why women are angry 1: sex and love

There is a politician in the UK who is running for parliament. She is a porn director who has just won an award for her work. She has a PhD in philosophy and is obviously a woman of note but something about her conversation on the radio disturbed me. She was spruking about women’s rights, saying that she supports the empowerment of women, however, the combination of her statements with the idea of her directing porn stars just rankled me.

Here I risk sounding like a prude but I don’t think I am one. I grew up in a reasonably liberal, non-Christian Dutch household with my Grandfather’s collection of porn magazines not too carefully stashed. Those mags were pretty out there in the 70s. The Dutch seem to be fairly practical about sex. When half of my family went back to Holland for a visit they all went on a sight-seeing tour of the red-light district, kids and all. Sex without guilt but with some commitment was probably my Grandmother’s code. All she demanded of me was that I didn’t do what men wanted me to without really making sure it was what I wanted too. Oh, and don’t get pregnant, which is why she sent me off to the doctors at barely 16 to get the pill.

Ideologically I support the right of women to make a living from their bodies. And when I meet someone who does I am more curious than judgemental. So I have to dig deep to discover why it still upsets me that women do porn and work as prostitutes. I think it has something to do with the dirty words ‘love’ and ‘commitment’.

My generation grew up with the notion that sex, any sex was good, in fact the more the better with as many people as you could. That went for women as well as men and even more so for me because I was a member of a Tantric sect that encouraged those values. But somewhere in the equation women were ripped off - again. Instead of valuing our bodies as the ‘temples’ they were supposed to be, we ‘swallowed’ - whole, the primitive male version of what sex should be. I have had as much love-less sex as anyone of my generation, but it was never as good as sex with love.

Now the pseudo-Tantric philosophers would tell me that it is my understanding of love that is incorrect, but I have read the Taoist books too and nowhere does it say ‘go fuck your brains out’. Whatever the relationship between participants there is a commitment to practice together, over time. The Eastern sexual practices of tantric gurus detailed in that classic 70s novel, the name of which escapes me, were exploitive, the purpose of which was to procure the master’s longevity at the expense of others. And therein lies my point.

On a basic primitive pro-creative level, yes, any sex is good because it ensures the survival of the species. It might feel good at the time. And I will admit that harnessing sexual energy without commitment or exploitation seems to be possible for those who have studied the practices. But let’s face it, how many of us are at that level. What are we left with? Love and commitment - which by the way I have never been very good at.

So now we have women, and particularly young girls, who think they are acting from a place of empowerment by exploiting their own bodies, a lot of the time to win approval and get noticed and in the process disempowering their emotional and psychic bodies, by having sex, and being seen to be having sex. And instead of teaching men to value them, their bodies and therefore the feminine, they are actually reinforcing the behaviour that is also tearing at the womb of the earth, in the search for oil and minerals. The feminine has been completely fucked over…..no wonder women are angry.

image: my sculpture, life sized.

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