She Can Explore Her Kinks Without any Explanation
She has full control over her body, and she alone gets to determine the threshold of her sexuality
Sexual fantasies stem from a non-linear, exciting, and unusual place. A place where our preference merges with our erotic instincts which we’ve built from our experiences over time.
One thing to be conscious about when exploring your kink, is to remember never to objectify anyone. The craving to objectify someone when we get ‘kinky’ is very common and usually happens because we choose to make that person fit perfectly into our fantasy.
The art form of erotica, helps us achieve this feeling without necessarily having the actual experience or relationship with someone. But, the possibility of this, also gets misused by ill-informed people who just despise feminine body autonomy. Kinks require unusual behaviour by each consenting party. Be it the men, man, woman or women involved, it definitely takes two to tango. Hence, the burden of executing kink erotica shouldn’t be turned into a cross and thrown on the shoulders of women.
Feminine Autonomy vs Masculine Predator
Historically, the objectification of women has been among many others, sexual, and this is partly due to the ‘chase culture’ where women are labeled as prey, waiting to be romantically deceived by their prince charming.
The deep-rooted issue with this culture is its disregard for the body of a woman. A woman should only comply to the advances made by the ‘hunters’ and desist from exploring her own desires. She shouldn’t take charge, and her actions most always seem noble, regardless of how deep the flames of her passion burn.
This constant clash between the idea of a sexual woman and the idea of a sexual man continues to evolve, even into modern day erotica.
A man is sexually free just by existing, but a woman has to in some way prove her sexual freedom. She has to fetishize herself before she gets her standing ovation, whereas a man just pulls out his penis and he wins an award for the pervert of the year.
A woman enjoying sex too much is seen as synonymous to her giving up a portion of her autonomy, whereas no one dares to challenge the pre-conceived ‘control’ of the man in the exact same erotica.
Cognitive Dissonance and Bias
Truth is, this behaviour affects even the best of us. You find yourself challenging the autonomy of a woman, simply because you have learnt how to deceive yourself that you care about ‘her safety’. You totally blur out her ability to make her choices, all in the guise of ‘looking out’ for her well being.
Deep down we all know how much our fragile egos bury any sense of allyship we claim to have concerning women.
Self-abnegation
The constant need and in most cases, demand to place your wants and needs second to others is a ‘virtue’ that definitely puts a chokehold on feminine autonomy.
Theorists like Andrea Westlund and Oshana have made reference to Virginia Woolf’s critique of Coventry Patmore’s poem “Angel in the House” to elaborate on discussions of autonomy:
She was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg, if there was a draught, she sat in it — Virginia Woolf, 1942
Andrea Westlund also finds that the Angel resembles Thomas Hill’s well-known example of the Deferential Wife:
She buys the clothes he prefers, invites the guests he wants to entertain, and makes love whenever he is in the mood. She willingly moves to a new city in order for him to have a more attractive job, counting her own friendships and geographical preferences insignificant by comparison… She does not simply defer to her husband in certain spheres as a trade-off for his deference in other spheres. On the contrary, she tends not to form her own interests, values, and ideals, and when she does, she counts them as less important than her husband’s — Thomas Hill, 1991
These citations point to the very obvious characteristics of subservience that society burdens on a woman, simply for being a woman.
Adaptive Preference Formation
A fox, after finding that he can no longer reach some grapes, decides that he does not want the grapes after all. The fox adapts his preferences to what he perceives to be the options available to him.— Jon Elster, 1983.
Elster proposes, that in order to distinguish adaptive preference formation from preference change due to learning and other processes, the former is an unconscious process in which an agent turns away from a preference to avoid unpleasant cognitive dissonance that is associated with holding on to it. According to him, this is a “blind psychic process operating ‘behind the back’ of the person”.
Similar to this, Martha Nussbaum evaluates the case of poor working women in India who face physical abuse from their husbands, but still choose to stay in the marriage.
Some women, like Vasanti, think that the abuse “was painful and bad, but, still, a part of women’s lot in life, just something women have to put up with as part of being a woman dependent on men, and entailed by having left her own family to move into a husband’s home” — Nussbaum, 2001.
The Illusion of Virtue
Truth be told, even virtue is a form of clamping down on feminine autonomy, only difference is the ‘pizzazz’ that comes with the word.
Showing high moral standards has never meant having dignity or integrity. It has always being a sellable way for women to comply and align themselves with decisions that’ll cuddle the male fragile ego.
All these question why women have to bear the brunt of a naive and ignorant world.
As sexual beings, women have to still subject themselves to varying degrees of self-abnegation, adaptive preference formation and virtue. Even when exploring their deepest desires, it can’t just be for fun, there must be a valid reason. Without an explanation, a woman is labeled broken, aggressive, traumatized or damaged.
These labels may be true, but that is not a reflection of who anyone is, it’s a demonstration of a system that burdens women with the responsibility of acting sane in an insane world, with spearheading change in a world that thrives on ignorance and regression.
A woman can explore her kinks without an explanation, she has full control over her body, and she alone gets to determine the threshold of her sexuality.
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