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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Subjectified is a book about subjects, objects, and verbs. It is also a book about clothing-optional resorts, masturbation circles, and sex parties.
Suzannah Weiss takes the reader through her adventures as a sex and relationship writer to explore how we can create a world with less objectification and more subjectification – placing women and other marginalized groups in the subject role of sentences and actions. Offering a deeply personal critique of sexual empowerment movements, Weiss presents a way forward that focuses on what women desire, not what men desire from them. Subjectified calls for women everywhere to inhabit their bodies and hearts – to look through their own eyes and speak as “I.”
The book is for everybody wanting to understand themselves as subjects. Wholeheartedly, the author invites you to follow her search for subjecthood and, should you desire, forge your own path out of objecthood.
Now available as an audiobook.
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Seitenzahl: 421
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for
Subjectified
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Notes
1 I Walk: My Path Out of Objecthood
Recovering the “Me” I’d Always Been
Body for Sale
The Girl Jumped Over the Verb
“No Such Thing as a Woman”
To the Unheard Teen in All of Us, Who Always Was a Subject
Notes
2 I Feel: My Body’s Size Doesn’t Matter Because I Have a Big Heart
The Right to Be Sexy
Don’t Worry, You Get to Be Objectified, Too
Women Don’t Exist to Produce Erections
From Being Seen to Just Being
Out of the Looking Glass
Notes
3 I Reveal: Freeing the Person Behind the Nipple
Looking Through the Male Gaze
The Split Self
All Eyes on the Nipple
Concealing as Revealing
My Body as Art
Stripping Under the Sun
Our Eyes Are up Here
Our “I”s Are in Here
Behind the Breasts
Breasts as Gazelles, Deer, and Lightsabers
Open Chest, Open Heart
Notes
4 I Look: Reclaiming the Dick Pic
Unsightly or Unwanted?
All Breasts Are Sexy and Penises Pretty
All
Women
People Are Beautiful
Return of the Peacocks
Uncovering Adonis
The I of the Beholder
The Fear of Female Subjects and Male Objects
You Show Me Yours
Changing the World, One Dick at a Time
Notes
5 I Ask: From Consent to Desire
The Keepers of Consent
The Consent Double Standard
“Pockets of Vulnerability”
From Gatekeepers to Move-Makers
I, Too
On Putting Out, Getting It in, and Asking for It
Letting the Body Speak
Hearing Your “Hell Yes”
The Asker’s Advantage
Desire Cannot Be Rationalized
Where Do Your Hands Feel Led?
Starting Sentences with “I”
Notes
6 I Create: My Body, My Voice
Yes Means Yes in the Doctor’s Office, Too
“I Had Been Like a Machine”
Deprived of Delivering
From Choices to Voices
Attack of the Sperm
From Prevention to Pleasure
Re-birthing Our Realities
Notes
7 I Want: Why Buy the Cow When You Can Both Be Free?
Consuming Women
Sex as Currency
Why Do We Think of Women Like Cows?
Stop Trying to Dip Your Chips in Me
On Sluts, Whores, and Humans
From Calculating to Feeling
Notes
8 I Touch: Feeling Myself, the Other
Woman, Cast as Her Own Object
Waking Sleeping Beauty
The Vulva: Invisible or Invisibilized?
Floral Vulvas and Divine Perfume: The Female Model
Just Me, Myself, and I … and the Gender Binary
The Other Woman
Are You My Sister?
Time to Rock and Roll
Embracing My Inner Grumpy Vampire
The New Siblinghood
Notes
9 I Define: Embody Your Divine Self
Uncovering the Mysteries of the Feminine
A Cure for Female Masculinity
Objectification, but Make It Spiritual
The Fragility of Femininity
Divine Gender Is Too Much Work. I Give Up
There Is No “Should”
Tell Me Your Pronouns So I Know What Box to Put You In
Declaring Our Divinity
Notes
10 I Bleed: A Girl Becomes an Object Becomes a Subject
Welcome to Womanhood, Leave Your Subjectivity at the Door
Bleeding the Same Color
I Get to Say What I Am
Selling Sisterhood
The Body Has No Destiny
Must We All Be Moon Goddesses?
Seeing Myself (Period) Positively
Making Meaning of Our Own Bodies
Notes
11 I Grow: The Politics of Pubes
The Genitals as Object
Beating Around the Bush
Fun Little Beauty Things
The Pleasure of Being an Object
Sugarcoating Hair Removal
Profiting off Pubic Hair
Yay, Choices
A Whole Other Ball of Wax
Doing It for Yourself
Playing With Pubes
The Volition of the Vulva
Notes
12 I Care: Sexual Empowerment Sells
The Self-Love Industry, Making Money off Self-Hatred
The Quest for Tight, Vanilla-Flavored Vajayjays
Self-Care or Self-Criticism?
