Feminine sexuality can function as cultural resistance

Sex.

It propagates our species; it satisfies our lust. It is necessity and emotion, dominance and submission. It is fully-clothed sensuality and raw nakedness. It embodies many extremes, the most important of which being this: Sex is a concept as ancient as the very essence of biological life, yet as immediate as our foremost thoughts and impulses. When it comes to sex, the primordial makes love to the modern. So which should we open wider, our minds or our legs?

In Western societies, there is a double standard which says that only men can initiate sex. In other words, sex — fooling around, hooking up, taking the 46G to Pleasant Hills — takes place only on his watch. Once he wants to go, the woman’s timetable is secondary. Sex is an aspect of humanity; we’ve got to do it to keep ourselves going (in more ways than one), but is it possible for such an age-old act to be manipulated?

How can feminists have their cry?

Traditionally, they couldn’t. The public imperative of a gal to initiate sex, whether intercourse itself or just foreplay, was pretty impossible. Even plain forwardness was unseemly. But maybe, in modern times, that notion is teetering on the edge of reversal. There might not have to be a subservient partner for there to be a dominant one. Maybe something about females makes them inherently docile, but is it possible, from a psychoanalytical perspective, for a female to usurp the sexual throne and desire to successfully initiate sex at her own will? And if so, is that progressive or just plain slutty?

It depends on why she wants it. Sexual rebellion has been real for eons — think Lysistrata, La Malinche, or even Samantha Jones. Women who have openly expressed a desire to do it are automatically branded strumpets, whores, and “easy.” But to leave the issue here puts an incomplete spin on the dice in the game of sexual dominance. Being skanky, or traditionally immoral, makes a woman further subjugated by the dominant masculine culture because she’s trying to express her sexuality in terms of the definitions of men. When that happens, she faces the fate of Thelma and Louise or Desdemona: masculine society will see her destroyed.

But then there’s cultural resistance, the legitimate undermining of the preconceived notions of our own culture. In debilitating the boys, we’ve got to draw on our most primal ingrained female sexuality. To effectively resist the stale idea of sex as a man’s ability to “get some,” women must really want some of their own, and then they’ve got to act on it — either intransitively or externally. After all, you’ve got to feel personally satisfied first and socially manipulative second. Because when you do something that satisfies you, then you’re taking ownership of yourself. And when you do that within the context of women initiating sexual emotions and actions, then you achieve personal happiness while simultaneously fueling feminist power everywhere.

So use the hair toss. Walk the walk. Wear the Wonder Bra. Because men, as I’m told from the very source, are just as tired as we are of their stereotypical “macho” role. Bottom line: When you want it for you, and you’re protecting yourself while still putting your pride on the line, all in the name of pleasure, it’s HOT.

I’m not pleading for total gender equality in all aspects of the word, because I don’t think that would be natural. Nor am I praising über-feminism. But as Lady Macbeth says, “Unsex me here,” and in the words of Paris Hilton, “Live every day like it’s your birthday.” So light the candles, and go get what you want — carefully, proudly, and powerfully.