In “The Feminine Mystique” (1963) Betty Friedan made the claim that feminism would improve sex for women — not with sex ed but by making it possible for them to be married to men yet still go out and work.

She worried about the covert and overt lesbianism which she assumed for “old-maid” teachers and other unmarried professional women who wore their “hair like a man.”

Feminism would resolve the lesbian-threat problem by allowing women careerists to be wives rather than spinsters. In addition, formerly stay-at-home wives would now expend libido in career work as well as in the bedroom. Without jobs to soak up the libido, Friedan warned, stay-at-home, “parasitical” mothers were directing sex drive to their sons — turning them into homosexuals. Unfeminist women, she wrote in Feminist Mystique, threatened to spread homosexuality “like a murky smog over the American scene.”

Sexual fulfillment for Friedan was thus an attribute of people who’d taken up feminism. And in the early 1960s, to do that was to demonize homosexuality.

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Second: I think you are reading waaay to much into this slogan, and also misinterpretate it while doing so. E.g : “State Feminism tends to produce rigid, utopian formulas proclaimed the only proper way to live” What? Where? Seriously, I have never seen this. On the contrary, the only feminism I have encountered has given me more opportunities and ways to live than mainstream patriarchy ever has.

Also this: “That’s right, people supposedly interested in personal and class liberation sound as though they are engaged in a one-up-manship that says Our way of living is better than yours.” Again, What? Where? Nowhere did Feministiskt Initiative claim that a certain kind of sex was better than the other (I think they said the contrary in their response do Grelson). No, they simply claim that feminists are more satisfied with their sex lives (even though I can agree that the scientific evidence may not be the best)-hence, have better sex according to themselves!!!

“If you believe that most women, across the board, have been oppressed into a limited range of tasks, roles and expressions for most of history, almost everywhere – a truism – then a good step forward is to find out what women want and like, give them space to see where they would like to go before declaring some tastes unacceptable.”

Well, uh yes? Maybe that is what feminsits already have been doing, and maybe that is why they are more happy with their sex lives (at least that is my experience)? Also, where did Feministiskt Initiative declare any tase unacceptable? Didn’t Gudrun Schyman point out in her response to Grelson that they were aware that sex can be very different?

I could go on and on about this but to be totally honest (and I am probably wrong) it feels like you are just out to smash what you call State Feminism (whatever that is) and try ever opportunity to read in as much shit as possible in even the most harmless jokes.

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Unless you lot are all into SM.

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I feel that in your text Gudrun Schyman plays the role of being your spring-board. She is in my view often a very capable rhetorician. I have many times enjoyed her courage in turning discussion topics her way swiftly and elegantly. Maybe not this time though.

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At least there ain’t any clue to feminists really *having* better sex, only to them telling more often they were satisfied by whatever they have …

Cheers, Aoife

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