I recently read this article on CNN, and I felt that I should respond. For anyone who doesn’t make the jump, the author, William Bennett, states that a “hookup culture” hasn’t resulted in happiness and that the place to find real fulfillment is in marriage. He goes on to say that “deviant” sexual acts such as bondage debase both men and women, and that such things are not what the feminist movement of past decades was fighting for. He makes the point that novels such as “50 Shades of Grey”and similar TV programs support the subjugation of women, and he finds it odd that during a time when such an uproar is going on about the “war on women”, that so many women would be buying the book so fast the stores can hardly keep in on the shelves.
Bennett’s first and most obvious mistake is that the women that take part in this sort of relationship don’t like it.
Now, allow me to get the necessary PC disclaimer out of the way: We’re not talking about domestic or sexual abuse. We’re talking about relationships between two law-abiding, consenting adults.
That being said, he’s making the assumption that the women involved in relationships with such sexual activities as a “room… full of chains, clamps, whips, canes, flogs and cuffs” are there against their will. He relates once again the story of the female protagonist of 50 Shades, bemoaning how she turns from an innocent girl to a “sexual submissive” for some corporate suit-type guy. He completely ignores the possibility that the girl enjoys feeling dominated specifically within the context of that exact sexual encounter. I’ve never read the book, but considering he’s generalizing from the book to American culture at large, I don’t need to know the whole plot in order to say this: It’s possible, that with the girl acting as a representative for all women in America, that she leaves the “Red Room of Pain” and goes on to kick ass the next day at work. Maybe she’s a high-powered exec too. Maybe she’s a cop or an EMT, or some take-no-prisoners politician who goes to the mats for her constituents. She could be an amazing teacher pursuing a career in the administration of schools, a small-business owner who just recently expanded, or a Marine.
My point is, Bennett assumes that her desire to be submissive and dominated in the bedroom with this particular guy (this might not (and probably isn’t) with all guys, either) means that she’s got some desire to be submissive and dominated outside the bedroom. And that just might not be the case.
Second of all, and this is almost as bad as the first point: He seems to be making the assumption that the only people who like to be dominated are women.
I invite anyone who believes that previous statement to take a casual jaunt around the video-hosting website of your choice and do a search on BDSM. How many of the people being worked over are male? A fair number of them? That could be because some people like being hit with a whip. Some of them are female, and some of them are male. Some people like hot wax, being tied up, or being stepped on with heels. Everybody has a kink- men included.
So, those are the first two assumptions that he makes, but they are not the worst. In my opinion, the worst assumption that he makes is the third one- that “hookup culture” is not only bad for women, but bad for society as a whole.
The very article he quotes when grimly warning us that “women are no happier than they were in the 1970s” says, and I quote,
…How bad are the heartaches, anyway? According to New York University researcher Paula England, the war stories about the hookup culture are greatly exaggerated. The average college student has about one hookup a year, and most people end up in a long-term relationship at some point in college. Beyond college, women are much less vulnerable to assault than they have ever been, according to a 2011 White House report, largely because they have more power to leave bad relationships.
This is, to put it simply, not an issue of what is damaging to American society; it is an issue of what is damaging to Bennett’s perception of American society. He’s not the only one with such views, I’m sure, but for him to come out and say that he believes we should take more of a lesson from Victorian England (and when I think of healthy sexual expression, that’s the time period I think about) is so absurd it’s laughable.
He does, of course, stick in his obligatory jab at the LGBTQ community by stating that the deepest sexual satisfaction comes from traditional marriage, and slips a literary eye-roll in there by mockingly calling the term “derisive”.
In closing, the one thought I was left with after reading this article is, “MAN that dude needs to get laid.”
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