Erotic Aspects of Student/Faculty Relationships

Feminist bell hooks on erotic student/faculty relationships

Following are key excerpts from an article by feminist author Bell Hooks, “Passionate Pedagogy; erotic student/faculty relationships,” Z MAGAZINE, March 1996, 45-51. This is one of the best articles written on this subject and I urge readers to savor and critically scrutinize this article.

When I became a professor I was amazed at the extent to which students, male and female, approached me for romantic and/or sexual encounters. Like many unattached female professors in the academy, I was constantly the subject of student gossip. Often the students I loved the most did the most talking. When I complained to them about their obsession with my sex life, they simply responded by telling me to get a grip and accept that it goes with the turf. They wanted to understand female sexual agency. They wanted to know how women professors are coping with working in patriarchal institutions, and how we were juggling issues of sexual desirability, agency, and careerism. They saw us as charting the path they will follow. Many of these students were more than hip to the dangers of getting involved with someone older and more powerful.

Contemporary feminist movement has usefully interrogated the way men in power within patriarchal culture often use that power to abuse and sexually coerce females. That necessary critical intervention is undermined when it obscures recognition of the way in which desire can be acknowledged in relationships between individuals where there is unequal power without being abusive. It is undermined when any individual who is in a less powerful position is represented as being absolutely without choice, as having no agency to act on their own behalf. As long as young females are socialized to see themselves as incapable of choosing those situations of erotic engagement which would be most constructive for their lives, they will always be more vulnerable to victimization. This does not mean that they will not make mistakes, as countless female students did when they chose to have disappointing nonproductive romantic liaisons with professors. Everyone I interviewed for this piece had no regret about these liaisons. We all knew they did not have to be negative. The point is that we were not embracing a psychology of female victimization that would have been utterly disempowering. There is clearly a connection between submitting to abuse and the extent to which any of us already feel that we are destined to be victimized.

The vast majority of women who are heterosexual in this society are likely to be in intimate relations with men at some point in their lives who have greater status and power, however relative, given the nature of capitalism and patriarchy. Clearly, it is more important to learn ways to be “just” in situations where there is a power imbalance, rather than to
assume that exploitation and abuse are the “natural” outcome of all such encounters. Notice how such logic fixes those in power in ways that deny their accountability and choice by assuming that they act on behalf of their interests exclusively. And that their interests will always be antithetical to the interests of those who are less powerful.

Contemporary focus on victimization tends to leave very little cultural space for recognition of the erotic as a space of transgression that can undermine politics of domination. Rather than perceiving desire between faculty and students as always dangerous, negative and destructive, what does it mean for us to consider the positive uses of that desire, the way the erotic can serve to enhance self-actualization and growth. We hear much more about the way in which individuals have abused power in faculty/students relations where there is erotic engagement. We rarely hear anything about the ways erotic desire between teacher and student enhances individual growth. We do not hear about the affectionate bonds that spring from erotic encounters which challenge conventional notions of what is appropriate behavior.

Most professors, even the ones who are guilty, would acknowledge that it is highly problematic and usually unproductive to be romantically involved with students you are directly working with, either in the classroom or on a more individual basis. Yet, prohibitions, rules and regulations, will not keep these relationships from happening. The place of vigilance is not in forbidding such encounters but having a system that effectively prevents harassment and abuse. At every college campus in this country there are individual male professors who repeatedly harass and coerce students to engage in sexual relations. For the most part, even when there have been ongoing complaints, college administrators have not confronted these individuals or used the already institutionalized procedures governing harassment to compel them to stop abusive behavior. Even though everyone seems to be quite capable of recognizing the difference between those professors who abuse their power and those who may have a romantic relationship with a student that is consensual, by imposing rules and regulations that would effect all faculty and students they deny this difference. Some folks want to argue there is no difference that the student is always more vulnerable. It is true that relationships where there are serious power imbalances can be a breeding ground for victimization. They can begin with mutual consent yet this does not ensure that they may not become conflictual in ways that lead the more powerful party to become coercive or abusive. This is true in all relationships in life. Power must be negotiated. Part of maturing is learning how to cope with conflict. Many of the cases where students cite serious exploitation on the part of professors involve graduate students and professors. It is difficult to believe that any graduate student is not fully aware of the risks when they become erotically involved with a professor who has some control over their career. Concurrently, sexism and misogyny have to be seen as factors at work, when individual powerful male professors direct their attention at exceptionally smart female graduate students who could easily become their competitors. If campuses really want to effectively address the problems of abuse in faculty-student relations then we should be socializing undergraduates to be realistic about the problems that can arise in such encounters.

The Time magazine story on romantic relations between students and faculty begins with this confession: “During the three months in 1993 when she was sleeping with her English professor, Lisa Topol lost 18 pounds. She lost interest in her classes at the University of Pennsylvania, lost her reputation as an honor student and wondered if she was losing her mind. If she tried to break up, she thought, he could ruin her academic career. Then she made some phone calls and learned a bit more about the professor she had come to view as a predator.” If one took out the words academic and professor this would read like the troubled narrative of anyone involved with someone on the job who is their supervisor. The problem with this story is not that it does not tell the truth but rather that it tells a partial truth. We have no idea why Lisa Topol entered this relationship. We do not know if it was consensual. We do not know how or why the male involved became abusive. We do know that he did not become abusive simply because he was her professor. The problem here does not lie with faculty-student relations but with this individual male, and the large numbers of men like him who prey upon females. The cultural context that condones this abuse is patriarchy and male domination. Yet most men and women in the academy, like society as a whole, are not engaged in activism that would target patriarchy. There are many faculty-student romances that end in friendship, some that lead to marriage and/or partnership. The professors in these relationships are able to conduct themselves in a way that is not exploitative despite the imbalance of power. There are many more male professors involved with students who are not abusive than those that are.

Realistically, our pedagogy is failing both inside and outside the classroom if students have no awareness of their agency when it comes to choosing a relationship of intimacy with a faculty member. Some folks oppose faculty/student erotic bonding because they say it creates a climate of favoritism that can be deeply disruptive. In actuality, any intimate bonding between a professor and a student is a potential context for favoritism, whether or not that intimacy is erotic. Favoritism often surfaces in the classroom and has nothing to do with desire. For example: Most professors are especially partial to students that do assigned work with rigor and intellectual enthusiasm. This is as much a context for favoritism but no one is seeking to either eliminate, question, or police it. Young females and males entering college are in the process of claiming and asserting adult status. Sexuality is as much a site where that evolution and maturation is registered as is the classroom.

A college environment should strengthen a student’s ability to make responsible mature decisions and choices. Those faculty members who become involved in romantic relationships with a student (whether they initiated it or responded to an overture by the student) who are not exploitative or dominating will nurture this maturation process. In my teaching career I have had a relationship with one student. Although he was a student in my class, I did not approach him during the time that he studied with me because I did not want to bring that dynamic into the classroom or into my evaluation of his work. He was not an exceptional student in my class. When the course ended, we became intimate. From the start we had conflicts about power. The relationship did not work yet we became friends. Recently, I shared with him that I was writing this piece. I wanted to know if he thought I had taken advantage of him. He reminded me of how shocked he was that I desired him because he primarily thought of me as this teacher that he admired and looked up to. He shared his perspective: “I did not feel in any way coerced. I found it intriguing that I would be able to talk to you one on one about issues raised in the class. I was happy to have a chance to get to know you better because I knew you were this smart and gifted professor. We all thought you were special. I was young and inexperienced and even though it was exciting that you desired me, it was also frightening.” Our romance failed. We had our share of miserable conflictual moments. Our friendship has deepened over the years and is grounded in respect and care.

Student devotion to a teacher can easily be a context where erotic longings emerge. Passionate pedagogy in any setting is likely to spark erotic energy. It cannot be policed or outlawed. This erotic energy can be used in constructive ways both in individual relationships and in the classroom setting. Just as it is important that we be vigilant in challenging abuses of power wherein the erotic becomes a terrain of exploitation, it is equally important to recognize that space where erotic interaction is enabling and positively transforming. Desire in the context of relations where hierarchy and unequal power separate individuals is always potentially disruptive and simultaneously potentially transformative. Desire can be a democratic equalizing force—the fierce reminder of the limitations of hierarchy and status—as much as it can be a context for abuse and exploitation. The erotic is always present, always with us. When we deny that erotic feelings will emerge between teachers and students, this denial precludes the recognition of accountability and responsibility. The implications of entering intimate relations where there is an imbalance of power cannot be understood, or those relations handled with care in a cultural context where desire that disrupts is seen as so taboo that it cannot be spoken, acknowledged, and addressed. Banning relations between faculty and students would create a climate of silence and taboo that would only intensify dynamics of coercion and exploitation. The moment power differences are articulated in a dialogue where erotic desire surfaces, a space is created where choice is possible, where accountability can be clearly assessed.

What's Your Take on It?

. . . there's "innocence" at risk. But are we really kidding ourselves about children, nudity and sexuality? Are we sending them a harmful message in the process?

Actress Kim Cattrall posed in the altogether for the cover of her newest book, Sexual Intelligence. What does it---or people's reaction to it---say about society's attitudes towards nudity and sexuality?

A few weeks ago, on a "Go" section cover, The Spectator printed a large photo of actor Kim Cattrall in connection with a new book of hers. Some readers complained about the photo because Cattrall was naked.

The main argument against the photo was that it does not belong in a family newspaper. "Family" means a few things, chiefly the presence of children, also a certain parental attitude: young minds should not be polluted by nudity in a newspaper that arrives for breakfast.

Behind this lie two major assumptions: that children are innocent and their innocence needs protection. Although in some ways children are innocent, many parents narrow that to mean ignorant and try to keep them so, especially in sexual matters. "Protection" via ignorance then easily backfires as a method of upbringing. It also loads burdens onto minors of all ages that adults fail socially to deal with.

Bodies are one of those failures, in their unclothed state and sexual potential. We act in imaginative ways to keep even the topics of nudity and sexuality from minors. It doesn't matter that young children in all cultures prefer to be naked, that at very early ages they masturbate, if non-erotically, and that in adolescence they know well what erotic experience is.

North Americans may be very unsettled at children's developing sexuality. "Our culture deals with this inevitability," writes the social critic James Kincaid, "by issuing orders to deny it." Ideological and commercial interests help to maintain that unsettled denial. Ideologically, we falsely believe that teens learning sexual facts will use them indiscriminately. Commercially, advertising blasts us with sexual messages that we try to prevent many of their intended targets from heeding.

Many deny reality constantly to maintain the myth that we can enforce minors' distancing from sex. The United States, for example, officially promotes and exorbitantly funds "abstinence-only" sex education. Five of the best American professional organizations have shown scientifically that it doesn't work, that vows of abstinence break far more easily than a good condom. The result: the U.S. government says that's not science.

That kind of reaction reached its nadir a few years ago. In 1998, a scientific analysis by Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman claimed that not all sexual experiences of minors presumed harmful are actually so. What did the U.S. Congress do? It didn't say, "We'd better study this" or "We think your stats are wrong." As soon as it could, in a fit of political hysteria, it denounced the analysis in unanimous votes in both House and Senate. It lynched the messenger because it didn't want to understand the message. Promoting baseless fear reaps far more political benefits.

Don't sneer at our southern neighbours, however. Canada, while better, is hardly free from criticism. Its government has tried hard to make some thoughts about sex a crime. Its pornography laws are based on discredited theories. Its police often wrongly claim that child sexual abuse is an epidemic. Ontario's Children's Aid societies threaten nudist families, who refuse to buy into body shame and phobia. And its sex-ed curriculum for elementary schools is warped by omission of important concepts.

Obsession with sexuality may become absurd. Often, it results in those most afraid of it inducing plenty of harm where none existed. In Florida in 2004, a 22-year-old female babysitter undressed in front of her four-year-old male charge because he asked her to persistently, in his innocent way. The boy was declared psychologically damaged and sent to counselling. The babysitter faced 30 years in prison, much more than for murder.

That unhappy tale reminds me of an old joke about a four-year-old boy who spotted a totally naked woman standing up in a convertible. "Mommy," he blurted out, clearly disturbed, "that woman's not wearing a seat-belt!"

The crusade for children's innocence takes other forms. Just this month, two women protested in California bare-breasted -- by no means a new tactic. Sacramento police arrested them for indecency and disorder, claiming their act "could corrupt children ... and cause sex offenders to run amok." There is no evidence whatever to support such claims. Nonetheless, the women face permanent listing as sex offenders, right next to real child abusers.

That sort of thing happens in Canada, too. In the past 10 years, arrests of bare-breasted women in several provinces have been major news. In 2001, when the magnificent Breast of Canada calendar from Guelph showed women's complete breasts, it was labelled "pornographic." Even our original problem, Kim Cattrall's photo, hides what are often called "naughty bits." What message does that send to children?

