The discussion about topless in public pools immediately gave way to the prescription of topless among preteen girls. It was, I read, to prevent the two-piece bikini from erotizing the female breast . You may wonder why.
The concern did not come from the look that this small and useless bra could arouse in the swimmer but from the attitude he fosters in girls. It was, it is about educating them to conceive their breasts in full equality with the male breasts. No supplementary erotic load. It is the same principle that encourages the free the nipple campaign against censorship and for the free display of the female breast on social networks. This campaign also insists on the comparison with the male breast, demonstrating to what extent a good part of feminism has endorsed the conviction, let's assume that Catholic, that the erotic must be kept hidden. The free display of the female breast is allowed and even claimed, but on condition of deserotizing it. It is a misconception of both erotic and free.
Input, because the breasts can not (de) eroticize at the convenience of the latest ideological fashion. Breasts are erotic by nature. They have evolved to be larger than those of our distant relatives, precisely to be more attractive to men . To be indicators of sexual maturity. When it happens, of course. When all that is given is a girl who insists on wearing the bikini bra, all they point to is a girl who wants to look older. When what is given is a mother determined to politicize the issue, all we have is a mother who wants girls to remain girls, who knows how long.
Then, because the erotic is perceived as something that enslaves women and makes them sexual objects at the service of men. This is a very poor vision of both the nature of eros and of man and that in few matters it becomes as manifest as in the discussion about pornography. We have seen him again in reaction to a BBC interview with Mia Khalifa, a former American-Lebanese porn actress, retired and repentant, who became famous for filming scenes with a veil.
The interview is interesting because of her denunciation of the industry and should serve as a warning to any young woman who, like her, intends to "do porn as her dirty little secret". But we all know that debates about the industry are often excuses to denounce pornography and its supposedly violent , exploitative and sexist nature. Therefore, although Khalifa assumes "100%" responsibility for his mistakes, his defenders do with her as they usually do with prostitutes and even hostesses: they are denied freedom in the name of liberation. If they cannot accept that these women are free, it is because they cannot recognize themselves in their decisions. It is a wrong but understandable reasoning, because although self-freedom seems evident in doubt and repentance, that of others is always mysterious. One can explain any behavior of others, how badly they do it, as the logical and necessary result of social pressures, prejudices, etc. And so, with this metaphysical paternalism , as they tend to talk about porn, that they have such a negative view that they find it inconceivable that nobody in their right mind will dedicate themselves to him voluntarily. It is something that would only explain trauma or coercion.
It is a position as unfair to porn as to its actors. Because, against those who denounce it as violent sexual exploitation of women, what shows most of the scenes is not so much the power of male violence as its limit. It is common to see the man surpassed and at the mercy of some drives and women who are unable to control. And even in those violent scenes so denounced, what begins as male aggression usually ends in a subversion of the power relationship and in the restoration of the normality of the sexual relationship , where the woman also satisfies her low passions and dark fantasies . The man who uses violence as a last resort to satisfy his impulses is discovered before a woman desirous and self-confident and in a situation where he continues to do what he wants.
The freedom of women will be invisible, but their liberation is, in fact, the (implicit) argument of almost all the scenes, where the protagonist acts shamelessly against the expected, forbidden and established before the stupefaction of each and every one of the figures that claim authority. Mainly, of course, the masculine ones. In a few areas it is as ridiculous to talk about weak sex as in this one , where it is precisely through sex that women take power. In this porn is subversive, and precisely to this subversion Mia Khalifa owes her fame. The veil did nothing more than theatricalize liberation, antipatriarchal !, first of all who does not pretend to ignore the relationship between the Islamic veil and the sexual behavior that is expected, required, of its carriers. It is something that the Islamists who threatened her and should not ignore the feminists who now intend to defend her.
It is also something that should not be hidden when discussing the effects, say pedagogical, of pornography. Porn is nothing more than a slightly grotesque and deeply tragicomic nature caricature of human sexuality, and that is why the expectations and frustrations it generates on sexual life are only as severe as those generated by romantic comedies about love. They are the inevitable frustrations of maturing to discover that neither the world nor women are obliged to satisfy our desires.
It is an unpleasant lesson and it is normal that they do not want to see it. It is the lesson that Khalifa had a hard time learning and that consists in discovering that the long-awaited freedom has a price and often unexpected and undesirable effects. The attempt to deserotize the breasts is nothing more than an attempt to infantilize, to deny nature to forget that the real danger does not come from the erotic or the patriarchal but from the inexorable impotence of freedom . Before the topless was understood, the free nipple , as an act of empowerment of women, which is displayed free and self-confident, aware of the effect it causes on men and the power it confers on them. Now they are determined to deserotize, to turn adult women into innocent girls who run around the beach in boobs, without understanding that it leaves them without dominion over their body, their freedom and their power.
Ferran Caballero is Professor of Philosophy, columnist and author of Machiavelli for the 21st century (Ariel).
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more- theater
Opinion Women and men: history of a struggle
Boulevard «Finish the page»
Open city Virginal August