for a woman should make her feel safe about exposing her sexual vulnerability, not fearful of her sexual abuse or exploitation. Good sex should make a woman feel comfortable and cared for, not content with being one in a series of sexual romps. It was concluded, therefore, that for a woman, truly satisfying sex is monogamous sex with a single, loving, committed partner.
From this point of view, good sex for men cannot be good sex for women, since men prefer the divorce of eros from romance. Some feminists would refer to the feelings of loneliness, guilt, and alienation many women experienced during the postwar sexual revolution (and ever since) as confirming evidence that sex without love, tenderness, or commitment serves men's needs for unencumbered heterosexual sex, not women's. According to feminists of this perspective, the sex that men prefer is casual, performance-oriented, and objectifying. Male sex victimizes women by making them replaceable and expendable sexual objects of male fantasy and desire. Male sex is body-centered without being person-centered. The sex men prefer is power-motivated, dominating, "scoring" sex that is inherently promiscuous and profoundly unromantic. 31
While appearing to reinvigorate the 1950s stereotype of the docile, nurturing, and sexually monogamous female, which feminists of varied theoretical backgrounds have long claimed subordinates women to men, 32 some feminists see in a uniquely female sexual nature a way to celebrate and value individual women for their own sake. Alice Echols and others refer to such feminists as "cultural feminists" for their insistence on essential gender differences to discover a separable and valuable female identity. Echols also uses this specific feminist nomenclature to distinguish cultural feminists from other feminists who also regard a hierarchical heterosexuality as essential to patriarchal stability but who neither require sexual intimacy as insurance against women's sexual victimization nor characterize women as the sexual objects
Page 42
of male subordination in the absence of such intimacy. 33 While many cultural feminists prefer women as sexual partners, most would advocate the rejection of contemporary male-identified sexual values and not the rejection of heterosexual eroticism per se. Adrienne Rich has argued that the "woman-identified woman" is on what she calls a "lesbian continuum" that can accommodate heterosexual and homosexual women alike. 34
On the other hand, self-styled sex radical feminists, often referred to as "sexual libertarian feminists" or as "sexual liberals" by their critics, see cultural feminism as a reaction to the pleasure, variety, self-expression, and adventure that sex radicals believe are women's right as sexually autonomous beings. Such feminists claim that by confining women to an essentialist stereotype, cultural feminism misrepresents the plurality of women's erotic needs and reinforces the oppression of alternative sexual preferences. For a sex radical, the role of feminism is to identify patriarchal stereotypes of women in order to transcend them and move toward a new vision of women's sexuality constructed by individual women to suit their individual erotic needs. For sex radical feminists, the sexual intimacy required by cultural feminists is only one of many ways a woman can discover what good sex means to her. According to this view, under conditions of mutual consent, individual women can explore with their partners the breadth and depth of their erotic preferences, whether tame or taboo. Sex radical feminists contend that to regard sex as completely determined by gender is to play right into the hands of patriarchy by reaffirming the feminine archetype definitive of women's oppression. From a sex radical's perspective, feminism's role is to show women not only how gender informs sex but how sex can inform gender.
Cultural feminists respond that women continue to be sexually victimized by a patriarchy
From this point of view, good sex for men cannot be good sex for women, since men prefer the divorce of eros from romance. Some feminists would refer to the feelings of loneliness, guilt, and alienation many women experienced during the postwar sexual revolution (and ever since) as confirming evidence that sex without love, tenderness, or commitment serves men's needs for unencumbered heterosexual sex, not women's. According to feminists of this perspective, the sex that men prefer is casual, performance-oriented, and objectifying. Male sex victimizes women by making them replaceable and expendable sexual objects of male fantasy and desire. Male sex is body-centered without being person-centered. The sex men prefer is power-motivated, dominating, "scoring" sex that is inherently promiscuous and profoundly unromantic. 31
While appearing to reinvigorate the 1950s stereotype of the docile, nurturing, and sexually monogamous female, which feminists of varied theoretical backgrounds have long claimed subordinates women to men, 32 some feminists see in a uniquely female sexual nature a way to celebrate and value individual women for their own sake. Alice Echols and others refer to such feminists as "cultural feminists" for their insistence on essential gender differences to discover a separable and valuable female identity. Echols also uses this specific feminist nomenclature to distinguish cultural feminists from other feminists who also regard a hierarchical heterosexuality as essential to patriarchal stability but who neither require sexual intimacy as insurance against women's sexual victimization nor characterize women as the sexual objects
Page 42
of male subordination in the absence of such intimacy. 33 While many cultural feminists prefer women as sexual partners, most would advocate the rejection of contemporary male-identified sexual values and not the rejection of heterosexual eroticism per se. Adrienne Rich has argued that the "woman-identified woman" is on what she calls a "lesbian continuum" that can accommodate heterosexual and homosexual women alike. 34
On the other hand, self-styled sex radical feminists, often referred to as "sexual libertarian feminists" or as "sexual liberals" by their critics, see cultural feminism as a reaction to the pleasure, variety, self-expression, and adventure that sex radicals believe are women's right as sexually autonomous beings. Such feminists claim that by confining women to an essentialist stereotype, cultural feminism misrepresents the plurality of women's erotic needs and reinforces the oppression of alternative sexual preferences. For a sex radical, the role of feminism is to identify patriarchal stereotypes of women in order to transcend them and move toward a new vision of women's sexuality constructed by individual women to suit their individual erotic needs. For sex radical feminists, the sexual intimacy required by cultural feminists is only one of many ways a woman can discover what good sex means to her. According to this view, under conditions of mutual consent, individual women can explore with their partners the breadth and depth of their erotic preferences, whether tame or taboo. Sex radical feminists contend that to regard sex as completely determined by gender is to play right into the hands of patriarchy by reaffirming the feminine archetype definitive of women's oppression. From a sex radical's perspective, feminism's role is to show women not only how gender informs sex but how sex can inform gender.
Cultural feminists respond that women continue to be sexually victimized by a patriarchy
Similar Books
