The Implications of Meat Dresses September 16, 2010

For those of you who have somehow managed to avoid entertainment and celebrity news sources for the past few days, this is Lady Gaga dressed in 40 pounds of beef. She wore this outfit at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. Since then, there have been articles commenting on her unusual attire popping up all over the internet. Many of the articles condemn her attire as “offensive.” I, on the other hand, found it interesting.

My initial reaction when I saw these pictures was disgust. After all, she is wearing a dress made of raw meat. When I overcame that feeling, I began to recognize that she was making some kind of political statement with her costume. My interpretation was that she was playing on the idea of women as pieces of meat, and turning that perspective into something literal. Women’s sexuality is often said to be that of “object” while men’s sexuality is that of “subject”. All that means is that women are things to be looked at, desired, acquired, and men are meant to do the looking, desiring and getting. These are roles that we are taught from a very young age how to do. Women are taught how to be looked at, and to manage the “male gaze” – how to sit, what kinds of clothes to wear, etc. Men are taught to compete for the opportunity to “win” women’s affections.

Lady Gaga seems to be very aware of the agency she has as a high-profile performer and uses that to both her advantage and to comment on the issues in society that she chooses to focus on. In this case, I assumed she was making a statement about her role as a woman in show business. As it turns out she was making a statement, but not the one I interpreted. Instead of addressing the role of women as sexual objects, she was trying to draw attention to the US military’s policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which I will address in another post. In any case, it is an interesting use of her fame and notoriety as a shocking performer and personality to highlight problems she sees in the world around her.

‘Cause Getting Married at 16 is a Wonderful Idea. September 16, 2010

I received a message about this blog a few days ago from a friend of mine who works as a public health nurse. In it, she reminded me of an issue that I had somehow managed to overlook in my research for this project. In Canada, it is illegal to have anal sex until you’re 18. Unless you’re married.

The age of consent in Canada (the age at which a person is able to consent to having sex with an adult) was raised from 14 to 16 years old on May 1, 2008. However, this does not cover anal sex, which remains illegal for unmarried couples until both partners are 18. In most provinces, people can get married at 16 with parental consent, and in some cases even earlier than that.

This law has been challenged in various courts across the country on the grounds that it discriminates against gay men. So far, despite legal decisions that state that this law violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the criminal code remains unchanged on this issue. Which begs the question, who is this law trying to protect?

Obviously, this law is trying to protect people under 18 from exploitation by adults, like the laws that set the age of consent for other sex acts at 16. What is it about this particular orifice that requires more protection than the others? I would tend to agree that it is an effort to keep gay men from having relationships with boys under the age of 18, especially given the idea that anal sex is central and more-or-less exclusive to gay men’s sexuality. However, this law, including its exception for married couples has been on the books since before gay marriage became legal in 2005. The existence of this exception suggests, in addition to homophobia, a paternalistic protection of girls, and an effort to police, literally, female sexuality.

A woman cannot become pregnant by having anal intercourse, which is problematic in a system where women’s sexuality is often not seen as being separate from their role as wife and mother. To take away the chance of procreation seems to defeat the purpose of a woman having sex in the first place. If, however, she is engaging in anal intercourse with her husband, the assumption is that they are primarily engaging in vaginal intercourse, and she therefore has the opportunity to become pregnant, which legitimizes her sexuality in general. She is free to explore her sexuality (with her husband) because she is committed to her marriage and the children that have resulted or will result from it.

There also seems to be a focus on the protection of women’s virtue. Anal intercourse carries a lot of stigma, its association with gay men and the perception of its being an unclean act among them. There is an idea that women who engage in premarital sex (which assumes a person’s eventual marriage, excluding people who might choose to remain unwed) are impure, especially if the sex acts they are engaging in carry their own stigma. “Who wants a woman who has had anal sex? By making it illegal for her to engage in until she’s an adult, we will protect her virtue, allowing her to eventually find a man and settle down,” the law seems to be saying.

As I end this post, I want to leave you with a song by New Order, conveniently titled “Age of Consent”. Enjoy.

I Thought We Had a Blood Shortage? September 15, 2010

In Canada, if you are a man who has sex with another man at any point since 1977, you can’t donate blood. At least not unless you lie about it. The story of a man who did just that, Kyle Freeman, has been making the rounds in the past few days. Freeman lied on the Canadian Blood Services questionnaire when it asked him about his sexual history. He got caught, and now needs to pay a $10,000 fine.

The question that Kyle Freeman gave a false answer to is extremely contentious. Ostensibly, the question is there to protect the patients who will be receiving blood transfusions from becoming infected with HIV/AIDS. According to the Government of Canada, men who have sex with men make up 51% of the country’s approximately 58,000 people living with HIV/AIDS, so one can understand, perhaps, why this population was targeted for exclusion from blood donation. This argument quickly breaks down when we consider the technology now being used to test donated blood, and its accuracy in detecting this and other blood-borne pathogens. Basically, the risks of becoming infected with any kind of illness as a result of a blood transfusion is incredibly small, and Canadian Blood Services says that “the risks of not getting a transfusion are far greater than the extremely remote chance of being transfused with infected blood.” Which means that the fact that the question about whether a man has sex with another man since 1977 is at best an anachronism and at worst blatant discrimination.

For the purposes of this blog, I am less interested in how accurate the technology for the detection of blood-borne disease is, and much more interested in the assumptions that go into excluding men who have sex with men from being able to donate. First among these assumptions is about how men have sex with each other. Oral and manual sex are both generally accepted to be relatively safe practices as far as the transmission of HIV/AIDS is concerned (though they are associated with the spread of other types of STIs). This means that the Canadian Blood Services is making the assumption that for a man to have sex with another man means that they are engaging in anal sex, and further to that, that they are not using condoms.

Second, there seems to be an assumption that groups other than men who have sex with men are not having risky sex. Anal sex, while common among men who have sex with men, is certainly not restricted to this group, nor is it the only sex act available to them. People, regardless of sexual or gender identity, engage in a range of sex acts with varying degrees of associated risk. Unless the Canadian Blood Services is prepared to collect each donor’s detailed sexual history along with their pint of blood, they should look at reviewing their data collection policies to either be more restrictive across the board, or less stringent in light of vastly improved quality control since the question was first added to the questionnaire.

An interesting assumption that Canadian Blood Services, and in fact many public health agencies, is not making is that only men who self-identify as gay are having sex with other men. Many men who do not self-identify as gay have or have had sex with men. If those men have engaged in unprotected anal intercourse, which is especially risky for disease transmission because of the nature of the tissues involved, they are just as at risk for contracting STIs, HIV/AIDS among them, as sexually active men who do identify as gay. In order to be more accurate in their data collection, public health agencies, CBS among them, have adopted the term “men who have sex with men,” which denotes sexual behavior, instead of terms like “gay” or “homosexual” which denote sexual identity, but do not necessarily convey one’s sexual practices, and exclude men who do not claim that identity for themselves.

This story is another excellent example of how assumptions about sexual practices have an effect on people’s rights and freedoms. In this case, an assumption about the way that men have sex with each other keeps many men from donating blood, and in the case of Kyle Freeman, is going to cost him $10,000.

Streaking is a Sex Crime!? September 12, 2010

This weekend was homecoming weekend in the small university town where I live. This means two things: binge drinking and football. In an effort, I’m sure, to limit the number of angry phone calls and emails he has to respond to on Monday, a university official sent out an email reminding students of the consequences of their actions. The email listed things like fines for open liquor, reminders about security measures, that kind of thing. Then it listed something that I found pretty shocking. According to the email, “public nudity or streaking is considered a sexual offence which carries very serious repercussions (registered sex offender) to the individual.”

For the uninitiated among you, streaking is when someone (usually male) removes either all of their clothing, or all of their clothing save footwear, and runs onto the playing surface of a sporting event, disrupting play. It is very common at university sports games, and at my university in particular, it is pretty easy to do as the football field isn’t encased by a stadium, or barricades of any kind. I’m sure it’s probably an annoyance to some fans and players, but for most people it’s a playful spectacle. Which is why it shocked me to read in the email that a person caught streaking could become a registered sex offender.

It seems to me that to get saddled with the label “Registered Sex Offender” you should have to do something both illegal and sexual in nature. I haven’t checked to see if the information given by the university official is correct, but if it is, it raises an interesting point. Is a naked body always sexual? This law seems to be saying that it is.

I can understand public nudity being on the books. In our society, clothes are necessary when in public. Even in private, they’re important – I think most of us would find it shocking to arrive at a friend or acquaintance’s house to find them in the nude. But I don’t think that these conventions mean that anyone who is naked in public is automatically being sexual.