Penis Envy, Repackaged
Femaleness as Lack
Food, Water, Shelter, and Vibrators
Notes
13 I Receive: Sex Work as Play
My Body Is Priceless
Paid for Pleasure
Sex Work Is Work
The Cost of Getting Paid for Sex
My “Yes” Cannot Be Bought
No Pleasure, No Gain
Doing the Dirty Work
From Jobs to (Blow) Joys
Nice and Cute and Fun
On the Subject of Sex Workers
Subjectification 101: You Get to Be All of Who You Are
Fun, Passion, Inspiration: A Labor of Love
Notes
14 I Like: You’re Just Not That Into Them
Sexy Is Not a Feeling
The New Beauty Myth
A Woman’s Place Is in Her Body
I Love You, I Love You Not
What Are
You
Into?
Self-Love Through Other-Love
Notes
15 I Write: Inhabiting the Active Voice
I
Get Penetrated
Engulf
The Nature of Words
On Octopussies
Being It All
Dancing With Words
Notes
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Praise for Subjectified
“Authentic and moving. Challenging and uplifting. This book couldn’t be more relevant to the battleground that is women’s bodies.”
Victoria Bateman, University of Cambridge, author of Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty
“Weiss is one of the best sex writers out there. Her voice is one that lifts and carries you. This book has the power to change the way we think of ourselves as women, as people – to know our power and agency when we so often have been left wanting.”
Gigi Engle, psychosexual therapist and author of All the F*cking Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life
“Subjectified is a highly original, irreverent, and refreshing perspective on what it means to be a woman. I hugely enjoyed Suzannah Weiss’s debunking of the sacred cows of female sexuality (I use that term deliberately – you’ll see why). I guarantee you’ll never look at ‘the divine feminine’ the same way again.”
Cindy Gallop, founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn
“This is the inclusive feminist manifesto of destigmatization and personal power we need today. Weiss asserts a unified imagined future of possibility that can speak to anyone who has grown up in the last several decades. An important voice in the modern fight for liberation and human thriving.”
Kiran Gandhi, musician, activist, and free-bleeding runner at the 2015 London Marathon
“Subjectified is a book that will make you think long and hard about sex and the way we talk about it. Weiss shows how a simple sentence flip or reframe can dramatically change the way we think about ourselves and our partners, as well as what it means to be sexually free. Readers stand to become informed and empowered ‘subjects’ of desire.”
Justin J. Lehmiller, host of the ‘Sex and Psychology Podcast’ and author of Tell Me What You Want: The Science of Sexual Desire and How it Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life
“Taking us on a journey of sexual liberation, Subjectified is a deep dive into what it means to be objectified and how we can talk, think, and action our way into becoming the subject of our own lives.”
Erika Lust, indie erotic filmmaker and author of Good Porn: A Woman’s Guide
“Weiss perfectly breaks down the dehumanizing split between subject and object, detailing the myriad ways in which the enforced position of ‘object’ is profoundly destructive for women. Her deep dive into the consequences of this process is both illuminating and liberating.”
Nina Menkes, director of Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power
“Subjectified will make you think – about the words we use to describe women, sex, and men. More than that, it will inspire readers to consider their role in the world and how they want to create their own sexual narrative and life journey. Using cultural critique, linguistic analysis, surprising facts from science, and her own journey as both a woman and a sex writer, Suzannah Weiss invites readers into her world so that they can choose if they want to change their own. I plan to recommend this book to students and clients for years to come. I am certain that all will have ‘Aha!’ moments and be inspired to make changes to the way they approach the world of sex.”
Laurie Mintz, University of Florida, author of Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters – and How to Get it
“Subjectified is a deeply heartfelt, thought provoking, and gripping account of Suzannah Weiss’s personal journey toward empowerment in a world that still frequently treats women as objects. It is a gift to any woman who wants to get in touch with her own true north and make choices that honor her body, mind, and feelings, across each and every part of her life.”
Tiffany Pham, founder of Mogul and author of You Are a Mogul: How to Do the Impossible, Do It Yourself, and Do It Now
“Suzannah Weiss rediscovers sex-positivity as she returns our agency, worth, and subjectivity to ourselves, our own voice and vision, our ‘I.’ This radical script-flipping of women’s selfhood sees Suzannah dancing with language and gifting us the wonderful, powerful identity ‘subject of desire.’”
Carol Queen, staff sexologist at Good Vibes and author of Exhibitionism for the Shy: Show Off, Dress Up and Talk Hot!
