Loose Women, Lecherous Men (52 page)

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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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they mold us to, but they also suggest by implication the shapes we might have been without that molding."
153
The dialectical relation between active subject and manipulable object that defines being a survivor of sexual intimidation from the "view from somewhere different" helps explain why a contemporary woman's experience of her sexuality can be such a fascinating and frustrating experience. The more a woman rejects traditional notions of femininity by going out alone, living independently, or initiating dates, the more she may also find herself vulnerable to violence than if she sought the safety and passivity of membership in a group. The more a woman submits herself to her batterer, the more she may see herself as engaged in her active survival, and the more her batterer must allay the total submission that would turn her into a will-less object of no value to him. A battered woman may simultaneously see herself as the active support system for a troubled partner and the whipping post for his anger and frustration. Resisting her rape may reduce a woman's experience of post-traumatic stress syndrome, but it may also increase the risk of further abuse during the rape itself. Reporting her abuse can aid her recovery, reduce further incidents of abuse, and increase public awareness of the nature of the abuse and the identity of the abuser; but as I mentioned earlier, such reporting can also result in the kind of reprisal, humiliation, reduced credibility, or emotional repetition of the original trauma that makes her feel she has been victimized all over again.
Self-defense courses specifically designed to combat rape can build a woman's self-confidence and self-reliance but can also promote a wariness and hostility that encourage her to see a rapist in every man. Carrying a can of mace in her purse may convince a woman that she is not in sexual danger, yet she may find herself defenseless against an aggressive former boyfriend whom she cannot bring herself to hurt. Many feminists argue that sex education for young girls is incomplete without an explanation of the ways in which a woman's sexuality can be used as a vehicle for her harassment and abuse; yet the goal of such education is not to increase girls' sense of victimization but to strengthen their resolve not to tolerate such abuse or see it as normal. Sexually abused little girls often see themselves as powerful keepers of the dark secret that keeps their families intact and as tempting seductresses of their abusers; yet they can also regard themselves as powerless to stop their own sexual violation. While helplessness may constitute the essential insult of the trauma, reliving it in memory later in life may help restore efficacy and power to the survivor.
154
"Reasonable woman" standards of harassment and self-defense, and rape shield laws limiting the exposure of women's sexual history, can have the combined effect of both encouraging some women to prosecute their abusers and encouraging others to regard women as in need of special protection. Ironically, if a woman makes a relatively quick psychic recovery from the dehumanizing trauma of date rape, she may be accused of not being raped at all. Many women who feel successful at putting their abuse behind them report that a feminist activism of sharing their experience with others has been their best source for recovery. Other women who have been rape victims find that they can no longer tolerate the subordinating sex on demand that was a regular feature of their sex lives prior to being raped. Indeed, Judith Lewis Herman remarks that it is tempting to side with the perpetrator of violence, for while
 
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he simply asks you to ignore him, his victim "demands action, engagement, and remembering."
155
Kathleen Barry states that surviving is the other side of being a victim.
156
I agree that a woman's survival of sexual intimidation involves her developing coping mechanism and formulating strategies in response to her abuse, strategies, that require a willful subject. I have argued, however, that from the "view from somewhere different," surviving places a woman's sexual victimization under patriarchy in a dialectical relation, to her active capacity for sexual agency and self-definition. From the "view from somewhere different," being a survivor, just
is
being
both
a victim or potential victim of institutionalized male dominance
and
an autonomous agent who has the capacity to transcend that victimization and move toward a sexuality more fully defined in her own terms. From this perspective, women's sexuality under patriarchy constitutes a dialectical relation between defining sexual subject and abused sexual object. This relation describes women's sexual desires and preferences as constrained by social institutions that are oppressive to women at the same time, that women's capacity to define the terms and conditions of our sexual lives affords us the determination to resist oppressive individuals and institutions and, ultimately, to transcend them. Valerie Heller, a feminist survivor of years of sexual abuse as a child, reports, "I think that our sexuality cannot and has not been taken from us. It has without a doubt been thwarted. . . . My sexualitythe inner experience of my sexual energyis, in actuality, something that I am becoming aware of and experiencing for the first time."
157
The "view form somewhere different" can accommodate the diversity of feminist voices that speak to the issue of women's sexual intimidation, because the subject/object dialectic on which surviving such intimidation is based invites viewing women as both victims of men's pervasive and institutionalized sexual violation and as willful agents taking responsibility for the direction of our sexual lives. Thinking and talking about women's sexual intimidation from the "view from somewhere different" does not reinvigorate the debilitating stereotype of the fragile and vulnerable woman in need of protection from and by men, because this perspective affords women the capacity to develop a self-confidence and self-reliance that can liberate her from her dependence on abusive men; nor does such a perspective absolve women of all personal responsibility, for our heterosexual relationships. Indeed, taking responsibility for one's sexuality is a feature of the ethic of care respect implied by this perspective, which asks women and men to look at how and why we choose, the sexual partner, we do, and how those choices are affected by the particular cultural and political contexts in which we live. Interpreted from this perspective, men's sexual violation, terrorization, coercion, and dehumanization of woman under institutionalized male dominance can be experiences that motivate women to seek out better relationships for ourselves and richer lives for our families and friends. Therefore, regarding women as survivors from the "view from somewhere different" is neither antimale nor antisex, since such a perspective encourages viewing women's sexuality not merely as externally defined by an oppressive patriarchy but also as subjectively determined by each woman through her own personal exploration of sexual passion and pleasure. From this perspective, it is through the unique dialectical interplay of
 
