Hearing A Man Moan Really Do Turn Up The Hoe In Me

Hearing a man moan really do turn up the hoe in me 😅

Same😭

I’m such a slut when I’m sad lmao

This may sound wild, but sex-positivity should include positivity for people who don’t have sex.

Lmao why does going to the dentist make me horny

Shaming women for catering to the "male gaze" is a form of conservative slut-shaming masquerading as feminism.

There's a trend I've seen of people looking at female characters in media who look sexually attractive and saying that the creators of this media are bad or the enemies of feminists because they created something to "cater to the male gaze."

For example, video games with female characters who have big boobs are criticized for "sexualizing women" for the sake of male consumers.

I've also seen a post which made a comparison between the old and new Harley Quinn, claiming that the one who had "choppy and fun" bangs rather than "seductively framing her face" was much better because it showed female rather than male gaze.

The issue with these criticisms is that well-meaning feminists start to generalize them to real women. We tell women not to look seductive or sexually attractive because those traits cater to men. We feel pity for them for having become victims to men's lust.

Do you see why this is bad? If you look closely enough at these claims about the male gaze, you see that modern feminist language is being used to repeat the same conservative slut-shaming bullshit our society should have overcome by now.

How different are these claims, really, from the teacher at my high school who followed her presentation about the dress code by saying that girls who have been victims of sexual harassment have invited it upon themselves with the way that they were dressed?

Some things that are bad:

Telling women how they can and can't dress

Saying that if men are attracted to a woman, she is not safe or not respectable

Telling women to dress modestly

Shaming women for wanting to be attractive to men

To be clear, the opposite is true too. It's bad to force women into sex of course, or to make them wear something "attractive" that they aren't comfortable with. But telling women that they are "catering to the male gaze" if they want to look attractive disempowers women by taking away our choice to be sexually liberated, choose how we dress, or look attractive for our own sakes.

In addition, when feminists consider the male gaze their enemy, they also start to consider women who dress attractively or are purposely seductive or engage in sexual acts as their enemies. We end up with women yelling at women, enforcing the patriarchy on ourselves. It's fucked up, and we can do better.

Women have the right to love having sex.

Women have the right to never want to have sex.

Women have the right to choose how much sex we want to have, and with whom.

Women can experience attraction.

Women can enjoy sexual pleasure.

Women can prefer never to think about sex.

We are autonomous and have the right to choose who we would like to have sex with and what sexual acts we would like to engage in.

We should not feel obligated to engage in sexual acts with anyone we don't want to.

We should not feel ashamed of our bodies or our desire.

(Note: this post applies to people of all genders!)