“What Suzannah Weiss has achieved in Subjectified is remarkable. In a marketplace packed with ‘pop feminism’ books she has written something fresh, absorbing, and important. This is persuasive, groundbreaking material.”
Emma Rees, University of Chester, author of The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History
“Subjectified is a super thoughtful, heartfelt, generous story that dives into many important and interesting topics – such as menstrual blood, dick pics, the politics of pubes, sex work as play, behind the nipples, easy money, sex and divinity, body sizes, and more – all in one nicely written book. Suzannah Weiss asks, and answers, many questions about our bodies and ourselves, which many women ponder – if they dare.”
Annie Sprinkle, sexecologist and author of Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover
“Subjectified is delightfully nerdy, zeroing in on the details of how language informs our feelings and framings. The way Suzannah Weiss weaves personal and societal together is absolutely stunning. Thanks to her for sharing this with me, and the world.”
Jessica Stoya, porn icon and sex columnist
“Subjectified takes you on a journey that’s equal parts playful, poetic, profound, silly, sexy, and full of titillating twists and turns. Weiss is a trailblazer, expanding minds and pushing boundaries with a refreshingly approachable warmth and tenderness.”
Maitland Ward, actress and model
Subjectified
Becoming a Sexual Subject
SUZANNAH WEISS
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Suzannah Weiss 2024
The right of Suzannah Weiss to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2024 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6018-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6019-6(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023939814
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Dedication
To everyone who has ever been treated like they were there to be used, rather than simply to be.
Preface
Subject verb object.
This is the basic structure of a sentence. This is the basic structure of the world. Boy meets girl. So the story goes. Man sees woman. He pursues her. He woos her. He proposes to her. He marries her. “You may now kiss the bride.” Husband kisses wife. She is kissed. She is taken. She is claimed. By him.
Male subject, female object. Subject verb object. Man verb woman. He verb her. In these sentences, a man acts on a woman. A woman gets acted on. If she’s a subject, she is in the passive voice. And the other pronoun is still “he.”
Objectification (n): the action of degrading someone to the status of a mere object.1
This term is often invoked in a visual sense: Women are mere things to look at. But objectification happens with many verbs: “use,” “take,” and even more neutral words like “ask” and “admire.” If women are always the objects and never the subjects, any action can objectify with repetition.
Instead of objectifying women, how can we subjectify them? How can we make women the subjects of more sentences and actions? How can we put “she” before more verbs? How can we create a world where she sees, she pursues, she acts, she knows, she desires, she loves?
I see the irony in these questions. When I ask “how can we subjectify women?,” women are the objects of the verb “subjectify.” When I talk about “making women the subjects,” women are the objects of “make.” Even the title of this book, Subjectified, is in the passive voice. But I embrace this paradox. It leaves room for each woman to exist in any spot in a sentence she likes. Being an object once in a while doesn’t mean you cannot be a subject. A subject is not confined to one position. She cannot even fit onto a page. She dances between sentence fragments, hops from clause to clause, and somehow gets home in time to write a whole new story. To live a whole new dream.
I am taking about women because women have been denied the subject role for so long. But subjectification is for anyone who uses the pronouns I/my/mine. It is for all who seek to be the authors of their lives and the starters of their sentences. Accordingly, each chapter begins with the pronoun “I” and then a verb, inviting readers to imagine how they can be subjects of each action.
I am writing for those who use gender-neutral pronouns like “they,” who get omitted from every kind of clause. (I personally use “she” as well as “they.”) I am writing for those whose partners’ pronouns are the same as theirs and those with more than one partner, with love stories full of plural pronouns. Subjectification is for all bodies and all varieties of relationships. It’s for people like me, who say exactly where they want to eat, when they want to talk, and how they like to be touched. And it’s for people like me, who have fun putting on flowy dresses and cooking sweet recipes to surprise someone they love.
This is a book about the grammar of everyday living. The ability to stand on any side of a verb we like, then jump back and forth over it, switching or sharing sides with others. And how we can revise the sentences that shape our lives so that every type of person has the chance to do, to be. This is a book about the female I and our female eyes, and how to position yourself at “I” level. How to speak in the first person, to say “I” and mean it, when you’ve been confined to “you” and “she” and “them.”
And this is a book about me and my career as a sex writer. I draw upon this work to show how I came to understand subjects and objects, how I’ve played with the grammar of my actions. I’ve been immersed in this field for nine years and have formed many opinions, which still shift as I grow. So, consider this your invitation to accompany me to clothing-optional beaches, pleasure workshops, and other assignments as I discover what it means to be a subject. It won’t all be so serious. I am not writing to persuade or debate or convict or accuse. I’m an artist, not a lawyer. My goal is not to argue but to share my thoughts so you can apply them as you wish, even if that means doing the opposite.