So we, too, can pin major harm on a tiny part of women's bodies. This nipplemania is the ultimate fetish. It blames women's nipples for disorder subsequently caused by police and calls them indecent to support false claims of protecting misconstrued innocence. We do not help children by teaching them intolerance, disgust, and unjust discrimination towards women's bodies or by hiding from them as much information as possible about bodies and sexuality.

Cattrall's new book is called Sexual Intelligence. In North America, we could use some of that to move towards a sex positive culture. Currently we convey mostly body negativity, in sexual politics of fear and hypocrisy. As protective measures for children, nothing could be worse

A Black Feminist Statement: From The Combahee River Collective

“We are a collective of black feminists who have been meeting together since 1974.1 During that time we have been involved in the process of defining and clarifying our politics, while at the same time doing political work within our own group and in coalition with other progressive organizations and movements. The most general statement of our politics at the present time would be that we are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. The synthesis of these oppressions creates the conditions of our lives. As black women we see black feminism as the logical political movement to combat the manifold and simultaneous oppressions that all women of colour face.

We will discuss four major topics in the paper that follows: (1) The genesis of con-temporary black feminism; (2) what we believe, i.e., the specific province of our politics; (3) the problems in organizing black feminists, including a brief herstory of our collective; and (4) black feminist issues and practice.

