Wow, why all the vitriol? There’s no need to resort to labels and ad hominem. Can we just have a discussion and talk facts without the name calling?

I know its hard for you to see it, but I’m actually on your side. I actually want to free women from submission to men. I want to do that by helping them fully embrace, own and market their sexuality however they see fit. For thousands of year’s they’ve been prevented by men (and recently by traditional feminists (as opposed to sex positive feminists)) from doing so.

I think you and I mostly agree on that objective. Where you and I may disagree is in the method of achieving that objective. Where traditional feminism (and even sex positive feminism to a lessor degree) has gone wrong (IMHO) is that it has focused all of its resources on resisting and supressing the old patriarchy (quite unsuccessfully, I might add). However, as Buckminster Fuller (I know, he’s male, but consider the possibility that he might be right about something nonetheless) famously said:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Rather than continuing to resist maleness and its institutions, I’m advocating (in the spirit of Buckminster Fuller) for a new feminist paradigm that turns the natural male interest in females into an advantage for women rather than a disadvantage, and that thereby makes the old male patriarchy obsolete.

This begins with the recognition that the so-called “objectification of women” is completely natural and can and should be exploited to women’s benefit. Men’s interest in women as sex objects is the result of deep evolutionary programming. If you don’t understand how or why that’s the case, then please consider reading some books on evolutionary psychology (“Why Beautiful People Have More Daughers” and “Sex at Dawn” are two great ones). There are also a great many published academic studies on the subject. The fact that evolution has programmed men to pursue women as sex objects really is not debated among serious scientists (and I don’t consider “social science” to be actual science). What is sometimes debated, however, is whether we can do anything to change it.

I suggest that we can’t fundamentally change what evolution has created. All the evidence suggests that the odds of ever socially conditioning men not to view women as sex objects is about as great as the odds of successfully conditioning women not to have a maternal instinct. Even if for some reason it could be shown that the maternal instinct is socially suboptimal for some reason, attempting to end it through bans and shaming would (a) never work and (b) be extremely harmful.

So, what I suggest instead of resisting this male tendancy is to exploit it. That can be done by returning female sexuality to its rightful owners—women—and by teaching women how to exploit it to their advantage (just like we teach atheletes or intellectuals how to exploit their natural physical talents). If women could systematically exploit men’s sexual interest and convert it to their advantage in the same way that the athlete, intellectual, or artist is free to exploit and market her talents to those who are interested, women would be empowered like never before (which is exactly why the patriarchy has never allowed this to happen and has supressed female sexuality so relentlessly over the centuries).

Males are unquestionably more competitive, aggressive (even violent), and ambitious than females. These traits are mostly genetic (a function of higher testosterone levels) and not socially conditioned. This fact has been shown in study after study, and its true in virtually all species (not just humans). Again, the odds of changing this evolutionarily programmned behavior by shaming and suppression are, like the odds of ridding females of the maternal instinct and resulting behaviors, essentially nil. No socieity in the history of the world has ever succeeded, and there’s no reason to believe we can.

But, what we can do as a society is harness and channel these male instincts in ways that benefit women rather than harm them. Again, returning ownership and control of female sexuality to women (and taking it away from the male dominated churches and political institutions) so that they can openly and shamelessley market it to men in ways that benefit themselves, and so that men are forced to compete for it (like that compete for any other scarce resource), is one way of doing this.

While this solution is obvious, traditional feminists (but not so much sex positive ones) resist the idea visciously. They do so simply because they have such (understandable) resentment toward men and toward the patriarchy that they are more invested in revenge than success. Consequently, they see any attempt by women to exploit their sexuality as “selling out” to males by giving men what they want most rather than depriving them of it. They fail to distuish between being forced to give it up and being able to freely market and charge for it. For this reason, traditional feminists have actually joined the male patriarchy in shaming women who attempt to exploit men’s interest in their sexuality to their personal benefit. I find that incredibly offensive.

I would suggest that the world works best (and least violently) when free markets permit people to sell their goods or talents or assets on whatever terms the buyer and seller agree. This is freedom. This is what women have been denied for thousands of years. And this is what needs to be restored to end the patriarchy.

When women are conditioned to be traumatized or terrified or angered by men’s sexual interest, they overlook obvious opportunities to exploit it to their advantage. Anything we can do to help women change this conditioning and drop the shame (and especially to change the laws) so that they can own and freely market their sex appeal is a good thing that will ultimately end the patriarchy. This is why the patriarchy has resisted such attempts for so long. And, regrettably, traditional feminists have inadvertently aided and abetted them.