I am not trying to tear down the movements I critique but to expand them. You can think of this book as a “yes, and,” not a “no, but.” Most people I describe here are doing good things. And we can do even better. Nor am I posing as an authority on scholars’ philosophies or histories. When I draw upon thinkers’ ideas, I’m taking poetic liberty to expound what they mean to me, how they’ve shaped my life, and how they might impact yours. I am writing to dance with language, in all its contradictions and its silliness.
Perhaps, as you whirl and twirl with the words on the pages, you’ll find inspiration for how to subjectify yourself. Or, you may become more enamored with the thought of being an object. Don’t be alarmed if it’s both. The body loves to rebel against whatever role it’s placed in. The body doesn’t like boxes. Tell it that it’s one thing, and it’ll take extra care to become the opposite.
Is it trying to have it both ways? Yes, but that’s what it means to be human. To be everything and its opposite all at once. All at twice.
But let’s start this story from a time when I didn’t know that. From a time when I wondered if an object was all I could be.
If that’s where you are now, then maybe, you can follow my footsteps and walk this path out of objecthood.
Or, even better, forge your own.
Notes
1.
Google Dictionary (2023). “Objectification.”
Chapter 1I Walk: My Path Out of Objecthood
I remember just what it was like to be a child. Every sight I saw, down to each yellow forsythia outside my bedroom window, had its own spot on my retina. My face in the mirror was just one of these sights. And when I saw it, I saw inside it: the light, the laughter. All people begin life as subjects; a child’s eyes are globes. On each little sphere is a map of that person’s growing world. But during adolescence, my eyes started to shrink. I realized the Earth was not inside them. No, I was just a coordinate inside others’ globes.
This awareness began with little comments: an older man telling me I looked “developed”; another warning my parents to “watch out” for me. Boys in class describing efforts to peer down girls’ shirts. One murmuring about my “nice ass.” By age thirteen, it was as if my eyes had floated outside my head, always on the watch. I stood with my shoulders hunched, trying to protect the beginnings of breasts that I could sense were there for show. I’d stare in the mirror, crossing my arms over my chest, trying to squish it in and make it disappear. I could not love my body because it felt dangerous to live there.
I wished I didn’t have to live the life of a person with breasts, which may seem odd, since we so often learn that breasts are attractive and women should be just that. But that’s precisely why I felt this way. In the back of my mind, I knew that life with breasts would be different from life without them. That I would face sexual advances, wanted or not. That people would perceive me as motherly, hormonal, and everything else they project onto women. After all, I’d seen breasts depicted in only two ways: as objects of men’s sexual appetite and children’s literal appetite. I was never taught they could be body parts you bare on a beach without sexual connotations. Or that you can cover and keep to yourself – and either way, they’re not asking for attention. Or that a partner can notice and like without a hint of aggression or entitlement. Or touch for your pleasure, checking in with you every step of the way. All I knew about having a “woman’s body” was that people would want to use it and possibly abuse it.
Since I couldn’t determine what my body signified for myself, others defined it for me. My dad scrutinized my eating habits, warning me that as I got older, maintaining my figure might not be so easy anymore. I remember eating my favorite dessert, Oreos with peanut butter, when he told me that once gymnastics season was over, I’d have to cut back. So that was another thing a “woman’s body” made me: an object of men’s opinions. I grew aware that I was no longer just me. I was “you.” I was “her.” Even to myself.
It turned out my eyes did not hold the world. Some powerful, collective eye held me. This eye seized me and sized me up: Look at that body. This eye, this I, this mysterious masculine voice told me what I – what she – was and wasn’t. If this was what being a woman meant, I wanted out. I wanted to fight for the world I saw, for the self I was.
Recovering the “Me” I’d Always Been
My thirteen-year-old self didn’t know about rape culture or objectification. All I knew was that I didn’t want an objectifiable body. I’d go to great lengths not to have one. And I did. I limited my intake of carbs, fats, and food altogether – until I didn’t have to squish my breasts inward or wear tight bras to erase the woman-ness lumped onto me. At last, my form was slight enough to slip into the peripheral vision of this eye staring at me. With less meat on my bones, I could finally stop feeling like a meal. I’d found an (albeit unhealthy) way to subjectify myself, to retain my identity as “I.” Not “she,” not “you” or “that” or “those,” but the “me” I’d always been.
