Coming Together
Into the Light
Alessia Brio
editor
Coming Together: Into the Light
Alessia Brio, editor
Copyright © 2010 Alessia Brio
All digital rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Cover art © 2010 Alessia Brio
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Coming Together Production
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Table of Contents
Candida Royalle
Introduction
On August 23rd, 2009 the cover story of the New York Times Sunday Magazine opened with the following statement:
"The oppression of women worldwide is the human rights cause of our time. And their liberation could help solve many of the world's problems, from poverty to child mortality to terrorism."
The article, co-authored by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn—adapted from their book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide—exposes some of the more horrific realities that millions of women and girls endure every day, such as "bride burning" in India which "takes place approximately once every two hours, to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry or to eliminate her so a man can remarry."
In case you didn't see it, here are a few other choice excerpts:
"When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were kidnapped and trafficked in to brothels, we didn't even consider it news."
"Girls and women are locked in brothels (in India) and beaten if they resist, fed just enough to be kept alive and often sedated with drugs—to pacify them and often to cultivate addiction."
"The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century."
Mercifully, this "manifesto," a wake-up call to action, was accompanied by a handful of inspiring examples of how women are being helped even in the face of rampant gendercide. Through various humanitarian groups such as WomenforWomen.org and CARE, girls are provided with the tools to finish their education and women are able to start their own small businesses and pull their families out of abject poverty through what are called "micro-loans." What was particularly encouraging was this, and again I quote:
"There's growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. Military's Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That's why foreign aid is increasingly directed toward women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren't the problem; they're the solution."
I was a feminist in college during what's now referred to as "second wave" feminism. We talked about sexism and unequal pay, glass ceilings and date rape. We handed out leaflets on the streets inviting women to "consciousness raising" gatherings and took part in marches demanding access to legal abortions. We even demanded equal opportunity orgasms! While we still have a long way to go, second wave feminism set in to motion a sea change for women. Nearly forty years later, young women heading off to college no longer flippantly claim they're going for their "M.R.S." degree. (Yes, it's true. That used to be a common refrain!) While there is still a glass ceiling in many fields, especially as income potential rises, and while education and economics still limit the available choices for some segments of the female population, for the most part young women today feel the freedom to choose the life and careers they want. And certainly when it comes to sexual freedom, women's right to an equally fulfilling sex life was high on the agenda for feminists of the late sixties and early seventies.
It was in 1970 that the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (BWHBC)—a nonprofit, public interest women's health education, advocacy, and consulting organization—published a stapled newsprint booklet called Women and Their Bodies which became the still hugely popular Our Bodies, Ourselves, and essentially put women's health in a radically new political and social context. For me, as a young feminist at the tender age of eighteen, that stapled newsprint booklet was instrumental in educating me about my own anatomy (I don't think I had even heard of such a thing as a "clitoris" until then!) and how to have an orgasm.
While second wave feminists got what I feel was an undeserved rap for being "anti-sex" and "anti-male" thanks to the wave of anti-porn activists that later came to dominate the movement, I am proud of the strides we made. However, it has become painfully evident that our efforts still have not reached women much beyond Western society. It makes all the achievements we women in the West have made and the concerns we continue to have seem almost quaint in the face of such global inequality and brutality against women.
I suppose a more productive response would be to realize that it is now up to us to do all we can to help initiate and bring change and opportunity to oppressed women everywhere. And to remember that things were not always so great for us in the West either; and that we must remain vigilant if we want to continue to enjoy the economic, political, and personal freedoms we have achieved, such as our hard-won reproductive rights which continue to be threatened in the U.S.
I fear that many young women are not aware of what it was like only one hundred years ago before women in America could vote or own property. Women were given one option: to marry and raise children, and even then they could never inherit their husband's—or father's—property or have a voice in politics. And if you couldn't find a husband and you weren't from a family who could send you to school to learn to do something respectable like teach, you were relegated to cleaning other women's houses and caring for their children, or forced in to prostitution.
