Ampersand had another one of his giant link farms, and I found this article at Feminista provocatively subtitled, “How John Gray Helped Me Change My Mind About the Feminists People Love to Hate“, meaning Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon. The article is a tad unfair to Susie Bright (implying that she offers blanket condemnations of these two, when the reality is that she praises them as thought-provoking), but otherwise it’s a great read. I don’t know enough about MacKinnon really to say much one way or another, but I can agree that the sexists who pass around scare quotes from Dworkin are shooting the messenger. To say that sexual intercourse is constructed as rape in our culture is not to say that it is intrinsically so, and if you don’t like hearing that women’s consent is rendered meaningless in our culture, take issue with the people like Phyllis Schafly who advocate that viewpoint, not with people like Dworkin who just describe it.
Anyway, without signing onto everything that MacKinnon and Dworkin said—and certainly without signing onto their embrace of punitive measures that put them on the side of the religious right against other feminists—the writer Kathleen Trigiani praises Dworkin and MacKinnon for being willing to bluntly describe the way that patriarchal structures like marriage continue to deny women’s agency and make the idea of female consent meaningless. And it was reading John Gray’s advise on marriage that made Trigiani realize that our society still constructs marriage as male ownership of female bodies, and that MacKinnon and Dworkin weren’t talking out of their asses on this, as much as it makes us squirm:
But my reckoning point came when I read the chapter, “The Joy of Quickies”. After setting the stage for convincing the audience of a man’s “need” for sex, Gray set out to tell us about “man’s legitimate need to not take a lot of time” (MVB:77), to “just skip all the foreplay and just do it” (MVB:77), and finally, to enjoy “the occasional quickie”(MVB:77). In typical self-help book fashion, Gray recounted a case study of James and Lucy, who were having marital problems because of James’ guilt over his enjoyment of quickies, or to be more blunt, fucking (MVB:79). Gray the “therapist” negotiated by promising Lucy that in exchange for a quickie, or “fast-food sex”, she could have leisurely or “healthy home-cooked sex” once or twice a week, and at least once a month, she could have “gourmet sex”. But Lucy remained unconvinced because she couldn’t “respond” to quickies. So James told her: “If you are OK with occasional quickies, I promise to never expect you to respond. It will just be your gift to me. I don’t expect you to get anything out of it. You can lie there like a dead log!” (MVB:79) Yes, you heard it right: You can lie there like a dead log!
When I read the “dead log” remark, I thought, “Is this what Kitty MacKinnon means by women not having real sexual choices in a patriarchy?” I mean, Lucy’s consent was totally meaningless. Her husband, James, didn’t even expect her to enjoy it. Most Americans, including several self-defined feminists, would undoubtedly say, “Lucy could have said no. It’s all her fault for putting up with it.” But did she have a REAL choice? And did Gray give the man a REAL choice?
So she gets sex she enjoys in “exchange” for letting her husband masturbate into her. He gets sex he enjoys 100% of the time, and her payment is she gets to like it maybe even 50% of the time, especially at first while he’s holding up his end of the deal. Such a deal between equal adults would be unthinkable, but when women are constructed as existing for male pleasure, this sort of deal is treated as an indulgence of women’s silly whims. Using cooking metaphors to describe sex where female pleasure is taken into consideration furthers the cause of making this seem like a huge favor for Lucy, the same way that a man in an apron is considered above and beyond, but for a woman it’s simply expected.
Shooting the messenger is a time-honored way for traditionalists to discredit radical thinkers and uphold injustices like the one described above. (Look at how merely quoting Marx—even though he was right in so many ways and absolutely a necessary step in realizing that economic injustice is actual injustice—is still considered verboten in America.) Trigiani realizes that a lot of what makes people uncomfortable with Dworkin and MacKinnon is not when they were in the wrong, but when they were in the right.
