One more thing about sex positivism

And it will probably be my last, as the whole topic is pretty polarizing.

I know this post from The Pervocracy has been linked before, in particular on a contentious piece on Feminitse, but I think it's one of the better ones I've found elucidating sex-positive feminism in simple, non-judgmental terms. Right away, this stood out:

"If you treat sexy women with disgust and pity, you're not protecting their rights; you're just gleefully participating in their public humiliation. (You're also often attacking them on a subject that's highly intertwined with culture, class, age, and even body shape. Not everyone who looks "sexy" to you is doing it on purpose, much less doing it to serve the patriarchy.)" (emphasis mine)

I bolded that last part because for a movement that at least gives lip service to intersectionality, there's very little intersectionality in practice. A big part of why I've become apathetic to feminism lately is that I can't always pretend to be on the same page as someone whose experiences differ wildly from mine, and while it's certainly true that the feminist blog world is varied, the public face of contemporary feminism -- the ones granted guest appearances on MSNBC and the like -- is straight, white, cis, and middle-class.

This reminds me of something Julia Serano said in her book, Excluded:

"... diversity is something that is routinely touted, albeit only within certain parameters. Usually, when people talk about 'striving for diversity,' they are rather specifically talking about displaying a mix of people of different races, ethnicities, religions, classes, genders, sexual orientations, ages, and/or abilities. In other words, these the handful of different traits that 'count' toward imparting diversity onto an organization or movement... what concerns me is that these are not the only traits that exist."

Not only are those not the only traits that make up how one experiences the world, they overlapp, influence each other, and become muddied. For example I know how people with class privilege think and act because it's presented as the dominant or "correct" experience, and since classism is the "ism" I'm most microtuned to notice, everything else I do is filtered through it. Gender roles, for example, are always "classed" to me. Pink and lace say girly, sure, but for me they also say (relatively speaking) money. I don't know if the reason I don't like "girl stuff" is because of some innate trait in me that says "Pink? No thank you," that I didn't have a lot of girly things growing up because they were expensive and I've since trained myself not to want them, or the feminist catchall, internalized misogyny.*

How does all this factor into sex positive feminism then? It's often presented as sexy straight girls who like a lot of PIV sex. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and sexy straight girls who like PIV sex shouldn't be shamed for it, but it's an incredibly naive stance to take, particularly when a lot of sex-poz thought comes from queer theorists like Patrick Califia and Carol Queen. It's unfortunate that it's gotten somewhat of a tarnished reputation (pun intended), because there is a lot of good there once you get past some of the stereotypes.

*I would never deny that internalized misogyny is a thing, but it's often over-simplified.