When Feminist Sex Talk Cratered: a Conversation w/ Andi Zeisler
The Long and Short of the Sex-Positive Sellout
I tend to be the "nosy bitch" in any interview situation, but the tables were turned on me by Andi Zeisler, founding editor of the late and incandescent feminist magazine, Bitch. 1
I appreciated our conversation immensely. The interview still has legs, after all these years. I rediscovered our transcript last week as I was cataloging my archives:
AZ: In your essay collections Sexwise and The Sexual State of the Union, you wrote about the hypocrisy of our government meddling in the sex lives of its citizenry. You were one of the first people to talk about politicians in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way as these people whose values are so misaligned with their actual behavior.
Do you think it’s now apparent to all, how hypocritical government policy is when it comes to legislating and policing sex?
SB: America once had a very tight class structure that dictated who could be unmasked sexually. You could always take some poor wanker, a “disgraced girl,” and make them out to be beyond redemption.
But historically, you could never do that with the rich, the protected, the elite. The mainstream media made all the cover-up decisions about what everybody got to read or look at.
Today, mainstream exposés unmask the powerful as well— but the consequences? Nil. Just titillation.
I always want to illustrate how sexual freedom is a test of a democracy: Do you have the nerve, the courage, to let people educate themselves, make their own decisions about their sex lives? Or are you going to take the mommy-and-daddy-know-best position, where [the government] gets to look at everything, prescreen, and then decide what everybody else is going to do?
Many misinterpret puritan leadership as being a group of people who want to outlaw all sexual expression. No. They’re very interested in looking at it themselves. They want the full range; they want access to the esoteric knowledge. Carte blanche is their script of entitlement. But they don’t want you, the prol, to have it. That’s why sexual speech is the canary in the coal mine of suppressed speech in America.
Anybody can stand up in the crowded theater of the internet and publish their murderous or inflammatory thoughts, or — but when it comes to sexual speech, American is petrified— and willing to arrest without further ado.
AZ: Has that evolution made you reassess your own ideals?
SB: I was one of those people who joked that the Bill Clinton years were very good to me, in the sense that I had plenty of opportunity to write about what I call “lovers’ ethics.”
It was a prime time to examine, "How do we do right in sex?" And I don’t mean "do right" in terms of the Judeo-Christian idea, but [in terms of] an ethical sexual philosophy that does right by the community and at the same time feeds your soul.
We haven’t had that role model from the left wing of American politics, either. Much of the left are as puritanical as religious conservatives. They often feel like—and a lot of radical feminists felt this way too—until the revolution comes, (which one?) keep your legs crossed, because you can’t have a genuine sexual feeling in this insane society.
Andi, way back when, we talked about Ariel Levy’s book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, vis a vis the aspects of what I’ll call “ambivalent sex” in it— experiences that look from the outside like exploitation, but are also learning experiences. We allow for learning experiences in every other arena—we give them that generosity.
Nobody insists, for example, “Was your school 100% fabulous? Your job? Or was it pure hell?”
In those instances, we usually say, “It was a mixed bag.”
So why can’t sex be considered in that spectrum, too?
AZ: That’s the trouble with trying to legislate sex and reproduction.
Take the whole thing with restricting access to Plan B: There’s this idea that if “girls” have access to it they’ll use it, and be wildly irresponsible, and they don’t have enough knowledge to deploy it. They can drive a car at sixteen— can have a baby, work, plan to join the Navy—but they can’t pop a pill.
SB: —I want everyone to go to the drugstore and get Plan B and RU-486. I don’t care if you’ve been celibate for years: Go get it. Then go to another pharmacy and get it. You have a gynecologist? Tell them you need the meds for yourself, your mother, your daughter, your sister. And believe me, they’ll get on the bandwagon. You want to have these meds on hand, like Band-Aids. By the time you’re in that situation, saying, “Oh, shit—am I pregnant?,” you’ve got it. Your sister, your neighbor, your teacher and student. Across state lines.
AZ: Did you talk to your daughter about all this when she was a teenager?