To acknowledge that Dworkin and MacKinnon were often telling the truth about America’s real views on sexuality forced me into another feminist identity crisis. After reading Gray’s books, there was no way I was going to remain silent about how he makes a farce of women’s consent. But I cringed at the questions my friends would ask and the accusations they would make: “Stop acting like women are victims”, “Why did you let that self-help idiot change your view about those anti-sex, pro-censorship radicals?”, “Why don’t you admit that deep down, you really hate men?”, “You ought to read Susie Bright and learn some things about sexuality”, “You’re too attractive to start reading that radical stuff”, “Were you sexually abused as a child?” . . .the list went on and on.
This passage made me cringe, because some of these are either strawmen retorts she imagines from her friends, or she has shitty friends. But the “Stop acting like women are victims” thing is a common one, and that’s classic shooting the messenger. Describing a woman’s mistreatment at the hands of someone else is routinely conflated with making her a victim, and usually by people who want to discredit you so nothing stops the mistreatment of women. To say that Lucy is a victim is not to “victimize” Lucy; that happened when her husband treated her like an object instead of a person and that happened when her therapist objectified her under the guise of helping her.
It’s an interesting article, so as we like to say on these here ‘nets, read it all.
Despite her radical reputation, MacKinnon always struck me as sensible on issues of power and free speech. I remember showing students, nearly all of whom would gag at the thought of feminism, watching a panel she was in on a Bill Moyers’ show about the Metzgers’ trial. The students responded to her very well and thought she made far more sense than the “free speech is more important than criminality” argument of the other panalists.
It’s perhaps not surprising how widespread the “wife = masturbation tool” meme is, but it still depresses me. Our (female, psychologist) premarital counselor suggested that I agree to my husband screwing me while I slept…*after* I told her that my ex-boyfriend did that and I hated it. And then she utterly amazed that her statement started me crying. We utterly disregarded his advice, and my husband knows that my self-defense training will kick in if he starts thinking that my conscious consent is optional. But jeez, there’s no escape even when you think you’re talking with a reasonable liberal person.
Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon are proof that radical feminism and the religious right have more in common than both sides would like to admit.
Wow, what the fuck, RP? Why would a counselor even suggest something like that? That is really messed up.
Scummy Bear…you read their work? Intimately familiar with their arguments?
No, but he read some quotes on some woman-bashing site, and a good 25% of them were real. MacKinnon is such a terrible, terrible person, though—she helped Bosnian rape victims obtain some justice!
By admitting that rape happens, we create a climate where men can totally have false accusations of rape thrown out of court before they have a jury trial, creating a climate of fear where you can’t rape anyone, and that’s unfair.
Scummy Bear, did you even read this piece?
I have read some of their work and I know that both of them have tried to get porn banned which is in direct contrast with the 1st amendment.
Which books have you read, Scummy Bear?
No, he didn’t. I think “not reading the post and throwing out irrelevant comments” is the dictionary definition of threadjacking. Threadjacking is a bannable offense here, so if you want to stick around, Scummy, you have to quit it. Comment on the point of the post, which you don’t get because it seems like you may not even be able to read very well.
“Reading random quotes on an MRA site that are taken out of context” does not qualify as having read some of their work.
Oh, right. He doesn’t want to feel bad about his porn. Next.
But Lucy remained unconvinced because she couldn’t “respond� to quickies. So James told her: “If you are OK with occasional quickies, I promise to never expect you to respond. It will just be your gift to me.
OK, James, how’s this for a deal: after you and Lucy are done with your quickie, Lucy gets to break out the vibe and go to town. You’re free to watch her if you want, but she promises to never expect you to respond.
Of course, that also means no getting jealous or pissy when she makes more noise with a plastic dick than she does with yours, mmkay?
(And once again, Sue Johansen comes across as the best sex expert, ever!)
He gets sex he enjoys 100% of the time, and her payment is she gets to like it maybe even 50% of the time
That’s assuming he enjoys sex where he takes the time for his wife to enjoy herself.
