Loose Women, Lecherous Men (50 page)

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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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male dominance means trying to get men to change first, then feminism is truly victimizing after all. According to Johnson,
women
are the ones who must do the changing, so that we do not miss opportunities for making new lives for ourselves outside the system of oppression, not from within it.
149
Sonia Johnson is committed to the view that women's oppression is ubiquitous and institutionalized. Nevertheless, she questions the road to liberation founded on trying to change men's behavior, believing this tactic gives men more power to dictate the form and function of that liberation. As I have described thus far, other critics are much more skeptical of the theoretical foundations of a feminism that appears to reduce women to sexual victims: how, such critics ask, can we provide women with equality of opportunity at home and in the workplace when many feminists want literally to institutionalize men's sexual harassment and abuse of women? In the discussion that follows, I offer some analysis of the competing views described in the preceding sections and outline a framework for discussing women's sexual intimidation that can circumscribe the concerns of a variety of political perspectives
Sexual Intimidation Revisited
The [feminist] consciousness of victimization is a divided consciousness.
To see myself as victim is to know that I have already sustained injury, that
I live exposed to injury, that I have been at worst mutilated, at best di-
minished in my being. But at the same time, feminist consciousness is a
joyous consciousness of one's own power, of the possibility of unprece-
dented personal growth and the release of energy long suppressed. Thus,
feminist consciousness is both consciousness of weakness and conscious-
ness of strength. But this division in the way we apprehend ourselves has
a positive effect, for it leads to the search both for ways of overcoming those
weaknesses in ourselves which support the system and for direct forms of
struggle against the system itself.
Sandra Lee Bartky,
Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression
Feminists who are convinced that an understanding of women's systematic sexual intimidation by men is necessary to freeing women to define the terms and conditions of our sexual lives argue, as does Sandra Lee Bartky, that such an understanding is empowering to women. Such feminists argue that with this understanding, women can recognize that our intimidation is not trivial, inevitable, or deserved, even if it appears "normal"; and when we do come to see our intimidation as imposed by patriarchal social institutions, we are able to map out the specific programs and strategies most effective in resisting what is sexually oppressive to us. An understanding of the structural and pervasive nature of women's sexual intimidation tells abused women that they are not alone in their pain and that there are resources at their disposal designed to help them overcome their abuse. Furthermore, from this perspective, women can understand that the male bias and gender asymmetry within the political and cultural institutions under which we live make it highly questionable
 
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whether the economic, legal, academic, or family values of the status quo will work to our advantage.
Thus, I believe feminists critical of views like Bartky's are mistaken when they contend that such a perspective reduces women to no more than victims of an oppressive patriarchy. These critics apparently disregard the strong emphasis that feminists like Bartky place on women's resistance and transcendence of women's subordinate position. Sexual harassment policies, campus rape brochures, battered women's shelters, and abused women's support groups are all designed to encourage individual women to resist their exploitation, defend against possible violence, and change their abusive conditions. For feminists who regard the sexual intimidation of women as pervasive and institutionalized, the raised consciousness of sexual intimidation in a woman's life means that she is aware of her responsibility for assessing the risks of where she walks and with whom, which dorm rooms she visits, and how to avoid unnecessary contact with an employee known for his advances. These same feminists also encourage individual women to take the offensive, by participating in Take Back the Night marches, filing sexual assault and battery charges, and apprising themselves of harassment grievance procedures and how to use them. Many feminists make a point of arguing that a woman who is terrorized and dehumanized is
not
thereby
made
helpless even though she may
feel
helpless. I believe that what many feminists do not want to imply by making women responsible moral agents is that women should always be
blamed
when things go wrong.
However, I would argue that this is precisely what happens when critics like Camille Paglia contend that given men's aggressive nature, women who do not want sex are "fools" for letting men get too close. It is difficult to deny that a young college woman is at least partially responsible for her dating behavior, unless we want to make her into a truly passive victim. Women should be wary of the ways in which their sexual messages may be misconveyed or misunderstood. Yet by removing all behavioral responsibility from men in the name of raging hormones, Paglia places all of the responsibility on women for what men do to them, effectively blaming women for whatever happens in our dealings with men. I think that we can assign individual sexual responsibility to both women and men, in keeping with the "view from somewhere different," in ways that allow us to adjudicate cases contextually according to an ethic of care respect and under current cultural constraints that typecast women, and not men, as heterosexual subordinates. Under such constraints, some female students may get their boyfriends drunk and press them for sex; some women may take sexual advantage of their senior positions in academia to intimidate male graduate students. However, these gender role reversals should not disguise important asymmetries in the general patterns of socially constructed sexual relations between women and men; and a woman cannot be expected to bear full responsibility for the acting out of any one man's lust in addition to her own. My point is that we cannot treat any cases of sexual intimidation in isolation from the particular social locations and dialectical interplay of sexual subordination and liberation that circumscribe each case.
My main criticism of the contention that women's sexual intimidation is a pervasive and institutionalized feature of all women's lives is in its widely mistaken interpretation, not in its intent, since this claim often leaves many with the easily refutable
 