1. THE GENESIS OF CONTEMPORARY BLACK FEMINISM
Before looking at the recent development of black feminism, we would like to affirm that we find our origins in the historical reality of Afro-American women’s continuous life-and-death struggle for survival and liberation. Black women’s extremely negative relationship to the American political system (a system of white male rule) has always been determined by our membership in two oppressed racial and sexual castes. As Angela Davis points out in “Reflections on the Black Woman’s Role in the Community of Slaves,” black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways. There have always been black women activists—some known, like Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Frances E. W. Harper, Ida B. Wells Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell, and thousands upon thousands unknown—who had a shared awareness of how their sexual identity combined with their racial identity to make their whole life situation and the focus of their political struggles unique. Contemporary black feminism is the outgrowth of countless generations of personal sacrifice, militancy, and work by our mothers and sisters.
A black feminist presence has evolved most obviously in connection with the second wave of the American women’s movement beginning in the late 1960s. Black, other Third World, and working women have been involved in the feminist movement from its start, but both outside reactionary forces and racism and elitism within the movement itself have served to obscure our participation. In 1973 black feminists, primarily located in New York, felt the necessity of forming a separate black feminist group. This became the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO).
Black feminist politics also have an obvious connection to movements for black liberation, particularly those of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of us were active in those movements (civil rights, black nationalism, the Black Panthers), and all of our lives were greatly affected and changed by their ideology, their goals, and the tactics used to achieve their goals. It was our experience and disillusionment within these liberation movements, as well as experience on the periphery of the white male left, that led to the need to develop a politics that was antiracist, unlike those of white women, and antisexist, unlike those of black and white men.
There is also undeniably a personal genesis for black feminism, that is, the political realization that comes from the seemingly personal experiences of individual black women’s lives. Black feminists and many more black women who do not define them-selves as feminists have all experienced sexual oppression as a constant factor in our day-to-day existence.
Black feminists often talk about their feelings of craziness before becoming con-scious of the concepts of sexual politics, patriarchal rule, and, most importantly, fem-inism, the political analysis and practice that we women use to struggle against our oppression. The fact that racial politics and indeed racism are pervasive factors in our lives did not allow us, and still does not allow most black women, to look more deeply into our own experiences and define those things that make our lives what they are and our oppression specific to us. In the process of consciousness-raising, actually life-sharing, we began to recognize the commonality of our experiences and, from that sharing and growing consciousness, to build a politics that will change our lives and inevitably end our oppression.
Our development also must be tied to the contemporary economic and political position of black people. The post-World War II generation of black youth was the first to be able to minimally partake of certain educational and employment options, previously closed completely to black people. Although our economic position is still at the very bottom of the American capitalist economy, a handful of us have been able to gain certain tools as a result of tokenism in education and employment which potentially enable us to more effectively fight our oppression.
A combined antiracist and antisexist position drew us together initially, and as we developed politically we addressed ourselves to heterosexism and economic oppression under capitalism.
2. WHAT WE BELIEVE
Above all else, our politics initially sprang from the shared belief that black women are inherently valuable, that our liberation is a necessity not as an adjunct to somebody else’s but because of our need as human persons for autonomy. This may seem so obvious as to sound simplistic, but it is apparent that no other ostensibly progressive movement has ever considered our specific oppression a priority or worked seriously for the ending of that oppression. Merely naming the pejorative stereotypes attrib-uted to black women (e.g., mammy, matriarch, Sapphire, whore, bulldogged), let alone cataloguing the cruel, often murderous, treatment we receive, indicates how little value has been placed upon our lives during four centuries of bondage in the Western hemisphere. We realize that the only people who care enough about us to work con-sistently for our liberation is us. Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters, and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.
This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity pol-itics. We believe that the most profound and potentially the most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression. In the case of black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of lib-eration than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.
We believe that sexual politics under patriarchy is as pervasive in black women’s lives as are the politics of class and race. We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously. We know that there is such a thing as racial-sexual oppression which is neither solely racial nor solely sexual, e.g., the history of rape of black women by white men as a weapon of political repression.
Although we are feminists and lesbians, we feel solidarity with progressive black men and do not advocate the fractionalization that white women who are separatists demand. Our situation as black people necessitates that we have solidarity around the fact of race, which white women of course do not need to have with white men, unless it is their negative solidarity as racial oppressors. We struggle together with black men against racism, while we also struggle with black men about sexism.
We realize that the liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political- economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy. We are socialists because we believe the work must be organized for the collective benefit of those who do the work and create the products and not for the profit of the bosses. Material resources must be equally distributed among those who create these resources. We are not convinved, however, that a socialist revolution that is not also a feminist and antiracist revolution will guarantee our liberation. We have arrived at the necessity for developing an understanding of class relationships that takes into account the specific class position of black women who are generally marginal in the labor force, while at this particular time some of us are temporarily viewed as doubly desirable tokens at white-collar and professional levels. We need to articulate the real class situation of persons who are not merely raceless, sexless workers, but for whom racial and sexual oppression are significant determinants in their working/economic lives. Although we are in essential agreement with Marx’s theory as it applied to the very specific economic relationships he analyzed, we know that this analysis must be extended further in order for us to understand our specific economic situation as black women.
A political contribution which we feel we have already made is the expansion of the feminist principle that the personal is political. In our consciousness-raising sessions, for example, we have in many ways gone beyond white women’s revelations because we are dealing with the implications of race and class as well as sex. Even our black women’s style of talking/testifying in black language about what we have experienced has a resonance that is both cultural and political. We have spent a great deal of energy delving into the cultural and experiential nature of our oppression out of necessity because none of these matters have ever been looked at before. No one before has ever examined the multilayered texture of black women’s lives.
As we have already stated, we reject the stance of lesbian separatism because it is not a viable political analysis or strategy for us. It leaves out far too much and far too many people, particularly black men, women, and children. We have a great deal of criticism and loathing for what men have been socialized to be in this society: what they support, how they act, and how they oppress. But we do not have the misguided notion that it is their maleness, per se—i.e., their biological maleness—that makes them what they are. As black women we find any type of biological determinism a particularly dangerous and reactionary basis upon which to build a politic. We must also question whether lesbian separatism is an adequate and progressive political analysis and strategy, even for those who practice it, since it so completely denies any but the sexual sources of women’s oppression, negating the facts of class and race.
3. PROBLEMS IN ORGANIZING BLACK FEMINISTS
During our years together as a black feminist collective we have experienced success and defeat, joy and pain, victory and failure. We have found that it is very difficult to organize around black feminist issues, difficult even to announce in certain contexts that we are black feminists. We have tried to think about the reasons for our difficulties, particularly since the white women’s movement continues to be strong and to grow in many directions. In this section we will discuss some of the general reasons for the organizing problems we face and also talk specifically about the stages in organizing our own collective.
The major source of difficulty in our political work is that we are not just trying to fight oppression on one front or even two, but instead to address a whole range of oppressions. We do not have racial, sexual, heterosexual or class privilege to rely upon, nor do we have even the minimal access to resources and power that groups who possess any one of these types of privilege have.
The psychological toll of being a black woman and the difficulties this presents in reaching political consciousness and doing political work can never be underestimated. There is a very low value placed upon black women’s psyches in this society, which is both racist and sexist. As an early group member once said, “We are all dam-aged people merely by virtue of being black women.” We are dispossessed psychologically and on every other level, and yet we feel the necessity to struggle to change our condition and the condition of all black women. In “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,” Michele Wallace arrives at this conclusion:
We exist as women who are black who are feminists, each stranded for the moment, working independently because there is not yet an environment in this society remotely congenial to our struggle—because, being on the bottom, we would have to do what no one else has done: we would have to fight the world.’
Wallace is not pessimistic but realistic in her assessment of black feminists’ position, particularly in her allusion to the nearly classic isolation most of us face. We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action. If black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.
Feminism is, nevertheless, very threatening to the majority of black people because it calls into question some of the most basic assumptions about our existence, i.e., that gender should be a determinant of power relationships. Here is the way male and female roles were defined in a black nationalist pamphlet from the early 1970s.
We understand that it is and has been traditional that the man is the head of the house. He is the leader of the house/nation because his knowledge of the world is broader, his awareness is greater, his understanding is fuller and his application of this information is wiser. . . . After all, it is only reasonable that the man be the head of the house because he is able to defend and protect the development of his home. . . . Women cannot do the same things as men—they are made by nature to function differently. Equality of men and women is something that cannot happen even in the abstract world. Men are not equal to other men, i.e., ability, experience, or even understanding. The value of men and women can be seen as in the value of gold and silver—they are not equal but both have great value. We must realize that men and women are a complement to each other because there is no house/family without a man and his wife. Both are essential to the development of any life.
The material conditions of most black women would hardly lead them to upset both economic and sexual arrangements that seem to represent some stability in their lives. Many black women have a good understanding of both sexism and racism, but because of the everyday constrictions of their lives cannot risk struggling against them both.
The reaction of black men to feminism has been notoriously negative. They are, of course, even more threatened than black women by the possibility that black feminists might organize around our own needs. They realize that they might not only lose valuable and hard-working allies in their struggles but that they might also be forced to change their habitually sexist ways of interacting with and oppressing black women. Accusations that black feminism divides the black struggle are powerful deterrents to the growth of an autonomous black women’s movement.
Still, hundreds of women have been active at different times during the three-year existence of our group. And every black women who came, came out of a strongly felt need for some level of possibility that did not previously exist in her life.
When we first started meeting early in 1974 after the NBFO first eastern regional conference, we did not have a strategy for organizing, or even a focus. We just wanted to see what we had. After a period of months of not meeting, we began to meet again late in the year and started doing an intense variety of consciousness-raising. The overwhelming feeling that we had is that after years and years we had finally found each other. Although we were not doing political work as a group, individuals continued their involvement in lesbian politics, sterilization abuse and abortion rights work. Third World Women’s International Women’s Day activities, and support activity for the trials of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, Joan Little, and Inez Garcia. During our first summer, when membership had dropped off considerably, those of us remaining devoted serious discussion to the possibility of opening a refuge for battered women in a black community. (There was no refuge in Boston at that time.) We also decided around that time to become an independent collective since we had serious disagree-ments with NBFOs bourgeois-feminist stance and their lack of a clear political focus.
We also were contacted at that time by socialist feminists, with whom we had worked on abortion rights activities, who wanted to encourage us to attend the National Socialist Feminist Conference in Yellow Springs. One of our members did attend and despite the narrowness of the ideology that was promoted at that particular conference, we became more aware of the need for us to understand our own economic situation and to make our own economic analysis.
In the fall, when some members returned, we experienced several months of comparative inactivity and internal disagreements which were first conceptualized as a lesbian-straight split but which were also the result of class and political differences. During the summer those of us who were still meeting had determined the need to do political work and to move beyond consciousness-raising and serving exclusively as an emotional support group. At the beginning of 1976, when some of the women who had not wanted to do political work and who also had voiced disagreements stopped attending of their own accord, we again looked for a focus. We decided at that time, with the addition of new members, to become a study group. We had always shared our reading with each other, and some of us had written papers on black feminism for group discussion a few months before this decision was made. We began functioning as a study group and also began discussing the possibility of starting a black feminist publication. We had a retreat in the late spring which provided a time for both political discussion and working out interpersonal issues. Currently we are planning to gather together a collection of black feminist writing. We feel that it is absolutely essential to demonstrate the reality of our politics to other black women and believe that we can do this through writing and distributing our work. The fact that individual black feminists are living in isolation all over the country, that our own numbers are small, and that we have some skills in writing, printing, and publishing makes us want to carry out these kinds of projects as a means of organizing black feminists as we continue to do political work in coalition with other groups.
4. BLACK FEMINIST ISSUES AND PRACTICE
During our time together we have identified and worked on many issues of particular relevance to black women. The inclusiveness of our politics makes us concerned with any situation that impinges upon the lives of women, Third World, and working people. We are of course particularly committed to working on those struggles in which race, sex, and class are simultaneous factors in oppression. We might, for example, become involved in workplace organizing at a factory that employs Third World women or picket a hospital that is cutting hack on already inadequate health care to a Third World community, or set up a rape crisis center in a black neighborhood. Organizing around welfare or daycare concerns might also be a focus. The work to he done and the countless issues that this work represents merely reflect the pervasiveness of our oppression.
Issues and projects that collective members have actually worked on are sterilization abuse, abortion rights, battered women, rape, and health care. We have also done many workshops and educationals on black feminism on college campuses, at women’s conferences, and most recently for high school women. One issue that is of major concern to us and that we have begun to publicly address is racism in the white women’s movement. As black feminists we are made constantly and painfully aware of how little effort white women have made to understand and combat their racism, which requires among other things that they have a more than superficial comprehension of race, color, and black history and culture. Eliminating racism in the white women’s movement is by definition work for white women to do, but we will continue to speak to and demand accountability on this issue.
In the practice of our politics we do not believe that the end always justifies the means. Many reactionary and destructive acts have been done in the name of achieving “correct” political goals. As feminists we do not want to mess over people in the name of politics. We believe in collective process and a nonhierarchical distribution of power within our own group and in our vision of a revolutionary society. We are committed to a continual examination of our politics as they develop through criticism and self-criticism as an essential aspect of our practice. As black feminists and lesbians we know that we have a very definite revolutionary task to perform and we are ready for the lifetime of work and struggle before us.
NOTES:
• 1. This statement is dated April 1977.
• 2. Michele Wallace, “A Black Feminist’s Search for Sisterhood,” The Village Voice. 28 July 1975, pp. 6-7.
• 3. Mumininas of Committee for Unified Newark, Mwanamke Mwananchi (The Nationalist Woman), Newark, N. J., c. 1971, pp. 4-5.”

