Letters to the Editor
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The delectable Kipnis
I'm glad to see Laura Miller recognize the writing skills, fun and biting smarts of Laura Kipnis. One small correction to her review. She refers to "Against Love: A Polemic", as Kipnis's first book. It was actually her second. Her first book, as fascinating and right on as those following, was titled: "Bound and Gagged: Pronography and the Politics of Fantasy in America."
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interesting but muddled article
There seems to be a regular series in Salon on modern pop-feminism which poorly serves the issues. I tend to doubt that levels of sexual enjoyment are actually that different between genders but that sexual entitlement has become a hot button for gender war. Even determining what constitutes orgasm is highly subjective and biased by the overall cultural and scientific zeitgeist.
Sex, in the evolutionary context, has two main functions to explain why it’s pleasurable: procreation and the formation of valuable social bonds.
As another poster mentioned males are evolved to ejaculate easily for the needs of procreation and are biologically rewarded with some pleasure. Similarly females become lubricated easily and are rewarded with some pleasure. As biological acts to facilitate procreation, ejaculation is more comparable to lubrication being pleasurable but not necessarily of great pleasure.
The level of sexual enjoyment and degree of fulfillment (which is what we’re really discussing) is much harder to objectify. What constitutes orgasm? Is it simply ejaculation and lubrication, or it is more than that? The definition varies by gender and women set a much higher bar for pleasure than men do for the term. While “orgasm” is a term which is used to describe great pleasure in women, it’s used to describe simple ejaculation in men. Most men and women already know that not every lubrication and ejaculation qualify as especially “orgasmic” experiences. For most men certainly only a fraction of ejaculations qualify as truly great sex, similar to experiences of women, despite appearances.
Also, as females play a greater role in nurturing offspring it’s reasonable that emotional fulfillment relating to social bonding is more prominent in all aspects of life. Similarly competitiveness is more prominent in men due to male evolutionary roles. Both can be a strength or weakness in modern times where biological evolutionary roles are increasingly less relevant. Despite what Kipnis may believe and what Miller quotes, there’s no failure to understand that principle among evolutionary biologists and primatologists.
Another issue raised is that of partner's sexual empathy. All empathy is essentially reciprocal in nature i.e. enlightened altruism is evolved for group dynamics and collective success. In all barters the required effort needed to achieve a goal, relative to its reward, factors heavily into the likelihood of effort being made. That principle alone explains a lot and offers more useful perspective to understand how norms evolved and how they may be changed for the better.
Being raised as a feminist, I'm so disappointed at what feminism has become. It's become a haven for second rate punditry laced with vague ideology and pop-psycho babble, often by victims of rape and people with copious personal baggage. There’s a lot of important discovery and cultural advancement to be made if people would leave baggage behind.
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Easy
because in the quest to play the role of victim successfully in order to gain more control over and autonomy from men, feminists need to fail to acknowledge the power AVERAGE women already have over AVERAGE men and that AVERAGE men do not in return have over AVERAGE women.
even LESS parity between the sexes than before. even MORE resentment from men than ever.
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GIVE A STAR TO THIS WOMAN
Shooting Ourselves in the Foot and Pissed-off That Our Foot Hurts
If the orgasm gap in the issue that's troubling feminists the most, then we're shooting ourselves in the foot. A woman has the best chance of having really great satisfying (yes orgasmic) sex when she feels emotionally secure and she is hooking up with a man who is committed to her for life and has dedicated himself to beComing an expert on her body. You can't find conjugal bliss when you've got one foot out of the bed...poised to make a run for it. Being the only one taking care of You is a damn lonely exhausting job. As risky as marriage may be, there's something priceless about a best friend who is your ally till death and who has a PhD in your Gspot. If embracing this truth means this college educated woman has to opt-out of calling myself a feminist, then so be it.
HappyWife NEEDS a star BAD
but of course Broadsheet won't give it to anyone who speaks the TRUTH
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Sometimes I wonder why I read these kinds of articles anymore
"...you can even get away with never making a coherent argument..."
So the critics of feminism have something in common with feminists, then?
Let's be honest here: I've seen feminists take-up an argument when it's expedient and then drop the argument as soon as it's no longer in their interest.
We see you say on one hand that what a woman chooses to do with her body is her own business and no one should judge what she decides to do, yet you obviously feel compelled to say something judgemental when a woman chooses to put breast implants inside her body. Puh-leeze.
This kind of behavior isn't an isolated thing at all. I see feminists arguing on one hand that co-ed contact sports are fine for women because women ought to prove they're rough and tough-- and yet the same feminists will say that women need to be protected from dirty looks in the workplace so they won't "feel uncomfortable". So how so "rough and tough" can women possibly be? Puh-leeze.
And if feminism "isn’t about saying mean things about men", then why are so many feminists so eager to defend a sister who does exactly that?
(Sigh) Seriously, Laura. I used to enjoy Salon a LOT more before you helped to turn it into a spear-carrier for feminist activism. The tone has become snide and mocking, the female-partisanship has become crass and blatant. I love Salon and it's dismaying to watch what's happening to it.