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but false impression that all women spend their lives stricken with an immobilizing terror that sexual violence could be their fate at any moment. Few would deny that men's sexual violence against women is a serious problem or that the numbers of women who are abused daily are far too high. Therefore, I believe that feminists would do ourselves a great service by consistently pointing out that the institutionalized sexual intimidation of women does not require women to spend most or even many of our waking hours experiencing the kind of daily wariness, paranoia, or fear that a woman living under the threat of a Salvadoran or Serbian terrorist attack feels when she steps outside her front door. I agree with the feminist claim that battered women and incest victims are terrorized in an analogous way, but that same sense of constant and unmitigated fear cannot be attributed to all women. What I believe feminists do say with accuracy is that women's sexual intimidation is part of the fabric of patriarchal institutions and that it is used regularly and effectively as a means for the subordination of women in contemporary Western societyso effectively, in fact, that women's views of ourselves and our negotiation of our world is profoundly influenced by a pervasive awareness of our vulnerability to male sexual assault. This is what Bartky refers to when she says that women live daily with a consciousness of our own victimization. Indeed, it is a consciousness of sexual vulnerability and access that I believe men as a class do not experience, no matter how victimized by male violence they may be. While self-defense courses and gun classes can better prepare a woman to avoid or combat rape, their growing popularity is testimony to general feelings of sexual distrust and anxiety that are a common feature of women's lives. When a working woman locking up late in the evening is joined alone in an elevator by a man she does not know, she will typically experience a heightened awareness of her own vulnerability that symbolizes, at some level, that her sexual intimidation by men is always with her. Walking alone to my parked car at night in an unattended lot is enough to instill this awareness in me, no matter how much self-defense I know or how assertive I am. Indeed, it is this very awareness that gives women who have never been raped, battered, or abused some understanding and empathy for women whose lives are those of daily trauma or abuse. Men's sexual intimidation of women can be overt or subtle, unmitigated or intermittent, overwhelming or overcome. From the "view from somewhere different," the partiality and particularity of each woman's social location will define the nature and extent of that intimidation.
Therefore, when a woman is advised by feminists wary of an overly victimizing view of women's sexuality to "take the heat" of men's sexual harassment or to dispense a few "risqué barbs" herself, I would respond that women are not always or even often in the social or economic position to fight back with equal power or authority. Nor should women give men the idea that such harassment is acceptable by shrugging it off or, whenever possible, by returning the harassment in kind. The goal of making women's sexual harassment a form of gender discrimination, among other things, is to point out that the harassment is underwritten by a stereotypical view of women qua women as the unconditionally accessible sexual objects of men. Without laws specifically designed to prohibit taking advantage of women's sexuality, employment and academic environments are not level playing fields for women and men. Furthermore, it is because there is a
gender
hierarchy at work, not just an eco-
 
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nomic one, that sexual harassment of women by men, particularly by coworkers, is such a routine occurrence: in a system defined by patriarchal values whose rule for heterosexual relations is one of male dominance and female submission, sexual harassment indeed becomes the norm. This is why many women are often suspicious of in-house resolutions to their harassment. This is why feminists have taken such pains in the last twenty years to expose women's humiliation and exploitation in school and at work. Thus, I would argue, in response to Katie Roiphe and Rene Denfeld, that younger feminists tired of the apparent sexual conservatism and humorlessness of an older feminist generation would do well to acknowledge the extent to which such women's consciousness-raising efforts on behalf of all women have afforded many younger, more affluent women the sexual freedom that Roiphe and Denfeld value.
I also believe that arming women in self-defense communicates to many men that violence is a legitimate way of settling disputes. A .357 magnum or a black belt in karate may help keep rapists at bay but may also be used as excuses for men to do whatever they think they can get away with. Furthermore, bearing lethal weapons can not only escalate violence between the sexes but can also give both women and men the false impression that the sexual playing field is a level one just because both sexes are armed. However, women are victimized sexually in part because our socialization reinforces establishing connections rather than enforcing hierarchies, and many men know this. Being "armed and female" may be completely useless in acquaintance rape. Will a woman want to shoot her date in the face? Will she want to send her lover to the hospital? Will she want to jeopardize her family's primary source of economic support? Moreover, women's success on the firing range or in the karate studio does not always translate into successful defense against rape. Rape can be painful, humiliatingindeed, traumatizingprecisely because all of one's best-laid plans for self-protection simply did not work. Misfires in the heat of the moment can further enrage a rapist who may himself be armed. Karate can be rendered useless by gang rapists or an attacker with a knife. In short, arming ourselves can give women a false sense of security that may encourage women to enter the dangerous settings of which Camille Paglia and others say women should be
more
wary, not less.
Contra Paglia, if men are strongly motivated by the most basic biological urges of sex and aggression, all the more reason for
men
to reassess
their
shortcomings as successfully socialized human beings, not for
women
to take up the slack. Indeed, a woman can be sending all of Paglia's recommended "clear signals" that she wants a man to keep away from her, but this may only increase his excitement, hostility, or abuse. Moreover, a ninety-year-old widow may be incapable of firing a gun properly or executing a karate chop. As Susan Brownmiller attests, "There can be no private solutions to the problem of rape." From this perspective, unless women and men recognize the political underpinnings of why men rape and why women cannot ignore rape, women will continue to suffer from the contradiction of being perceived as both the victims of male sexual aggression and the agents responsible for sexual assaults against us by men bursting with uncontrollable hormones.
150
Woman battering is another area where, as with sexual harassment and rape, special laws to handle battering do not upset an already equitable distribution of justice but attempt to restore an equity that does not exist within legislative institutions

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