(I found this in draft, realized it was pretty much complete the way it was, and so I’m posting it the way it was written, sometime this summer.)
Ahem.
It has come to my attention that the practice of being tattooed is, in some circles, considered “unfeminist.” Something to do with penetration, or self-mutilation?
I’m already a bad girl in the Jewish community and in the eyes of most of America for having tattoos, though most of mine are still in acceptable places (lower back, ankle, foot). When I crossed the line to the big one on my upper back, the one you can see in normal clothes some of the time, that’s when I really became transgressive.
Transgressions are at the very root of my feminism, though. They disrupt and disturb the order of things much more than any form of separatism, which just allows the other order to go on unquestioned.
Many things I do hurt. Exercise hurts. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning to ride a bus two hours to go to work for free hurts. Getting my heart broken hurts. And yes, tattoos hurt. Just physically, though. And there’s a corresponding rush, and then I’m left with something beautiful. The opposite of a relationship.
When I wrote about tattoos before, I said,
It’s my own statement of control over my body. My right to it, and no one else’s. I didn’t get tattoos for anyone else. I didn’t do it for attention, though of course I know it draws it. So do the clothes I choose to wear, my hair and eye makeup, even the books I choose to read in public (guy reading Lolita at the dog park, I’m looking at you). But it ain’t your business.
Getting tattooed was to me a feminist act despite it being a man with the tool in his hand putting ink under my skin. Despite the words on my skin coming from a book a man wrote or a song a man sang. It’s my choice, my reclamation, and it is my body.
As for the penetration thing, well, we’ve been over penetration as power before, haven’t we? Is the simple act of putting something inside something else indicative of power? Even if it’s coupled with, yes, pain? What if I did, in fact, ask for it? What if I like the pain?
Perhaps the definition is not in the act, but in the feelings that come from it. We assume (most of us) that rape is different from consensual sex (and even then there are different types of feelings involved in consensual sex–who doesn’t know what I mean when I say the difference between that terribly cheesy term ‘making love’ and spitefucking? between a one-night stand and someone you’ve been with for years?). Yet the act can be the same.
And thus…we come to oral sex. To blowjobs, really, because that always seems to get under people’s skin. Apparently even if you enjoy it it’s wrong. I mean, I must be taking pleasure in my own degradation, right?
I wrote once about the difference I saw between giving head to satisfy your man and shut him up and giving head because you like it. Oral pleasure…yeah, it’s for real. What’s kissing? What’s eating? Why can’t we enjoy something in our mouths just because?
Admittedly there’s more to it than that. I was trying to explain to someone the other day that part of the pleasure involved is simple (see above), part of it stems from performance and power, and part stems from enjoying giving pleasure.
For me, if any one of these things is lacking, I can’t be bothered. I can be lazy, yes. Sometimes I damn well don’t feel like it. I didn’t do it for years because I did believe it was degrading. And the first time I did it, I sure did do it to keep the man I was with happy (item: he didn’t deserve it). But I did start to enjoy it. It can be like a puzzle, trying to figure out what works and doesn’t work, and the results are great fun–the facial expressions, twists and moans. I began to understand why men think so much about performance–there is a sort of power in that.
But I still can’t be bothered if I don’t have any investment in that person feeling good. Lazy, I guess? I mean, your jaw and neck get tired and sometimes it’s hard to breathe and…yeah.
But here’s a really great option: saying no. Not doing it. I don’t have to, and neither does anyone else. If it makes you feel degraded and disgusting, don’t do it. Personally, I feel disgusting thinking about pregnancy and kids. But I don’t have to do any of that.