By Holly Combe | 3 June 2005, 23:27

According to blogcritic Adam Ash, feminism urgently needs a pro-sex feminist. I think he means well but why does this have to be a position for a “poster child” who both loves and is seen to love “screwing men”? He also seems to have forgotten feminism’s long relationship with the fight for sexual liberation. How could he overlook The Female Eunuch or Germaine Greer’s involvement with Suck and Oz? And what about currently active writers and speakers like Suzie Bright, Carol Queen, and Jill Nagle? What about the debate that has been re-invigorated by the arrival of Scarlet magazine?

This is not a job for just one spokesperson. I believe a better approach would be for a number of us to mix things up and confound common expectations. For example, as a control-freak who finds the idea of being taken in hand a turn-off, I believe it’s very important that I also defend the rights of masochists. Another example is that I’d like to see women who get off on sexual submission to argue against the determinists and traditionalists who are usually behind the promotion of the idea that such a preference in a woman is part of the natural order of things. Those of us for whom conventional intercourse is not a necessary part of our sexual fulfilment need to step forward and argue against the censorship of material that actually shows this act. Just as importantly, those of us who enjoy vaginal penetration need to defend the right to not bother with it and, more to the point, be open about such a preference without being labelled as “dysfunctional.” In other words, I see anyone who doesn’t adhere to the tradition that we ought to have sex when and how it’s expected of us (i.e not too much or too little and not too hard or too soft) as a comrade in the fight for true sexual freedom.

Band together like that and we’ll soon gainsay those stereotypes.