Feminists like to...What?

From Feministing.

A look at the attempts to aggregate feminism and "girls gone wild". It seems, in the end more like male fantasies (girls are just waiting to loose it and debase themselves...for me) and conservative women's fears of their own... potency.

Feminists Gone Wild

Something that has really been on my mind lately is the way that younger women--younger feminists, in particular--are being "blamed" for (what I think is) a largely media-created craze about girls "gone wild." This came up recently on a feminist listserv that I'm on--actually it comes up there a lot--so I've somewhat edited (and added to) an email I sent around for posting here...

I think what I find most frustrating about this conversation—whenever it seems to happen—is how young feminist discourse about sex somehow always gets compared to, and talked about in relation to, the very trendy Girls Gone Wild theme.

I feel like there’s a tendency in these conversations to conflate the probably not-very-thought-out (or drunken) actions of girls “gone wild” and young feminist actions surrounding sex—like certain burlesque shows or events. Sure, there are conversations to be had about both kinds of performance, but talking about them as if they’re the same thing seems very dismissive to me.

I keep seeing these threads where folks say that young feminists somehow think that Girls Gone Wild is “empowering” or “feminist.” What young feminists—or even young women—say this?! I don’t think that anyone is trying frame drunken performances for male pleasure as feminist. And I think that if you talked to the young women participating in GGW or similar things, most would say that they do it because it’s “fun.” (And it would pay to have conversations with, rather than about, these young women about why they think it’s fun and what that says about what girls are learning about pleasure.) But even if the occasional young woman did use feminist rhetoric to explain “going wild,” it’s not because of third wave feminism—it’s because of the mainstream appropriation of feminist language.

It just irks me to see that just because young feminists want to have a conversation about things like GGW without finger-wagging at the girls involved and while recognizing that all sex and sexual performances aren't exploitative, we’re somehow seen as simply okaying it using feminism. The truth is much different, and much more complex.

An aside: What also upsets me about this conversation (and all the GGW hype) is that it frames most young women as being participants in this kind of culture--as if we're all just dying to be Paris Hilton. The young women I know are doing amazing, political, active things, and are a far cry from the creepy-shirt-wearing, wild gals I keep hearing about from the media.

Interest in Paris Hilton seems more like a morbid curiosity, like Anna Nicole Smith. And colleges are full of young women dedicated to learning, to improving themselves, and active in life.

So...yeah. All these feminist want to get naked...for you. Idiot!