Are sex strikes Actually Conservative?
And is that even the right question?
So everyone’s arguing about whether sex strikes are abstinence-only rebranded or, conversely, the most radical of feminisms. If you think the former, you’re a white feminist because reasons. (Even if the sex strikes you’re talking about are Korean-inspired but not in fact happening in Korea.) That aspect doesn’t really interest me. The one that does is this idea that everything even can be filed in one category or another, or indeed that this is the best framework for understanding human behavior.
But it comes up all the time!
The classic case I always return to is the harem, the cad with ten girlfriends, how if the right language is used, this is actually very modern and consensual non-monogamy and they’re a polycule you see. It is an empowered choice made by women joining forces, a sisterhood really, or maybe sisterwives?
The very same on-the-ground scenarios are the good thing (modern) or the bad thing (regressive) depending the cultural signifiers of the practitioners.
The same is true of feminine self-presentation more broadly. One is either a basic bitch who never heard of not wearing makeup, or an intentional performer of femininity, perhaps a queer femme but at the very least someone who knows what she’s doing.
So, too, the divide between sex work (modern) and financial dependency on male partners (regressive).
Seeing a pattern?
What I want to do is step back and ask what we mean when we say conservative versus liberal/progressive, regressive vs modern. When we classify what looks like the same thing one way or the other, and use that classification to decide how to feel about it.
Do we mean autonomy vs being forced to do something? Individualism vs collective action? Are we imagining individual women are either moderns (newfangled labels, septum piercings) or trads (or worse, basics)? Actual people are a mix of these things, and of autonomous people who know what they want and passively reacting to social structures foisted upon them.
This reminds me of a moment from the "Mike Pence is not allowed to be alone with a woman" scandal from 2017, when an old Ta-Nehisi Coates piece surfaced and everyone realized he observes a similar rule in his marriage.
Speaking of how the same practice can be viewed differently depending on how it is culturally coded, in the late 19th century, the women leading the Utah feminist movement didn't oppose polygamy, they argued that showing that Mormon women had rights and could think for themselves would undercut arguments against polygamy.