Sex Flashcards
Rubin
- Establishes criteria for evaluating sexual behavior: ‘A democratic morality should judge sexual acts by the way partners treat one another, the level of mutual consideration, the presence or absence of coercion, and the quantity and quality of the pleasures they provide’
- ‘Traffic in women’ is a more fundamental and useful term than ‘patriarchy’ to explain how the political economy of sex and gender works and patterns of female oppression. Proposes eliminating the sex/gender system altogether, a society which ‘transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied’. Argues against Marxist theories of capital (the reproduction of labour power depends on women’s housework and the system of capitalism cannot generate surplus without women, yet society does not give women capital), and Freudian theories of desire (they justify women’s subordination)
- ‘The stigma of erotic dissidence’ - there is a ‘charmed circle’ of acceptable sexual behaviours, that there is a hierarchy of sex acts, and that sex negativity dominates sexual discourse. We ought to understand ‘benign sexual variation’ and adopt a relativist view of sexual cultures. Argues that models currently assume a domino theory of sexual peril. But in the same way we have learned to value other cultures as unique without seeing them as inferior, and we need to adopt a similar understanding of different sexual cultures as well
Willis
- Under anti-sex arguments, consensual heterosexual sex becomes impossible, and this problematically turns women who engage in heterosexual sex into collaborators in their own oppression.
- Argues it is ‘axiomatic’ that consenting partners have right to do what they want sexually
- BUT a truly radical movement must look beyond the right to choose, and keep focusing on the fundamental questions: why do we choose what we choose? What would we choose if we had a real choice?
- Anti-porn feminism asked some to accept a spurious moral superiority as a substitute for sexual pleasure, and reinforces the neo-Victorian idea that men desire sex while women just put up with it, which was to chiefly curtail women’s autonomy
Bartky
Argues for a politically correct sexuality, and that sexuality is political. Sadomasochism eroticises male dominance and is an inevitable expression of a woman-hating culture. If an individual enjoys sadomasochism and is also a feminist, they necessarily experience internal contradictions and should seek to remove the desire and associated shame. They experience their own sexuality as ‘arbitrary, hateful, and alien to the rest of her personality’. Those who like BDSM suffer a double shame - ashamed on a personal level (would be humiliated if they were public), and on a political level as an activist or feminist
- Willis - BDSM is best at consent, because it literally portrays very clear consensual boundaries
Gayle Rubin quote
Sexual freedom is inextricable from political freedom
Califa
BDSM is not a form of assault, but a fantasy and a legitimate sexual taste on behalf of both involved, enacted by mutual consent.
BUT Willis - it is not that simple! It is nonetheless the eroticisation of dominance and violence, or acknowledgement of the shame and guilt. The point of these actions is their debasing, violent, humiliating nature. BDSM is a reproduction of conventional societal and sexual practices, enacted as a way of “coping with this culture’s sexual double standard”
Haslanger
Gender is socially constructed (as opposed to essentialism), and that the ideas associated with gender are constructions, e.g., fictions about biological essences and genetic determination are used to reinforce belief in the rightness and inevitability of the classifications
Butler quote
Gender is performative
MacKinnon quote
“What is sexual is what gives a man an erection”
MacKinnon (capitalism)
Under capitalism, women are oppressed:
1. Occupy an inferior position in the workplace
2. Segregated in low-paying, service jobs,
3. Sexualisation and harassment of the woman is part of the job, as is compulsory heterosexuality which ‘eroticises’ women’s subordination
Srinivasan
- There is no right to sex, and that the current sex-positive discourse naturalises all sexual preferences as ethically acceptable. There is a feminist discomfort with thinking in terms of false consciousness’, and we are required to trust her if she says eg. she enjoys working in porn. The norms of sex have become the norms of capitalist free exchange; only the agreement of transfer matters.
- If all desire is insulated from political critique (which is bad), then so must the desires which exclude and marginalise trans women
- Feminists ‘treat as axiomatic our free sexual choices, while also seeing why, as ‘anti-sex’ and lesbian feminists have always said, such choices, under patriarchy, are rarely free’
- ‘Black is beautiful’ and ‘Big is beautiful’ are not just slogans of empowerment, but proposals for a reevaluation of our values’
- Even lesbian sex (without men) can be problematic - as MacKinnon says, sex under male supremacy is still always marked by domination and submission
- To say that sex work is ‘just work’ is to forget that all work is never just work, it is also sexed-
Dworkin
- Intercourse mandates male dominance, and that the act of intercourse itself is abuse and violation, or ‘penetration, entry, occupation’.
- Women are inherently inferior and more violable, and that there is something about the act of intercourse that is degrading.
- ‘Physically, the woman in intercourse is a space inhabited, a literal territory occupied literally’
- Women do not orgasm
- Women are meant to ‘treasure the little grain of fear and eroticise it to make it bearable’
- Collaboration by women with men to keep women civilly and sexually inferior has been one of the hallmarks of subordination; “The best system of colonisation on earth” - women take on the burden and responsibility for their own objectification and submission. Mothers perform it to their daughters
Adrienne Rich
- Compulsory heterosexuality plays out in every aspect of our lives, including women being encouraged to value their relationship with men above all else.
- Porn entrenches this by portraying women as inferior and to be humiliated, but also by writing off sensuality between women as ‘queer’ or ‘sick’. 3. Lesbianism is 1) the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life, 2) an attack on the male right of access to women, and 3) an act of resistance to patriarchy
- Compulsory (cultural) heterosexuality simplifies procurers of exploited women, and abusers of women - eg. it aids trafficking, by enabling the practice of providing an ideal heterosexual relationship to tempt the victim
BUT she replaces this problematic theory with an equally psychoanalytic one, arguing one’s true sexuality is one’s attachment to their mother
BUT Willis - Rich’s argument depends on implicit biological determinism, where men are inherently violent and predatory, and women are inherently loving and nurturing, and patriarchy is where men ensure their access to women. Where homosexual men fit into this is unclear
Kathleen Gough
Discusses the origin of the family and the ways in which men dominate or enjoy power over women:
1. Deny women their own sexuality eg. female genital mutilation
2. Force male sexuality upon women eg. rape, male sexual ‘drive’ amounts to a right
3. Command and exploit women’s labour by controlling their produce eg. unpaid marriage and motherhood, male control of abortion and contraception
4. Control or rob women of their children eg. seizing children in courts, enforced sterilisation
5. Confine women physically eg. rape as terrorism, feminine dress code, the veil
6. Use women as objects in male transactions eg. wife-hostess, secretaries
7. Cramp women’s creativeness eg. witchhunts against female healers, definition of male pursuits as more valuable
8. Withhold from women knowledge and cultural attainments eg. noneducation of females, ‘Great Silence’ wrt women and lesbian existence in history, deterrence in STEM
Nussbaum
- Argues for seven different types of objectification, relying on Kantian notions of ‘treating people as means to an end’, and also using MacKinnon and Dworkin’s account of men using women to achieve sexual pleasure
- There is nothing within objectification that is inherently bad - it always depends on context and whether ‘mutual regard’ exists
- Does not support restrictions on pornography because of their expressive interests, and because its availability has moral and educational value
Papadaki
Nussbaum’s conception of objectification is too broad; if someone is objectified every time they are treated as an instrument (not a mere instrument), in our daily lives we objectify nearly everyone, including ourselves (eg. using a taxi driver)
