Because that fear of female sexuality is very Victorian, and a lot of btvs and the treatment of female sexuality in it makes sense. even with the comics. It reminds me of the creation of the femme fatale in the late 19th century by men who were nervous about feminism, about immigrants and blacks, who made women monstrous, the whole saving one's seed and copulating only for reproduction, blah blah bitty blah....Being afraid of female sexuality, imaging vaginas have little teeth, that men will be devoured as helpless victims, is the most bizarre notion to me. A professor from Scotland jokingly called it "sexy death" but it's a pretty sick joke.
If someone is afraid of female sexuality, if they're afraid of sex, then that indicates to me a fear of life, not death, or a confusion of the two because sexuality (and sensuality) are core components of life. We wouldn't be here without it, right?
True! And yet, sex is so often conflated with death (see: Freud. See also: why I can't take Freud seriously). Which I feel is strongly connected to all that stuff you mentioned in your previous paragraph and is a very male-centric view: the fear of losing yourself in sex, succumbing helplessly to a woman's mysterious wiles. But it goes the other way around too, doesn't it? I mean, into whom is the lesson that sex is scary and dangerous pounded more vigorously than into young girls? When we talk about the first sexual experience of girls/women, it's in terms of "popping the cherry", "tearing the hymen", "busting a virgin". All horrifyingly violent imagery.
And if Joss is likewise freaked out by love scenes, by female sexuality, then how can he make or be expected to make a truly "empowering" story for and about women? He shows his hand all over the place - in the opening act of WTTH, in Darla and Dru, in Sheila and Faith as "bad girls", in sexuality being Buffy's undoing over and over again, and she ends up the series in a chaste relationship, in Joyce dying right after she goes on a date with a man for the first time in the series entirely of her own free will, in Tara being shot to death in Joyce's bedroom after making love to Willow....
Wow. When you list up all of this, it really is incredibly creepy. The whole conflation of "sexual = bad" in female characters has also bothered me a lot. Or the other way around, that you can tell a woman is evil by how openly sexual it is. Add to that S6 and the implication that frequent and intense sex and kink are connected to mental illness, and I'm just about done. Which is why I do love Buffy's little throw-away line about oil-wrestling in Chosen; it's mere crumbs, but a tiny hint that a more mentally balanced Buffy is still kinky as hell. :P (Also she is totally a slasher, which amuses me to no end. I have the beginning of an early-seasons fic in which Willow explains the wonders of slash to Buffy sitting around on my hard drive.)
I also feel inadequate to the task, but maybe just mentioning it will be enough to get the ball rolling?
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branchandroot
2/3, actually.
Date: 2013-07-03 05:45 pm (UTC)If someone is afraid of female sexuality, if they're afraid of sex, then that indicates to me a fear of life, not death, or a confusion of the two because sexuality (and sensuality) are core components of life. We wouldn't be here without it, right?
True! And yet, sex is so often conflated with death (see: Freud. See also: why I can't take Freud seriously). Which I feel is strongly connected to all that stuff you mentioned in your previous paragraph and is a very male-centric view: the fear of losing yourself in sex, succumbing helplessly to a woman's mysterious wiles.
But it goes the other way around too, doesn't it? I mean, into whom is the lesson that sex is scary and dangerous pounded more vigorously than into young girls? When we talk about the first sexual experience of girls/women, it's in terms of "popping the cherry", "tearing the hymen", "busting a virgin". All horrifyingly violent imagery.
And if Joss is likewise freaked out by love scenes, by female sexuality, then how can he make or be expected to make a truly "empowering" story for and about women? He shows his hand all over the place - in the opening act of WTTH, in Darla and Dru, in Sheila and Faith as "bad girls", in sexuality being Buffy's undoing over and over again, and she ends up the series in a chaste relationship, in Joyce dying right after she goes on a date with a man for the first time in the series entirely of her own free will, in Tara being shot to death in Joyce's bedroom after making love to Willow....
Wow. When you list up all of this, it really is incredibly creepy. The whole conflation of "sexual = bad" in female characters has also bothered me a lot. Or the other way around, that you can tell a woman is evil by how openly sexual it is. Add to that S6 and the implication that frequent and intense sex and kink are connected to mental illness, and I'm just about done. Which is why I do love Buffy's little throw-away line about oil-wrestling in Chosen; it's mere crumbs, but a tiny hint that a more mentally balanced Buffy is still kinky as hell. :P (Also she is totally a slasher, which amuses me to no end. I have the beginning of an early-seasons fic in which Willow explains the wonders of slash to Buffy sitting around on my hard drive.)
I also feel inadequate to the task, but maybe just mentioning it will be enough to get the ball rolling?
Who knows? Maybe someone will catch on that.