Missy Ink Magazine Missy Ink Magazine - Fall 2015 - Censorship | Page 24

MUTING Female Sexuality Will we ever find a happy medium when it comes to celebrating and subduing female sexuality? Written By Dr. Carlen Costa “SHOW ME YOUR TITS.” You love to love me but it only works when you ’re calling the shots, and that ’s a problem. Our sexual climate asserts that when someone tells me they like my chest, I’m supposed to be excited and exaggerate their presence. And if someone tells me to shake my ass and wear daisy dukes, it ’s okay as long as I have “ hot ” legs. But when I voice the fact that I love to fuck, that apparently becomes an issue. The silencing of female pleasure and desire has somehow become a problem, unless it ’s for monetar y gain. Long gone are the days of Missy/Ink | Issue 18 going to your physician for ways to help you masturbate and relieve your supposed hysteria. Welcome to a world where my assets, as long as their exposure is for the pleasure of a man, are acceptable. As Judith Butler says in Gender Trouble, “The ver y subject of women is no longer understood in stable or abiding terms;... but there is ver y little agreement after all on what it is that constitutes, or ought to constitute, the categor y of women.” This was written in 1990 and still rings true today. What does it mean to be female? 24