Masculine and Sports; whither the female??

Hired, Fa$ter, $tronger

The history and prevailing images of sport are predominantly male. Sports figures are said to be heroic in decidedly male terms—athletes are valued because they are "large, strong, often violent, record-setting champions." The male qualities of the athlete are central to the appeal of sports that crosses class, national and political lines.

Burstyn argues that "the ways in which the element of physical content of sports has been gendered are central to its appeal. The actions that the dominant sports forms practise and celebrate are `higher, faster, stronger,' in the succinct words of the Olympic motto. This is at once an industrial and a masculinist motto, for it condenses within its ideal bodies and activities the technomorphism of industrial capitalism (the ideal of the machine) and the biomorphism of maleness (the muscular superiority of males)." (22-23)

Even in the context of presumed male athletic superiority lies the essential fact that athletes are objects serving a purpose other than their own competitive goals. To survive as a professional athlete, one serves the needs of the athletic organization, the government or the corporate sponsor.

Just as Marx argued that practitioners of even the most honored professions have become the servants of capital, so too have athletes been reduced to wage laborers, even if that wage seems exorbitantly high to the fans who root for them and purchase the products they endorse.

Another aspect of the control of sport outside the playing field is the ritualized nature of athletic competition. Gone is the improvised, free-flowing game of childhood that lasts until dark in favor of a highly-controlled spectator sport. Domed stadia make competition possible in any season and any weather conditions, and the demands of the media and the marketplace help to determine the pace of the game.

It is not surprising, then, that every January, the cost of commercial television time gets almost as much attention as the strengths and vulnerabilities of the combatants in football's Super Bowl.

Gentlemen and Savages

Violence and aggressive behavior are endemic to the sports experience. Burstyn argues that the gentleman athlete, the sportsman, has been replaced by a far more aggressive paradigm.

She notes that "in the official middle-class mores of the nineteenth century, to be a good man was to be a man of `character,' one who met the rigorous standards of masculine and class duty. This ideal included being robustly active and exercising sexual restraint according to the dictates of the spermatic economy." (91)

As it became clear that sport was a commodity to be sold in the raucous marketplace of the early twentieth century, the ideal "Christian gentleman" model of the sportsman was replaced by a more aggressive, sexualized and (often) racialized one.

Citing Kevin White's work on the emergence of male masculine models, Burstyn notes that by the 1920s, the qualities of "underworld primitivism"—violence, sexual promiscuity without responsibility, and aggression—had moved into the center of American idealizations of masculinity." (90) Could Mike Tyson be far behind?

At the same time, sport itself was presumed to be the great civilizing force among those who had never experienced the influence of the "Christian gentleman" model. Participation in athletics was a way to civilize the "savages and semi-savages" of America's new immigrant population and the children of crowded city streets upon whom family, community and religion now had less of a strong behavioral hold.

Sport provided a mechanism for enforcing proper social habits for young men who had not been raised to value restraint and "character." Inevitably, the social control potential of organized sport served distinct class interests. As Burstyn notes, "'Get them off the streets and they won't riot or strike' was paired with 'Send them to the gym or playing field and they won't masturbate or fornicate.'"

Proponents of Muscular Christianity and later reform movements saw social salvation in sports. Many reformers hoped to civilize young men by having them channel their aggression onto the playing field in preparation for the discipline that their bosses would require of them in the factory or the bravery their country would require of them in a real war.

Proponents of public and private investment in athletic facilities and competitions for young men "viewed athletics as a way to build strength, create habits of dominance, teach abstract principles of group effort and common goals, promote the values of nineteenth-century Christianity, and thus to harness and control men's sexual impulses in the service of worthy social enterprises . . . sport was sold as a safe, nonsexual activity for men, and an acceptable celebration of the strong male body." (92)

Equality vs. Hypermasculinism

Burstyn argues that the hypermasculinist approach to sports that emerged out of the nineteenth century coincided with the appearance of activism by women for equality in the larger political and social world.

She argues that "conditions were ripe for sport to change toward greater egalitarianism;" yet just as the women's rights and suffragist movements brought about change over many decades with the realization that there is much work to be done to insure gender equality in the twenty-first century, earlier models of sport as a representation of masculinist ideals have been slow to yield to a more egalitarian approach.

"Late in the 1990s," she argues, "women's participation in sport notwithstanding, the core men's sports and the culture that derives from them remain prime sites for the regeneration of masculinist mythologies—fictive master narratives of heroic manhood that homogenize in fantasy and symbol a reality of diverse, contradictory masculinities that are often far from ideal." (103)

Marketing the Meat Market

One aspect of this far from ideal masculine world is the dehumanization and alienation of the athlete. Athletes are compared to physical standards that are presumed to determine performance on the field.