Scummy Bear is exactly wrong, because Dworkin and MacKinnon are for the most part being descriptive rather than prescriptive. (At the risk of Godwinization, that comment is a little like wondering whether Primo Levi’s detailed descriptions of life in a concentration camp mean he was secretly a nazi.)
What always freaks me out is that the same guys who crow about Dworkin and MacKinnon are also the ones who talk about some bitch who wouldn’t put out even after they bought dinner and flowers, or about getting some babe to give it up, or about all the power women have because they can withhold sex from men. Poster children, all of them.
great post. MAJeff… don’t bother with SB. He has two brain cells, and they’re swimming in a murky ocean of not-thought trying to find one another.
The “acquiesence=consent” thing is something I’ve been thinking about for years. I teach my sons that consent is not enough…. that enthusiastic participation is the bar they should be reaching for. In my marriage, that’s certainly the bar both my husband and myself aim for.
No,what they did was try to allow women to litigate against porn producers for specific harms caused by porn (as defined by D&M of course). Litigation for harm is not exactly unknown in theUS. There are certain aspects of their proposal that are problematic and questionable, like, for instance, allowing women to litigate against a porn producer IF their male partners (or even a female stranger, for that matter) harmed them in such a way that was inspired by porn—this kind of “action at a distance” principle has a lot of risk of legal abuse, in my opinion, but that’s not necessarily a First Amendment problem.
But they were not planning on instituting a regime of censorship, whatever faults their proposal may have.
Scummy Bear, the people who have a lot in common with the religious right are the pseudo-sex status quo lovers, who think that women exist for the pleasure of men. Sex=woman, woman=thing, and consent is meaningless (or must be faked to make the man feel oh so manly).
Fuck that noise.
Also: euuugh. If my husband ever told me he didn’t expect me to respond, and that was OK, just as long as I let him use my body as a recepticle to ejaculate into, I think we’d be well past the point where counselling could save the marriage.
About the point of the thread I agree that sex should be enjoyable for both parties and in any good relationship it is. Whatkind of therapist was this one woman seeing that told her husband to have sex with her while she was sleeping? That is just plain sick. Also that John gray book was as much crap as The Rules. Many books came out in the 90s that screwed up male/female relations and that book was one of them. The point where Dworkin and Mackinnon get it wrong is assuming every sexual interaction between men and women is like this. I know many couples that have mutually enjoyable sex lives.
Scummy, please back up your assertion. You are lying about the “assuming every sexual interaction” in order to make a point. We only deal with the truth here, and wingnuts who can’t argue without falling back on lies are not allowed. Granted, that means they get tossed a lot, which says something about modern conservatism
Decontextualized quotes that make it seem like describing the construction of something in society=every single case are not evidence. Also, you haven’t answered which books you’ve read. You said you have, so we need you to back that up in order not to get banned for lying.
The point where Dworkin and Mackinnon get it wrong is assuming every sexual interaction between men and women is like this. I know many couples that have mutually enjoyable sex lives.
The point just flew over your head.
SB… they don’t. Get your facts straight. Societal trends are not the same as “always”
SB, learn the difference between an A-statement and an I-statement.
I know many couples that have mutually enjoyable sex lives.
Somehow, I am highly doubtful of anyone trusting you with the intimate details of their sex lives.
I do know that one of them said that under patriarchy consent means nothing which actually reduces women to the level of helpless children which is something feminism claims to fight against. A matures adult woman who is not intoxicated is perfectly capable of knowing whether or not she wants to have sex.
SB, maybe if you jump a little higher, one of the points will hit you on the head instead of keeping flying over it.
Amanda, are y’all still banning trolls that are boring? Because I’m seriously about to fall asleep, here. Just sayin’.
I rest my case. That he could read this post and say this = two brain cells. Murky seas. Not finding the one with the other.
Oh dear, can someone direct Scummy Bear to an article on meaningful consent that is, if this is possible, clearer and simpler than this one? More direct? The absence of three syllable words would probably be helpful.
I haven’t read much Andrea Dworkin or Catherine MacKinnon myself. But it is a small mind indeed that cannot grasp that patriarchal pressures influence women’s ability to give meaningful consent without reducing all women to helpless children.