By age fifteen, my efforts had paid off. While most of my peers were gaining weight due to puberty, I’d quickly lost 20 pounds and hadn’t gotten my period in a year. Thus began two long years in and out of therapists’ offices. One of them spoke to me about intuitive eating and heeding my internal signals. I hadn’t known my body had a voice. It had been spoken of, but nobody had asked it what it had to say. Yet as I paid attention, I learned that my stomach had its own sensibilities, my hands their own creativity.
I spent that summer taking writing courses in New York City, and as I learned to tune in to my physical needs, I listened to my everyday instincts. I wandered through the buffet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art cafe, putting salads, grains, and fruits on my plate as if I were splashing colors on a canvas. I wrote poems that flooded my ears from up above the skyscrapers. I strolled the streets of Greenwich Village with no destination, my feet deciding for me which alleyway to go down, which shop to pop into. I met up with a friend to get my nails done and knew which peachy pink I wanted right away. I was beginning to experience myself as the subject of verbs like “sense” and “feel” and “like.” I sensed what I sensed, felt what I felt, liked what I liked for no reason. It was subjective. No one else could tell me what my body was craving. No eye could size me up and say what size I should be. Like a seed sprouting a tree, a subject knows which direction to grow in.
Yet I couldn’t stop monitoring my body as it grew, trying to make sure it stayed small enough to remain unnoticed. When my period and shape returned, I remembered I was defined as “feminine.” Defined by whom, what subject, I can’t say. But I could tell I was the object. I sensed that people associated curves with sexiness, passivity, and other “womanly” traits. And I did not want to take all these characteristics on. I at least wanted a choice. I sensed that people were looking at me, and as I struggled to connect to my body’s own voice, others continued speaking about it, about me, for me. Telling me to make sure not to gain too much weight, not to eat at night, not to eat too many carbs – but also not too few, lest I fail to boast a big enough butt and boobs. For two more years, I fell in and out of disordered eating habits. These were my only safety mechanisms at a time when no one could even explain why I felt unsafe. Nobody around me had the language.
Body for Sale
At last, my parents sent me to live at an eating disorder treatment center the summer between high school and college. There, I ate supervised meals and attended therapy sessions. During one appointment, my therapist had me draw myself and label each part with the connotations it carried. Over my breasts, I wrote, “FOR SALE.” I didn’t label anything between my legs. When my therapist asked which body part was scariest, all I could do was point there.
The words she then told me are ones I’ve spent my career passing on: “You don’t have to do anything with it. You don’t have to have sex with anyone. You don’t have to have kids. You don’t have to do anything.” With these sentences, I became the subject of “do” and “have.” My body could do and have, not just have things done to it, not just be had. I realized then that my eating disorder was fueled by the perception that my body existed for other people. I did want to do those things with it. I just wanted to be the one to do them – and the one they were done for. I wanted to be “she” and “you” and “me.” I yearned to grow, to thrive, to expand, to rejoice in my physical vessel. I simply hadn’t found a way to do so that felt safe.
I’m unsure where I learned that my body wasn’t my own, but there were plenty of opportunities: the scantily clad women in men’s (and even women’s) magazines; the models presented as rewards for buying products on TV; the predatory male behavior in movies and music, which always seemed to blame women’s irresistible figures. “Look at those gazongas!” a devil on a frat boy’s shoulder in Animal House exclaims as he contemplates whether to sexually assault a thirteen-year-old girl. The angel on his other shoulder wins and he resists, as if not raping is so difficult, it’s angelic. “She takes her vitamins,” a high school boy in American Pie comments while spying with a group of peers on a girl undressing. “I like ’em round and big … just can’t help myself, I’m actin’ like an animal,” rapper Sir Mix-a-Lot broadcasts in “Baby Got Back.”
It was clear to me that the woman my society wanted me to be was curvaceous, vapid, and submissive – yet the more I fit that description, the more I’d be viewed as an object for men’s pleasure. And the less safe I would be. I’d heard that the pressure for women to be sexy contributed to eating disorders, but I saw another force at work: fear of being sexy. It seemed that my value lay in my sex appeal, but that if I had sex appeal, I was vulnerable to degradation. Being sexually desirable felt obligatory but dangerous. The same internalized male gaze that made me think I wasn’t beautiful made me fear my beauty. By attaining a body that felt less objectifiable, I’d been trying to protect my freedom.
I didn’t have real-life experience to counter these frightening depictions of sexuality. All I knew about sex, besides the basic anatomy taught in sex ed, came from gossip about school “sluts” who pleasured guys to gain approval. Sex seemed like a favor women did for men. Women’s whole existence seemed like a favor for men.
