This week’s readings were like a timeline of different feminisms, their different time periods, and their varying beliefs on the act itself. Moving through writings by radical feminists, s/m dykes, and one that is critical of the real difference between the two, we notice that common threads through all the readings, notably on infusing sex acts with political consciousness in different ways.
Catherine MacKinnon wants to display the construction of oppression via normative sex acts. In her version of social construction theory, sexuality is not simply a product of male dominance, but is also a constitutive force in the making of oppression. This is simultaneous and almost identical to the construction of gender “All the social requirements for male sexual arousal and satisfaction are identical to the gender definition of ‘female.’ …each element of the female gender role, the standard that women are held to, not emerges as specifically sexual” (41). She believes that it is the inequality in a relationship that makes it sexy for men. She also touches on the rape-continuum, critiquing ideas of “rape as violence” which maintain sex as innocent of violence by definition. Rather, “force is sex, not just sexualized; force is the desire dynamic” (38). Most notoriously, MacKinnon posits a relative helplessness of women to the ever-present patriarchy, and the existence of ‘false-consciousness’ amongst women who claim to enjoy and take agency in their sexual lives.
It was important that the readings for this week were assigned together. Reading MacKinnon’s article on its own would undoubtedly inflame opinions. It seems that she is telling us something that we already know, and possibly something that we have overcome. But recalling the time of its publishing, and the fundamentality of radical feminism to our field of study, there is definitely worth in a piece like Pleasure Under Patriarchy. I am always excited to read MacKinnon, Dworkin or Daly since being radical, being anti-sex and exposing the deep-seated presence of patriarchy takes eloquence and guts. I think Pleasure Under Patriarchy is well argued, well written and has (and has had) an amazing potential for moving people. This is what I think is the biggest success of radical feminism, especially regarding the ‘sex wars’.
I don’t want to say that pro-sex feminisms, or the s/m dykes of the Duncan reading, are just reacting to MacKinnon, since that implies opposition and disagreement. I think Glick’s article is invaluable for its ability to syncopate the theories, and align their supposed ‘differences’. In fact, they are attempting to retain the deep and well thought out theories of MacKinnon, the production and reproduction of power relations by the state of sex at the time and the politics of inequality that are implicated, while simultaneously infusing them with new attempts at resistance. It could be argued that they are inherently rejecting the original “false consciousness” theory by falling victim to those very processes. This is doubtful, since MacKinnon herself argues for the constitutive power of sex acts, and how they individually and collectively produce oppression. Therefore a sex-positive approach where sex acts are the sites of resistance is logical under her theory. On a less theoretical level though, I personally don’t believe one can fall helplessly victim to something they know, and in 1989 MacKinnon made sure the world knew about the machinations of patriarchy in sexuality so that we would be able to resist it in whatever ways made sense. The readings of Califia and Duncan are now making that sense.