For example, can a sober, mature adult woman prisoner give meaningful consent to a manipulative prison guard? She can “know whether or not (sic) she wants to have sex” but she doesn’t have any way of asserting her wishes.
Although I’ve not read much Andrea Dworkin, I’m really very impressed with her analysis. I don’t agree with everything she said, but I think there are fewer better examples of Dworkin that show that feminism is not just a cultural movement but a respectable intellectual perspective.
And Scummy Bear, for the sake of simplifying this a bit: No, none of them ever said that. You’ve been misinformed. Worth Reading
You know, I never understood the “jealous of the vibrator” thing that guys seem to have. Maybe my fiance is an oddball, but he actually LIKES the damn thing: watch me play with it, play with it with me, or just when he’s tired but still likes to know I’m getting off.
I, quite frankly, can’t understand why a guy would get mad at a female masturbating.
I vehemently dislike both of these thinkers and it has absolutely nothing to do with false claims about things they might have said. Instead, I dislike them because they both make sound fundamental arguments (which I agree with on many levels) and then take those arguments to a scary, scary place (i.e. all women’s choices are suspect because women can’t really see beyond the patriarchal system that is oppressing them…all women that is except them).
I wrote my entire thesis on this topic (based on in-depth interviews with about 25 sex workers) and while I agree that Dworkin and MacKinnon made valid points about the subtle powers of patriarchy, the conclusions they draw from this fact are both damaging to women and missing what I think is the real heart of the problem. In essence, both women basically argue that they know what all women would choose to do in any given situation were women freed from the constraints of patriarchy. That I might not agree with their choice for perfectly legitimate reasons is outside the scope of their argument entirely.
In different ways, both women argue that we can’t simply legislate equality because there are so many systematic ways in which oppressed groups are divested of “free choice� that genuine equality is unachievable without additional legal protections for the oppressed groups. I agree with the central argument, but then they take it one step further and suggest that currently we can never assume that members of oppressed groups are able to see beyond the systematic oppression and therefore are literally unable to make an actual “free choice.� In other words, as a women (i.e. member of an oppressed group), I am literally unable to make an actual choice about my life because I can’t see beyond the deeply ingrained patriarchal system that has me bamboozled.
I won’t even start going into their anti-porn stance which is based on the fundamental belief that the women participating are suffering false consciousness and that no “free� women would actually choose to do such a dirty thing. All I will say is that the laws they advocated for to “protect women from porn� would have in fact made the day to day lives of sex workers much more dangerous, a fact supported by numerous studies on the safety of sex work in various countries.
There IS a certain amount of inevitable
‘Having’, ‘giving’ and ‘taking’ that goes with
Sex…either straight or gay.
Not maybe so much with dominating or submitting
but more like bottom and top.
The language exists, the words ring pretty true,
and probably has base in that which sex is…
as biology, at the very least least.
[or like the whole comment is totally obvious,
redundant and superfluous.]
So all men are manipulative prison guards?
SB: Did you notice that bit about the difference between prescription and description? Hint: describing a bad situation doesn’t mean it’s the messenger’s fault. Someone already brought up Nazis for your benefit, for crying out loud!
This is the same kind of thinking which blamed the media for Abu Ghraib, because if we didn’t know it was happening, then we’d all be so much happier. How does this kind of thinking make any sense after you reach middle-school age?
Sex should not be thought of as a commodity that one person (wife) gives to another (husband). It should be viewed as an activity that two or more people engage in willingly and enthusiastically. What kind of scumbag would want to have sex with a sleeping woman who wasn’t into doing it while conscious? If my boyfriend EVER…
Count me in as yet another person thinking, “If he really wants quickies, can’t they get her a vibrator so she can have a good time, too?” But, of course, that would interfere with his view of her as a withholding, frigid bitch, so that won’t work.