SB: Oh yes, we were both militant on the subject. What was heartbreaking was how girls who are neglected in reproductive health— they’re neglected, period. My daughter would bring home kids from school or her sports team, who were knocked up and terrified. We’d become their comforting chaperone to Planned Parenthood. Once there, the doctors would find that these same young women had suffered from terrible healthcare neglect, not only an unplanned or forced pregnancy. Dental issues, P.I.D, asthma, anemia, abuse injuries, you name it.
When I was a teenager, I was always chaperoning girls from high school who were “in trouble” to free clinics, and we never dreamed of telling anyone’s parents—everyone over thirty was suspect.
It didn’t even occur to me that you could talk to most parents then. But now, there are girls whose moms are right by their sides. And there always were—it was just my own family situation that didn’t make me realize that the support could be there.
AZ: Do you think things have gotten worse because the climate is retrograde—abstinence-only sex education, LTBT attacks, fundie education, etc.?
SB: That’s a tough question. Some of the material conditions have gone down the toilet, and there’s an absence of stark feminism in most aspects of modern life. We are battling for the basics. What did we fight for, after all?
The media narrative on feminism is a shift-show—always packaging and diluting for mass consumption. The commodification of feminist thought is as old as a suffragette’s apron.
I remember the first time I went to a sex-radicals convention in the 80s; we talked about this new conservative movement that was calling itself the Moral Majority. I was like, "Huh, that’s a catchy name."
We were all spinning various nightmare scenarios that might happen, but we never guessed the half of it!
Our sell-out culture takes so many odd twists: Who would ever have thought that gay liberation would turn out to be umpteen seasons of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Of course it was a fun show; it’s just we’re in a world where the most basic human rights for sexual minorities are being torn asunder.
AZ: I remember being aware of how the media was “framing feminism“ when I read about you, Lisa Palac and, I think, Annie Sprinkle in the famous 1994 “do-me feminism” article in Esquire. I’d like to hear what you have to say about the evolution—or devolution—of feminism and media representation.
SB: I’m still friends with the editor of that story, Bill Tonelli, who was at Esquire for years, then Rolling Stone. A lot of people have written to me wanting to read that article. There's no online reprint! It was such an “innocent” beginning, eh?
AZ: Reading Female Chauvinist Pigs made me think about it again, because it seemed like as soon as the phrase “do-me feminism” was coined [by the article’s author, Tad Friend], reporters twisted what you all were talking about into something that was for consumption rather than for female autonomy.
SB: It’s funny the way that story came together. In the heyday of On Our Backs, we would often reflect on how strange it was to be smeared as pornographers or sex maniacs—the kinds of things men have historically been accused of. The accusations were rank, elitist bullshit, and I would have sympathy for my fellow media targets, a kinship with how “pornographers” everywhere got attacked.
But at the time, I was interested in considering the lesbian position of what it’s like to desire and pursue a woman, experiencing what it’s like to be the one who makes the first move, the one who might be rejected—those are things that every young man is brought up to deal with.
I wrote a lot of editorials in On Our Backs on the subject. Tonelli was on a talent hunt for Esquire, and he had seen one of the amusing anti-p.c. things I published— a parody of women’s woo-woo movement, called “My Date With Holly Near.” It poked fun at wearing Earth shoes and having vegan soup together.2 I hadn’t had much experience writing for the mainstream press, so the idea of writing for Esquire was like catnip to me.
I told Bill that I wanted to do a story called “What Lesbians Have in Common With Straight Men.” He ended up assigning me a story that had a much more middle-of-the-road title, “How to Make Love to a Woman.” The "do-me" feminist feature came out of that, because he was intrigued by the militant women he’d met in San Francisco.
I remember Germaine Greer being treated like that too, in the 70s, with The Female Eunuch. She was sexy, high IQ, she wore ripped jeans and was braless—she was such an emblem. The American media ate it up; they treat politics like fashion: "Innocence is in! No, being a vamp is in!"
And anyone who’s lived long enough sighs. "Yeah, right."
I’m sure a lot of people who saw the “Do Me” story thought it was fluff. They probably remembered decades previous, when the sex kitten of the year was revealed in the media to be “surprisingly intelligent.” There’s always been the character of such stories.
AZ: But this was more like, "Surprise! Feminists might want to have sex with you!" Which was the opposite of what men, and people in general, had been schooled to believe about feminism.