And sexual equality? Forget that. Women weren't even assumed to enjoy sex let alone choose to have sex. At least not "good" women. And fear of pregnancy and more children they all too often couldn't afford made most of them not want to have sex due to a complete lack of reliable birth control.
Which brings me to something I feel I must address given what I do for a living. Considering that I am best known for work that sexually empowers women, I do want to bring this around to how it relates to the issue of violence against women.
As I mentioned earlier, second-wave feminism unfortunately became known in its last few years as being "anti-sex" and "anti-men" because of the anti-porn movement. According to these radical but well-meaning activists, sexually explicit imagery was automatically deemed harmful and exploitive of women. Because of the very nature and inherent violence of heterosexuality, there couldn't be a form of erotica that wasn't harmful to women. Nor could egalitarian erotica exist within a sexist patriarchal society. While one could argue that the more degrading types of pornography might perpetuate oppressive attitudes toward women, even if you wanted to try to create positive, egalitarian erotica, as I did when forming Femme Productions back in 1984, you were still accused of harming women. I was personally informed of this when I invited a group of women from NOW—National Organization for Women—to my home to view some of my work.
I was only a couple of years in to my Femme project, and I was frustrated that while the media was becoming increasingly supportive of the films I was making, feminists were either ignoring my work or, on the part of the anti-porn faction, criticizing me for doing it. So I invited members of the New York chapter of NOW to view one of my films before declaring me a traitor to the movement.
A group of about five or six women showed up including the late Florence Rush, one of the big players in the anti-porn movement who was then involved with NYS NOW. I had refreshments served to them by my very cute and sexy Swedish—now ex—husband who also happened to be my producer and assistant director. I started out by showing them a clip of what I felt was a good example of mainstream male-identified porn. It featured a typical hardcore scene with the prerequisite gynecological close-ups and ended with the almighty "money shot," probably on the woman's face.
Then I put on Christine's Secret, my third movie, which I would describe as a lush, romantic story that features lots of sweet and lusty sex in a dreamy country setting. The story line was simple but worked to hold the piece together and bring an element of longing and mystery; and the sex was what I would describe as "sensuously explicit." Also notable was that, as in many of my movies, it featured real-life lovers in the lead roles. What they lacked in acting skill they made up for in real desire. Christine's Secret garnered five awards from the New York Adult Critics Association that year, including 'Lady's Choice".
To my amazement and delight they watched the entire seventy-five minute movie, erotic scenes and all. When it was over they seemed genuinely surprised, making comments like, 'it really is different' and 'it really is more egalitarian.' But what I remember most was a comment made by Florence Rush: she stated basically that she remained concerned about whether it was safe for women to express their sexuality, their erotic fantasies, in a world as dangerous as ours. This horrified me.
Now let me first acknowledge that Ms. Rush was a much loved and respected feminist whose groundbreaking book, The Sexual Abuse of Children: A Feminist Point of View was the first to challenge Freudian theories of children as the seducers of adults rather than the victims of adults' sexual/power exploitation. Ironically, this comment seemed no different to me than telling girls it's their responsibility to prevent men from sexually violating them. It's like telling a woman who was just raped that it was her fault because she looked too provocative, which historically has often been suggested. As someone who was assaulted at the age of thirteen (I miraculously managed to fight him off), I deeply resent the implied notion that I, who was small for my age and had not yet begun to menstruate or show any visible signs of womanhood, could have been faulted for having been too alluring or in any way responsible for what this man had in mind for me.
I'm sure Ms. Rush had not intended that to be the message. But for too long women have been told, whether directly or through implication, that we must keep our sexuality under wraps "for our own good." That "boys will be boys" and like dogs in heat, men can't be faulted for simply following their urges at the sight of a woman. Or… we'd better not let on that we actually like sex; or that we even like to fantasize about sex and write about it and make movies about it. Because if the word gets out and men find out about it, well, I don't know… maybe they'll rape and abuse us even more than they already do.