I mean, I know relationships are all about compromise and occasionally you have to do things that aren’t at the top of your list that make your partner happy, but it should be stuff like who takes the garbage out, not something as important as sex.
*headdesk*
What does a woman’s desire (or lack thereof) matter if the society in which she lives (or the man to whom she’s married) doesn’t give a flying fuck about her wishes? If the notion that she EXISTS to be a cum-dumpster/baby-maker for some man is reinforced by her culture?
Okay, time for a Scummy Bear Ban. This is tedious.
Antigone, it takes a man with a very, very low opinion of himself to think he can be replaced by a gadget; it says, in effect, “my value to my partner is entirely mechanical.” Come to think of it, that dovetails rather nicely with the whole “men are drooling hormone morons incapable of thought” thing. You’d think men would be more pissed off at these stereotypes than at feminists, but go figure.
I second the call to ban SB. No one’s that stupid (please, please) so I expect he’s just trying to be a twerp. Much more fun to argue with Fizgig, who manages to disagree without being blatently trollish.
Scummy, your unwillingness to list which books by Dworkin and MacKinnon you’ve read and your continue unwillingness to address the point of the post in lieu of robotic assertions that you have no evidence for makes you a liar and a threadjacker. You’ve had your fun, but you’re banned now. We only deal with conservatives who can be honest about the facts here.
I have no doubt you’ll lie about why you were banned, but you can lie elsewhere.
Seriously, Mnemosyne. I think Dan Savage has it right here - you have to work together. I’m all about giving a little even if you’re not into it - you can dance around naked while your partner masturbates, provide, um, manual assistance, or just agree to give him/her some private time with the DVD player (or in some cases allow him/her to seek out sex elsewhere). But no one’s personal vulva is a receptacle.
Because in the minds of some men, women shouldn’t be allowed to climax without a penis. Apparently, if they’re not necessary for orgasm, they’ve been rendered completely useless to women as a group. It’s usually men who have nothing to offer mentally/emotionally who get paranoid about vibrators.
Okay, time for a Scummy Bear Ban. This is tedious.
[raising hand in agreement]
I’m currently reading MacKinnon’s Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues. That is, I keep picking it up and reading a snippet and then letting it fall from my hand with the weight of the pain and sorrow it contains. Descriptive indeed. Here’s a sentence from the chapter called “Women’s September 11th: Rethinking the International Law of Conflict”: “But it is striking that the number of people who died at these men’s hands on September 11th, from 2800 to 3000, is almost identical to the number of of women who die at the hands of men every year in just one country, the same one in which September 11th happened.”
StotheL: Of course Dan Savage has a point, but it’s a point that’s only useful to people working from a different set of basic beliefs from the creey guy. If one is okay with the “dead-log” style of fucking, I don’t think the problem is one of simple logistics.
If he really wants quickies, can’t they get her a vibrator so she can have a good time, too?
Heck, if all he’s looking for is a hole to come into, there are plenty of toys available for men. Why should it have to be a real, live, unconsenting hole? Assuming of course that his actual desire is for sexual pleasure rather than an expression of dominance…
Fizgig:
“currently we can never assume that members of oppressed groups are able to see beyond the systematic oppression and therefore are literally unable to make an actual “free choice.â€? In other words, as a women (i.e. member of an oppressed group), I am literally unable to make an actual choice about my life because I can’t see beyond the deeply ingrained patriarchal system that has me bamboozled.”
It sounds to me like you are extending this beyond what Dworkin and Mackinnon actually meant. Just because we can’t assume that every woman can see beyond the systematic oppression in order to truly make a free choice, this should not be construed to me that EVERY woman cannot see beyond that oppression.
This is a spoof site, right?
If this exemplary hubby wants a quickie, let him use the vibrator. Why would the exemplary wife need to be bothered at all? There are probably things she’d rather be doing than “lying there like a dead log.”
In fact, another solution suggests itself, though it would leave the schmuck at some hazard of splinters.
