The Essentia Sphere

OK, I’ve got some complaining to do. Yeah, I know, you’re shocked.

This is about the Open Source Boob Grab, or whatever in the hell the name is. Some people shared a mystical experience of titty touching and so they took it to other conventions. They gave buttons out—green buttons for people (mostly women, of course) who had no problem with being asked to offer up their chest for loser amusement. Red buttons went to people who didn’t want to be asked.

Leaving aside the basic idea of peer pressure, let me complain about the defense of this stupid. The basic idea plays upon so many patriarchal ideas—slut/prude, men validating women’s bodies, women seeking male approval, etc. But the real stupid comes into play when you see the people involved try to defend themselves.

First and foremost, they bring up the idea that the women/feminists speaking out against this are just as bad as the anti-choice crowd—meaning that both groups want to control women’s bodies. This dismisses all the valid complaints women may have with this little boob grab and pulls out the old patriarchal way to shut women up: You’re just a prude/jealous! It dismisses the influences of a sexist culture on women as well as men (that specific point gets little jokes about “conspiracies”). One of the many people (and now I can’t find the name of the person who wrote it among all the massive amount of writing on the subject. Just know that it isn’t mine) involved in this debate said it better than I ever could:

Also, asserting the existence of internalized sexism is not patronizing, it’s honest. And it does not necessarily entail telling a woman that she “cannot possibly know what is best for her.” But pretending that oppressive power structures don’t influence our choices only obfuscates the truth and prevents actual empowerment by simulating it with faux, within-the-constraints empowerment. The truth will set us free and all that.

Finally, I think there’s some confusion of legal and moral rhetoric going on. Women should be given total and unmitigated control over their bodies and sexualities, regardless of how non- or antifeminist they may be. That does not mean, however, that we must praise every choice they make as empowering.

Another stupid point is the good old stereotype that the women complaining about it are feminists who hate the male gaze/heterosexual sex. This is an often used stereotype by MRA or anti-feminists. This goes back to how heterosexuality is defined in our culture. Men define women’s bodies and men define sex. For a woman to dare to question that—for a woman to want to define her own body and to define sex in a way that would give her equal power in the culture–is, to some men, the same thing as questioning men’s sexual urges. And men have been taught that their view of sex is unquestionable. To them, it has nothing to do with a feminist saying, “Hey, maybe there is a way we can shift the power structure between men and women so that sex can be on a level playing field—so that the power dynamic isn’t shifted so far in men’s favor.” No, they don’t hear that because the poor things already think that they have to work so hard for sex by asking for it: I take her out to dinner and I hold the door open for her and I keep asking her until she gives in. That totally means women have all the power in the relationship. Since a basic idea of the patriarchy is that women’s bodies are in the public domain and not their own—we all can comment on them, stare at them, even touch them—it does seem like a lot of work to ask permission to have sex with that body when it’s already considered to be in the public domain.

In the end, these are men who will never get it. These are men who will likely not feel threatened sexually when a group of men approach them and say “Can I touch your chest?” These are a group of men who will never be called a slut for participating in something like this, or a prude for not participating. These are men who probably never thought about male privilege or male power—because they’ve never had to think about it. These are a group of people who could have said, “You know, I see your point. I think now I may have made an honest mistake, based on my lack of knowledge of how this would feel to women who are raised in a sexist culture. I’m sorry.” But instead, they’ve been defending their little boob grab as something wonderful and mystical and isn’t it a shame that the plebs just aren’t smart enough to get it—that takes it from an honest mistake into the realm of entitled men defending their right to define women’s bodies, to touch women’s bodies, and to define the women involved or not involved in it.