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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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BOOK: Loose Women, Lecherous Men
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loving and may involve graphic displays of nudity, bondage and discipline, group sex, sex with objects, or some other "perverse" sex. Feminists who advocate women's experimentation with such practices believe that a heterosexual and male-dominated society has a vested interest in confining women to sexual attitudes and practices that maintain the status quo of female heterosexual subordination. Therefore, one way to undermine such oppressive politics is to subvert precisely those sexual practices that reinforce male-identified sexual norms. Indeed, many feminists who adopt this perspective believe that the oppression of sexual diversity, not the oppression of women per se, should be feminism's primary enemy since both men's and women's challenges to the sexual status quo help subvert the sexual dominance of women circumscribed by heterosexual monogamy.
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However, other feminists are equally convinced that the appropriate expression of women's sexual liberation is the participation in caring and committed lesbian or heterosexual relationships in which the sexual politics of dominance and submission is self-consciously avoided. Feminists who would advocate more intimate and egalitarian relationships either with other women or with men are at odds with their more sexually radical sisters since they regard the practices of sex radicals as precisely the behavior most identified with men's sexual objectification and exploitation of women. From this view, promiscuity, sadomasochism, and commercial sex work are pervasively patriarchal forms of sexuality specifically designed to subordinate women to men, and feminists therefore cannot adopt them without also adopting the sexual politics of dominance and submission that accompanies them. Indeed, some feminists point out that the public display of radical feminist sexuality invites the sexual harassment, rape, and abuse of women by men who use women's consent to such displays as justifications for men's assaultive behavior. It is argued that male-dominated societies establish and perpetuate themselves by legitimizing the sexual intimidation of women in order to keep women in a state of dependency, wariness, and fear. Many feminists note that women will hesitate to take advantage of economic and social opportunities if men's sexual harassment of women is perceived as the cost of doing business. Women are also intimidated into remaining in physically abusive relationships upon which they are emotionally or financially dependent.
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Many women who consider themselves political liberals, if not sexual liberals, counter that feminism's emphasis on men's sexual intimidation of women reflects an antimale and antisex bias that equates all heterosexual sex with violence against women. They argue that although some men are abusive, the notion that men as a group conspire in smoke-filled rooms to oppress all women through sex promotes a form of sexism against men that should be anathema to any feminist pursuing sex equality. Some women regard feminist sexual harassment policies, rape brochures, and sexual abuse therapy as discouraging women from free, open, and responsible expression of their sexuality, bombarding women with an onslaught of oppressive propaganda that only undermines women's successful pursuit of sexual liberation. These women acknowledge the disturbingly high incidence of men's sexual violence against women, including men's sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse of women. Nevertheless, they enjoy heterosexual sex and see themselves as the subjects of moralizing lectures by feminists interested in forcing all of the power dynamicsand so all of the realism, risk, and exhilarationout of sex.
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Other more sexually conservative women simply want to feel comfortable being both feminine and feminist. They are in favor of equal opportunity for women under the law but find that some feminists' emphasis on men's sexual oppression of women limits the free expression of their femininity. Like their sexually more liberal counterparts, they understand how sexual violence against women threatens women's physical and emotional well-being, but they enjoy the company of men who respond to their efforts to look attractive. Such women will hesitate to discuss pay equity or reproductive rights in ways that risk identifying them with abrasive male-bashing.
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Indeed, many women whose sexuality ranges from the radical to the traditional find no place for feminist politics in their sexual lives. Some prostitutes' idea of sexual liberation is to be free of feminists picketing their street corners so that sex workers can get on with their work. Some lesbians whose homosexuality is a way of life and not a political choice say they pursue the sex that feels good to them whether or not it is "politically correct." Many promiscuous teenage girls simply want to be attractive to the most popular or best-looking boys despite the boys' mistreatment of them. Other women, from working-class mothers to society matrons, do not have the time, resources, energy, or interest to infuse their sex lives with feminist politics, and some women are not interested in having a sex life at all.
This book introduces a feminist philosophy of sex whose express purpose is to advance the dialogue among the competing viewpoints on women's sexual liberation typified in the preceding paragraphs. These sexual debates are philosophical as well as feminist, insofar as they raise not only questions about the nature and extent of the sexual oppression of women but also questions of conceptual clarification (What does it mean to be promiscuous? What is presupposed by the claim that pornography is degrading to women?) and normative evaluation (Is there anything wrong with sadomasochistic sex between consenting adults? Is men's sexual harassment of women ever morally justified?) that are the contemporary moral philosopher's stock-in-trade. Such debates also raise epistemological questions about how much women can know about their own sexual desires under conditions of sexual oppression and whether such knowledge is essential to women's sexual liberation. Concomitant metaphysical questions arise about the possibility of women's sexual agency under conditions of oppression and the likelihood of an enduring self whose sexual self-definition changes over time. Can philosophy help feminists negotiate the conceptual and normative tensions among our often disparate views of women's sexuality? Can feminists help philosophers understand how male dominance and control of women figure in some of the most fundamental questions philosophers raise about women's sexual preferences and sexual desires? Can women and men unfamiliar with either feminism or philosophy gain some insight into the variety and complexity of feminists' debates over women's sexuality in ways that will help them understand their own sexual needs and experiences?
My thesis is that a philosophical and feminist dialogue on women's sexual liberation is possible if women's sexualitythe erotic passions, pleasures, and preferences that circumscribe women as sexually desiring and desirable beingsis examined from two equally compelling perspectives: (1) the perspective of women's sexual oppression under conditions of individual and institutionalized male dominance; and
 
