Undead Sexist Cliche: If a woman didn’t enjoy sex, that’s hi-larious!

When Harry Met Sally is a charming rom-com about Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan staying friends for years before finally realizing they’re in love. It’s probably best known for the memorable fake orgasm scene. Harry (Crystal) assures Sally (Ryan) that the women he sleeps with are sexually satisfied — he’s heard them give orgasmic moans. She proves him wrong by giving out a spectacular fake-orgasmic moan that stuns everyone in the restaurant.

This is meant to be embarrassing for Harry. What goes unsaid is that lots of women had a disappointing time sleeping with him. Becauseas Lili Loofbourow puts it “we live in a culture that sees female pain as normal and male pleasure as a right … Women have spent decades politely ignoring their own discomfort and pain to give men maximal pleasure.”

Kissing cousin to the idea women don’t like sex is the idea it doesn’t matter whether they like sex. According to DC McAllister and Dennis Prager, among others, women should just lie on their back and think of England. If their husband wants sex, where do they get off thinking they should be “in the mood”? No wonder some women don’t enjoy sex if that’s what it’s like for them. As Roy Edroso points out, if the husband’s too tired to give her what she wants, McAllister’s view is too bad, so sad — you can’t expect him to put you first!

And from that it’s a short jump to arguing that women shouldn’t enjoy sex or at least not when it’s free of the risk of pregnancy. Part of the Heritage Foundation’s theocratic plan for 2025 is “returning the consequentiality to sex. … restoring sex to its true purpose, & ending recreational sex & senseless use of birth control pills.” Because in the eyes of the right, only nymphomaniac sluts use birth control. Which is to say any claims you may have heard that conservatives don’t want to outlaw birth control are lies (forced-birthers lie a lot). And despite their claims that it’s about birth control being abortion (it isn’t) if they’re opposed to recreational sex that’s not the issue: any birth control  method would be wrong. The Catholic group Human Life Internationl, for example, argues that consensual recreational sex is rape (it isn’t).

In short, the issue isn’t the lives of fetuses. If recreational sex is bad, then any method of preventing conception is bad. “Save the babies” used to be the excuse but they aren’t hiding their true views as much any more.

For the record I doubt most of them have problems with men having recreational sex and no consequentiality. It will always be women who wear the scarlet letter; the man who cheats or doesn’t gift his virginity to his bridge — hey, boys will be boys! It’s not a double standard, men are just different (spoiler: it’s totally a double standard).

As Fred Clark says, a lot of right-wingers are horrified that under liberalism and freedom of religion “the state is neutral toward questions of “the good,” leaving that up to its citizens to work out for themselves.” Yes, how horrible that would be — individuals deciding for themselves what constitutes a good moral life, how they relate to God (or don’t), deciding on their own worldview. Sooooo much better if someone like the Heritage Foundation gets to impose their view of the good life. If anyone else tries, of course, well that’s what heresy trials and concentration camps are for.

As Clark has pointed out, the liberal bogeyman doesn’t “prevent you from seeking and finding your own answer to that question. Nor does it interfere with you embracing, living, promoting, or sharing that answer. You are free to pursue that answer in your own life and you are free to persuade your fellow citizens of the truth, beauty, or goodness of that answer.”” But that’s not enough. People might have an answer the Heritage Foundation and many others on the right don’t like. You know, one where women are equal citizens and not means to an end.

Of course, as Clark says, “ven on the very slim chance the government somehow initially got the answer mostly “right,” the establishment of that “right” answer would change it, alter it, and deform it. This bastardized, twisted version of that “right” answer would become the official answer, and any other answer — including the “right” one in its untwisted form — would be precluded.” And if we get the theocracy so many on the right seem to yearn for, all alternatives will be precluded, as brutally as necessary.

Damn, for a post that started with a light rom-com, things got grim fast. For more examples of odious misogynist arguments and why they’re bullshit, check out my Undead Sexist Cliches, available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward.