Sex Drive

It's interesting to me how certain "feminist" perspectives accord so much power to male sexual desire but not to female.

By that I mean... just look at some of the anti-porn views. The idea that men (and of course on this view all men are cisgendered) are so programmable by sexual desire that they'll actually lose empathy for women as a whole due to too much wanking. Those hormones must be some powerful shit, yo.

But it's rarely discussed what libido does to women. Libido is assumed to be peculiarly masculine. Women are assumed not to be driven by it, or to be being frivolous if we mention that sexuality is important to us.

We're expected to know better than use porn. Unlike the men, who get sucked into it by the power of the overweening male sex drive. If we do use porn, we've been selfish, turned our backs on other women. We're indifferent to a struggle we should understand. We're irresponsible.

Yet the men are somehow expected to be caught up, slaves to their dicks, cogs in the machine at twelve or thirteen, nearly impossible to wrench back out of it. Only the destruction of the industry -- which is talked about like the fall of the Empire in Star Wars -- will free them from their enslavement to pornography.

Anti-porn feminists do work involving pornography all the time. They look at it, quote it, analyze it, discuss it. Why doesn't it work its empathy-killing magic on them?

As far as I can tell, many women's answer is as much about sex as it is about politics. It's not just the expected "Well, I don't have privilege so I can see the problem." That might make sense.

Very often, especially if you provoke them enough to cut through thin masks of civility, it includes "I'm not a slave to my pussy, like you."

(Goddess, do I hate that word. "Pussy." Yeah, my vagina is cuddly and purrs. No thanks. My cunt is a white-hot pool of swirling, burning energy that fuels my spirit.)

Anyhoo, pussy-slavery.

The assumption seems to be that those of us who do find this magically seductive tool of Satan arousing work, strangely and frighteningly, like the men.

And I wonder: why is sexuality assumed to have this kind of enslaving power when it's male sexuality, and assumed to be frippery when it's female sexuality?

How can something that's so common to human experience be so driving for half of humanity, and so silly and inconsequential for the other?

News Flash: It can't and it's not. Women can and do experience sexual passion.

Some women are asexual. Some women lose interest in sex. All great... if that's who you really are, rather than some belief that libido in women is some silly fairytale.

It's not.