(6) Introduction

"Only thirty years (my lifetime) ago, our mothers were “burning their bras” and picketing Playboy, and suddenly we were getting implants and wearing the bunny logo as supposed symbols of our liberation. How had the culture shifted so drastically in such a short period of time?
What was almost more surprising than the change itself were the responses I got when I started interviewing the men and — often — women who edit magazines like Maxim and make programs like The Man Show and Girls Gone Wild. This new raunch culture didn’t mark the death of feminism, they told me; it was evidence that the feminist project had already been achieved. We’d earned the right to look at Playboy; we were empowered enough to get Brazilian bikini waxes. Women had come so far, I learned, we no longer needed to worry about objectification or misogyny. Instead, it was time for us to join the frat party of pop culture, where men had been enjoying themselves all along. If Male Chauvinist Pigs were men who regarded women as pieces of meat, we would outdo them and be Female Chauvinist Pigs: women who make sex objects of other women and of ourselves.(...) They wanted to be “one of the guys”; they hoped to be experienced “like a man.” Going to strip clubs or talking about porn stars was a way of showing themselves and the men around them that they weren’t “prissy little women” or “girly-girls.”" [mijn nadruk] (8-9)

"I tried to get with the program, but I could never make the argument add up in my head. How is resurrecting every stereotype of female sexuality that feminism endeavored to banish good for women? Why is laboring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering?" [mijn nadruk] (10)

"“Raunchy” and “liberated” are not synonyms. It is worth asking ourselves if this bawdy world of boobs and gams we have resurrected reflects how far we’ve come, or how far we have left to go."(11)

[Dat laatste natuurlijk als het gaat om normatieve zaken als rolverdelingen, emotionaliteit, beoordeling van uiterlijk, seksualiteit. Uit alle voorbeelden die Levy hierna gaat geven zal blijken dat ontzettend veel vrouwen zich op die terreinen nog steeds laten leiden door 'mannen' en hun waarden en normen. Het is fantastisch als je blond bent, grote tieten hebt, je doos scheert, halfnaakt rondparadeert - niet uit een soort van nudistische overtuiging, maar om de waardering van mannen te krijgen -, op commando alle 'geile dingen' doet die 'mannen' zo geweldig vinden - niet omdat je er zo'n plezier aan beleeft maar om er bij te horen / om niet afgewezen te worden. Vrouwen kunnen nu studeren, werken, etc. en dat is een enorme vooruitgang, maar op andere terreinen is er weinig 'normatieve bevrijding', om zo te zeggen. Erger is dat al die vrouwen (en mannen) niet door hebben dat ze door zich aan dat vulgaire ('raunch' = 'vulgair') bestaan aan te passen 'mannen' bevestigen in hun typisch masculiene waarden en normen en gedrag. Met andere woorden: je zit verkrachters en misbruikers in de wereld te zetten waarvan je als vrouw alleen maar je hele leven last hebt. Waarom doe je zoiets? Onbegrijpelijk. En als het dan mis gaat het slachtoffer uithangen.]

(11) One - Raunch Culture

Over Girls Gone Wild, een tv-show, waarvoor vrouwen graag uit de kleren gingen.

"“It’s all girl-on-girl, we never shoot guys,” explained Bill Horn. “That’s not what Joe wants. And no pros. It has to be real.”"(20)

"It sounds like a fantasy world dreamed up by teenage boys. A world of sun and sand where frozen daiquiris flow from faucets and any hot girl you see will peel off her bikini top, lift up her skirt…all you have to do is ask. It’s no surprise that there’s a male audience for this, but what’s strange is that the women who populate this alternate reality are not strippers or paid performers, they are middle-class college kids on vacation — they are mainstream. And really, their reality is not all that unusual. People on spring break are obviously young, and Horn was right to call the flashing a rite of passage. But it is an initiation into something ongoing rather than a one-shot deal, more like having a first beer than a bat mitzvah. The heat is turned up a little in Miami, but a baseline expectation that women will be constantly exploding in little blasts of exhibitionism runs throughout our culture. Girls Gone Wild is not extraordinary, it’s emblematic." [mijn nadruk] (24)

"But a panty procession would soon seem quaint, compared to the tidal wave of reality shows that swept over television and brought our culture that much closer to a raunch aesthetic and state of mind." [mijn nadruk] (28)

[Hm, ja, maar wat is dat precies? Er is een indruk gewekt, maar nog geen definitie gegeven. Wat is 'vulgair' eigenlijk? Oppervlakkig? Onnadenkend? Kritiekloos? Gemakzuchtig?]

