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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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Page 90
and pleasure. From this view, by absorbing women's sexuality into patriarchal politics, a cultural feminist offers women a so-called egalitarian sex that cannot distinguish between the subordinating sexual power of patriarchy and the liberating sexual power of women. Such confusion only results in oppressing individual women's sexual exploration, pleasure, and agency by misidentifying it as yet another example of women's victimization by men. According to a sex radical feminist, there is every reason to encourage women to defy sexual norms that have so distorted women's needs in the past. Joan Nestle suggests that a cultural feminist's adoption of the status quo's rejection of sexualities that do not match the norm ''turns a language of liberated desire into the silence of collaboration."
72
Given the extent to which the feminist movement has endorsed, even embraced, the sexual "deviance" of lesbianism, many sex radical feminists believe that it is nothing less than hypocrisy for cultural feminists to reject other deviations from the sexual norm, especially when they are practiced as a way of reclaiming women's sexuality. Indeed, Gayle Rubin observes that cultural feminism has so politicized lesbianism that nonfeminist and nonpolitical lesbians are regarded with suspicion by many within the women's movement, while lesbianism itself has all but lost its distinction as a sexual orientation as opposed to a political preference.
73
Furthermore, sex radical feminists point out that if men's sexual victimization of women implies that women's consent to dominant/submissive sex is meaningless, then a cultural feminist's recommendation of consent to more "egalitarian" sex is meaningless as well. This claim suggests that when the sexual victimization of women is made an essential component of the patriarchal landscape, not only is a sex radical unable to define a woman-identified sexuality, but a cultural feminist is denied that power also. In this way a cultural feminist condemns women's sexuality to be defined without opposition in men's terms. According to sex radical feminists, until women are free of being identified as the sexual victims of male lust, individual women will never be able to define their sexuality in their own terms. Accusing sex radical feminists of internalizing patriarchal valuesindeed, of imitating the worst form of compulsory heterosexuality by being brainwashed victims of a false consciousnessis, according to sex radicals like Pat Califia, arrogant, hateful psychologism.
74
According to a sex radical feminist, a cultural feminist's position reveals, if anything, the extent of her own indoctrination by a patriarchy with which she unwittingly colludes. Sex radicals charge that women cannot be sexually liberated when they are attributed an inability to make sexual choices independent of patriarchal constraints.
75
Sex radical feminists also protest cultural feminists' accusations that those who practice man/boy love, butch/femme sexual role-playing, and lesbian sadomasochism are incapable of expressing the kind of care respect that acknowledges, understands, and promotes the sexual needs and interests of their partners. Equality of power, attention, and affection are all a part of a sex radical's program for the sexual liberation of women and men; far from being an "anything goes" program of sexual license, a sex radical feminist advocates the eroticization of power that is equally accessed, defined, and controlled by all partners.
According to sex radical feminists, butch/femme sexual roles and lesbian sadomasochism are vehicles for individual women to reclaim and redefine power in per-
 
Page 91
sonal relationships in their own terms. As such, they are vehicles in which the power to explore and pursue the sexual needs of each partner is shared equally. According to a sex radical feminist, in butch/femme sexual role-playing and lesbian sadomasochism, the partners create a drama of dominant/submissive sex that is choreographed entirely by them. "Tops" (butches/sadists) and "bottoms" (femmes/masochists) exercise their power in sex through their mutual enjoyment of sexually stimulating each other and being stimulated in accordance with their own versions of the sexual roles of controller and controlled. Indeed, some feminists claim that the relationship between top and bottom is complex enough to make the opposition of the ''active" versus the "passive" partner in sex obsolete. By the same token, according to a sex radical, lesbian sadomasochists use bondage, verbal abuse, physical restraint, and physical pain (from leather straps, whips, clamps, hot wax and the like) not in a Sadean coercive or malevolent manner but as a means to explore forbidden erotic territory and reclaim its significance for individual women's sexual pleasure.