The Girl Jumped Over the Verb
But one night, the week after I got out of eating disorder treatment, those assumptions were shattered. I had my first-ever hookup on a beach during a family vacation, and it consisted entirely of me receiving pleasure. I snuck back to the beach house and tucked myself under the covers with a beam on my face. Sexuality was so different from what I’d been taught it would be. My body was so different from what I’d been taught it would be. The “womanly curves” that were supposedly there to be soaked in by male eyes had instead soaked in wonderful sensations. Sex, I realized, could be for me. My body could be for me.
My high school peers’ gossip had led me to believe that, if I engaged in hookups, I’d be giving something away. But I hadn’t given anything. I had only gained. And I had not just gained physical gratification. I’d gained permission to be sexual, not just sexy. I’d gained freedom. My eyes returned from that place in outer space where they’d sat sizing me up and reassumed their spots below my forehead. They began to fill again with my own dreams and fantasies. I took an interest in those around me, no longer so scared of them taking an interest in me.
As I began college that fall, I took part in a few hookups but would stop after the other person pleased me, knowing that anything more would stem from a sense of obligation. I had to derive pleasure from my body before anyone else could. I had to know someone saw me as a subject before I’d be their object. I began to understand that female bodies were not passive or powerless, nor were men made to be violent or threatening. There were other ways of thinking about our bodies. There were other ways of thinking about ourselves.
Over the course of this awakening, my eating disorder recovery got easier. It was as if some invisible cord connecting my stomach and brain also passed through my genitals, and once that opening cleared, everything else could flow. Spells are cast with words, and the words I used to think of myself transformed. I was no longer just the object of verbs like “see” or “want” or “pursue.” I saw. I wanted. I pursued. With a skip in my step, I jumped from the right side of each verb to the left, to the beginning of each sentence, starting over. Rewriting myself. Rewiring myself.
I began to make new meanings of my body, part by part. My vagina was no longer a place to let men in or keep them out. It was a source of sensation I could act on. My breasts didn’t have to be objects of partners’ or children’s appetites; they could provide me with pleasure – or not. I could decide if, when, and how others touched them. My disordered thoughts fell away as I inhabited a place deeper inside myself. Instead of being hyper-aware of being observed, I felt. Others could look at me, and I knew they would. But I was still in there, still living, existing, looking back.
My recovery had forced me to develop a mature female body, the kind of body typically objectified. Yet by exploring pleasure on my own terms, I saw that this same body could produce sensations for me and me only. Though I’d learned that men were predators and women were prey, I could find people who defied that framework. I could be one of those people. By changing how I spoke to myself, I forged a path out of objecthood. I still struggle with self-consciousness, as women probably will until society itself changes. But that first semester of college sparked a fascination with how sexuality can both damage and heal women, how it can both enforce patriarchy and liberate us from it.
“No Such Thing as a Woman”
To understand the transformation I’d experienced, I studied feminist theory. Two quotes by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan stuck with me: “Woman does not exist”1 and “there is no such thing as a woman.”2 He stated that “there is no woman who is not excluded by the nature of things, which is the nature of words.”3 While the meaning of these quotes is complex and debated, what I took from them is this: A culture that objectifies women has no concept of a female subject. We’ve defined “woman” in the negative: as someone lacking what men have. Men can be “emasculated”; they can lose their masculinity. But there’s no “efemination” because femininity is already defined as something lost, a state of lack, an absence of maleness.
Since it’s how we learn what it means to be male or female, sex is the first way we learn to associate women with lack. From childhood, girls are taught that they have a vagina but not that they have a vulva or clitoris. Our genitals are depicted as an empty hole, a negative penis. A few years later, when we’re taught how sex works, we hear that we get penetrated. We’re literally the objects of the sentence: “Man penetrates woman.” This is how we learn to relate to the world: to take it in rather than move into it. A similar sentence, “man looks at woman,” governs how we’re portrayed in the media, teaching us to direct our gaze toward ourselves rather than all that’s around us.
Whether or not a woman has a body that society deems desirable, she likely knows what it’s like to be an object – if not of desire, then perhaps of scorn or stereotyping. And objectification is faced not just by women, but by all disadvantaged groups. LGBTQ+ people, people of color, those with disabilities, and more are objectified in their own ways, whether they are objects of pity, fear, or mockery. They – or I’ll say we, as I belong to other objectified groups – are judged, monitored, spoken for, and placed in the passive voice in a million other ways. Yet we fight for our right to be subjects.
To the Unheard Teen in All of Us, Who Always Was a Subject
It’s all too common for people to seek subjectivity through destructive methods like disordered eating. But once I learned there were joyful, healthy ways to become a subject – ways full of blossoming and growth rather than self-denial and erasure – I made it my career to explore them.
