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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Am I a Gaping Vagina?

I just found an entire community on Vox against GV. What's GV, you ask (as I did)? Well, I'll tell you: Gaping Vaginas.

Now, the big question for me this brings up is (the admittedly self-centered): am I a Gaping Vagina? Yes, I heeded the Carly Simon siren song allure of the blog post's title.

You're sexy! You're putting you and your sexuality out there because "that's just how you are". You have guts! You're so crazy! Right?

In Susan Brownmiller's words,

"You think you're being brave, you think you're being sexy, you think you're
transcending feminism. But that's bullshit."

And it is bullshit. And the women around you that you try so hard in every which way imaginable to "beat" and "use" and "be like" will look at you like how I LOOK AT YOU.

And that is with a disapproving, raised eye brow, as I take a sip of my double, Absolut Better-Than-You cocktail and think to myself, "What a god damn Gaping Vagina."

As will every single other woman, and hopefully, man in your life because it is too difficult to keep up all those lies and shows at once. You will burn your own bridges. They will from both ends and turn to ash.

I just hope by the time you are stranded on your own lonely island with nothing but a bunch of fishnets and "Lip Venom" left will you have finally figured out what your problem is?

Or will we have a new TV program called "GV and the Island" where you sit on your laptop and video blog about the trials and tribulations of masturbation and how horny you are all by yourself on that god damn island.


It's unclear from their definition, and, perhaps not surprising for someone who calls Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs her "bible" (oh wait, that's crossed out and it's just one of her favorite books) the amount of vitriol leveled against people who are, last I checked, still women, frightens me. I'm not saying there's not plenty to critique, but when women are "chauvinist pigs" and "gaping vaginas," I can't help but think that just adds to the name calling. And while I've been critical of Abby Lee over anonymity issues, the harshness with which she's treated in these posts seems uncalled for (though the final Lindsay Lohan line here did amuse me). It reminds me of this post where I asked "Is your vagina a sexual turnstile?" Which brings me back to the same question I've had every since I read Female Chauvinist Pigs, which is who are we attacking? The Paris Hiltons/Judith Regans/strippers/bikini waxers themselves, or the supposedly ubiquitous raunch culture? That line gets very fuzzy indeed and is a large part of why I took offense to so much of Levy's book. To my reading, these critiques put readers on the defensive, so they have to try to "prove" that if they, say, sometimes like to take their clothes off or they do sex work or they write a sex blog or they act in any number of ways they are somehow being disingenuous and not "true" to themselves and some essentialized version of womanhood and I just can't buy into that. I think these critiques will only work if we stop playing Big Sister and acting like we know what's best for other women, like there is one single answer. There's just not.

I'm not saying I think Paris Hilton (or anyone else) is above criticism. I am saying that I personally take offense at the tone of this article, and I think there has to be some kind of acknowledgement that there's not necessarily an easy way to tell what a woman's thinking just based on what she's wearing (or not wearing). I'm writing an article tangentially related to this and I think it raises some important questions so more from me on this and boob flashing soon.

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