.
I allowed myself to start considering calling myself a feminist and being a part of this elite club of superior women (I mean who wants to wear the yoke forever?) following a conversation with a friend who was surprised I didn’t consider myself a feminist.
I asked her, “What exactly is feminism?”
“Well, for me, it’s having the freedom to choose. Fundamentally if you, as a woman, don’t have choice then you’re enslaved by those who deny you that choice.”
So feminism is about choice. Which is about freedom. Now that resonates.
My friend offered her definition during the period in my life in which I was fighting for the right to choose who (and how) I had sex with. The Boyfriend sought to limit my choice. I sought to expand it. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I didn’t want to restrict my life experiences and personal growth for his comfort.
I think that’s pretty radically feminist! A woman living the truth that this is my body and my orgasm and I’ll do with it what I please.
The common response to my demand to live life on my terms is “How selfish.” Which is today’s ducking stool if you ask me. It’s just the modern means by which women are controlled and coerced to do whatever it takes, and be whoever people want us to be, to keep them comfortable.
I once read a brilliant quip on Facebook, “If you have a problem with a sex worker using her body for work, but not a coal miner using his, you have a problem with the sex, not the work.”
People, including many, many women are discomforted by sex work because, in truth, they are discomforted by sex. So many so called feminists – women who believe in bodily autonomy and female choice – become deeply hypocritical and pained when considering sex work.
I’m absolutely fine with women who choose not to have sex. I hate the gym and I hate people who try to jolly me into the idea of sweating in an overheated, over stimulating room. If a woman loathes the idea of a sweaty man rubbing up against her body, that’s great – more for me!
No-one is making women have sex (well only people breaking the law). If you don’t want to, don’t, simples. Just don’t use the weight of a big word like “feminism” to shame and disparage those of us that really do want sex, want loads of it and choose to sell our sex in a capitalist society (in which every other person is selling their unique genius).
My feminism is inclusive. It includes women who hate sex, hate men and hate themselves. I feel sad for them but I won’t tell them that they are not feminists for making the choices they make.
So why hasn’t feminism freed women from the chains of sexual oppression? Why hasn’t a movement led by women for women finished the job? I think we’re starting to, it’s one of the roles of my blog, but why has it taken so long?
“Normal Women” documents how sexuality became an intrinsic part of the English class system. One of the distinctions between high class (non-working) women and low class (working) women was how sexual they were allowed to be.
High class women became objects to be revered but not touched. Objects of desire that you could write poetry and love songs about but who remained, pure, unsullied by sex and beyond your grasp, as perfect and unblemished as the statues of the Virgin Mary in all of Europe’s churches and cathedrals.
When the Ancient Greek belief that women need to orgasm to conceive a child was replaced with Enlightenment ideas that they didn’t, even orgasm with a husband was denied any woman who needed to believe herself to be high class or high born.
But clearly their husband and “lovers” (the men who wrote lengthy poems and songs expressing their undying love to their untouchable goddess) needed the physical experience of sex with someone. So, low born women, women believed to be little better than livestock, were accepted to be highly sexual, even animalistic in their desires, and thus endlessly available to any man however high or low born he was.
I don’t think this conditioning has been washed out of women.
Consider the founding women of feminism – all high born – ie sexless. As more women became educated they moved themselves, through their education, from low born status to high born status, and even if the rigid class system in England didn’t really allow for this upward movement, the women doing the moving wanted it to be so. One way, across hundreds of years of English history, for a woman to demonstrate that she is “high born” is to live as sexless a life as it is possible to lead.
The rules are different for men, who are happily allowed to be sexual whatever class they believe they belong to.
What I am suggesting is that there is status to be gained by women who eschew sex and that after hundreds of years of conditioning this behaviour has become embedded in our bodies.
Well most of our bodies. Somehow I didn’t get this genetic blueprint. Maybe it’s because I am made of immigrant stock and am not a pure-bred English woman?
The hierarchical structure of patriarchy wires us to need to feel superior to someone. Anyone will do. Patriarchy survives by giving us all someone to look down on. And, feminism is operating within the same patriarchal system as everyone else, so it’s not that surprising that feminists also need someone to look down on, and they absolutely do.
Feminists will fight for women to have the right to choose bodily autonomy and to work for a life of economic independence but NOT if it means enjoying herself in the process!
That’s honestly why I think whores are better, we don’t look down on people to make ourselves feel good, we make ourselves feel good by making other people feel amazing!
So, are whores feminists?
Am I a feminist? Is your whore a feminist?
I don’t know and I think I have moved beyond caring about whether I am admitted into the club. I know I am a Queen. I stand tall and proud in my space. I don’t feel the need to convert you to any cause or make you feel uncomfortable in any way (unless you’ve booked a Ra massage with me!)
I live my life on my terms because I have vowed to die with no regrets.
I am a wife and a mother as well as a whore. I love my life and I love my work. I wish for everyone to have the same level of freedom, satisfaction, joy, passion, authenticity and creativity in their lives as I have.
I enjoy the company of men especially when they are naked and I can play with their cocks. I am learning to feel less judged by women who are still trapped by centuries of conditioning.
In my little way I rebel against the system every day. And I ally myself with anyone else, feminist, anti-colonialist, anti-war, heck, anti-monarchist who is, in some small way, in their corner of the world, disrupting the patriarchal system that has been so destructive to humanity and the planet.
As a whore my life is devoted to love, pleasure, heart connection and the momentary dissolution of ego – personally I think that’s a more powerful middle finger up to patriarchy than spending hours angrily typing man hating messages on Facebook and X.
Patriarchy will continue to control and exploit us all as long as we continue to waste our time hating, judging and policing each other – and ourselves.
In my opinion, feminists who hate men are agents of patriarchy and feminists who deride sex work are also agents of patriarchy. Their small minded, ignorant, arrogant, fear based belief systems are maintaining the order they purportedly seek to disrupt.
And I have no time for it.
I disengage from the noise.
I refuse to answer the question and I book another sexy appointment.
I have real work to do.
Recommended further reading:
“Normal Women” by Philippa Gregory