I became a sex and relationship writer in 2015, when feminist blogs, books, and celebrities had begun spreading sex positivity. The #FreeTheNipple movement and SlutWalks were advocating for women’s right to wear as little as they pleased without judgment or victim-blaming. Sex educators were evangelizing vibrators as tools for independence. Celebrities were promoting vaginal adornments and spa treatments to help women feel good about their genitals. Affirmative consent advocates were spreading the word that a woman’s partner must hear “yes” to know she consented. Body-positive Instagrams and fashion campaigns were teaching us that every woman is beautiful. They still are.
As a journalist, I’ve explored these movements firsthand. I’ve sought subjectivity at singles’ and couples’ retreats, sex parties, and masturbation circles. I’ve reviewed dozens of sex toys, from smart vibrators to crystal dildos, that promise to literally put women’s pleasure in their hands. I’ve modeled for figure-drawing classes and traveled to clothing-optional resorts to gain comfort with my naked body. I’ve thrown myself into the study of sacred sexuality and orgasmic meditation to experience “feminine” forms of pleasure. I’ve interviewed everyone from feminist pornographers to dominatrixes to discover how they’ve cultivated authentic female perspectives in a culture built around male ones. I have also trained and worked as a sexologist, sex educator, sex and love coach, sexual assault counselor, and birth doula, sharing the knowledge I’ve gained while learning from real people’s experiences.
All the while, my inner thirteen-year-old tagged along, seeking the same thing she sought in front of her childhood bedroom’s white wicker mirror: to be something other than an object. To be a subject. Toward that end, many of these adventures fell short. Feminism and sex-positivity aim to help women embrace their sexuality. But at times, I’ve seen such movements cater to men’s sexuality instead. Too many women’s empowerment advocates still teach women to flaunt their bodies but not to enjoy them. Too many are teaching women to love their looks but not their inner beauty. Teaching them they can say “yes” or “no” to others but not asking them what they want. Telling them not to give themselves away for free without questioning whether they should have a price tag.
The thirteen-year-old in me deserved better than this cheapened version of empowerment. She deserved to find enjoyment in her own gaze, not just to be the object of a man’s. She deserved to feel confident for reasons independent of her looks, not to be reassured she was sexy. She deserved to be looked in the eye no matter what she was wearing, not to be told how arousing her naked body was. She deserved to be celebrated not just for her “femininity,” but for all the precious qualities that made her a well-rounded person.
The problem is, many efforts toward women’s liberation encourage us to be sexual without distinguishing between sexual objects and sexual subjects. By focusing on women’s right to be looked at, feel wanted, and otherwise have things done to them, the recent explosion of movements bringing feminism into the bedroom does not always afford us subjectivity. Sometimes, it objectifies us.
There’s a saying attributed to French writer Anne Louise Germaine de Staël: “The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.”4 But it only seems that way because male desire is the only desire we talk about. A sexual subject has desires of her own. She is the subject of the sentence: “I desire.” In a world where we get to be subjects, we’re at the beginning of many new sentences: “Woman envelops man.” Or “woman touches woman.” Or “woman loves non-binary person.” We get to ask ourselves: What would our sentences say if we were the subjects?
We’ve been doing things to women for long enough. It’s time for women to do. It’s time to take women out of the passive voice. It’s time to subjectify women, as I call it: to create space for women to see themselves as desirous, desiring beings. Not just desirable beings. Subjectification leaves room for women who are horny on days when they look like crap, women who look without being seen, women who would rather forget about their looks than love them, and women who would rather propose their own ideas than consent to someone else’s. Being a subject means having an inner world that can dream, perceive, and have objects of its own. It doesn’t mean you can’t be an object of anyone’s desire. You can still be looked at, desired, and penetrated. But you can also look, engulf, and do everything else that makes you the subject of the verb. You can be more than the negative space men fill.
This shift must take place in the bedroom as much as anywhere else. Sex, after all, is where the status quo is rooted. The view of women’s bodies as passive receptacles has led to a cultural neglect for women’s needs.
But despite the expectations we internalize, women continue to desire more than being desired, to conjure up their own plans rather than just cater to others’, and to take joy in what they see, hear, and feel, not just what they look like, sound like, and feel like.
The thirteen-year-old girl who felt that desire within her and used every means available to protect it, but just didn’t have the right tools, lives in each of us.
This book is for her.
Notes
1.
Jacques Lacan (1990).
Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment
. Norton.
2.
Jacques Lacan (1975).
Le Séminaire, Livre XX. Encore, 1972–73
. Seuil.
3.
Ibid.
4.
Perry M. Rogers (2003).
Aspects of Western Civilization: Problems and Sources in History
. Pearson.