Hava: Is that the distinction? This usually comes up in the context of “She’s being oppressed!” “But she chose that.” “She didn’t choose that; it’s false consciousness.” The semantic difference between “no woman makes free choices” and “no woman can be assumed to be making a free choice” is, in this context, pretty hair-splitty.
The problem, which I think is what Fizgig is getting at, is that sooner or later leads this idea leads to accusations that the idea of false consciousness (is it called something else when it’s in feminism rather than Marxism?) is being used as a club to discount the ideas of women who disagree with the radicals: if you agree, then you agree, and the radicals are right. If you disagree, then you’re internalizing your oppression, and the radicals are right.
I know that both of them have tried to get porn banned which is in direct contrast with the 1st amendment.
…and Scummy’s dog in this fight shows its mangy hide.
Incoming!
But seriously, go on. Please explain what you think this site is spoofing, and why. Also, I’d be curious as to how you got here.
I don’t think it’s really splitting hairs. If you take the word “assumed” out of the sentence, it has a different meaning. An abuse of the idea doesn’t necessarily negate the validity of the idea itself.
Dunc: you said exactly what I was about to. Sure, she should be able to have a vibrator. But that’s not in any way equivalent to a quickie, since it doesn’t involve using somebody else’s body against their will for your own sexual gratification. I suspect James is in fact quite capable of getting off all by himself. Incidentally, do the sort of men who see vibrators as a threat refrain from wanking themselves? I would venture the guess “not”.
Google search string for “woman lying there like a dead log” probably, with his wang in his hand. Hehe.
Antigone: Maybe my fiance is an oddball
No, I’m a big fan too.
In general, I think Dworkin was the better intellectual and writer, and MacKinnon is the better activist. When the two get unfairly combined, you end up with a Frankenstein’s feminist who has both Dworkin’s personal foibles and tendency to withdraw plus MacKinnon’s rather imperious and voluminous prose.
However, they’re both quite valuable, and it should be an immediate red flag whenever someone tries to combine them into a single entity (”MacDworkin”, “one of them said all heterosexual sex is rape”, etc.). It is possible to largely agree with both Dworkin and Bright and not have your head explode.
Sometimes when the messenger is crazy, you should just find a better messenger. (all I know about Dworkin is from an anti-porn feminist documentary)
“But it is striking that the number of people who died at these men’s hands on September 11th, from 2800 to 3000, is almost identical to the number of women who die at the hands of men every year in just one country, the same one in which September 11th happened.�
And this is terrible. But men kill 13,000 other men every year. So in what way is MacKinnon supposed to have made a feminist point here? Men commit far more violence against other men than they do against women.
Part of the problem here seems to be the taboo against masturbation when a partner is present (albeit uninterested, sleeping, etc.). When one of us isn’t interested, the other DIY’s. Joining the fun is always an option, but not required.
I don’t know why the counselor for Lucy and her husband didn’t suggest a good healthy wank not involving her body! Or a long leisurely “gourmet” wank for for Lucy. All it takes is a little imagination, folks!
Yes, yes, patriarchy hurts men too, blah blah blah.
Nick Danger:
“Men commit far more violence against other men than they do against women.”
Hi Nick! I blame the patriarchy.
I tend to find both Dworkin and McKinnon somewhat unreadable, and it isn’t the ideas they express. Dworkin writes to shock in some ways, as if she can shock people into listening to her somehow. It works for some, but it makes others recoil and that obscures her underlying message for the very people who most badly need to read it. McKinnon’s excessive verbage verges on Victoriana writ radical feminist.
I far prefer Dworkin’s essays on neighborhoods and how her life changed in a negative way when her family moved from a classic stoop-sitting sort of place to a sanitized car dominated suburb.
While this option has appeal, if we really wanted to create an equivalent option for his wife the counselor should have suggested that James has to allow Lucy to fuck him in the ass with a dildo/ strap-on. And Lucy could assure James that she did not expect him to respond- he could just lay there like a dead log.