76
Thus, according to a sex radical feminist, the coercive sexual dominance that some cultural feminists complain about is in fact a consensual agreement to a sexual choreography in which the partners
play at
dominance and submission by
acting out
sexual roles. In this way, according to sex radical feminists, patriarchal power
over
women is transformed and transcended to create new avenues of power
with
women, so that women may experience their own sexual agency and sexual pleasure. Indeed, Anne McClintock argues that sadomasochism's successful display of power as performed or invented rather than natural and normal challenges a social order that would disguise power as inherent in some classes and not in others. Thus, butch/femme sexual roles and lesbian sadomasochism can represent a feminist rebellion against male-identified sexuality and political power.
77
Sex radical feminists regard themselves as the vanguard of the women's movement because, according to Joan Nestle, they "have had the strength and courage to express desire and resistance." For a sex radical feminist, it is an insult to such resistance to reconstitute it as a "phony heterosexual replica" instead of embracing it as a complex erotic and social statement.
78
From a sex radical's perspective, if a cultural feminist insists on regarding radical sex as a patriarchal kindred spirit of degrading dominant/submissive sex, then she has undermined individual women's real efforts to engage in sexual practices that express their liberation from oppressive norms.
Furthermore, many sex radical feminists question cultural feminism's rejection of the eroticization of power for its own sake; according to sex radicals, social psychologists and psychoanalysts tell us that if nothing else, sex is all about power.
79
Indeed, if Freudians are right, it is impossible for women to replicate men's dominant/submissive sex, since such sex is, according to classic psychoanalytic theory, the result of deeply embedded, gender-specific infantile fears of alienation and loss. Some sex radicals believe that this essential power dynamic in sex scares cultural feminists because they believe that
all
sexual power dynamics are constituted by patriarchal (sadistic) power. According to sex radical feminists, this belief leads a cultural feminist to the erroneous conclusion that any reclamation of sexual power by women is impossible. Sex radicals recognize that much of psychoanalysis has been used to marginalize women's sexual needs and repress sexual deviance in the service of the status quo; and many sex radical feminists also recognize that sexual liberation alone
 
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will not free women from political oppression. Nevertheless, sex remains for many sex radicals a Foucault-inspired, socially constructed practice whose power can be reclaimed by men or women in the service of their sexual agency and authenticity.
80
Sex radicals also claim that the complaints by cultural feminists that man/boy love is necessarily exploitative is a myth perpetrated by contemporary Western medical, psychoanalytic, and public health institutions, sensationalized by the media, and reinforced by law. According to a sex radical feminist, such myths about the essentialism of adult male power are used to reinforce the sexual mores that invigorate the power relations necessary for the maintenance of the status quo.
81
From this view, social prohibitions against children engaging in sex with either each other or adults make it difficult for children to gain any knowledge about, or experience of, their sexual needs. A sex radical points out, however, that this very inexperience is then used as the justification for prohibitions against sex with children. From a sex radical perspective, such prohibitions also make it difficult for children to find safe, secure, and loving outlets for their sexual exploration. The trauma of public exposure, parental disapproval, and police harassment all militate against the success of man/boy love.
82
Indeed, according to a sex radical feminist, it is persons' "consent" to adult heterosexual intimacy that should be questioned, since from her perspective, patriarchy makes available to us so little information about, and access to, sexual alternatives.
Moreover, sex radical feminists contend that the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is not a pimping or procurement service but a formalized network established to help gay men and boys meet one another in much the same way as other associations (of bird-watchers, classical music buffs, and the like) whose members share similar interests. NAMBLA's members report interest primarily in boys aged fourteen to nineteen, who approach them for sexual favors as much as or more than they approach young boys. The British Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) reports that their major adult interest is in boys aged twelve to fourteen and that social stigma remains more of a problem in man/boy relationships than coercion or abuse.
