Taryn Andreatta in ‘The Offering’

Taryn Andreatta On Artistic Nudity, the Female Body, Feminism & Divinity AOC Sensual Rebel (formerly Anne’s Sensually Yours)

Taryn Andreatta Interview

In posting Taryn’s interview and editorial a couple weeks ago, I wrote of feeling ambivalence about the answers in her interview. Several threads of thought upset me intensely.

1) The first was what I believe is her very narrow definition of feminism, a vision of me — as I explained to her — that not only doesn’t fit me at all but was never the subject of any of the consciousness-raising sessions that I attended.

It is true that in those sessions, we discussed the implications for our own hearts, minds and livelihoods of being almost always the object and rarely the subject. Unlike Taryn, we rejected the idea that women really hold all the power; we just don’t know how to use it.

Without being dismissive in any way of Taryn’s pov, reality is that even women living in New York in the late ’60s couldn’t legally book a hotel room in their own name. They did, of course, with hotel keepers looking the other way, but the act was illegal. 

Natural Submission of Women

Sex in Nature AOC Apple Valley

2) It is true that I and most feminists uncategorically rejected the concept of the “natural submission of women”. Not only is this theory not true in much of the natural world where females dominate the decision of whether or not to reproduce, but embracing it asks too much of my rational mind.

In the same way that I reject the most binding of monotheism’s patriarchal, strict governance of female virtue, I reject Taryn’s theoretical embrace of the natural submission of women. (Note that Taryn clarified in private conversations that she does see women as leaders in business or as religious leaders. I am admittedly confused by how she reconciles submission to men with taming them at the same time, because the historical record on men’s treatment of women is so clear. We’ve submitted for thousands of years, so how we use our submission to make the world a better place is beyond me.)

Unfortunately, this philosophical rejection of female power and influence has been used against us not only by the religious authorities on every continent, and by the lies of social conservatives in America. Now American feminists find ourselves on the defensive against talented, artistic, articulate young women like Taryn.