The Saddest, Most Infuriating Troll This Month: Newsweek and Katie Roiphe

Like much of the internet, particularly the lady-oriented bits of it, I found myself reading Katie Roiphe's Newsweek cover story this morning. It was sort of like watching a train wreck, really: I couldn't STOP reading it. Now I can't stop reading reaction to it, which is also like watching a train wreck.

I know a lot of people don't like Roiphe. She's not my favorite person in the world, either, but she wrote a piece for Slate once titled "Does Everyone Think Single Mothers Are Actually Crazy?" that really resonated with me, so I am more apt to defend her (despite her history of dismissing date-rape as a thing that doesn't happen) than most people. That's a round-a-bout way of saying that I don't diss everything she writes out of hand the way some people do.

And this piece is no exception. Roiphe is really a pretty smart lady. There are more than a few good points made: Sexual desire is not beholden to political correctness; fantasies are generally about leaving behind the world you're living in. And, snob that I am, her jabs at the awful prose that is Fifty Shades of Grey make me snicker to myself. Because, honestly, it is awful writing. If you want literary female-submission porn, there are far, far better-written stories than Fifty Shades of Grey. REALLY. This shit is like Twilight all over again, and it offends me most as a writer, or someone who considers herself an aspiring writer. Or something. Bad prose is offensive, ok?

The basic problem with all of Roiphe's assertions can be summed up thusly: she's talking about modern women and their sexuality when she ought to be looking at modern life in general, and pressures on and fantasies of both sexes.

Fifty Shades of Grey is enormously popular! No one can deny it. It's become a bonafide sensation. There's a pretty good piece on Jezebel explaining why this particular piece of words strung together is perhaps not as culturally revealing as we would all like to think it is, because the rules of supply and demand and also the unspoken power of cache apply.

But ok, that would be boring, so let's run with the idea that this particular story, with its themes of submission and losing one's self, IS popular because it stirs up some latent need or desire in the collective unconscious. I'll bite that hook. I happen to think that the allure of sexual submission does, in fact, come from pretty much that exact set of desires: the desire to let go, to not be in control, and ultimately to not be responsible for whatever happens. Roiphe backs up this reading of our culture at large by referencing a scene from HBO's new comedy Girls in which one of the characters, waiting for an OB/GYN appointment, briefly fantasizes about having AIDS because such a diagnosis would free her from the responsibility of ambition and making something of herself.

I think we can all identify with that urge.

And that's where Roiphe goes wrong. We ALL can identify with that urge. Men, too. The urge to leave behind responsibility and just float for awhile is not uniquely female. And the fantasies that we engage in that run along this theme are not uniquely sexual: for all that it occurs in a gynecologist's office, the scene in Girls is not at heart a sexual fantasy. The desire to shed responsibility for a while comes up in even the most mundane daydream about going on vacation. Hell, I get excited about the prospect of my dad taking my kid to my sister's house for the day because it means that my walk home from work is conducted without the specter of responsibilities to be shouldered immediately upon returning home. It's an hour of time that is normally scheduled and deadlined which is suddenly, utterly, blissfully free, and that is SUCH a great feeling. But not in the least a sexual one.

By pegging this completely natural desire to leave it all behind as (one) only for women, (two) sexual in nature, (three) universal and (four) irrevocable, Roiphe has done a serious disservice to all of us. Men, in Roiphe's world, exist only to cater to the fantasies of women. They don't get to have any of their own. They don't get to want to indulge in the fantasy of giving it over and giving up control for a while. I would love to hear Roiphe explain the prevalence of the FemmeDomme in popular culture, if men don't even want to give up control. Women, in Roiphe's estimation, are all exactly the same, with exactly the same fantasies. The popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey translates to an absolute universal: since a lot of women seem to enjoy reading this, all women want to experience this. And, like Freud before her, Roiphe assumes that everything can be reduced to sexuality, when the truth of human behavior is actually far more complex. And while I myself indulge in some pretty hefty abnegation-of-responsiblity fantasies, at the end of the day, I do enjoy my autonomy and personal-decision-making capacity, and I'd really like it a whole lot if the culture I lived in would acknowledge that I am both capable of and have the right to make all personal decisions for myself. This is why I am a feminist. Just because I, like everyone else, sometimes would like to not make any decisions, doesn't mean I never want to make any decisions. Submission fantasies do not mean that feminism, with it's basic demand that women be viewed at all levels as complete human beings, is wrong.

This is where some of the feminist criticism of Roiphe, and of BDSM in general, breaks down, for the record. They take the opposite position, and they're equally wrong: feminism does not mean that submission fantasies are bad. If feminism is the struggle to gain credence to that women are people, then the ultimate feminist goal is a completely humanistic view of all people. And that means that women, as much as men, have the right to daydream about being free from pressure now and again, and even to achieve that feeling through whatever means they deem fit.

Of course, the larger context of this piece of Roiphe's matters. It's a Newsweek cover story. The headline reads "The Fantasy Lives of Working Women" and the accompanying image is of a naked, blindfolded women with suggestively parted, perfectly painted red lips and perfectly sculpted coiffure. She is slender to the point of emaciation through her neck and arms, but with hints of a generous, voluptuous bust. The image is titillating, and rife with the kind of impossible beauty standards we as a culture hold women to. The title plays on the language of "working girls" and delights in wallowing in the idea that women that own their sexual desires are sluts and prostitutes. Given Roiphe's own fascination with spanking, the association that women need to be punished for owning their sexuality is unavoidable.

The content of the article is sadly narrow. The context is utterly infuriating.