I'm afraid men already do know. To quote the late Dr. Masters, of the team William Masters and Virginia E. Johnson who pioneered research in to the nature of human sexual response, one of the first things they learned was that "women's capacity for pleasure would put any man to shame." This long kept secret threatens men and has done so for a very long time, at least since the rise of patriarchy made the worship of the Goddess seem terribly frightening and someone decided that the mother of Jesus had to be a virgin. Since then, all manner of ways and devices have been employed to keep women from fully grasping our erotic power, from burning 'witches' at the stake to running Margaret Sanger out of town in 1915 for educating women about birth control, to banning Our Bodies, Ourselves from high schools and public libraries across the country. In the early '80s, Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority even condemned it as "obscene trash."
I am disheartened that there is still a disproportionate amount of degrading garbage out there that falls under the label of 'porn.' But to caution women against exploring, expressing and relishing their Goddess-given sexuality as an antidote to the threat of harm is in itself dangerous. Not only does it put blame where it doesn't belong, it offers an antidote that simply doesn't work. And it cruelly denies women the full experience of their rich and fruitful sexuality. I created Femme Productions in order to give women a voice in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry, because if we don't pick up the reins of production and create that which expresses who we are and how we want to be seen, men will continue to do it for us.
Compared to the suffering endured by countless women across the globe, issues of sexual expression might seem insignificant; the rant of privileged women of the West. But it's important that we women not be convinced that we need to trade one basic human right for another. I'm often asked why I feel the issue of sexual freedom for women is so important. One reason is that I believe our sexual energy is a huge part of who we are and what drives us as human beings. Without the ability to feel and experience our pure life-giving sexual energy, we are denying a huge piece of who we are, and we are functioning with only a portion of the vitality that is available to us. How can we expect to go out and do all we can in the world when we're not using all we've got? In addition, a growing number of scientific studies are finding links between sex and a better quality of life: when people are engaged in a sexually satisfying partnership, they achieve more and lead longer, happier, healthier lives. Finally, there's much historical evidence to support the equation between physical affection and violence in a culture. Societies that foster a more physically affectionate environment between parents and children tend to be less violent and engage in fewer wars.
So in our own small way perhaps we erotic pioneers are making a difference.
Just as we're learning that the solution to many of the world's problems lies in investing in women, perhaps by daring to express ourselves we are helping others to become happier, healthier human beings. And maybe we'll even become a world of lovers instead of fighters. To recall on old refrain from my days as a young hippie-feminist: Let's make love, not war. I think it's still a great idea and one I'll continue to live by.
~ Candida Royalle
www.candidaroyalle.com
Candida Royalle, author of How to Tell a Naked Man What to Do, pioneered the genre of erotic films from a woman's point of view, and worked with a Dutch industrial designer to create the groundbreaking Natural Contours line of sleek stylish intimate massagers. She is a sought after speaker on women's sexuality and free speech, a member of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT), and a founding board-member of Feminists for Free Expression (FFE).
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Jenna Byrnes
Far from Ordinary
It was so hot, the trees were whistling for dogs. It was so hot, birds had to use potholders to pull worms from the ground. The lonely rural highway took him through Tennessee into Georgia, and Luke Mason passed the time by thinking of lame clichés. He'd been on the road six hours, making pretty good time from Kentucky, and had at least another six hours ahead to put him into Florida. He lost the last radio station hours ago, and the tape player in his '85 Le Baron had long since stopped working. Luke lowered one hand to the car seat and snapped it up again. It's so hot, the damn seat belt buckle is a branding iron! He wasn't sure if he made that up or if he'd heard it somewhere.
He eyed the gas gauge and found the needle edging empty. The last station he passed was closed, its windows boarded up. A billboard indicated another station fifteen miles ahead. If his odometer worked, he should almost be there. Luke sighed and fumbled in the cooler behind his seat for a cold drink. His hand felt nothing but small bits of ice floating in cool water. He glanced at the road before stealing a peek into the cooler. Damn! Evidently, he finished the last can of pop awhile ago. He latched on to a bit of ice and popped it in his mouth.