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GOOD_VIBRATIONS
December 23, 2014
February 19, 2015
February 20, 2019
This entire controversy seems pretty peculiar: if it
were just a group of men that were confused about how
women's bodies react, that might be understandable A_BRIEF_HISTORY_OF_SEX
(though you know, it's not as though straight guys
are *uninterested* in female sexuality...), but isn't
it profoundly weird when you get a group of *women*
arguing about how women's bodies work? Don't they
just know this? But evidently human sexual responses
are a little more complicated in the female than
male-- and it could also be that the American
puritanical streak was getting in the way on this one.
(A resonable method is "just mess around and see
what you like", but if you're hung up about "messing
around" you might never get there.)
This was part of the mission of the new generation
of pro-sex feminists that I associate with San I used to think of this
Francisco in the 80s. The sex toy store "Good as the "third wave" of
Vibrations" was originally a feminist collective: it feminism, but everyone's
bothered them that many women didn't know how to understanding of the
have orgasms, particularly when it didn't seem like boundaries of the waves
men had this problem. They weren't just a "novelty seems so confused I've
toy" store, they were dedicated to creating a place given up on them.
where women would be comfortable learning about
sexual techniques-- the staff at Good Vibrations WAVICALISM
were more like sexual counselors than just sales
people.
Susie Bright talks about this period
in some of her writings.
The 70s feminism seemed summed up by the slogan "The
personal is political". For them, nearly anything you
might do has great signifcance, and it's important to try
to live in just the right way, to set a good example and
help bring about The Revolution.
The pro-sex feminists of the 80s placed a great deal
of emphasis on individual freedom-- their standard
advice was summed up in the slogan "Get over The long form was
yourself". Their insight was that stressing out "Get over yourself
about the proper application of feminist doctrine in and start having
your life can be a strange kind of egotism-- the orgasms."
world simply does not turn on every choice you make.
Playing with sex toys doesn't make you a traitor to
the cause of equal rights.
The goal of the feminism that grew out of San Francisco
in the 80s was to expand the ways that women-- and not
only women-- were allowed to be.
The San Francisco-based magazine "On Our
Backs" that was founded in the mid-80s was A very funny title:
full of things like lesbian bondage porn made there's a classic
by women for other women to look at. In a socialist publication
time when people were still struggling with that was called "Off
the concept of "lipstick lesbians", this was Our Backs".
a very mind-bendy phenomena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipstick_lesbian
Compare that to the image of the
lesbian couple presented by the The Segal sculpture is on display
George Segal sculpture "Gay on the Stanford campus, next to
Liberation". It portrays a generic the north-west corner of the old
image of lesbians circa 1970: quad building.
they're dressed in a casual/sloppy
manner in blue jeans and simple, In the mid-90s some troglodytes
loose shirts, they look braless, from Berkeley used to like to
and they have Very Serious vandalize it with blue paint
expressions on their caucasian during "big game" week.
features.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Liberation_Monument
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