In the dildo solution, James’ consent is not really affected by Lucy’s actions- he can leave or watch, he just can’t interfere. In the ass-fucking solution, James’ consent is rendered as meaningless and his body objectified as much.
I am not advocating reducing men to the same level of disregard that women face, but I wonder if we presented these extreme options it might get the fuckers that promote this shit to STFU.
Men commit far more violence against other men than they do against women.
So it’s all good?
“Please explain what you think this site is spoofing, and why. Also, I’d be curious as to how you got here.”
I was reading a nice discussion at Ezra Klein’s site, and all of a sudden this woman “Amanda” shows up and starts screaming at some guy and calling him a masturbator, for no apparent reason. (It wasn’t me she was doing this too, btw, nor a friend of mine.) Then I noticed she has her own web site, and I come here, and she’s booting people off for not being nice posters!
So it has to be a spoof, yeah? Someone is trying to mock feminism by creating this “Amanda” pseudonym and going bat-shit crazy all over the Internet, right?
Actually I’ve always loved Andrea Dworkin. Reading “I Want a Twenty-Four Hour Truce” brought me to feminism. It was like a tidal wave of blinding recognition crashing over my head (or some similarly mixed metaphor/simile). She was so angry and she had reason to be - she was abused, homeless, a prostitute - she knew of what she spoke, and I loved for it. Of course I reserve the right to disagree with her (and do at times). Her whole life was one big experiment in using the active voice to talk about sexual violence, and look what it brought her. I think often the quarrel with Dworkin and McKinnon is one of emphasis (oppression vs agency) and therefore seems slightly silly to me.
Also, I agree with Ron Sullivan - if hubbie wants to masturbate, he should do that and leave his poor wife out of it. If he wants to have sex with an actual living, breathing human being thats a different story. But I would also imagine having sex when you don’t want to traumatizes your body and relationship and makes it difficult to trust and respond in a healthy way. Maybe that’s where the frigidity is coming from.
Oh, Nick, I didn’t “scream” anything. That’s your own sexism talking. I typed it. And what do you have against masturbation? Are you some kind of anti-masturbation wingnut?
What exactly do you think feminism is, Nick Danger?
But WE are those shitty friends: I hear those dismissals from feminists as much as I hear them from anti-feminists. John Gray is a scumsucking wipe, and a cartoonish illustration of the larger consequences of the EP apologists (and, let’s face it, one of the mellower ones). Scummy Bear trots out the same old tired crap. The predictable shrieking of porn-defensive men is just that: predictable.
But the current vogue in feminism of conflating being anti-industry with being anti-sex is as laterally damaging as the vertical damage coming from male anti-feminists, and more covert and exclusionary. It’s gotten tangled horribly in classism, too, as the arguments tend to revolve around upper middle class white women ‘making choices about their sexuality’ and thought-criminalizing any challenge to porn or the sex industry as inherently ‘oppressive’ (to those upper middle class white women?), while less privileged women continue to die in an industry still, always, primarily controlled by corporate (male, misogynous) interests making billions from the sexual exploitation of a global majority of women who empirically do not have choice.
The vogue argument of ‘but MY porn is GOOD porn,’ is, to my ears, the same whether it’s coming from feminists or trolls.
It’s a complicated subject, and one I realize this blog treads carefully out of commitment to furthering dialog.
But I have to say, I’m delighted to see a moment of not-bashing of Andrea Dworkin’s work here. We should all take on half as much as she did - about misogyny, about racism, about equality - with half the commitment, and rock the damned boat. Whether we agree with everything she said or not, she was brave as hell, a complex thinker, and profoundly committed to social justice.
Jack wrote: “So it’s all good?”
Jack, did you miss the part where I wrote, “This is terrible”? I realize I hid that way down in the first sentence, and you might not have read that far, but it was there.
So it’s terrible, but we shouldn’t talk about it because anything that doesn’t focus completely on The Mens isn’t worthwhile.
Nick, SB was booted for posting off topic and being dishonest in his arguments. It’s a private site; if the operators want to boot people for any reason at all, it’s their business. Don’t like it? Don’t read it.