"The reality TV universe is a place that seems strangely untouched by any significant cultural event of the twentieth century, least of all the feminist movement."(29)

"Between 1992 and 2004, breast augmentation procedures in this country went from 32,607 a year to 264,041 a year — that’s an increase of more than 700 percent."(30)

"If the rise of raunch seems counterintuitive because we hear so much about being in a conservative moment, it actually makes perfect sense when we think about it. Raunch culture is not essentially progressive, it is essentially commercial. By going to strip clubs and flashing on spring break and ogling our Olympians in Playboy, it’s not as though we are embracing something liberal — this isn’t Free Love. Raunch culture isn’t about opening our minds to the possibilities and mysteries of sexuality. It’s about endlessly reiterating one particular — and particularly commercial — shorthand for sexiness." [mijn nadruk] (39)

" ... our interest is in the appearance of sexiness, not the existence of sexual pleasure."(39)

"Passion isn’t the point. The glossy, overheated thumping of sexuality in our culture is less about connection than consumption. Hotness has become our cultural currency, and a lot of people spend a lot of time and a lot of regular, green currency trying to acquire it. Hotness is not the same thing as beauty, which has been valued throughout history. Hot can mean popular. Hot can mean talked about. But when it pertains to women, hot means two things in particular: fuckable and salable. The literal job criteria for our role models, the stars of the sex industry."(41)

"It is true that women are catching up with men in the historically masculine department of sexual opportunism; trying to get the best and the most for ourselves in that arena as we are everywhere else. But it’s not true that men parade around in their skivvies as a means to attaining power, at least not men in mainstream heterosexual American culture — they don’t have to."(41)

"For women, and only for women, hotness requires projecting a kind of eagerness, offering a promise that any attention you receive for your physicality is welcome.(...) Proving that you are hot, worthy of lust, and — necessarily — that you seek to provoke lust is still exclusively women’s work. It is not enough to be successful, rich, and accomplished ..."(43)

"Both men and women alike seem to have developed a taste for kitschy, slutty stereotypes of female sexuality resurrected from an era not quite gone by. We don’t even think about it anymore, we just expect to see women flashing and stripping and groaning everywhere we look." [mijn nadruk] (44)

[Niet alleen van vrouwelijke seksualiteit, ook van mannelijke seksualiteit.]

"It no longer makes sense to blame men. Mia Leist and plenty of other women are behind the scenes, not just in front of the cameras, making decisions, making money, and hollering “We want boobs.”" [mijn nadruk] (45)

[Dat is waar ik de hele tijd op wijs: dat vrouwen zelf ook verantwoordelijk zijn voor de 'onderdrukking' van andere vrouwen. Het gaat er niet om of je man of vrouw bent, het gaat er om welke waarden en normen je hebt en hoe je je op bais daarvan gedraagt.]

"The only alternative to enjoying Playboy (or flashing for Girls Gone Wild or getting implants or reading Jenna Jameson’s memoir) is being “uncomfortable” with and “embarrassed” about your sexuality. Raunch culture, then, isn’t an entertainment option, it’s a litmus test of female uptightness."(51)

"There are some women who are probably genuinely aroused by the idea or the reality of being photographed naked. But I think we can safely assume that many more women appear in Playboy for the simple reason that they are paid to. Which is fine. But “because I was paid to” is not the same thing as “I’m taking control of my sexuality.”" [mijn nadruk] (55)

"That women are now doing this to ourselves isn’t some kind of triumph, it’s depressing." [mijn nadruk] (56)

(57) Two - The Future that Never Happened

Over Susan Brownmiller.

