檳榔嶼

- Sexist thinking taught to females from birth on had made it clear that the domain of sexual desire and sexual pleasure was always and only male, that only a female of little or no virtue would lay claim to sexual need or sexual hunger.
- We still live among generations of women who have never known sexual pleasure, women for whom sex has only ever meant loss, threat, danger, annihilation.
- Female sexual freedom requires dependable, safe birth control. Without it females cannot exercise full control of the outcome of sexual activity.
- Early feminist activism around sexuality focused so much attention on just the politics of granting females the right to be sexual whenever we wanted to be, with whomever we wanted to be sexual with, that there was little feminist education for critical consciousness teaching us how to respect our bodies in an anti-sexist way, teaching us what liberatory sex might look like.
  - In the late '60s and early '70s females were often encourageed to make synonymous sexual freedom and sexual promiscuity. And a large number of heterosexual feminists had the same misguided notions because they were patterning their behavior on the model provided by patriarchal males.
  - However it did not take women long to realize that sexual promiscuity and sexual liberation were not one and the same.
- Radical lesbian activists constantly demanded that straight women reconsider their bonds with men, raising the question of whether or not it was possible for women to ever have a liberated heterosexual experience within a patriarchal context.
  - Sexual promiscuity among lesbians could no more be equated with sexual preference women who suffered emotionally by equating the two were disillusioned about sex.
  - And given the connection between male domination and sexual violence it is not surprising that women who had been involved with men were often the most vocal about their sexual unhappiness.
- The contradictions and conflicts arising as a consequence of the tensions between sexual pleasure and danger, sexual freedom and bondage, provided the seductive proving ground for sexual sadomasochism.
- Ultimately feminist interrogations of sexuality were all tied to a question of power.
- No matter how much feminist thinkers talked about equality, when it came to sexual desire and the enactment of sexual passion the dynamics of power and powerlessness evoked in the sexual arena disrupted simplistic notions of oppressor and oppressed.
  - Nothing challenged the grounds of feminist critique of heterosexual practice more than the revelation that feminist lesbians engaged in sexual sadomasochism, a world of tops and bottoms, wherein  positions of powerful and powerless were deemed acceptable.
- Mainstream aging feminist individual women who had once been the great champions of female sexual freedom for the most part began to talk about sexual pleasure as unimportant, valorizing celibacy.
- Visionary feminist discourse on sexual passion and pleasure has been pushed into the background, ignored by almost everyone.
  - In its place females and males continue to rely on patriarchal models of sexual freedom.
- Despite sexual revolution and feminist movement we know that many heterosexual females have sex only because males want them to, that young homosexuals, male and females, still have no public or private supportive environment that affirms their sexual preference, that the sexist iconography of madonna or whore continues to claim the erotic imagination of males and females, that patriarchal pornography now permeates every aspect of mass media, that unwanted pregnancy is on the increase, that teens are having often unsatisfying and unsafe sex, that in many long-time marriages and partnerships, whether same-sex or heterosexual, women are having no sex.
- Fundamentally mutual respect is essential to liberatory sexual practice and the conviction that sexual pleasure and fulfillment is best attained in a circumstance of choice and consensual agreement.
  - Within patriarchal society men and women cannot know sustained heterosexual bliss unless both parties have divested of their sexist thinking.
  - Many women and men still consider male sexual performance to be determined solely by whether or not the penis is hard and erections are maintained. This notion of male performance is tied to sexist thinking.
  - While men must let go of the sexist assumption that female sexuality exists to serve and satisfy their needs, many women must also let go a fixation on penetration.
- In the bedroom many men want a sexually desiring woman eager to give and share pleasure but ultimately they did not surrender the sexist assumption that her sexual performance (i.e., whether or not she wanted to be sexual) should be determined by their desire.
  - While it was fun to do it with willing excited, liberated females it was not fun when those females declared that they wanted a space not to be sexual.
  - Often when that happened heterosexual men made it clear that they would need to look elsewhere for sexual release, an action which reinforced the reality of continued allegiance to a sexist paradigm of ownership in the female body as well as their holding to the notion that any female body would suffice.
- In a liberatory heterosexual or homosexual relationships both parties should be free to determine when and how frequently they want to be sexual without fear of punishment.
  - Until all men cease to believe that someone other than themselves is required to respond to their sexual needs demanding sexual subordination of partners will continue.
- A truly liberatory feminist sexual politic will always make the assertion of female sexual agency central. That agency cannot come into being when females believe their sexual bodies must always stand in the service of something else.
  - Often professional prostitutes and women in everyday life hold up their free exchange of pussy for goods or services as an indication that they are liberated. They refuse to acknowledge the fact that whenever a woman prostitutes her body because she cannot satisfy material needs in other ways she risks forfeiting that space of sexual integrity where she controls her body.
- Masses of heterosexual women remain unable to let go the sexist assumption that their sexuality must always be sought after by men to have meaning and value.
  - To do so they must believe that same-sex sexual encounters, self-pleasuring, and celibacy are as vital and life-enhancing as sexual intercourse with men within patriarchal culture.
- Women would only be truly sexually liberated when we arrived at a place where we could see ourselves as having sexual value and agency irrespective of whether or not we were the objects of male desire.
- We need an erotics of being that is founded on the principle that we have a right to express sexual desire as the spirit moves us and to find in sexual pleasure a life-affirming ethos.
- Erotic connection calls us away from isolation and alienation into community.
- In a world where positive expressions of sexual longing connect us we will all be free to choose those sexual practices which affirm and nurture our growth.
  - Those practices may range from choosing promiscuity or celibacy, from embracing one specific sexual identity and preference or choosing a roaming uncharted desire that is kindled only by interaction and engagement with specific individuals with whom we feel the spark of erotic recognition no matter their sex, race, class, or even their sexual preference.