Radicalesbian Homepage

A friend on the internet asked if the Jerry Falwell Right were sexually repressed, and if that could be why they seem to be so concerned over other people's sexuality. Indeed, the sexual repression in the USA is an amazement to Europeans and others in the Americas.

Since sex is considered to be for procreation only, the anti-sex people in the churches are against birth control and same-sex relations as they do not result in childbirth, and sexual encounters are therefore only for pleasure, which is inherently evil. The "better off dead" idea in rape or unmarried pregnancy shows the stigma put on unmarried women. Whether willing participants or not in the act, they are labled. (In Mexico, they are called "chingata", unmarriagable girls who have been raped and are no longer virgins.)

These are the "Victorian" ideas that women like Margaret Sanger fought against. They are still being forced down Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist throats, as well as those of Moslems and others, with the gleeful acceptance of the men. This is the woman as slave of the patriarchy, the woman who must remain repressed and unfulfilled. There is a real threat to men when women give themselves or other women pleasure sexually. Men need to rule over that part of us to protect their "rights" to use us as baby machines.

In primatology, there are two groups , chimpanzees and bonobos, who are most like us genetically. As time goes by, scientist have come to believe that we are closer to the bonobo. I would love that to be the case! Bonobos are seldom seen on television, because it is almost impossible to film them when they are NOT enjoying sexual contact of one kind or another, and they stay very close to the rest of the group. Touching and grooming behaviors incorporate sexual caressing. The chimpanzees still spend hours grooming, but also a lot more time in violent arguments abd chest beating display. Jane Goodall witnessed murder and infanticide among her troop while she was living with the chimpanzees.

Those who see sex as evil have done unspeakable things to children to prevent masturbation, including castration and female circumcision. The last female circumcision in the united states was in 1952. They still go on in Africa.

My mother told me before my wedding, "There is something you have to do for your husband, it's disgusting and it hurts, but you have to do it in order to have babies." Women were not supposed to enjoy sex. Any woman who did was labled a wanton, and suspect for adultery. She told me late in her life that she had never had an orgasm.

I have a lot of opinions of Human Sexuality.... unfortunately, because of its power, most of them are politically unpopular with the true believers and the fathers. Personally, I think that either/or definitions are a result of cultural gender assignments and traits. My grandsons all played with Barbies around age 3, and my grandaughter is just as rough and tumble as her brothers. My son loved nothing better than dressing in drag every Halloween, and asked for ababy doll when he was 6. His male role models and mentors growing up were all gay men, friends of mine from college, who took him camping and BSed in our apartment's jaccuzi. He is as hetero as he can be and very macho at 30. My grandkids seem to be hetero so far, but all my kids/grandkids are feminist/humanist/ecofriendly. I really think that any attempts to change a persons internal programming through cultural sanctions is doomed to failure (one of these in Western culture is Psychiatry) and will cause deep problems, emotional and social, for the person effected.