"What Brownmiller and her radical sisters really wanted was a total transfiguration of society — politics, business, child-rearing, sex, romance, housework, entertainment, academics. And they really believed they would make that happen."(59)

"Like most of the other attendees, Brownmiller had an activist history; she had already spent two summers in Mississippi volunteering with the civil rights movement. But in the civil rights movement — as in the peace movement, as in the Students for a Democratic Society, as in the New Left in general — women played a supporting role. “Background, education, ideology and experience all primed the New Left women for equality. Yet their experience in the national movement was confusing, grating,” writes social historian Todd Gitlin in The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. “Men sought them out, recruited them, took them seriously, honored their intelligence — then subtly demoted them to girlfriends, wives, note-takers, coffeemakers.” It didn’t help when Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael made his notorious comment to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: “The position of women in SNCC is prone.”" [mijn nadruk] (60)

"But Brownmiller, characteristically, was seeking something more momentous and unwieldy: nothing less than the overthrow of the patriarchy, which had to start in the minds and bedrooms of Americans as well as the workplace — change from the inside out." [mijn nadruk] (61)

"Many of these events were counted as victories by two revolutionary movements, both of which had a tremendous impact on the reshaping of American womanhood: women’s liberation and the sexual revolution. In significant ways, these movements overlapped. Many of the same people were involved with both causes, and initially some of their key struggles were shared. But ultimately a schism would form between the two movements. And some of the same issues that drove them apart would likewise prove irreconcilably divisive within the women’s movement itself." [mijn nadruk] (66)

"One of the fundamental initial goals of the women’s liberation movement was to advance women’s sexual pleasure and satisfaction.(...) But the larger reimagining of sexual pleasure as a crucial part of life — one worth fighting for and talking about — and the sense that sexual freedom was ultimately political, were shared tenets of both the women’s movement and the sexual revolution."(66-67)

"Because of his efforts to promote progressive legislative change and because of the freewheeling approach to sex, nudity, and non-monogamy he advanced through his magazine, his clubs, and his life, Hefner is considered by many to be the hero of the sexual revolution.(...) Beyond creating a successful brand, Hefner had a vision for a new kind of masculinity, a new kind of man, one who no longer needed to be the duck-hunting outdoorsman, the virtuous patriarch of the forties and fifties."(69-70)

"Hefner’s sexual revolution seemed to apply only to men.(...) Women were meant to be ornamental entertainment, not partners in wildness, and their complicity—their obedience—was policed accordingly in the Playboy empire. (...) A double standard was unapologetically built into his philosophy.(...) Free love was edifying for a man, immoral for a woman. Though Hefner was a devoted sexual opportunist himself, he expected total fidelity from his “special girls.”"(72)

[Niet erg bevrijdend voor vrouwen, nee, en Hefner had dat niet eens door, hoe kortzichtig kun je zijn. En een bevesting van bepaalde waarden en normen van mannen over vrouwen. Geen wonder dat feministes verder niets van hem moesten hebben.]

"In the late seventies, a prominent splinter group of activists, including Brownmiller, Gloria Steinem, Shere Hite, Robin Morgan, the poet Adrienne Rich, and the writers Grace Paley and Audre Lorde, turned their attention to fighting pornography."(74)

"“Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice,” was one of their slogans, coined by Robin Morgan."(75)

"It wasn’t just Hugh Hefner who found this position “antisexual.” Within the women’s liberation movement, the question of how to represent sex — even the question of how to have sex — became divisive. Two distinct and passionately oppositional factions developed. On the one hand there were the antiporn feminists, and on the other, there were the women who felt that if feminism was about freedom for women, then women should be free to look at or appear in pornography. (...) Brownmiller and her compatriots felt they were liberating women from degrading sexual stereotypes and a culture of male domination and — consequently — making room for greater female sexual pleasure. Her opponents thought they were fighting a new brand of in-house repression." [mijn nadruk] (77)

"Everyone was fighting for freedom, but when it came to sex, freedom meant different things to different people."(78)

De kloof werd in 1983 dieper door Andrea Dworkin en Catharine MacKinnon die in hun strijd tegen porno samen gingen werken met conservatieven die nota bene allerlei verworvenheden van de vrouwenbeweging veroordeelden.

"But many feminists never forgave Dworkin and MacKinnon — and, by association, all antiporn feminists — for getting into bed with the right wing. To them, it symbolized exactly the kind of termagant moralism and prudery they felt were corrupting their movement."(79)

Andere feministes vonden dat je geen seks meer kon hebben met mannen of zelfs helemaal niet meer moest omgaan met mannen. Ook dat werd niet algemeen geaccepteerd en leidde tot een scheuring in de beweging.

