The Future that never happened

 Ariel Levy's "The Future that never happened" provides a brief yet insightful review of the history of the women's liberation movement and its current status, supported with numerous anecdotes and examples from several time periods. Her detailed account of the evolution of the women's liberation movement and the sexual revolution, movements which initially shared fundamental goals of advancing women's sexual pleasure and satisfaction, provided a much needed historical context through which an appropriate examination of the direction and future of feminism can occur.

As I was reading the article, what I found most fascinating was the fundamental schism that developed regarding interpretations on sexual freedom and sexual liberation. Sexual liberation was a key tenet and fundamental goal of the early feminist agenda and women's movement. However, this goal proved to be a divisive feature of the movement, as proponents split into "sex-positive feminists" and "antiporn feminists." What we see today, as Levy aptly puts, is "the residue of that confusion."

The establishment and growing popularity of events such as CAKE parties best exemplify the contradiction, hypocrisy, and lack of direction within the current day feminist movement. My sentiment towards such events echo that of Levy, "a garbled attempt to continue the work of the women's movement." CAKEs mission to redefine public perceptions of female sexuality through the overt display of sexuality, promiscuity, and sexual exploitation is ironically more effective at perpetuating chauvinist perceptions and female objectification than destroying the inequalities that feminism was created for. This is the embedded feminism that subtly yet powerfully corrupts and distorts the notion of female empowerment and gender equality in mainstream society.

However, it is also true and important to acknowledge that this is a manifestation of the sexual liberation and freedom that the traditional feminist agenda sought to accomplish; thus, the power to exercise sexual freedom, even in the most overt and inappropriate sense, still falls under the scope of the women's liberation movement.  Who are we to condemn those who exercise the freedom women fought for years ago? It is not my place to judge; however, I do firmly believe that promoting events such as CAKE parties as the face of modern day feminism, or "feminism in action", represents a misconstruction and misrepresentation of feminism to the utmost degree.