83
Sexual radicals would also point out that if cultural feminists brand cross-generational sex between adults and teens as in any sense inherently exploitative, then they have paradoxically condemned any lesbian sex between adults and teens that might otherwise fit cultural feminism's conception of egalitarian sex. A sex radical does not deny that there are abuses in sexual relationships between men and boys. She only suggests that the trouble lies more with the contemporary (and relatively recent) Western perception that sex corrupts the young than with some intrinsic exploitation in man/boy love. The adult fear of children's active, healthy sexual desires often appears to sex radical feminists to be the real reason why anyone would reject outright the exploration by children of their own sexuality. Moreover, sexually aware and knowledgeable children may threaten adults by being more confident in getting what they want and refusing what they do not want, including reporting abusive situations and resolving them. For a sex radical, it is an adult's responsibility to provide education and guidance to children in the area of human sexuality, not to promote stigmatization and dogma in an effort to control childhood sex.
84
For a sex radical feminist, equality of attentiveness and equality of affection translate, among other things, into a mutual concern for the health and safety of each partner. Cynthia Astuto and Pat Califia discuss how important it is to be wary of "top's
 
Page 93
disease" and "bottom's disease" in butch/femme sexual role-playing and lesbian sadomasochism.
85
As in heterosexual relationships in which one sexual partner is dominant and one is submissive, Astuto and Califia warn against the top's demanding more than a bottom wants to give and against a bottom's feeling so insecure that she believes any top will do no matter how coercive or unsatisfying the sex. For a sex radical feminist, this is hardly an admission that no such sex is caring, attentive, or affectionate. On the contrary, a sex radical would argue that being on the lookout for such abuses belies a sensitivity and consideration for how each partner defines her role in sex as well as what each partner can expect from the other.
Astuto and Califia also point out that some consensual sadomasochistic sex is plainly unsafe, harmful, or unhealthy. Neck clamps can be too tight, time spent in bondage can be too prolonged or unmonitored, penetration can be with sharp or unclean objects. However, before any practice begins, partners can share with each other their sexual concerns, limitations, and needs, from emotional discipline such as humiliation and verbal abuse to the physical discipline of whipping, abrasion, and bondage. Code words that mean "Stop now!" are agreed to beforehand, so that begging to stop or refusing to stop can be incorporated into the erotic play of power; yet each partner maintains control of the encounter by defining the code and the roles played.
86
For a sex radical feminist, stop codes are themselves symbols of an attentiveness that each partner contributes to the sexual play. While a sex radical does not demand the intimate loving relationship that a cultural feminist does, a sex radical feminist nevertheless demands that there be the kind of care respect for each partner that turns the harm in sadomasochism into a mutually directed and mutually pleasurable drama of erotic discipline, quite the contrary from a unilateral perpetration of violence. From a sex radical's point of view, such discipline is intentionally
not
gentle,
not
sweet, and
not
romantic, because as I pointed out in chapter 2, sex radical feminists are skeptical of any version of sexual intimacy that imitates or reinforces patriarchal norms of romantic love. However, the practitioner of s/m protests that her practices should not be equated with rape, torture, and murder simply because her sex is not "vanilla" sex. Nor should her practices be equated with social pathology due to cultural feminists' belief in the essentially intimate and bonding nature of women's sexuality. If the burden is on a sex radical to show that her sex is truly liberating, there is an equal burden on cultural feminists from a sex radical's perspective to show that lesbian or heterosexual "vanilla" sex is not just another instance of an oppressive patriarchal norm.
Thus, a sex radical claims that she cannot be accused of encouraging
violence
against women since, she would argue, she is not being cruel or vicious to women at all. On the contrary, sex radical feminists would assert that cultural feminists encourage violence against women by restricting women to traditionally repressive romantic norms and by refusing to see the radical reclamation of dominant/submissive sex as anything other than the mirroring of women's sexual victimization by men. According to a sex radical, if the public mistakes legitimate attempts to reclaim women's sexuality as encouraging violence against women, that mistake is due to a lack of public sensitivity to sexual practices that deviate from the sexual norm, not to the practices themselves. The solution is public education about the methods and aims of a variety of sexual practices, not social ignorance and public ridicule.
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