"Imagine how Susan Brownmiller must have felt. Her vision had always been crystalline, her beliefs ardent. She had become engaged in the women’s liberation movement when it was a unified, sure-footed quest for change, and suddenly she was in a maze of contradictions. Now there were “feminists” working with conservative Republicans. There were “feminist” pornographers. There were separatist “feminists,” and there was a highly vocal contingent of S/M lesbian “feminists.” What had been clear and beautiful was now messy and contentious."(85)

"They lament, “Back in the day, because fighting sexual abuse was the priority, mainstream feminism tended to treat sexuality like a dark horse.” CAKE wants to fix all that. Founders Emily Kramer and Melinda Gallagher cite Hugh Hefner as a hero.(...) CAKE is also a sort of hypersexual sorority."(86)

Dat wordt 'raunch feminism' genoemd.

"Many of the conflicts between the women’s liberation movement and the sexual revolution and within the women’s movement itself were left unresolved thirty years ago. What we are seeing today is the residue of that confusion. CAKE is an example of the strange way people are ignoring the contradictions of the past, pretending they never existed, and putting various, conflicting ideologies together to form one incoherent brand of raunch feminism." [mijn nadruk] (90)

"In this new formulation of raunch feminism, stripping is as valuable to elevating womankind as gaining an education or supporting rape victims. Throwing a party where women grind against each other in their underwear while fully-clothed men watch them is suddenly part of the same project as marching on Washington for reproductive rights." [mijn nadruk] (92)

[Nou, dan is er iets goed misgegaan. En uit het vervolg blijkt dat dat ook weer iets te maken heeft met het postmoderne denken dat de universiteiten binnenstroomde, het idee dat de waarheid niet bestaat, dat er geen universele waarden en normen zijn, en zo verder. Als alles relatief wordt gemaakt krijg je dat alles ok is. Maar alles is niet ok als je wat dieper nadenkt.]

"We were trained to look at the supposedly all-powerful troika of race, class, and gender and how they were dealt with in narrative — and that narrative could be anywhere, in Madame Bovary or Debbie Does Dallas — rather than to analyze artistic quality, which we were told was really just code for the ideals of the dominant class."(96)

"But we have to wonder how displaying hot chicks onstage in exactly the same kind of miniature outfits they’ve always been in moves things in the right direction. If CAKE is promoting female sexual culture, I can’t believe there aren’t other ways to excite women. I even believe there are other ways to excite men."(99)

"The truth is that the new conception of raunch culture as a path to liberation rather than oppression is a convenient (and lucrative) fantasy with nothing to back it up." [mijn nadruk] (100)

"In recent years, the term “feminism” has fallen further and further out of favor. According to a 2001 Gallup poll, only 25 percent of women considered themselves feminists, down a percentage point from the 1999 survey. Some of the concepts and the lexicon introduced by the women’s movement remain modish, however: We are still encouraged by fashion and media and Hollywood and each other to be “strong women.” “Liberation” and “empowerment” are still buzzwords, but they once referred to bucking the system, going on strike against submission, adopting a brazen, braless, unshaven, untrammeled approach to life. These terms have since been drained of meaning. Instead of hairy legs, we have waxed vaginas; the free-flying natural woman boobs of yore have been hoisted with push-up bras or “enhanced” into taut plastic orbs that stand perpetually at attention. What has moved into feminism’s place as the most pervasive phenomenon in American womanhood is an almost opposite style, attitude, and set of principles." [mijn nadruk] (106)

(107) Three - Female Chauvinist Pigs

" ... part of the answer is that nobody wants to be the frump at the back of the room anymore, the ghost of women past. It’s just not cool. What is cool is for women to take a guy’s-eye view of pop culture in general and live, nude girls in particular. You’re worried about strippers? Nevins seemed on the verge of hollering at her inquisitor, Honey, they could teach you a thing or two about where it’s at! Nevins was threatening something she clearly considered far worse than being objectified: being out of touch." [mijn nadruk] (111)

[Dat lijkt me een heel belangrijk punt: iedereen wil er bij horen, maakt niet uit waarbij, principes tellen niet meer.]

