Sex Is Power - Or Is It?

Well, isn't this Esquire article rather amusing - Where Have All the Loose Women Gone?

Brilliant, funny, and powerful women are retreating from sex as never before, and if you don't believe it, take the curious case of Liz Lemon. The most complicated and intelligent woman in television comedy barely ever has sex...

How did this happen? A mere decade ago, Seinfeld's Elaine Benes was hilarious, smart, familiar with Russian novelists, an aggressive and demanding professional, and a woman who fooled around a lot. The Sex and the City fantasia of fin de siècle Manhattan broke women's desires into separable components — status, career, money — but sooner or later every conversation between the four principals came back to who's doing what with whom, how well, and how often...

...But the post-post-feminist maelstrom that is Danica Patrick and the Real Housewives of Wherever and Secretary Clinton versus Beauty Queen Palin means that women can wield real power, but it comes at the cost of confusion — professional, social, and sexual. Sex has become a minefield just too tricky to navigate as they build a career or a family or a reality-TV-show franchise. They go elsewhere. Which is a disaster for men. Until now, feminism has been the best thing that ever happened to us, because it means we get to sleep with people rather than ciphers.

Hmm. This certainly brings up a lot of provocative ideas for both men and women. Are the days of the Third Wave's "sex is power" message starting to fade and being replaced with something else? Is it really true that women are having "less casual sex" - or was that always a facade to begin with? A 2008 Science News article titled, Women Have Not Adapted To Casual Sex, Research Shows, hints that Esquire may have just been living a wet dream and not actually taking into consideration that nearly half of all women don't enjoy promiscuity:

Overall women's feelings were more negative than men's. 80% of men had overall positive feelings about the experience [casual sex] compared to 54% of women. Men were more likely than women to secretly want their friends to hear about it and to feel successful because the partner was desirable to others. Men also reported greater sexual satisfaction and contentment following the event, as well as a greater sense of well-being and confidence about themselves.

While I want criticize the Esquire writer for making the blanket statement that feminism leads to female promiscuity, I don't want to diminish the truth of the matter: these pop culture icons, such as the characters of Sex and the City, allowed many young women to embrace their own sexuality. I've heard many women say over and over again that watching shows like Sex and the City made it acceptable to talk about sex, which up until then, many still considered taboo.

I think that the sexual revolution on stillettos set women free from fulfilling what has been seen as a biological duty - to please a man sexually rather than pleasing themselves. By finally being comfortable with sex and all it's dirty little secrets, this article would suggest that women are now taking ownership over sex as never seen before.

That is the part of this Esquire article I enjoy. While it lacks facts and quotes from real women, it does seem to suggest that some women are moving away from being objects to please a man and instead empowering themselves to take charge of their personal and sexual happiness.

What do you think?