Young women have been particularly active in mobilizing voters this election, from working with women’s organizations to creating political panties. But what about organizing for the election using just what women have traditionally been objectified for—our sexuality?
Several groups have cropped up recently that focus on getting out the vote by, well, putting out.
Votergasm.org, tells "young people everywhere to have sex with voters on Election Night, and to withhold sex from non-voters until the next presidential election," and hopes to "send 100,000 first-time 18 to 25 year old voters to polls for the 2004 elections, and to catalyze 250,000 orgasms by the morning of November 3." Way to aim high!
The group’s publicist, Michelle Collins, says in a Salon.com article today that young Americans aren’t voting enough, and aren’t fucking enough. “If there's anything that's really going to speak to America's youth, it's saying that voting is as important as sex, as fun, as American.”
Sounds sketchy as hell, but their strategy seems to be working pretty well. Since the site’s launch, they have received more than half million unique visitors, and more than 25,000 people have pledged to vote (and have sex) on election day.
Another site that is using sex as a means to political participation is FTheVote.com, a project of the Carbon Defense League (CDL), which Lauryn wrote about back in July. FTheVote’s theory is that liberals are simply hotter, and we should be using that to influence the election. Essentially, we should be having sex with conservatives in exchange for their vote:
Believe it or not, even the most seemingly deeply rooted right-wing ideologue can be manipulated by sex. As we all know, the sex drive is a powerful beast that has the potential to change people. People lie for sex, they cheat for sex, they even kill for sex - and you can be sure that they will change the way they think (and therefore vote) for sex. All you need to be armed with are your sexy progressive values, a razor-sharp wit, your genitalia, and a mindset that doesn't mind taking one for the team.
Unlike Votergasm—which actually is planning an election night party and looking for bar where people can easily have sex—FTheVote is just a joke:
The goal of the CDL is to present information and content normally filtered from a general audience's view through satire, humor, and trickery.
Another joke site that I found last month is little more vulgar (if you can imagine that), called Porn for Progress, which put out a Porn for Kerry DVD. I won’t even go into the actors’ fake names…
I’m at the point where I’ll take what I can get in terms of folks organizing against the current administration. And I’m all for fun, funny, types of activism. But I know that these actions also have the potential to piss people off and make a good majority of folks not take our voices seriously.
So do websites like these—jokes or not—reinforce the idea that the only thing women have to offer in politics (or in general) is their sexuality? Or is this just a fun, harmless way to get people involved in a process that they might not otherwise engage in?
Let’s hear it…
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I am afraid that this old fart thought of an even older fart - Aristophanes and the play, Lysistrata.
I can't believe that even the old prunes in the Repugnant hypocrit pundit brigade truly believe that folks are trading sex for votes. Even if the pundits say they believe this on the radio. Remember, FALAFEL! LOOFAH! (or whatever your favorite Shaddup O"Reilly detail is) every time one of the screamers starts in.
I think by getting too serious for "respect" from our elders who aren't going to respect us no matter what we do isn't the way to go. Humor keeps other young people in, and I see nothing wrong with it.
However, I do wish we could branch past just the dirty jokes. I wish this, but then again, I myself am bad about the dirty jokes.
Speaking from a mature perspective (I'm 48), I really don't like stuff like this. It's getting more and more prevalent, and I don't think it really serves women.
Here are a couple of my thoughts:
Encouraging men to view women as sex objects means that they can't take them as seriously. It gets in the way. It may all seem like fun and games, until you get a serious job and want to be taken seriously. If you object then, you're tarred with the dreaded "no sense of humor." And it never ends!!! Even at 45, while managing 3 departments, every 1-on-1 with the boss started with his making a comment about my appearance.
I truly believe that many of the young women who seem so eager to bare their bodies for attention may regret it later. So, you're 45 and up for a law partnership at your firm. Suddenly, your old Suicide Girls posting starts getting passed around.
I've talked about this with a lot of my friends. We came of age in the 70s. While we thought we were getting equality, we often just got used.
Can women expect respect from men when they're willing to objectify themselves?
I just don't like the porno culture. I have no problem with eroticism and sex, but it always seems to be women who are objectified.
Women are objectified in pornography because their primary market is towards men. Men would hardly pay to see men sexually objectified.
In any case, visual pornography (as opposed to other forms of erotica) only exists because women are happy to turn over their bodies for the all-mighty dollar.
On one hand, they may end up being cheated, as some "business deals" ultimately are designed for the benefit of the employer, not necessarily the employee. Perhaps legal regulation of pornographic materials, pay, etc, would help protect women from being used (although I question why they aren't wrong enough to protect themselves...be assertive, ladies!).
On the other hand, if they are perfectly happy displaying their bodies for others, its hardly appropriate to impose your own sense of moral decency onto them, even if you believe they are being objectified. Not all women feel that men looking at recorded images of their bodies as sexual objects is a bad thing.