Can a football running back run fast enough if his calves are small? Can a defensive lineman provide enough "muscle" against the opposition if he has skinny arms? Can a pitcher be effective if he is too short or a shortstop get in front of the ball in the infield if he's too tall? How do we explain the 5'4" highly successful professional basketball player Mugsy Bogues?

In short, college and professional sports represent a "meat market" approach to judging athletes. It is not at all surprising to find similar standards and presumptions about physical prowess and body type permeating the ranks of the Little League and Pop Warner coaches.

For those athletes who possess the right attributes and who look good on camera, the sports nexus provides opportunities to use their bodies to sell products in a global marketplace. The appeal is not the jacket or the shoe, but the athlete himself.

As Michael Jordan's image of masculine perfection sells Air Jordan shoes and as he earns millions of dollars for endorsing products that bear his name, the women workers in the Southeast Asian factories that manufacture these items earn wages that at best barely keep them out of poverty. But the plight of sweatshop workers doesn't sell shoes. It's the panache of athletes like Jordan and their appeal to young consumers that keeps Nike in business. The world of sports that Burstyn describes is an overwhelmingly male world that treats women as objects of sexual desire, wives and mothers, and often as the recipients of off-the-field physical abuse. She cites rapes of college women by athletes, abuse against wives and girl friends, and the use of "female," "woman," "bitch" and "pussy" as insults to keep male athletes in line, as examples of violence against women.

In this respect, sports are similar to the military, prison and all-male boarding schools in their all-encompassing anti-female approach to conditioning young men. To be a real man is to be hard, unrelenting and violent.

This condition of the world sports is anything but salutary, in Burstyn's view. She offers several specific recommendations for change: "Diminish the selective brutalization of males inside and outside sport. Change the `sacrificial' nature of sport for both sexes. Shift the emphasis from aggressive and competitive to cooperative and expressive games and disciplines. Pursue lively physicality for the majority."

Burstyn's conclusion states her goal to "reclaim physical culture from corporate culture," in order to "balance `masculine' and `feminine' in our culture and within ourselves (and to) find ways to treat our bodies, our children, and our biosphere with respect and affirmation for our diverse natures, and for the cooperative capacities that make us capable of helping, not just dominating, our fellow creatures." (276)

Unlikely as they are to get much air time on the sports highlights, these ideas are worthy of consideration.

The Good Wife's Guide

The following is excerpts from a 1950's home economics textbook intended for high school girls, teaching them how to prepare for married life:

1. Have dinner ready: Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal — on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him, and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospects of a good meal are part of the warm welcome needed.

2. Prepare yourself: Take 15 minutes to rest so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

3. Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives, gathering up school books, toys, paper, etc. Then run a dust cloth over the tables. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift, too.

4. Prepare the children: Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces if they are small, comb their hair, and if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.

5. Minimize the noise: At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of washer, dryer, dishwasher or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. Be happy to see him. Greet him with a warm smile and be glad to see him.

6. Some Don'ts: Don't greet him with problems or complaints. Don't complain if he's late for dinner. Count this as minor compared with what he might have gone through that day.

7. Make him comfortable: Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or suggest he lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice. Allow him to relax and unwind.

8. Listen to him: You may have a dozen things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first.

9. Make the evening his: Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or to other places of entertainment; instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure, his need to be home and relax.

10. The goal: Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can relax.

Advice for Young Brides

The following is a reprint from The Madison Institute Newsletter, Fall Issue, 1894:

INSTRUCTION AND ADVICE
FOR THE
YOUNG BRIDE
on the
Conduct and Procedure of the
Intimate and Personal Relationships
of the Marriage State
for the
Greater Spiritual Sanctity of this
Blessed Sacrament and the Glory of God
by
Ruth Smythers
beloved wife of
The Reverend L.D. Smythers
Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist
Church of the Eastern Regional Conference
Published in the year
of our Lord 1894
Spiritual Guidance Press
New York City

INSTRUCTION AND ADVICE FOR THE YOUNG BRIDE

To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and most terrifying day of her life. On the positive side, there is the wedding itself, in which the bride is the central attraction in a beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing a male to provide for all her needs for the rest of her life. On the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must pay the piper, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex.

At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

On the other hand, the bride's terror need not be extreme. While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured, and has been by women since the beginning of time, and is compensated for by the monogamous home and by the children produced through it.

It is useless, in most cases, for the bride to prevail upon the groom to forego the sexual initiation. While the ideal husband would be one who would approach his bride only at her request and only for the purpose of begetting offspring, such nobility and unselfishness cannot be expected from the average man.

Most men, if not denied, would demand sex almost every day. The wise bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly during the first months of marriage. As time goes by she should make every effort to reduce this frequency.

Feigned illness, sleepiness, and headaches are among the wife's best friends in this matter. Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective, if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would normally commence his seduction.

Clever wives are ever on the alert for new and better methods of denying and discouraging the amorous overtures of the husband. A good wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end of the fifth year of marriage.

By their tenth anniversary many wives have managed to complete their child bearing and have achieved the ultimate goal of terminating all sexual contacts with the husband. By this time she can depend upon his love for the children and social pressures to hold the husband in the home.

Just as she should be ever alert to keep the quantity of sex as low as possible, the wise bride will pay equal attention to limiting the kind and degree of sexual contacts. Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices. These practices include among others performing the normal act in abnormal positions; mouthing the female body; and offering their own vile bodies to be mouthed in turn.

Nudity, talking about sex, reading stories about sex, viewing photographs and drawings depicting or suggesting sex are the obnoxious habits the male is likely to acquire if permitted.

A wise bride will make it the goal never to allow her husband to see her unclothed body, and never allow him to display his unclothed body to her. Sex, when it cannot be prevented, should be practiced only in total darkness. Many women have found it useful to have thick cotton nightgowns for themselves and pajamas for their husbands. These should be donned in separate rooms. They need not be removed during the sex act. Thus, a minimum of flesh is exposed.

Once the bride has donned her gown and turned off all the lights, she should lie quietly upon the bed and await her groom. When he comes groping into the room she should make no sound to guide him in her direction, lest he take this as a sign of encouragement. She should let him grope in the dark. There is always the hope that he will stumble and incur some slight injury which she can use as an excuse to deny him sexual access.

When he finds her, the wife should lie as still as possible. Bodily motion on her part could be interpreted as sexual excitement by the optimistic husband.

If he attempts to kiss her on the lips she should turn her head slightly so that the kiss falls harmlessly on her cheek instead. If he attempts to kiss her hand, she should make a fist. If he lifts her gown and attempts to kiss her anyplace else she should quickly pull the gown back in place, spring from the bed, and announce that nature calls her to the toilet. This will generally dampen his desire to kiss in the forbidden territory.

If the husband attempts to seduce her with lascivious talk, the wise wife will suddenly remember some trivial non-sexual question to ask him. Once he answers she should keep the conversation going, no matter how frivolous it may seem at the time.

Eventually, the husband will learn that if he insists on having sexual contact, he must get on with it without amorous embellishment. The wise wife will allow him to pull the gown up no farther than the waist, and only permit him to open the front of his pajamas to thus make connection.

She will be absolutely silent or babble about her housework while his huffing and puffing away. Above all, she will lie perfectly still and never under any circumstances grunt or groan while the act is in progress. As soon as the husband has completed the act, the wise wife will start nagging him about various minor tasks she wishes him to perform on the morrow. Many men obtain a major portion of their sexual satisfaction from the peaceful exhaustion immediately after the act is over. Thus the wife must insure that there is no peace in this period for him to enjoy. Otherwise, he might be encouraged to soon try for more.

One heartening factor for which the wife can be grateful is the fact that the husband's home, school, church, and social environment have been working together all through his life to instill in him a deep sense of guilt in regards to his sexual feelings, so that he comes to the marriage couch apologetically and filled with shame, already half cowed and subdued. The wise wife seizes upon this advantage and relentlessly pursues her goal first to limit, later to annihilate completely her husband's desire for sexual expression.

and ARISTOTLE...........

"On a Good Wife"

By Aristotle, from Oikonomikos - c. 330 BC.

A good wife should be the mistress of her home, having under her care all that is within it, according to the rules we have laid down. She should allow none to enter without her husband's knowledge, dreading above all things the gossip of gadding women, which tends to poison the soul. She alone should have knowledge of what happens within. She must exercise control of the money spent on such festivities as her husband has approved---keeping, moreover, within the limit set by law upon expenditure, dress, and ornament---and remembering that beauty depends not on costliness of raiment. Nor does abundance of gold so conduce to the praise of a woman as self-control in all that she does. This, then, is the province over which a woman should be minded to bear an orderly rule; for it seems not fitting that a man should know all that passes within the house. But in all other matters, let it be her aim to obey her husband; giving no heed to public affairs, nor having any part in arranging the marriages of her children.

Rather, when the time shall come to give or receive in marriage sons or daughters, let her then hearken to her husband in all respects, and agreeing with him obey his wishes. It is fitting that a woman of a well-ordered life should consider that her husband's wishes are as laws appointed for her by divine will, along with the marriage state and the fortune she shares. If she endures them with patience and gentleness, she will rule her home with ease; otherwise, not so easily. Therefore not only when her husband is in prosperity and good report must she be in agreement with him, and to render him the service he wills, but also in times of adversity. If, through sickness or fault of judgement, his good fortune fails, then must she show her quality, encouraging him ever with words of cheer and yielding him obedience in all fitting ways---only let her do nothing base or unworthy. Let her refrain from all complaint, nor charge him with the wrong, but rather attribute everything of this kind to sickness or ignorance or accidental errors. Therefore, she will serve him more assiduously than if she had been a slave bought and taken home. For he has indeed bought her with a great price--with partnership in his life and in the procreation of children....Let her bethink herself how Alcestis would never have attained such renown nor Penelope have deserved all the high praises bestowed on her had not their husbands known adversity. To find partners in prosperity is easy enough; but only the best women are ready to share in adversity.

Such then is the pattern of the rules and ways of living which a good wife will observe. And the rules which a good husband will follow in treatment of his wife will be similar; seeing that she has entered his home like a suppliant from without, and is pledged to be the partner of his life and parenthood; and that the offspring she leaves behind her will bear the names of their parents, her name as well as his. And what could be more divine than this, or more desired by a man of sound mind, than to beget by a noble and honored wife children who shall be the most loyal supporters and discreet guardians of their parents in old age, and the preservers of the whole house? Rightly reared by father and mother, children will grow up virtuous, as those who have treated them piously and righteously deserve that they should; but parents who observe not these precepts will be losers thereby. For unless parents have given their children an example how to live, the children in their turn will be able to offer a fair and specious excuse for undutifulness. Such parents will risk being rejected by their offspring for their evil lives, and thus bring destruction upon their own heads. Therefore his wife's training should be the object of a man's unstinting care; that so far as is possible their children may spring from the noblest of stock. For it is only by this means that each mortal, successively produced, participates in immortality; and that petitions and prayers continue to be offered to ancestral gods. So that he who thinks lightly of this would seem also to be slighting the gods. For their sake then, in whose presence he offered sacrifice and led his wife home, promising to honor her far above all others saving his parents, a man must have care for wife and children.

Now a virtuous wife is best honored when she sees that her husband is faithful to her, and has no preference for another woman; but before all others loves and trusts her and holds her as his own. And so much the more will the woman seek to be what he accounts her. If she perceives that her husband's affection for her is faithful and righteous, she too will be faithful and righteous towards him. Therefore it befits not a man of sound mind to bestow his person promiscuously, or have random intercourse with women; for otherwise the base-born will share in the rights of his lawful children, and his wife will be robbed of her honor due, and shame be attached to his sons. And it is fitting that he should approach his wife in honor, full of self-restraint and awe; and in his conversation with her, should use only the words of a right-minded man, suggesting only such acts as are themselves lawful and honorable. And if through ignorance she has done wrong, he should advise her of it in a courteous and modest manner. For of fear there are two kinds. The fear which virtuous and honorable sons feel towards their fathers, and loyal citizens towards right-minded rulers, has for its companions reverence and modesty; but the other kind, felt by slaves for masters and by subjects for despots who treat them with injustice and wrong, is associated with hostility and hatred. By choosing the better of all these alternatives a husband should secure the agreement, loyalty, and devotion of his wife, so that whether he himself is present or not, there may be no difference in her attitude towards him, since she realizes that they are alike guardians of the common interests; and so when he is away she may feel that to her no man is kinder or more virtuous or more truly hers than her own husband. And if the husband learns first to master himself, he will thereby become his wife's best guide in all the affairs of life, and will teach her to follow his example.

Repulsive-tive? eh?

why did i place the first picture first and the second second? why?

No SERIOUSLY! Are you afraid of my breasts?

Do they make you uncomfortable?

Do they make you shy?

Do you lack confidence when you see them?

Do you get anxious?

Are you afraid someone might notice you staring?

Are you staring?

Do they make you feel inadequate?

Are they disgusting or attractive?