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these two opposing forces in each woman's life that her sexuality is formed and lived. In the next section of this chapter I will outline how encouraging men to treat women with care respect can help undermine men's sexual intimidation of women.
Encouraging Men to Treat Women with Care Respect
The only way to understand a woman's survival is to put oneself in her
place.
Kathleen Barry,
Female Sexual Slavery
Feminist who argue that women's sexual harassment and abuse are pervasive features of contemporary social institutions also argue that it will take the wholesale dismantling of such institutions for men's sexual intimidation of women to be eliminated. Taking this position into account, it is naive to expect men to change their sexist attitudes toward women, when such attitudes continue to be reinforced be cultural institutions that reward male sexual dominance and control. Recognizing this, many feminists satisfy themselves with changes in current law, politics, or education, which they believe will result in better treatment of women. Yet despite changes, in these areas, feminists have found that if men's and women's
attitudes
toward the relations between the sexes do not change, the practice of theoretically equitable social systems tends to remain inconsistent and unpredictable. Dismantling institutional sexual intimidation will ultimately be successful only if those who have power over, and control of, existing social structures are themselves amenable to change. Therefore, in this section I present ways that women can encourage men to treat women with care respect, which can begin the process of dismantling those social institutions inimical to women's sexual agency and self-definition. I will argue that one of the ways that women can actively undermine the sexist attitudes that reinforce the sexual intimidation of women is to men to do the "world"-traveling required by the ethic of care respect introduced in chapter 3. First, I explain what it would mean for a man to treat a woman with care respect in his sexual relations with her. I then describe how encouraging men to exercise autonomous relating to others and to take responsibility for their sexuality can help them understand what it means to be a woman in a sexist society and what cultural pressures men may feel to conform to sexist standards. I speculate about whether convincing men (and women) to change their sexual attitudes is either practical or possible, especially if men will be asked to give up their power base. I conclude with the claim that only by simultaneously shifting individual women's and men's sexual attitudes toward those of care respect, as well as working toward changing the cultural and economic institutions that are both created by oppressive sexual attitudes and continue to reinforce them, can feminists hope to afford women the sexual agency and self-esteem necessary to define our sexuality in our own terms.
Encouraging Men to "World"-Travel
In chapters 3 and 4 I discussed how an effort to recognize other persons as both equally valuable and special is fundamental to air ethic of care respect. I suggested
 
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that a sexual ethic of care respect also encourages an active concern for understanding and promoting others' sexual wants and needs as they see them and for doing so in ways consists with the care respect of others. If we want to encourage men to treat women with care respect, then we must encourage men not only to regard each woman as the defining subject of her sexual experience but also to recognize each woman's ability to define her sexual experience in ways unique to her. Attempting to understand an individual woman's experience of her sexuality also requires the "world"-traveling often referred to as "putting oneself in another's shoes": treating a woman with care respect requires that a man ask, "What is it like to be her?," and ''What is it like to be me in her eyes?" Through such "world"-traveling, men will begin to understand the particular context of each woman's battle with sexual intimidation as well as her gender role socialization as the sexual object of men's institutionalized supremacy and control. He may also begin to understand why women fail to feel much sympathy for men whose failure in the workplace or in education is so often compensated for by their harassment or abuse of women and girls, yet rationalized by citing "trouble at home."
A sexual ethic of care respect further recommends that men not merely tolerate, or refrain from interfering with, a woman's pursuit of the meaning and value of the erotic in her own life. In doing so a man would be exercising no more than Marjorie Weinzweig's "autonomous being for oneself," introduced in chapter 3. This kind of autonomy is quite similar to one described by traditional actual theories of justice, in which mutually self-interested persons make claims on each other only when competing individual rights create conflicts between persons or when impartial duties to act in accordance with those rights are not fulfilled. Instead, a sexual ethic of care respect recommends that a man do what he can to promote a woman's sexual agency and self-definition in ways that encourage her ability to exercise an autonomous relating to others and to take responsibility for her sexuality. In this way a man also becomes one who exercises an autonomous relating to others in the world, a member of a community of persons who share a similar commitment to "world"-traveling and the pro-active care of others.
158
Furthermore, in such a community, a man takes responsibility for his own sexuality by seeing his sexual desires and preferences as themselves rooted in patriarchal social institutions that can afford him an unfair advantage over women and that may make it easy for him to treat women unreflectively as accessible sexual objects. By adopting this moral perspective, men will begin to regard men's sexual violation, terrorization, coercion, and dehumanization of women as violating their respect for women, as self-determining moral equals and as antithetical to the empathy and sense of community required of those who value an ethic of care.
159
Specifically, treating women with care respect in the workplace or in academia means, among other things, realizing that overt physical or sexual contact, sexual comments, jokes, or cartoons may offend a woman and not a man, precisely because she is sexualized by a culture whose economic and social climate makes it difficult for her either to transcend her identification of sexual object or to make that identification a positive feature of her life. By understanding sexual harassment from a woman's point of view, a man may realize that the subtlety, variety, and constant exposure to hostile environment harassment that a woman may be subjected to can be

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