Female Sexuality Is Not A Pandora’s Box
I was called a slut once in middle school by a girl after I kissed a guy she also liked at a school assembly. She wasn’t happy about it so she called me the one name she believed would be the most stinging. Slut. Perhaps it would have been insulting a generation prior but it was 1993 and being a slut had actually become rather chic for some of us.
Fourteen years and dozens of sexual conquests later I’m a big proponent of sex-positive feminism or ‘Stiletto Feminism,’ a movement born from the turbulent social and sexual upheavals of the 1960s that flourished in the 1980s and 90s as a back-lash against the conservative movement that endeavores to put limits on what women can and cannot do sexually. Broken down to its core component, sex-positive feminism’s message is a woman’s sexuality can and should be used not only for her pleasure but also her benefit if needed.
The Media Mirrors Society
An article from 2000 in Time featuring the cast of Sex and the City drew some positive attention to this phenomenon as did an episode of The West Wing. The August 2000 issue of George magazine also featured it, calling this a “new kind of feminism.” It described the “Stiletto Feminist” as the woman who “embraces expressions of sexuality that enhances rather than detracts from women’s freedom.” Dr. Susan Hopkins, a lecturer in The School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland, wrote a cultural analysis …