When you see a thin woman with small perky breasts, what do think and feel?

When you see a fat woman with breasts sagging down to her belly, what do think and feel?

How is that different? Why is that different?

Did you always feel that way about breasts?

When you were five years old, if you saw a girl your own age who has no breasts at all and is as flat-chested as a boy, did you feel differently?

When you were five years old and you looked at your mother's breasts, how did your feelings differ?

Are you jealous because women have something you don't? Breast envy?

Are you overweight and have man-titties?

Are you afraid other men will make fun of your man-titties?

Are you afraid women will make fun of your man-titties?

Do you wear a bra to support your man-titties?

Do you like pornography or erotica?

Which do you prefer?

What is the most obvious differences between the women in pornography and the women in erotica? Is it the size of their breasts? Is it their level of aggression? Are they more or less seductive? Which turns you on more?

When you were seven or nine years old, did you look through Department Store Catalogues (Sears or Eatons for example) and masturbate while looking at the bra and lingerie selection?\

Do you get turned on just by walking past a lingerie store?

Do you ever go in and ogle the dress-dummies and/or the sales representatives?

How comfortable are you inside a lingerie store?

Are you so uncomfortable that you usually find an excuse to leave?

Do you find it embarrassing?

Do you grit your teeth and stay anyway, and continue to ogle stuff whenever you think no one is looking?

Have you ever went to a strip club?

How do you feel when you are there?

Do you enjoy it or are you disgusted?

How old do you think the stripper is?

Do you think she has children?

Do you think she breastfeeds them?

When you see a relative of yours breast feeding, do you get turned on and try not to stare? Do you get incestuous thoughts?

When you see a woman (a non-relative) breastfeeding, do you feel attracted or turned on?

If the woman breastfeeding is overweight, does it make a difference?

If she is over 40 and getting wrinkles, does it make a difference?

Are you less attracted to overweight and/or older women and their breasts?

Why do you think that is so?

When you see a woman who has had her breasts augmented (implants for example), how do you feel? Are you disgusted or excited? Does their torpedoe shape make you feel uncomfortable?

When you see a woman who has had one breast removed due to breast cancer or an accident, how do you feel? Are you disgusted or excited? Do you feel uncomfortable?

When you see a female midget (or the politically correct "small person") nude, how do you feel?

Does the size of her breasts excite or disgust you?

Do you feel awkward in the presence of a female midget (or the politically correct "small person")?

Are you attracted to her or her breasts?

If she was old or fat, would it make a difference?

If you meet a 7 foot tall woman that weighs around 200 to 300 pounds and strong enough that she could lift you up over her head, how do you feel?

Are you still attracted to her breasts? Are you disgusted? Are you intimidated?

When someone says the word "breasts" do you think of a young woman or an old woman? Do you think of perky or saggy? Does size matter?

How do feel when a woman shoves her breasts in your face?

Does she intimidate you?

Are you excited?

Do you feel claustrophobic?

---

Now go back and apply the same question, but think of men instead. Think of men walking around with no shirt on. Are you disgusted by their chests? Are you excited? Are they saggy or wrinkly? What difference does saggy/wrinkly male chests make? If you see a male relative without a shirt on, do you get excited, disgusted or intimidated? If you see a male midget without a shirt on, how do you feel? If you see a huge 7 foot tall man without a shirt on, how do you feel? Are you turned on by men in pornography? Are you turned on by male erotica? Do you feel uncomfortable around another man with man-titties? Do you make fun of his man-titties? Etc, ect...

---

Now ask yourself, are men every bit as disgusting when they don't have their shirt on?

Are we socially conditioned that we think disgusting male chests are more socially acceptable than disgusting female breasts? Especially when it comes to seeing them in public?

Is toplessness for women legal in your state or province?

Do you have topless beaches in your state or province?

Do you have nude beaches in your state or province?

Are you a naturalist (otherwise known as a nudist)?

Are you uncomfortable around other nude or partially-nude people?

Do you think toplessness for women should be made legal in your state or province?

What do you think are the contributing reasons for why it is not legal? Is it because of the church? Is it because of old-fashionedness? It is simply tradition? Is it paranoia?

If you were raised in a society where topless females was considered normal and you saw it all the time, do you think you would treat women and breasts differently?

Do you believe in equality?

Do you believe that society will eventually reach an equalitarian utopia where the only division amongst people will be wealth?

What do you think will happen in the future?

Are you in favour of that future? Do you disagree with it but figure its useless to fight it?

Do you think the Catholic Church will die out and lose its influence? Do you think society is changing for the better or getting worse? Is breaking tradition a good thing in some cases? Will people stop being paranoid about something if they start seeing it on a regular basis and it becomes normal to them?

Do you think society is advancing to a new stage of cultural evolution?

Would you consider yourself to be a Cultural Evolutionary?

Kinda Makes You Think...

because half of me

You thought of caresses
I was designing a touch.............

and then

because half of me is what I hear
but the other half is what I keep silent.
that my desire destined to go, to
turn the calm and peace that I deserve
that tension that eating inside me
will one day be Rewarded ....

Shudder........ as it laid.....

Shudder,

I have not seen the birds born in throat
when you said my love.
These long-departed
and in its place, I tell you,
dream storms.

Alberto Pereira

(Translation Mine)

i drew a heart and...

there are places where you can not enter, places prohibited. rules. points. plenitude of retreats and give ups. I am, I am...
managed on a rainy night to hear his voice far closer to your voice, even your voice, I managed to... listened...
drew a heart pierced by an arrow and wrote on it the name of the puzzle. entered. there was silence. someone had never seen or heard anything like it. There were so many penalties and pains that the most beautiful man, the most beautiful MAN, cried, asked forgiveness for others. designed a new life in infinity, drew new lines, changed the route, drafted new homes explaining to others the impossible: so here, with each other, as now.

a line in between

Isn't it where the term AESTHETICS is called to play, almost naturally? Is it not the point, while we peep at pictures like this, when we sit to demarcate the permissible from the beyond, or, in other words, the aesthetic (may be erotic, yet aesthetic piece of art, may be) from the obscene, the vulgar? What would you call these pictures? What do you call them in public? What is your take when you are not under the compulsion of the domain of the public? When you are with these, in private? Do the two match? Do they?





I thought my self was supposed to write a few words and sentences on a few aspects of these two pictures that made me put them on here for you people. But, better not try saying anything. Better not try naming them... Yes, I did have a few suggestions to make, but, let me put them on hold for the moment, at least...

A Young Girl Defending Herself Against Eros (1880)
Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) *



* A write up on this soon to follow...