2001-03-11 - Night
While we�re talking about sex, let me ask my lesbian readers something.
Years ago, at a show my friend�s band was playing, one of the band members brought this pamphlet by some Womyn�s Book Collective denouncing "finger-fucking" as patriarchal and exalting nonpenetrative lesbian sex as the only kind that doesn�t negate the empowered FEMale identity (that�s approximately the language that was used--this was quite some time ago and I don�t remember the exact wording). During the band�s set the lead singer read part of the pamphlet aloud and then passed it around to the sound of much juvenile snickering--particularly from the dykes in the audience, of whom there were a good-sized number.
So can any of the lezzies out there explain the pamphlet�s reasoning to me? For me it�s very simple: More than half of the people in the world have slots, those slots can have things inserted into them (among their other uses), and whether the thing being inserted is a dick or a digit or an ATM card is no radikal feminista�s damn business.
I suppose if you think penetration = dominance you can follow their logic. But how uncreative and adolescent is that? When I was 16 I listened to the Pretenders� debut album for the first time and when I heard Chrissie Hynde snarl, "I shot my mouth off and you showed me what that hole was for," I almost fainted and fell out of my chair, the blood went south so fast. Who was the unempowered one there, I ask you?
Am I off-base here? My guestbook is open if anyone wants to enlighten me.
***
The above came to mind because of a minor pissing match I�m currently stuck in at the magazine.
The February issue is our sex issue. It�s a labor of love (or lust) for us, putting it together--it�s also a sacred duty. Disabled people have questions and concerns about their sexuality that nondisabled people don�t even think about--starting with the fact that you (ok, not all of you, but an irritatingly large percentage of you) freak out over the very idea that we have a sexuality.
As you�d expect, the sex issue generates a lot of letters each year, both positive and negative. The negative ones generally break down into two groups: the prudes who cancel their subscriptions because they ain�t gonna allow this kind of smut in their house where their children will see it and blah-blah-blah, and the folks even more perverted than we are who think we�re not being racy enough. (This latter group has a point, actually. We�ve been doing the sex issue for several years now and pushing the envelope has been getting harder to do each time. I offered to do a story about some of the weird gimp-fetish websites I�ve discovered over the years, but do my editors listen to me? Noooo.)
Then there�s one e-mail we got this year which is in a category all by itself. According to him, our approach to disabled sexuality--profiling couples in successful relationships, laughing a lot, and generally treating disabled people as healthy sexual beings--is unfair to gimps who aren�t gettin� any and only makes them (and him) feel ashamed. "Dangerous and irresponsible journalism," he calls it.
The guy who wrote this is very well-known in disability activist circles, by the way.
I made the mistake of replying. Diplomatically and politely. Instead of giving him the Miguelito treatment--"Oh, I�m sorry, I had no idea that it was All About You. Have you considered the possibility that you�re lonely not because you�re disabled but because BITTERNESS AND WHINING ARE FUCKING UNATTRACTIVE??"--I explained why I thought it was important for us to stress the positive and invited the person to write something for next year�s issue expressing a different viewpoint.
Apparently my reply got forwarded around to some people who have my phone number, because last week I got two phone calls from people giving me grief for "invalidating" their feelings.
Well, excuse the pluperfect fuck out of me. Lord knows I wouldn�t want to "invalidate" the feelings of people who just happen to be full of horseshit. And could somebody tell me when the dictionary got rewritten to make "argue" and "take issue with" synonymous with "invalidate your poor wittle feewings"?
If disability activists ever started talking about justice and civil rights again and stopped whining about hurt feelings, we might come a long way toward no longer being second-class citizens and at the very least wouldn�t have to worry about Congress or Shrub or the Supreme Court ripping the guts out of the ADA. I�m pretty sure I can go take a pee without missing it happening, however.
I know exactly why this letter pushes my buttons--it�s because I�ve been in the very same place. Everyone who knows me personally has heard me mope about my sex life, or lack thereof. Yes, even ol� Mig wallows in self-pity occasionally. Lots of people with disabilities have problems finding mates, I�m one of those people, and yeah, sometimes it�s goddamn depressing.
But I sure as hell wouldn�t want to see my moping in print in a national magazine. I also have enough self-esteem to not feel as if my precious gimp identity is threatened by another gimp�s success--and enough of a clue to know that spending every waking hour in a funk, or writing po-mo screeds about "Politicizing Our Sexual Oppression" (that was actually the title of an essay in one of the gimp mags a few years back--I shit you not) won�t get me any action.
My most recent sexual encounter was totally unexpected. I was at a party/concert, dancing my ass off, probably with the mother of all contact highs thanks to the dense fog of pot smoke--feeling completely at ease with myself and with everyone around me. I still would have had an awesome, fun, erotic time even if nothing overtly sexual had happened. In that respect, shakin� your thang beats reading Foucault hands-down--unless you�re a French grad student, I suppose.
I�d better stop here before I start sounding like Camille Paglia.
Tomorrow's topic: Movies--I saw three, count 'em, three this weekend. Time for bed now.
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