"Women who’ve wanted to be perceived as powerful have long found it more efficient to identify with men than to try and elevate the entire female sex to their level. The writers Mary McCarthy and Elizabeth Hardwick were famously contemptuous of “women’s libbers,” for example, and were untroubled about striving to “write like a man.”(...) There is a certain kind of woman — talented, powerful, unrepentant — whom we’ve always found difficult to describe without some version of the phrase “like a man,” and plenty of those women have never had a problem with that. Not everyone cares that this doesn’t do much for the sisterhood."(115)

"Gone is the sixties-style concern (and lip service) about society as a whole. FCPs don’t bother to question the criteria on which women are judged, they are too busy judging other women themselves."(124)

[Individualisme / narcisme in plaats van solidariteit.]

"Paglia’s equation of all things aggressive, arrogant, adventurous, and libidinous with masculinity, and her relegation of everything whiney, wimpy, needy, and complacent to femininity, is, among other things, dopey. We have to wonder why a woman as crackling smart as Camille Paglia would be so unsophisticated in her conception of gender."(133)

"There’s just one thing: Even if you are a woman who achieves the ultimate and becomes like a man, you will still always be like a woman. And as long as womanhood is thought of as something to escape from, something less than manhood, you will be thought less of, too."(135)

(142) Four - From Womyn to Bois

"Lesbians are women too, and this trend has hit the young gay women’s world — “the scene” — with discernible impact. In the scene, the New York to San Francisco back-and-forth migratory ladies’ pipeline, sex is taken so lightly there is a new term for it: “playing.” In the scene, people say things like, “I played with her,” and they go on “playdates.” This freewheeling nonchalance about sex is evident on the Internet." [mijn nadruk] (142)

"Even in an entirely female universe, there are plenty of women who want to be like a man."(146)

[Schokkend. ]

"Many bois, including many FTMs, consider themselves part of a “genderqueer” movement invested in dissolving the “gender binary.” They don’t feel that dividing the world up into men and women or, for that matter, butches and femmes is a particularly sophisticated way to conceive of gender roles."(152)

[Ook weer zo'n gevolg van het postmoderne ontkennen van waarheid, universaliteit, enz. Alles is een 'constructie', ook het idee van een man of een vrouw. Eigenlijk bestaat (gender) identiteit dan helemaal niet meer, nee. En dus dan krijg je vrouwen die 'bois' willen zijn met ideeën waarin het alleen gaat om aantrekkelijk gevonden worden en waarin verantwoordelijkheid dragen ('commitment') voor een ander niet bestaat en alle contacten vluchtig worden. Oppervlakkigheid troef dus.]

"The confusing thing, of course, is why somebody would need serious surgery and testosterone to modify their gender if gender is supposed to be so fluid in the first place. But “transitioning” is very popular. The transformation of women to men is so prevalent within the scene they have a name for it: “butch flight.” This is to say that women who don’t feel the traditional definition of femininity fits them, who in another lesbian era would have considered themselves butch, are more and more frequently thinking of themselves as transsexual, and doing whatever they can to actualize that self-conception medically." [mijn nadruk] (154)

[En de medici werken graag mee aan al die onzin. Brengt geld in het laatje, nietwaar?]

"But despite the differences between the scene and, say, spring break in South Beach, there are also meaningful similarities in the ways young women across this country, gay and straight, are conceiving of themselves, their bodies, sex, and each other. Women are invested in being “like a man,” and in the case of FTMs, women are actually becoming men. There is contempt and condescension for “girly-girls” or “bitches” or “hos,” confusingly coupled with a fixation on stereotypically feminine women (especially if they are stripping or dancing on tabletops). Elective cosmetic surgery — implants for straight women, mastectomies for FTMs — is popular to the point of being faddish. Noncommittal sex is widespread, and frequently prefigured by a public spectacle: a coed group pumping their fists at the strippers onstage at a CAKE mixer in New York; a drunk girl heeding the call of Girls Gone Wild to show her tits in Miami; a room full of lesbians hooting at a dildo-wielding dancer at “Fairy Butch” in San Francisco. This isn’t about being a lesbian, it’s about being a woman. Or a girl." [mijn nadruk] (167)

(167) Five - Pigs in Training

[Een aardig hoofdstuk in het kader van de seksualisering van jongeren.]