SB: Oh, I know. That article had nothing to do with representing how I felt. If I’d been interviewed in a more realistic way, you would have heard my exasperation. I would have said, “Sexually liberated people are only more “fun” to go to bed with, in the sense that they have a tolerance and a curiosity and a sense of regard for the other person.”
Of course a gender-liberated lover is going to be sexually intriguing. That aspect of what we were saying didn’t come out in Tad’s take.
I wasn’t raised to be valued for my looks. I thought I would read books and join a convent, honestly.
But I came out into the media world, and the veterans saw a young woman who was white, tall, and slender, eager to please. The notion of what they thought of as a "pretty girl with glasses" kicked in. Prominent news journalists expressed shock I could write at all— I remember splashing my drink in Eric Alterman’s face when he confessed that, on assignment from Elle.
It’s embarrassing, you know— when you're young, you’d like to think that people are interested in you because you’re [sarcastically] "so brilliant" with your writing—that’s what I wanted to think.
I wanted to think that Tad Friend would leave my apartment and just go, “Wow, she raised my consciousness” [starts laughing uncontrollably], and I’m sure that was the last thing on his mind!
AZ: What do you think of the subsequent proliferation of young female sex columnists, most of whom were writing for a male audience?
SB: I wrote about it in my blog: “This is candor, this is spin and service. Sell more crap.”
It’s like that terrible book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, which didn’t once discuss making love. There’s no “there” there. The publishing decisions were made by media executives/ad reps who looked at the success of chestnuts like Sex and the City and said, “What we need is more chatty, acquisitive, materialistic celebration of the most shallow and superficial elements of sex in our culture.”
Sex columnists were originally radical, gender-critical, and feminist. They had broad sexual experience. Now that’s not true: It’s more of a shopping trip. I think it’s an example of success spoiling art with capitalist reward.
It’s great that sex writers are not treated like syphilis carriers anymore, but the tradeoff is that the “job description” has become commodified. Schlock.
There are still fine sex writers around— Susannah Breslin has recently been covering some of the best. But you have to search!
AZ: What do you think about the release of what gets called “alternative porn”? Is it interesting to you?
SB: Same syndrome. When it’s fresh, it’s thrilling; if it’s successful, it becomes pablum, the golden goose is plucked. Victim of, etc.
It was fantastic for me with the first Herotica books, making the first lesbian sex movies, stuff like our first g-spot movie. It was our golden age, a bohemian break in the paradigm. In the beginning, when I was reviewing the history of 20th century porn, I was fascinated by all of it; I was like Linus, looking for the Great Pumpkin. I wanted “sincere” porn, and I did find some of it, and I was thrilled to tell people, “This is the real McCoy and you should check it out.”
And I would—I still do—get enraged when people would say that porn is all the same and perpetuates stereotypes. I would say, “No, you’re thinking of Hollywood.”
In porn, the variety is so much greater than in mainstream entertainment, you can’t even make a comparison.
But then the commercial aspects raked it in, and what was called “alternative,” was sus. It’s like saying The Cosby Show was the Black Power movement.
The underground now, as we see around us, is innovating the analog, the handmade, the found art, anything that CAN’T be suckered by A.I. or the internet.
Honesty was never so hard to find, and maybe that’s what I was saying all along.
Coincidence? I’m a big fan of Birks and vegan vats of soup. Not to mention Holly!
More
There’s very little I’d recommend to read on the sex wars, because I’m still so crabby about it. However, below are few titles are my idea of the last word on the subject. Let me know if other classics are on your shelves.
Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship, edited by Beth Jaker, Abby Tallmer, Barbara O’Dair, Nan D. Hunter, and Kate Ellis.
Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, by Laura Agustin
Big Sex Little Death: the “All Along the Girltower” section of my memoir
Deviations, by Gayle Rubin
In Case You Missed It
I’m sure you know I’m teaching writing/publishing classes on Zoom, early this June. There’s only a couple seats left.
But here’s my masterpiece for contrarians! Don’t write! Don’t publish! Beware all scribes!
Thank you for the (archival) shout out, Susie!
“Honesty was never so hard to find, and maybe that’s what I was saying all along.”
In my opinion, this is *exactly* what you have been saying all along!