Female Chauvinist Pigs

Posted By on May 16, 2009

I’m reading, lately, Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, and am alternately deconstructing and enjoying it. I like her writing and reporting style. But pervasively, I think she overestimates the extent to which raunch is at the heart of American culture, even sexual culture. Raunch is more … an accoutrement, an activity, a slice of life, than it is a way of life for most women I know who might embrace  it to some lesser or greater extent.

In other words, I think it doesn’t mean as much as she thinks it does. I don’t think pop/sexual culture is driven as much from the top — media, porn stars, etc. — as it is driven more locally by the basic human urge to be sexual, which manifests itself in more ways than even Shere Hite can fit in a book.

Ariel’s provocative and smart about it, though. FCP was published in 2006 and I’m glad I caught up to it.

And I loved her on the Colbert show:

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Comments

One Response to “Female Chauvinist Pigs”

  1. I read this book, and posted about it a while ago
    http://thebeautifulkind.com/2007/03/09/female-chauvinist-pigs/

    HA Colbert’s shoes were a fun surprise!!!

    Yay from the interview, Levy would like me! “Authentic expression of sexuality and liberation”

You've Been Tempted.

Shadowy "Into Temptation" has been a forum about evolving social-sexual networks and how they have changed and are changing lives. In other words, we talk about dating and sex.

The original intention was that this blog would also chronicle a book project on the same subject; but that is in flux, on hiatus, perhaps meant for another time.