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(2) the perspective of women's sexual liberation, identified both in terms of each woman's personal pursuit of sexual agency and self-definition and in terms of the sexual liberation of women as a class. This approach to women's sexuality posits that individual women's sexual lives are variously oppressive or liberating, and sometimes both at once; they are seldom static over time or identical to one another, and they are often complex and contradictory. Indeed, there may be as many different kinds of women's sexuality as there are women. As a feminist philosopher, I believe that a caring as well as critical understanding of this variety is essential to a feminism committed to cultural pluralism and social equity. The aim of this book is to develop a philosophical framework, which I call the ''view from somewhere different," to recognize and celebrate the different ways that women find meaning and value in their sexual lives.
Underlying my arguments for this approach is my belief that feminist discussions of women's sexuality have bogged down in recent years. Feminists from a variety of theoretical perspectives have staked out apparently unwavering and unilateral positions on women's sexuality despite disagreement among ourselves as to the aims or values of those positions. This multitude of voices has been significant in establishing the importance of feminism in discussions of sex and sexuality, but it has also encouraged a backlash that paints feminism as either dangerously extremist or hopelessly divided. As a result, feminists of different backgrounds have appeared to each other, and to other women, to approach issues of women's sexuality in one of two exclusive ways: either by perpetuating the notion of women as sexual victims with an emphasis on the ways in which men dominate women through heterosexual sex or by downplaying the ways in which gender politics figures in the construction of women's sexuality, demanding instead that women be identified as self-determining sexual agents who freely choose the nature and value of our erotic lives.
My sense is that neither women's sexual oppression nor women's sexual liberation alone is the dominant thread in the tapestry of women's sexuality; my nascent postmodern sensibilities tell me that such discrete and oppositional thinking hinders our understanding of the complexity, ambiguity, and variety of sex and sexuality. My goal is to further a philosophical dialogue about sex among feminists and traditionalists alike through an exploration of the variety of ways in which a woman's risk of sexual victimization by men and her potential for sexual self-determination, despite conditions of institutionalized male dominance, influence the construction of her sexual identity. My fear is that without such a dialogue, feminism will become the very thing its detractors now claim: a fragmented and narrow-minded political movement whose members are unwilling to recognize and listen carefully to the concerns of women with different views than our own. Therefore, this book is designed both to help feminists frame the dialogue on women's sexuality in realistic and nondoctrinaire language and to help those wary of feminism to see the value of approaching issues in women's sexuality in the context of the larger political and cultural institutions from which they spring.
Chapter 1 introduces an epistemological framework for thinking and talking about the different ways that women living under conditions of gender inequality ascribe meaning and value to our sexual lives. In chapter 2 I argue that this framework can advance the feminist dialogue on the nature and value of sexual promiscuity in
 
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women's lives, by conceptualizing promiscuity as one of many avenues for expressing sexual intimacy, exploring sexual pleasure, and encouraging women's sexual empowerment. This chapter also introduces a sexual ethic that values both care and respect for persons in ways that can provide a place for sexual exclusivity and sexual promiscuity in women's lives. In chapter 3 I develop a concept of sexual difference that accommodates both so-called normal and perverse sexual practices within a larger schema for valuing diversity in human sexual experience. I use this schema to flesh out the sexual ethic introduced in chapter 2, which recommends locating all sexual practice within an actively caring community of women and men sensitive to the ways that gender oppression, sexual exploration, and the eroticization of power figure in the construction of human sexuality.
Chapter 4 examines the feminist claim that commercial sex work is degrading to women. I argue that strippers, prostitutes, pornography models, and other sex workers can be understood as both the defining subjects of their sexual experience and the commodified objects of oppressive and institutionalized male dominance. I then use this subject/object dialectic to offer some of the ways in which feminists who debate the nature and value of sex work can begin a constructive dialogue that recognizes both the patriarchal politics of the sex industry and the sexually liberating possibilities for the women who work within it. In chapter 5 I discuss how feminists from different theoretical backgrounds approach the subject of men's sexual intimidation of womenspecifically, men's sexual harassment, rape, battering, and abuse of women and girls. I use the subject/object dialectic introduced in chapter 4 to describe women as survivors of a system of institutionalized sexual intimidation that neither determines women as sexual victims nor frees women fully to pursue our own passions and pleasures. I then examine how a sexual ethic incorporating both care and respect can help women and men better understand each other's sexual experience and promote supportive sexual relationships in which sexual intimidation is absent. I emphasize by way of conclusion the importance of engaging incommensurable political views despite any apparent commonality or consensus and suggest how the framework for thinking and talking about women's sexuality described in this book can be used as a model for doing so.
Many people who associate philosophy with the logic of Aristotle and the rationality of eighteenth-century Enlightenment do not find the passion, eccentricity, and ambivalence of sex conducive to philosophical investigation. From this perspective, sex doesn't seem to be sex anymore, once philosophers get their intellectual or analytical hands on it. I share this concern, since I found some of my own philosophizing about women's sexuality frustrating in its inability to express what I believe to be the profoundly complex and contradictory nature of sex. Philosophy and sex do not enjoy an easy or exact fit, nor do I expect or want them to do so. One of the pleasures that I derive from sexual arousal is the extent to which I can completely lose all sense of myself as a philosopher and simply enjoy the sensuousness of the moment. As I have said elsewhere, I do not want to discuss Cartesian dualism in bed; I want to have sex.
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On the other hand, perhaps some of my frustration with trying to use philosophy to speak a kind of sexually informative feminist language reflects the aptness of the postmodern injunction to abandon the differentiation and oppositional valuation of terms like "intellectual" and "sexual." Indeed, my philosophical writing about

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