I think that a body becomes sexual when a few things happen. First, if a person is engaged in a sex act of some kind, their body is obviously being sexual at that point. I think posing in an overtly sexual way also falls under the “obviously sexual” heading. After that, I think that peoples naked bodies become sexual when either they or another person sees them that way. Which is kind of an uncomfortable idea for me. To give an example, if I were in the shower and heard the phone ringing, I might jump out to answer it. For me, the act of tearing across my apartment without clothes on to grab the phone is an act of necessity, not a sexual one. But – if someone were to look through my window and see me like that, they might interpret my body and actions as sexual, and at that moment, without my knowledge or permission, my body becomes sexualized.

To bring it back to the idea of streaking as sex crime, I would put the act of streaking, itself, in the same relative category as running from the shower to grab the phone. Obviously, streaking in public is different because of the presence of an audience, the fact that it’s meant to shock and disrupt, but unless the streaker does something overtly sexual like grabbing his or her genitals, I don’t think it’s analogous to even something like flashing. I do think, though, that it is possible for some members of the audience to sexualize the body of the streaker, but that the responsibility lies with the given audience member(s) and not the streaker.

Texas v. Sex Toys September 12, 2010

This is an amazing clip from a documentary called “The Dildo Diaries” that was made in 2002. As I’m sure you’ve already probably guessed, it is decidedly NSFW.

There are a whole bunch of things I want to talk about in here.  First, what do Texans have against dildoes? They seem fairly innocuous, right? Maybe not something you want to have to talk about with an eight-year-old but certainly nowhere near as dangerous as guns, which are legal and practically ubiquitous in Texas. I would suggest that the laws that prohibit the buying and selling of sex toys have a lot more to do with trying to maintain heterosexual hegemony than the inherent danger of plastic phalli. What happens when women (assuming women are the primary consumers of “educational models” in Texas) don’t have to rely on men for sexual pleasure? In a society that relies on the nuclear family structure for its continued existence, it’s no wonder that people are sounding the alarm. Obviously, people get married for reasons other than sex, but it remains one of the things that differentiates a romantic relationship or marriage from a close friendship. When women don’t need to be in a relationship with man to have something that approximates that kind of sexual experience, things like the traditional family begin to be called into question. The institution of the nuclear family is a gigantic can of worms, but some key issues that people might be afraid of are childcare, gendered division of labour, and most terrifying, the obsolescence of men in general. Because what really defines men at their most basic level, if not a penis? I’m being a little bit facetious here, but I will talk about the fragility of masculine and feminine gender identities in a later post.

Second, the fact that the Texas legislature was willing to revoke rights from heterosexual couples so that they could take them from homosexual couples is evidence of how badly the legislators want to protect themselves and their constituents from the threats presented by what they see as the primary gay (male) sex act.  This is an excellent example of how what we define as sex has an impact on people’s lives. The assumption that Warren Chisum is making when he so quickly decides to move to make sodomy illegal for heterosexual couples as well as homosexual ones is that none of his heterosexual constituents are engaging in anal sex anyway. This is further evidenced by his comments about it being worthy of hanging in his county and that he would be willing to upgrade the offence to a felony, or even a “3G” felony, which I assume is part of the “three strikes” rule that comes with an automatic sentence of life in prison. For having consensual sex.

Third, and this is just an observation I made about my own assumptions while watching the video, without her mentioning the gender of her sexual partner(s), I drew the conclusion that the woman who had been shopping for a new strap-on harness was a lesbian. This is for two reasons.  One, even though I know that some heterosexual couples use strap-on dildoes during sex, it is more likely that she is purchasing these items for use with a female partner. Two, her short hair is outside of the typical range of appearance for women, which causes me to make assumptions about her sexuality, without her speaking about it.

Fourth, and this ties in with the laws against sodomy, why are butt plugs able to be sold without a pseudonym unlike dildoes and vibrators? I think that this has a lot to do with assumptions related to heteronormativity.  The idea is that heterosexual couples are only having vaginal intercourse. In order to make sure that heterosexual people continue to pair up, get married, have children, etc., the Government of Texas needs to remove threats to their unions, including dildoes and vibrators, which have the potential to take men out of the equation entirely. As far as the State of Texas is concerned, though, heterosexual couples aren’t having anal sex anyway, so there is no need to protect that orifice from the dangers of invading silicone.