Over dezelfde cultuur onder minderjarigen.

"What all of these adolescent incidents have in common are, of course, exhibitionism and oral sex — oral sex for the boys, that is. Like the mythical rainbow parties, these situations revolve around girls giving erotic performances and boys literally lying back and enjoying the benefits. “A lot of guys expect oral sex,” Talia said. “Not girls…people would think they were weird if they did.” (That sentiment was echoed almost unanimously by the fifty young people I spoke to between the ages of twelve and eighteen; there is no clinical data available comparing the percentage of girls versus boys who perform oral sex.) I asked Talia if most girls expected any kind of reciprocal sexual gratification for their services. “I don’t think most girls are expecting to have orgasms in high school,” she concluded, “but most guys are. Oh, definitely.”" [mijn nadruk] (174)

"Part of the reason they are so indiscriminate in their choice of partners is that the quality of these sexual encounters in terms of feeling or meaning isn’t really the point. Jessica described sex as something they engaged in primarily for bragging rights.(...) These are not stories about girls getting what they want sexually, they are stories about girls gaining acclaim socially, for which their sexuality is a tool. While it would be “weird” for a teen girl to pursue sexual gratification, it is crucial that she seem sexy — raunchy, willing, wild."(175)

"There’s a lot to look at if you’re a guy, and a lot of pressure to make yourself worth looking at if you are a girl. David described the typical female getup as a uniform: a slut uniform."(179)

"One of David’s best female friends, Anne, agreed. “Definitely girls hook up with other girls because they know the guys will like it,” she said."(181)

"Where David was difficult to silence on baseball, books, photography, the merits and drawbacks of small schools versus big universities, and the shape he imagined for his future, Anne seemed to have only one truly engrossing passion: her looks. She expressed interest in becoming a graphic designer and talked a little about the year she had spent on an exchange program abroad. But no topic elicited the same kind of intensity from Anne as her own appearance." [mijn nadruk] (184)

"For most of her friends, Anne said, things were similar: Sex was something you did to fit in more than something you did for pleasure. “It’s an ego thing. We talk about it like at lunch on the patio; people think it’s cool. It’s competitive: who can hook up with the most guys and who can have sex, who can be the most…like my friend is having her eighteenth birthday party and she wants to have strippers there.”" [mijn nadruk] (186)

"But if our fears for teens and teen girls in particular are justifiable, our response has not been. We are pouring an enormous amount of money into abstinence-only education — that is, sexual education that promotes virginity and discredits or disregards contraception — despite the fact that not a single study has shown this approach works."(188)

"What teens have to work with, then, are two wildly divergent messages. They live in a candyland of sex…every magazine stand is a gumdrop castle of breasts, every reality show is a bootylicious Tootsie Roll tree. And these are hormonal teenagers: This culture speaks to them. But at school, the line given to the majority of them about sex is just say no. They are taught that sex is wrong until you have a wedding (they have seen those in the magazines and on the reality shows too, huge affairs that require boatloads of Casablanca lilies and mountains of crystal), and then suddenly it becomes natural and nice.
If you process this information through the average adolescent mental computer, you end up with a printout that reads something like this: Girls have to be hot. Girls who aren’t hot probably need breast implants. Once a girl is hot, she should be as close to naked as possible all the time. Guys should like it. Don’t have sex." [mijn nadruk] (190)

" ... the abstinence-only approach has the disadvantage of being unrealistic. Planned Parenthood has repeatedly pointed out that relying on abstinence is ahistorical; teenagers have been experimenting with sex since the beginning of time. Even if we all agreed that teenagers shouldn’t be sexually active under any circumstances — and therefore didn’t need to know anything about contraception or disease prevention — they are. The majority of high school students graduate without their virginity, according to the Centers for Disease Control." [mijn nadruk] (194)

