Salon.com > Bitch

Is vanilla sex boring?

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 13:54:00 +0000

"Those of us who have different ... notions of eroticism and sensuality are simply dismissed. The pejorative word [being] ‘vanilla,’ which is ironically, one of the most sensual aromas.” – Andrea Dworkin.

“I wish [BDSM folks] would stop referring to me as 'vanilla.' If you're making the case that everyone should be free to do what they like without being judged, why call non-BDSM people a derogatory name that implies they're all prudish bores?” – Anonymous, commenter on Bitch.

If we bemoan the oversexualization of culture, should we also be concerned about the kinkification of culture? As BDSM blogger Clarisse Thorn writes, "Being a sex-positive feminist, I worry that other women will read my work and it will increase their performance anxiety ... that it will lead other women to feel like, 'Gosh, is this something liberated sex-positive women do? Is this something I should be doing?" Thanks to a prescriptive media, the competition to be having the most out-there, kinky, freaky, dirty sex keeps escalating, with "Ultimate Perv" engraved on the winner's medal. Fantastic if you’re antsy to compete, but what if you’re just not into all that stuff? What if you think you secretly might be ... [whisper it, now!] ... vanilla?

New Monster High doll debuts

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 21:35:00 +0000

Last year, we gave the Mattel's Monster High series the lowest honor we bestow here on the Bitch blogs: The Douchebag Decree. At the time, Deb Jannerson had this to say of the franchise:

Well, what do you know? Hypersexualized, heavily made-up dolls with über-Barbie proportions. Not only are their waists much narrower than their heads; they're close to the size of one of their calves. The ladies are homogeneous in height, shorter than their few male counterparts so as not to be intimidating. The designated nerd, zombie Ghoulia (third from the right), is the only female to come with a pair of pants; mummy Cleo de Nile (second from right) appears to at first glance but is actually clad in strips of fabric prone to gaps and *wink-wink* wardrobe malfunctions.

These are the quintessential high school outcasts?

Evaluating female submission

Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Before I even get into the thorny issue of how the media represents female sexual submissives, I want to lay some groundwork. Today, I'll consider the idea that women’s participation in BDSM, especially as a submissive, is inherently anti-feminist. Next post: the other side (that the female submissive who consensually participates in BDSM is empowered). Please remember: However much any of the views here piss people off, I am airing them because I believe in engaging with and critiquing beliefs that bug us.

In the '70s and '80s, feminists were bitterly opposed over BDSM, and the women who volunteered to be dominated were the biggest source of contention. In her book Female Sexual Slavery, Kathleen Barry described BDSM as “a disguise for the act of sexually forcing a woman against her will.” Lesbians who practiced BDSM didn’t escape condemnation either. As Jocelyn Borycszka puts it in her forthcoming book Suspect Citizens, they were accused of simply replicating “the very masculine power dynamics used to perpetuate women’s oppression.”