I think that this clip is a great example of so many irrational fears. Men are not in any danger of being made obsolete. The sex acts engaged in by consenting adults are unlikely to cause the demise of the world as we know it. But, by the way that the Government of Texas has reacted, you would guess that were under direct attack by some army of dildo trafficking homosexuals.

The Catholic Church: Arbiters of All Things Sexy September 12, 2010

This has been making the rounds on the feminist blogosphere this week. It’s a question-and-answer piece about the definition of sex.  More specifically, it talks about how the Catholic Church believes that a married couple (heterosexual, of course) hasn’t actually had sex if they used birth control of some kind. Furthermore, a child conceived by parents who were using a form of birth control were actually conceived outside of marriage. It’s pretty confusing, so you should read the piece.

There are a few things going on here. First, the writer, E. Christian Brugger, offers a super-specific definition of sex: “…at a minimum that a man’s penis penetrate a woman’s vagina, that the man ejaculates while penetrating the woman’s vagina, and that neither the man nor the woman intends to render the act non-procreative as either an end or a means.” So, it’s not enough that it needs to be between a married man and woman, vaginally penetrative and the man needs to ejaculate inside his wife, but there also needs to be no contraception involved to be considered sex.

Second, if we didn’t already have an idea of the Church’s position on relationships other than that of monogamous heterosexual married couples, this would give us a fairly clear picture. If the only real way to consummate a relationship (have sex) is to be married and not using contraception, what does that mean for all of the people who are in relationships but unmarried, or in relationships with people of the same sex? It means that their relationships are either not valued, or in the case of same-sex relationships, they are actively discriminated against. The Church is an institution that is an important source of support for many people, but because of its limited definition of what constitutes sex, people who d0 not conform to these rigid expectations often find themselves at odds with the Church and its followers and without the assistance they might otherwise receive.

Third, why is baby-making so important to the Catholic Church? In an era where humans number close to 7 billion and the Earth is being destroyed at an alarming rate, shouldn’t the choice not to have children, or at least the choice to limit the number of children one has, be recognized as legitimate? I would argue that the Church’s policy has probably less to do with children and more to do with the exertion of control over its congregation. People are going to have sex, and as long as the only acceptable way to do that (at least for faithful Catholics) is to be married in the Catholic Church and to eschew contraception, the Church will continue to influence its billion-or-so members.

Fourth, why are people still letting an organization run by celibate men dictate their sexual behaviour? I think that this goes back to the idea of control. If the men of the Church, both priests and parishioners, can convince women of their duty to bear children, and keep them busy raising said children, they can retain their positions with a minimum of controversy. Because their reasoning for the exclusion of women from the Church’s power structure is tenuous at best, other distractions have to exist to avoid major, arguably legitimate, changes from occuring.

I think that we can get a lot of information from this piece about the Church and a lot of its views towards women, unmarried couples and non-heterosexual people. It also gives us an idea of how the Church’s definition of what sex is has an effect on the lives of ordinary members, even in situations where sex is not the issue at hand. The exclusion of women and homosexuals are two very important examples of this.

What Do You Mean, “Sex Isn’t Natural”? September 11, 2010

Going into this course, I knew that definitions of sex and sexuality aren’t fixed. If you ask someone what sex is, they might tell you any number of things, the specifics of which I will go into later. Asking people about sexuality might yield an even more diverse range of answers. Does it mean one’s sexual identity? The kind of energy one puts out into the world? Is it inextricably linked to the sex act(s) or is it something separate?

Somehow, in all of this knowing and understanding about the fluidity and instability of these subjects, I managed to not really understand how “Sex” and “Sexuality” are constructs. Sex, especially, seemed kind of straight-forward to me. It’s something that happens between two people, or by yourself or with a number of your closest strangers and involves the stimulation of genitals in one way or another. Except that sometimes with things like BDSM genitals might not enter into the equation. And some people think that only penis-in-vagina sex counts as “real sex” but lots of other people have a much less restrictive definition.  Okay, maybe not so straight-forward after all…

So, here I was, entering into a class about the social construction of sex and sexuality thinking I already had this covered, and then I open the textbook. And there, on the fifth page of the introduction is the thing that will blow my mind, not for the last time. The book is called “The Social Construction of Sexuality” by a guy named Steven Seidman and this is what he says:

Most Americans likely consider heterosexuality to be natural. Several theories have been advanced to defend the notion of the naturalness of heterosexuality – for example, that it is an innate reproductive or family instinct, that it is the basis of the survival of the species, or that it expresses the natural fit between the bodies and psyches of men and women. These accounts of the naturalness of heterosexuality assume that homosexuality is unnatural. Homosexuals cannot reproduce or ensure the survival of the species, and, according to this view, the bodies and minds of two men or two women do not mesh. Accordingly, homosexuality is viewed as perverse, abnormal, and perhaps a social threat. From this point of view, society has an interest and a right to promote heterosexuality (through laws, culture, social policy, education) while repressing homosexuality and punishing homosexuals. So, whether a specific sexual act or identity is viewed as natural or not matters a great deal. Sexual behavior that is defined as natural may be celebrated and assigned all sorts of rights, resources, and benefits; unnatural desires are condemned and may be harshly punished.

This paragraph tells me a few things. First, it talks about “theories”. Not facts. Not laws. Theories. Which means that they’re up for discussion in a way that something more concrete isn’t. Second, if we define something as “natural,” it sets up a system where everything that falls outside of that definition becomes “unnatural”. I’m not too interested in tearing apart the idea of heterosexuality or instituting a new Queer World Order, but I am interested in showing that these are ideas among an enormous range of ideas, and they’re all up for discussion. Third, how we frame sexual behaviour has a real impact on people’s lives, not just on what kind of sex they’re engaging in. Rights and laws are created and struck down based on these ideas, not to mention the social implications of the celebration of some forms of sex and sexuality and the stigmatization of others.

Another way to understand how the ideas of “sex” and “sexuality” are constructed and not natural is to contrast them with something that is natural. For example, using your nose to smell is natural. There might be different theories of how the smelling process takes place (I’m not sure – I’m not a biologist) but there is no question that the nose is the organ used for smelling. Because it is actually natural, and not a construct, if someone were to say “The correct way to smell is with your ear” I would dismiss them outright. This kind of certainty of correct and incorrect ways of doing things does not exist when we talk about sex.

If sex were natural in the way that smelling with your nose is natural, there would be no reason for me to write about it. It would just be. We would all have sex in the same way with the same kind of people because that’s just how it would be done. Obviously, it’s not, and the ideas and hang-ups and insecurities and convictions and feelings we have about sex are what I’ll be discussing here.

Welcome to Sociology of Sex and Sexuality September 11, 2010

Hi, I’m Meaghan.  I’m taking a course called the Sociology of Sex and Sexuality from my university (which for reasons of privacy, I won’t be naming here) and this is my final project.  Before we get started, there’s a few things you should know:

1) I think the practice of situating one’s self is super important, so in that spirit, I’ll let you know that I am a white, cis-gendered (which just means that my anatomy and my gender identity ‘match’), able-bodied, queer woman who is a mature (age-wise) undergraduate student. I have lived in Canada for my entire life, and the laws and culture here have helped, along with my experiences, to shape my perspectives.

2) As you can probably tell by the title of my blog, I am going to be talking about sex. A lot. You probably also know that a lot of bosses don’t look too kindly on their employees checking out websites about sex on company time or with company resources. In case you’re an employee with one of those kind of bosses, and you’re not doing what you probably should be doing and jotting down my blog address for use outside of work (or at least at someone else’s work station), I’ve marked some of the posts especially likely to make your work life either brief or uncomfortable: NSFW (Not Safe For Work). Whether or not you heed my warning is your own business.

3) Everything I’m writing here is my own interpretation of the things I see around me. And as much as I wish it were different, not everyone agrees with my interpretation all of the time. A really good thing to come from the fact that we all have our own perspectives is discussion. Please use the comments to register your agreement, or more importantly, your dissent. You should know, though that I don’t go in for abusive language, and I will not approve comments that use it. Things like name-calling, slurs, -isms (sexism, racism, etc) won’t be tolerated.

4) As I mentioned above, this is a class project, or at least that’s how it started. I chose to do a blog because many of the contemporary issues around sex and sexuality are changing on a day to day basis, and a blog is a good way to make sure that you’re able to write about issues as they happen, instead of writing about things that have already taken place.

5) I am a really big fan of Feministing and similar sites that deal with issues around sex and gender, and modeled this blog after them to a certain extent. I’ve chosen to emulate their writing style, which I would characterize as simultaneously authoritative and casual. I think that it works well as a way to present these issues in a way that is clear but that also fosters discussion, which is something I hope will happen here.

I hope you get as much out of reading this blog as I do from writing it. If you have any topic suggestions, please send me an email at postcardsfrominania at gmail dot com.