Sexual Freedom for ALL

I'm working (very, very, very slowly, yes, but I am working on it) on a book proposal called Sexual Freedom for All. There will be 13 chapters about everything from casual sex to reproductive rights to chastity, submissive men, sex workers, love and romance, fantasies, ages of consent, defending the prurient interest, and more. I was going to post the chapter titles but they may change and I won't really be digging into it all until August, but my favorite one so far is: "Hot Bi Babes, Gay Tit Men and Other Queer Pioneers: Broadening the Sexual Spectrum." Yes, many topics will have been hashed out briefly in my Lusty Lady columns but I will be doing lots of original research for the book if I ever sell it.

But the reason I used submissive women as an example, is because a) sometimes I am one (I guess I could be called a switch, but I don't really identify that way because I don't switch with a given person, if I'm kinky with them, it's either as a top OR a bottom, but that's really a moot point at the moment) and b) because I think female submission is often one of the most misunderstood sexualities.

I may not be an "actual" feminist according to Pandagon, but the reason I quoted Boteach (for the record, I hadn't seen the Feministe post and came across his book at Barnes & Noble - another aside - I haven't read all of Hating Women yet but I see very, very little difference thus far, aside from their backgrounds/motivations, between Ariel Levy's Female Chuavinist Pigs and Shmuley Boteach's Hating Women aside from the fact that Ariel Levy sees Judith Regan as a "female chauvinist pig" while Boteach is published by her) is because I'm not only interested in looking at what feminists think about sex or the sex lives of feminists. I'm interested in sexual freedom much, much more broadly, which is why there will be a chapter about chastity. And there I will be quoting things like this Pandagon commenter who wrote:

Would you buy a car without test driving it first? Seriously. (And yes, I’m talking about this from both a male AND a female perspective. Why should a woman be stuck with a man who can’t make her orgasm?).

Before ANYBODY gets married, they should damn well fuck like rabbits, to make sure that they are sexually compatible. And if they are, the “boredom”, that usually leads to adultery doesn’t happen nearly as much. That boredom is usually just incompatibility. Or one person being a selfish greedy asshole.

That's not the "freedom" I'm in favor of.

As Siri Hustvedt writes in A Plea for Eros:

Although feminist discourse in America understandably wants to subvert cultural forms that aren't "good" for women, it has never taken on the problem of arousal with much courage. When a culture oppresses women, and all do to one degree or another, it isn't convenient to acknowledge that there are women who like submission in bed or have fantasies about rape. Masochistic fantasies damage the case for equality, and even when they are seen as the result of a "sick society," the peculiarity of our sexual actions or fantasies is not easily untangled or explained away. The ground from which they spring is simply too muddy. Acts can be controlled, but not desire. Sexual feeling pops up, in spite of our politics.