I’m not letting the fascists have sex

Evie, a magazine funded by actual Nazi Peter Thiel, is selling a Raw Milkmaid dress.

“A model wearing The Raw Milkmaid Dress, Sydney Sweeney on ‘SNL,’ and Victoria Kjaer Theilvig. Collage: Evie/SNL/Miss Universe” photo and caption via Tracy Clark-Flory

“As I see it, this ridiculous milkmaid campaign is just another recent example of conservatives using women’s sex appeal as a political symbol,” wrote long-time fave

Tracy Clark-Flory

. “It’s part of a broader push to brand certain women’s bodies—and large boobs, specifically—as anti-woke. There’s been a recent phenomenon of straight conservative men proudly reclaiming their desire, as if it had been taken from them.”

Clark-Flory quotes an article asking whether the fact that conservatives are celebrating Sydney Sweeney’s breasts means woke’s days are numbered.

First of all, We Have Never Been Woke. Second, if we ever had been, we certainly aren’t anymore by now.

A few weeks later, incels lost their shit over pictures in which Sweeney looks more normal, calling her a “catfish.” What could more perfectly illustrate that factionalism also impacts right-wing shitbirds?

Further illustrating the tension between celebrating sex and controlling women is a headline from the same magazine selling the Raw Milkmaid number: “Why I Think Pornography Should Be Illegal.”

“What a classic tension, right?” Clark-Flory asks.

She presents one explanation for the disconnect, which is that Evie and Thiel are “pro-natalist” and most people can’t get pregnant from masturbating to pornography. Meanwhile, a woman wearing a sexy milkmaid dress in real life might facilitate it.

Another explanation, one which I find more helpful, is that telling women what to wear and how to look reifies the patriarchy more effectively than allowing women to control and personally profit off our sexual appeal. But I would think that.

Either way, whether fascists tell women to dress more or less “sexy,” the main message is the same: “Your body, my choice.”

However much I want to make fun of it, the tension between wanting to control women and wanting people to fuck more is a real one. Eros requires push and pull. Desire cannot coexist with satiety. No one continues to want what they already fully possess.

So why are people who claim to be leftists writing cases against “the sexual revolution” while National Review is begging teenagers to have more sex?

It’s especially galling when I consider that left-wing conflicts over sex and sexuality are made-up, rather than fundamental.