analysis of promiscuity in the previous section can help us explore this question.
A cultural feminist is not accusing men of having all of their sex in public . What she is looking for in the privacy of sexual intimacy is to share with her lover what she would not wish to share or be shared with anyone else. A single act of premarital sex or fornication (with the appropriate caring attitudes) is no problem for a cultural feminist in search of a private relationship, since such sex is monogamous sex. On the other hand, single acts of adultery and the repetitious pursuit of different sexual partners are troublesome precisely because a promiscuous lover characterized in these ways is in a position to give both physical and emotional access to several partners. In the previous section, however, I argued that to require a limit to the sexual quantity in a relationship was unnecessary to provide that relationship with good quality sex.
Furthermore, I argued that the demand for sexual scarcity was very often detrimental to healthy, long-term sexual relationships. Both women and men often become jealously possessive of partners with whom they have shared sexual secrets that they believe no one else should know. Simone de Beauvoir points out that women who do not feel free to experiment under the restriction of sexual scarcity but whose
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identity in a male-dominated society rests in their associations with, and approval by, men often become desperate to "find a man" before discovering what they really want in a sexual partner. Such women compete fiercely with other women for the best "catch," only to languish in loveless relationships whose sexual exclusivity has become a curse instead of a blessing. 37 A woman's desire to submerge her identity in such relationships makes promiscuity unthinkable, since a woman has only one identity to offer. Robert Nozick believes that sexual love demands exclusivity precisely because such love requires us to "share an identity,'' of which each of us has only one. What he fails to recognize is that in a society in which sex is a vehicle for men's sexual subordination of women, women lose their identity in romance as often as they share it. 38
Shulamith Firestone suggests that women's "sex privatization" by men under patriarchal conditions is nothing more than a ruse to convince women that they are each man's one and only when women are in reality generically dehumanized, stripped of any semblance of individuality. Men devalue all women but idealize the women they fall in love with to "justify [their] descent to a lower caste." 39 Combine these concerns with the suggestion that one person may simply not be able to satisfy any one person's sexual needs, and it would appear that the private nature of sexual intimacy, far from being a requirement for female sexual satisfaction, is antithetical to a cultural feminist program for women's sexual fulfillment.
When a cultural feminist claims that good sex for women is personal sex, she is claiming that women's sex is person-centered, individuated, and personalized in the way she believes that the body-centered, performance-oriented, and dehumanizing sex of men is not. Men's sex, in Susan Minot's words, makes a woman "begin to feel like a piece of pounded veal." 40 The sex that a cultural feminist values is sex defined by what Robin Dillon calls "care respect." This respect includes (1) responding to others as "the particular individuals they are" instead of merely generalizing over persons in search of some abstract capacity that all persons share; (2) understanding others by trying to see the world from their point of view; and (3) actively caring about the well-being of others by helping them pursue their own wants and needs. 41 To help a self-centered pleasure seeker pursue his own wants and needs would be precluded because to do so would be to encourage a disregard for the care respect of others.
The high incidence of wife battering around the
A cultural feminist is not accusing men of having all of their sex in public . What she is looking for in the privacy of sexual intimacy is to share with her lover what she would not wish to share or be shared with anyone else. A single act of premarital sex or fornication (with the appropriate caring attitudes) is no problem for a cultural feminist in search of a private relationship, since such sex is monogamous sex. On the other hand, single acts of adultery and the repetitious pursuit of different sexual partners are troublesome precisely because a promiscuous lover characterized in these ways is in a position to give both physical and emotional access to several partners. In the previous section, however, I argued that to require a limit to the sexual quantity in a relationship was unnecessary to provide that relationship with good quality sex.
Furthermore, I argued that the demand for sexual scarcity was very often detrimental to healthy, long-term sexual relationships. Both women and men often become jealously possessive of partners with whom they have shared sexual secrets that they believe no one else should know. Simone de Beauvoir points out that women who do not feel free to experiment under the restriction of sexual scarcity but whose
Page 44
identity in a male-dominated society rests in their associations with, and approval by, men often become desperate to "find a man" before discovering what they really want in a sexual partner. Such women compete fiercely with other women for the best "catch," only to languish in loveless relationships whose sexual exclusivity has become a curse instead of a blessing. 37 A woman's desire to submerge her identity in such relationships makes promiscuity unthinkable, since a woman has only one identity to offer. Robert Nozick believes that sexual love demands exclusivity precisely because such love requires us to "share an identity,'' of which each of us has only one. What he fails to recognize is that in a society in which sex is a vehicle for men's sexual subordination of women, women lose their identity in romance as often as they share it. 38
Shulamith Firestone suggests that women's "sex privatization" by men under patriarchal conditions is nothing more than a ruse to convince women that they are each man's one and only when women are in reality generically dehumanized, stripped of any semblance of individuality. Men devalue all women but idealize the women they fall in love with to "justify [their] descent to a lower caste." 39 Combine these concerns with the suggestion that one person may simply not be able to satisfy any one person's sexual needs, and it would appear that the private nature of sexual intimacy, far from being a requirement for female sexual satisfaction, is antithetical to a cultural feminist program for women's sexual fulfillment.
When a cultural feminist claims that good sex for women is personal sex, she is claiming that women's sex is person-centered, individuated, and personalized in the way she believes that the body-centered, performance-oriented, and dehumanizing sex of men is not. Men's sex, in Susan Minot's words, makes a woman "begin to feel like a piece of pounded veal." 40 The sex that a cultural feminist values is sex defined by what Robin Dillon calls "care respect." This respect includes (1) responding to others as "the particular individuals they are" instead of merely generalizing over persons in search of some abstract capacity that all persons share; (2) understanding others by trying to see the world from their point of view; and (3) actively caring about the well-being of others by helping them pursue their own wants and needs. 41 To help a self-centered pleasure seeker pursue his own wants and needs would be precluded because to do so would be to encourage a disregard for the care respect of others.
The high incidence of wife battering around the
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