While we've rightly been focused lately on racist and sexist attacks coming from the political right wing (the alt-right in particular) of late, I think something needs to also be said about sexist attitudes emanating from the political left wing, which derive from a certain obsession with inclusiveness and political correctness. I kinda want to get your (anyone's, but especially forum leftists') input on how far with that is going too far.
Earlier this summer, Teen Vogue made a name for themselves online with an
article explaining how to ask your boyfriend for anal sex (which I'm sure requires much persuading) and describing the ostensible nature of the experience. Included was the following diagram of the female anatomy. See if you notice any curious omissions.
In case you missed them, let me point a couple things out to you that you wouldn't have missed if you were female:
1) The word woman. You see, "non-prostrate owners" are generally called women, girls, or females. None of those terms can be found either in the above diagram or in the corresponding article! Instead, the article opts for the term "vagina owners" throughout. That and 2) there is no clitoris in this ostensible anatomy of the female privates. That’s right: the sexual organ primarily responsible for women's orgasms was omitted from an instructive diagram about sex aimed at women, or, more specifically, teenage girls! (Perspective for our male readers: that's sort of like excluding the penis from a diagram of the male privates.) But they sure want your daughter(s) to have painful anal sex!
Between those two things, a theme of subtle misogyny emerges.
Stigmatizing references to female human beings has indeed become in vogue in liberal and left corners more broadly of late. In recent years, we have seen the replacement of women's studies classes with "gender studies" classes as another example. The funniest example I've found though came from the Green Party last year when "#GreenPartyFeminism" infamously decided to embrace the term "non-male", whereupon the non-men of the world united in objecting to the implication that men are the default gender and that women are simply extensions of men whose existence cannot be acknowledged. Anyway, the regularly-stated purpose for so doing is to be inclusive of transgender people. And yet, the reality of the matter is that this trend toward eliminating all gender references save for references to men has the inescapable effect of erasing all acknowledgment of the existence of anyone else, and of women in particular. The rest of us just become one big blah with no identity.
Getting back to this Teen Vogue article, I'm not sure it's just a coincidence that they're erasing all references to women and simultaneously erasing the female anatomy. And that's what I mean about misogynistic attitudes on the left. When the article was challenged on these grounds, the magazine's male owner responded by tweeting that "The backlash to this article is rooted in homophobia. It's also laced in arcane delusion about what it means to be a young person today." Here's a quick biology lesson for you on why that's not true: Men's bodies are better equipped to enjoy anal sex because 1) men have penises, and 2) men have prostates, which are conducive to butt orgasms. Women, on the other hand, have neither of those things.
You can see here that the liberal publication's strategy of defending their sexist errors with claims of oppressing other disadvantaged groups is consistent. According to the logic of Teen Vogue and a great many other liberal and left people and organizations, by existing, women like me are oppressing transgender people, both male and female. And by having a clitoris and no sex organs in our asses, we are oppressing gay men. You see what I mean about how this level of obsession with "inclusiveness" and political correctness can come across as sexist?
The Gender, Sexuality, and Race Room
Originally Posted by IMPress Polly
Reply With Quote
