Last Update - Thu Jun 12 2025
Wollongong ABPDC 2024 Grand Final OO DLO 80+ Feminism Nicola Brayan Youtube Link(Timestampped): HERE The greatest trick the patriarchy ever pulled was making women complicit in their own sexualization, in telling women—young women—that sex is a source of value, and a fear or apprehension towards sex is weird, and that sex is critian and not something deeply spiritual and intimate that you ought care a lot about. You prime them—uh, you prime these women—to disregard their concerns, society to treat them like sex objects, and them to normalize discussions of and opt into harmful sex when it is something that is often quite bad for them and often not something they can consent to perfectly. We forward a few claims in this debate. The first is that sex has nuance that is an uncap—an uncapturable value, which is perverted by a narrative—which I'll discuss the reality of in a second—uh, which is perverted by this narrative. And having narratives that suggest that sex is an inherent positive—which is the definitional claim they must, uh, that they must defend—shapes the way that people, especially young people, understand and engage with sex: how they feel about their first time, how they feel about sexual encounters where they may be not entirely sure if they liked it or not. That is an inherent and a deep, deep harm. Secondly, it contradicts messaging about sexual assault, about body positivity, about objectification, about things like sex work—which deserve critique from a feminist standpoint—but those critiques are eroded when you say that sex is always something that people ought to be positive about, that sex is always a positive source of value in your life. And thirdly, it prevents people from participating—we prevent people from participating in harmful kinks without being properly educated about them. Because I would note that in any world where you say people are coming forward and saying, "This is my sexual preference, this is a normal and good thing," if you do not share that sexual preference but you feel as though you should because you're peer-pressured into it, that is something you adopt poorly. It leads to people doing things like trying out choking for the first time and either dying or getting seriously hurt. Those are all massively deep harms for some incredibly vulnerable people, but they also have flow-on effects and harms to things like the policy that OG want to talk about so much. So let's firstly talk about what this—what this narrative actually looks like. Now note OG's definition of what sex positivity is incredibly convenient. And I think the problem is, they say that this is the status quo. But obviously the feminist movement is currently embracing a range of narratives around sex. They have to defend the specific narrative about sex positivity. I think there are a bunch of other manifestations of some of the claims they’re talking about regarding things like consent that don't stem specifically from sex positivity. The first thing they describe it as is discussions about consent and like opposing stigmas, on saying that like, if you want to have sex, we ought burn you at the stake. The first thing to note is: unclear that we can't also have these—like, that under our side these messages don't also exist, because sexual assault is a crime. That is not something that was identified by the sex—by the stance of sex positivity. There is a clear incentive of this feminist movement to take a stance on making that crime happen less, even if that does not relate to sex positivity. Secondly, obviously you can oppose stigmatization of sexual desires because they are something which, uh, disproportionately punishes women in particular. That is unclear it stems from the perception that sex is inherently positive, and rather it's unfair you persecute women for this when you don't persecute men. Secondly, they have to prove—and so do CG—these messages are communicated well, because this is a support motion. But as Oscar (LO) explains to no response: people are awkward, they are unnuanced, they have limited experience of a range of types of sex. Even if you are a feminist academic, that does not mean that you understand sex inherently, because academia is literally just someone sitting on their couch and thinking. What this means is that the conversations that are coming out are necessarily framed by the cultural context. The stigmas that they describe and people's positioning in relation to them is deeply, deeply unclear. This is a super, super nuanced perspective when people's own understanding of sex is something that is constantly evolving, constantly, which is totally distinct from everyone else's. But secondly, obviously there are clear incentives in this sort of discussion to self-censor. If you did not cum when you had sex, if it hurt when you had sex, if it was underwhelming, it is so deeply unclear you would communicate that to your potential Instagram audience of thousands, or put it in your paper that you're writing for your university, or even tell your friends when they go like, "So, how was it?" Right? Obviously you have an incentive, if you think that sex is something which must be an inherent value-add to your life, to shape the way that you discuss sex in a way that is especially harmful for the claims that we make or for—for the specific arguments that we push. The next claim they make is that this counters the narrative that sex is something which is done to women in particular. And I would note, beyond the fact that this is not exclusive—even if it is true that this is a way of reframing that narrative—sometimes sex just is something which is done to people, and we ought not hide that behind the pseudo-tangible screen of feminist rhetoric, because narratives do not invert rates of sexual assault. They do not change deep-seated misogyny within the people who are using women for their bodies. And it is an active harm to shield people from this reality by telling them that they are actually liberating themselves when they are simply being used. Sometimes, inbuilt hesitance to having sex can be a good thing, because sex can be a harm. The only pushback we get to our characterization is to claim that our side is a very—like, is to undermine it or to strawman it by saying that ours is a very chronically online take of what, uh, their world looks like. But it's literally not. Like Abby Chatfield launches—has like a vibrator that she sells to people. It looks like hookup culture and like encouraging people that it's like fun to go out and hook up with a bunch of people irrespective of emotional connection. It looks like normalizing joking about dick sizes with your friends when you're talking about, like, the date that you had last night. But even if it was something—even if their definition of the world was something which was more nuanced—it is seized upon as though it is this ultra-liberalizing, uh, sex-positive claim by the conservative media who want to impose the policy they talk about. POI Because the feminist movement is not a particularly homogenized body that has a clear messaging capacity. As they say, it looks like a very diverse, like a scattergun kind of approach to messaging. What this is picked up on as is—by conservatives—is this kind of like demonized version of sex, of sexual liberation. And that’s really bad because, firstly, it changes—it morphs these discussions because you have to become even more, like, kind of assertive in your message in response to the conservative push, which is to say you have to say, “Actually, it's not a bad thing to be hypersexual,” and you have to concede that that is a claim that you're trying to make, as opposed to being like, Backing down being like “Well, some forms of sex are bad,” because obviously that undermines the overarching claim that sex is a good thing. But secondly, it means that discussions like around consent, for instance, are muddied. These waters are muddied because instead of saying, “People should not have crimes committed against them,” it becomes a discussion of “Should women be able to have a lot of sex or not?” And that is a much more contentious issue. We far prefer a world where sex is neutral, where women are not complicit in their own dehumanization. OO.
Why
Before I move on—closing:
“Yeah, your harms are contingent on the movement engaging pure messaging like sex is good and everyone should have sex. We could frame messaging around freedom, people engaging consensual choices and maximizing their agency.”
Yeah, so that’s what your OG tried to do, but the reason that my response to this stands is that firstly, as I already said, this is not how it manifests. But even if it was, as I'll get onto now, it is not received in this particularly nuanced way. Because as OG identify at PM, there are conservative people who think the feminist movement wants to spread this message that all women should have lots of sex all the time without being in marriage—ooh—and that is what people receive it as.