"Though sexual activity among teenagers barely varies across the developed world, the rate of teen pregnancy in the United States is extremely high compared to the numbers in other wealthy countries. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), a nonprofit organization that conducts research and policy analysis on worldwide reproductive health (and is quoted and respected by both liberal and conservative groups), Japan and most western European countries have adolescent pregnancy rates of less than 40 per 1,000. (Uber-progressive Holland shines with only 12 pregnancies per 1,000.) The numbers go up in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, where there are between 40 and 69 teen pregnancies out of every 1,000. But in the United States, we have more than 80 teen pregnancies per 1,000. Rather than being on par with other nations of comparable privilege, our teen pregnancy rates match those of Belarus, Bulgaria, and Romania. On their Web site, AGI offers a succinct explanation for this fairly pathetic state of affairs: “The primary reasons why U.S. teenagers have the highest rates of pregnancy, child-bearing and abortion among developed countries is less overall contraceptive use and less use of the pill or other long-acting reversible hormonal methods, which have the highest use-effectiveness rates. Factors in cross-country differences in teenagers’ contraceptive use include negative societal attitudes toward teenage sexual relationships, restricted access to and high cost of reproductive health services, [and] ambivalence toward contraceptive methods.” AGI also points out that “though teenagers in the United States have levels of sexual activity similar to their Canadian, English, French and Swedish peers, they are more likely to have shorter and more sporadic sexual relationships.”
By any measure, the way we educate young people about sexuality is not working. We expect them to dismiss their instinctive desires and curiosities even as we bombard them with images that imply that lust is the most important appetite and hotness the most impressive virtue." [mijn nadruk] (195)

"Many of the issues confronting teenage girls are the same ones affecting grown women: the prioritizing of performance over pleasure; a lack of freedom to examine their own varied, internal desires; an obligation to look as lewd as possible."(203)

(204) Six - Shopping for Sex

Over de tv-serie Sex in the city.

"The ethos of the show was all about women getting themselves the best and the most, sexually and materially. They were unapologetically selfish, and civic-mindedness was scoffed at. Carrie didn’t vote; in one episode Samantha told another character, “I don’t believe in the Republican party or the Democratic party…I just believe in parties.”(...) The best thing you can do for your fellow man and your country is to shop till you drop." [mijn nadruk] (208)

[Wat een oppervlakkigheid weer. Inderdaad.]

"Like Female Chauvinist Pigs, Sex and the City divided human behavior into like a man’s or like a woman’s. Instead of being a confident woman, Samantha had the “ego of a man.” When Charlotte decided to make two dates in one night she was “turning into a man,” but when she worried whether she would be able to eat two meals in a row, “just like that, she was a woman again.” As is the case within the scene of young New York and San Francisco lesbians, the fantasy Manhattan of Sex and the City was a sphere in which sex was just another commodity, something to be acquired rather than shared, so sexual encounters often ended with someone feeling like a conqueror and someone feeling compromised. Rather than the egalitarianism and satisfaction that was feminism’s initial promise, these sexual marketplaces offer a kind of limitless tally." [mijn nadruk] (210)

"Why have we fallen sway to a kind of masculine mystique, determined that to be adventurous is to be like a man, and decided that the best thing we can possibly expect from women is hotness? Even as Annie and Meg and Lynn Frailey — three women — bravely head out into the night, they still deem this behavior to be like a man’s."(235)

(237) Conclusion

"Sex is one of the most interesting things we as humans have to play with, and we’ve reduced it to polyester underpants and implants. We are selling ourselves unbelievably short."(238)

"Our national love of porn and pole dancing is not the byproduct of a free and easy society with an earthy acceptance of sex. It is a desperate stab at freewheeling eroticism in a time and place characterized by intense anxiety. What are we afraid of? Everything…which includes sexual freedom and real female power.
Women’s liberation and empowerment are terms feminists started using to talk about casting off the limitations imposed upon women and demanding equality. We have perverted these words. The freedom to be sexually provocative or promiscuous is not enough freedom; it is not the only “women’s issue” worth paying attention to. And we are not even free in the sexual arena. We have simply adopted a new norm, a new role to play: lusty, busty exhibitionist. There are other choices. If we are really going to be sexually liberated, we need to make room for a range of options as wide as the variety of human desire. We need to allow ourselves the freedom to figure out what we internally want from sex instead of mimicking whatever popular culture holds up to us as sexy. That would be sexual liberation."(240-241)