The Oppressive Features of Sexuality (Male domination and female subordination)
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Radical libertarian feminism |
Radical cultural feminism |
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Problems with sex under patriarchy |
Repression · Stigmatize sexual minorities · Control majority |
Objectification · Male violence against women |
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Bad sex… |
· Stigmatizes sexual minorities · Restricts freedom |
“supports or normalizes male sexual violence.” |
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How do we regain control of our sexuality? |
Demand the right to do what ever feels good and is satisfying |
· Find our own sexual priorities · Intimacy rather than performance |
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Ideal sexual relationship |
· Fully consenting · Maximize pleasure in what ever way they want |
· Equal partners · Emotional involvement · Not polarized sex roles |
Pornography
1) Radical libertarian feminists
a. The idea that sex needs to be linked with love in order to be good is a repressive cultural construct
i. It is true that in our cultural pictures of sex are disturbing
1. Men as predators women as gold diggers
ii. women should use pornography to get their long repressed juices flowing and to create their own sexuality
b. Even violent porn is OK sex games can be good fun
c. Laws against pornography are just another kind of sexual repression.
i.
What counts as porn will get decided by patriarchy.
2) Radical cultural feminists
a. Sexuality and gender are the products of the same social forces
i. Link between ‘gender discrimination in the boardroom and sexual objectification in the bedroom.’
ii. Both are cases of men having power over women
iii. Pornography is propaganda for patriarchy.
b. Three ways that porn harms women
i. Encourages sexual violence
ii. Defames women by showing them with so little self respect that they procure abuse
iii. Puts women in a second class place in our culture generally
3) Problem: what counts as porn?
Lesbianism
1) Background
a. Ann Koedt “Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm”: The link between heterosexual intercourse and orgasm in women is tenuous at best:
1. 90% of women are orgasmic.
2. 30% of women never have orgasm during unassisted intercourse.
3. Most women, most of the time, do not have orgasms during heterosexual intercourse.
b. For women there is no link between reproductive sex and sexual pleasure.
i. To put not too fine a point on it, the clitoris does not appear to have any connection to reproduction, but has a very close connection with sexual pleasure.
ii. Developmentally the clitoris is analogous to the penis and the vagina is analogous to the scrotum.
2) Radical libertarian feminist interpretation:
a. Women can engage in non compulsory heterosexuality if they want to.
i. Women don’t need men for pleasure therefore they should only use them when they want to.
b. It
isn’t that sex with men has to be bad, it is just that most men aren’t very
good at it.
c. Insisting
on lesbianism is as sexually repressive as outlawing porn.
d. Not
separatist: the problem is based on patriarchy and we need to interact with
individual men to get them to renounce patriarchy.
3) Radical cultural feminist perspective:
a. There is no good (read feminist) reason for women to want to have sex with a man.
b. compulsory heterosexuality
i. there is no true consent when there are differences in power.
ii.
in our society it is a pattern that men have power over women.
c. true feminists are lesbians, we are fooling ourselves if we think that we actually want to have sex with men.
d. Separatists: women should “stop relating to men on all levels beginning with the sexual.