Chapter 2I Feel: My Body’s Size Doesn’t Matter Because I Have a Big Heart
One day in eating disorder treatment, the art therapist had us draw life-size contours of our bodies as we saw them, then lie on the paper so she could trace us. This way, we could compare the two drawings and become aware of our warped self-images. I paused before beginning my artwork. I was scared I wouldn’t discover I was smaller than I thought, as the art therapist expected. More than that, I feared the finished product would disappoint me no matter what size it was. I did not want to size up my figure. I knew my body hatred wasn’t about my body itself. Nor would loving my body come from reassessing how it appeared. I had a hunch that would come from somewhere deeper.
I nevertheless cooperated with the activity, then stood up and looked down in dissatisfaction at my own traced shape. It was thinner than I’d guessed but still did not look thin enough. As long as I was focused on the physical form, it never would. Then, I spotted a container of red spray paint on the table to my right, and an idea struck me. I grabbed the bottle and covered the whole drawing with a giant heart. Its pointed bottom surrounded my legs and feet. The circular sides at the top ensconced my head and shoulders. I filled it in until my shape was barely visible beneath the ruby mist.
“My body’s size doesn’t matter because I have a big heart,” I explained as the art therapist walked over to look. She scowled with disapproval and took me outside. “It seems like you’re engaged in self-defacement,” she said. “You need to make peace with your body.” My eyes welled up. She didn’t understand. Foregrounding my heart was my way of making peace with my body. But I understood why she didn’t understand. I wasn’t being body positive, by many definitions.
The Right to Be Sexy
It was 2008, and plus-size models were appearing on catwalks. Phrases like “real women have curves” and “embrace your curves” were thrown around in women’s periodicals. Each magazine had its own way of telling us to appreciate our bodies by seeing ourselves through men’s eyes.
Glamour conducted a survey for “bikini season” on “what men think about women’s bodies,” with a breakdown of how many men prefer butts vs. boobs, to prove that “while you’re busy wanting a ‘perfect’ body, guys are busy admiring the one you’ve got.”1Redbook shared a collection of quotes from men praising female bodies, including “all boobs are great” and “your butt is the best.”2Cosmo created a “feel great naked” guide assuring readers that “seeing yourself in your mind’s eye as a super-sexy star, and envisioning yourself at the center of everyone’s fantasy will trick you into acting sexier.”3
The way to love my body, it seemed, was to look in the mirror and find myself sexy. But how could I see myself as sexy when I hadn’t yet learned how to be sexual? How could I embrace being looked at when I hadn’t even learned how to look – to really see through my own eyes and feel with my own heart? Declarations like “every woman’s beautiful,” “all boobs are great,” and “your butt is the best” did little to mitigate the discomfort I felt around being seen. Nor did such words help me care less about beauty in the first place. Instead of helping me see myself as more than an object, these statements taught me I’d be objectified no matter my size – probably more so if I were more ample.
I confided in another patient at the eating disorder facility about my fear of being an object. “I’m scared that if I look too much like a woman, men will want to take advantage of me.”
“It’s true,” she said. “Men are horny bastards.”
“But why?”
“Because women’s bodies are beautiful. If you look at people naked, men don’t look very good. But women’s bodies are pretty, and that attracts men’s attention.”
Her take confirmed my worst fears. Men were predators. I was prey. And I couldn’t even help it because my body was irresistible by virtue of being female. My physical characteristics, which I had no control over – except the control I gained through weight loss – were the reason that men were horny bastards. Man hunts woman: It was a sentence supposedly scrawled into my DNA. I remembered what my therapist told me. I didn’t have to accept men’s advances. I could say “no” to sex. “No” to impregnation. “No” to motherhood.
But where was the joy in “no” when I had nothing to say “yes” to? Where was the fun in constantly getting hunted down? Did my ability to run from my hunters really make it better? Where was the power in being reassured that I looked appetizing? Did God or whoever created us hate women so much that we were designed to live under the threat of violence? There had to be more to being a woman than that.
Questions like these spiraled through my mind during my two months at the treatment center. But, motivated by the desire to go to college, I cooperated for the most part. I ate what they asked me to. I gained weight. The fullness in my stomach spawned feelings of self-loathing, but I learned to sit with those emotions. I was discharged that August and went back home healthier. But even after that healing experience on the beach during my vacation, there remained a discomfort I couldn’t shake. An unwillingness to fully inhabit my body, listen to my hunger, or grow to my full size. Friends tried to reassure me that “men like women with meat on their bones” and “guys want something to grab on to.” Men were the subjects of “want,” “like,” and “grab.” The consumers of the meat. And I, delectable. It made everything worse.
