Female Chauvinist Pigs

By Kendra Holliday

When I first heard Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, on NPR, I thought oh geez she wouldn’t like me much.

She takes issue with women who run around wearing Playboy necklaces and going to strip clubs and posing nude as a way of “empowering” themselves. She sees it more as “exploiting” themselves, and here’s why: she thinks they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. They should be doing it for their own sexual pleasure and satisfaction, but Levy believes it’s more about keeping up with the boys, more of a power thing, a pleasing men thing, more of a defeated, “if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em” mentality.

An excerpt from her book as an example:

In Jenna Jameson’s bestselling book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Jameson writes, “Though watching porn may seem degrading to some women, the fact is it’s one of the few jobs for women where you can get to a certain level, look around, and feel so powerful, not just in the work environment but as a sexual being. So, fuck Gloria Steinem.”

One has to wonder how she puts it together this way. If she feels so powerful as a sexual being, why can’t she watch her own sex scenes? If her work environment is so satisfying, why does she say that if she had a daughter she would lock her in the house before she’d let her get involved in the sex industry? Why does she refer to her vagina as a “ding-ding”? I’m not sure any of this is Gloria Steinem’s fault.

I couldn’t agree more. One of my main missions is to educate the masses, to let them know there are women like me out there, and to let other women know it’s OK to take ownership of their sexuality. So many women cheat themselves out of pleasure due to insecurity or guilt-inducing societal expectations. And if they do act on their sexuality, it’s more of a front or for other people and not themselves.

Don’t forget one of the most important (and to me, the most obvious) reasons to partake in sex: your own pleasure.