Care to discuss the topic at hand, or are you just trolling? Actually, why am I even asking the question?
“What exactly do you *think* feminism is, Nick Danger?”
Well, what I think it’s *not* is showing up in the middle of a reasonable discussion and out of the blue calling someone a jerk off!
Does anyone know where I can find that MacKinnon/Moyers recording?
It’s perhaps not surprising how widespread the “wife = masturbation tool� meme is, but it still depresses me
No, because:
1. Sex with ‘the wife’ is never a form of masturbation.
2. A married man who masturbates is looked upon as one who has turned down a 7-course meal for macaroni salad.
3. (Insert your favorite ethic group) foreplay: “You awake?”
I had a manager whose wife asked him to order out pizza, he responded by asking for a blow job in return, and that was a lot more honest than the above BS.
With a moniker like “Nick Danger” how could he be anything but a troll?
Why is it the trolls (almost) always announce themselves with their name? Is it in the troll handbook?
Yes fellas. Using women as penis hand-puppets isn’t what we in the civilized world would call sex. Shocking, I know.
Well, I thought you were just paying it lip service, because it appears you want women to shut up about the violence done against them by men, and for your evidence that women should just shut up, you cite that men also do violence towards men.
I thought you were merely trying to make the point that, hey, everybody’s getting it so it’s fair. Or something. You’re not giving me a lot to work with, and it’s hard to figure out another person’s argument when they can’t string together one coherent thought. Sorry, bucko.
“I was reading a nice discussion at Ezra Klein’s site, and all of a sudden this woman “Amandaâ€? shows up and starts screaming at some guy and calling him a masturbator, for no apparent reason.”
I’m sure there was no nuance in any of this unhinged screaming either, ‘cause bitches is CRAZEE!!!
And I’m sure it went down EXACTLY the way you describe, and if it did, you have positive proof Amanda actually did the posting, etc.
Nick, you could be Gotto, Herc, Scummy Bear, or any number of other known trolls. Why should anyone believe anything you say?…
Hava, I agree that isn’t exactly what they meant to say, but I do think it is a logical extension of their argument. If some women can’t see beyond the patriarchy, how do we know who that is? Who is confused, who is enlightened, and who gets to decide? That is the heart of what has always struck me as dangerous about their position. If we want to argue that some women make bad choices because they don’t see “reality� then we are assuming a privileged position over them and their own experiences.
To me, all people are making strategic choices about their lives every day. I agree that there are a lot of serious problems with social institutions such as the sex industry and marriage. To use the quickie example, are people here suggesting that no woman should ever consent to such a thing? The case you mentioned is clearly messed up because the woman doesn’t want to have a quickie. But what if my husband is horny and I’m not, it is inherently oppressive for me to have sex with him, even if I don’t get to have an orgasm? What if, the next morning, I’m the horny one and he isn’t and so I ask for oral sex and he complies. Am I using him as a masturbatory tool? I guess my point is – we should condemn the situation, not the choice itself.
The woman in that case doesn’t want to have a quickie, so she should never be expected to and we should defend her right to say no way without feeling guilt or some kind of sexual obligation to please her man. But I’m not willing to say that every woman that offers a quickie to her lover is inherently oppressed. To me that is a dangerous leap because we are asserting a privileged position over each woman’s experiences.
Clearly there are deeply ingrained patriarchal beliefs that move us all to occasionally make bad choices, but how we treat those matters a great deal. If we want to combat the meme that a wife is responsible for sexually pleasing her husband, I think it is a bad idea to say that no woman should ever want to sexually please her husband. In my ideal world, my partner and I would feel a mutual sense of caring about the other’s pleasure and would willingly give each other pleasure even if it doesn’t always mean receiving it. As long as it is based on mutual caring and that it goes both ways, then I don’t see a problem. It is the sense of obligation that is the problem, not the act or pleasing itself.
That is where I see both Dworkin and MacKinnon going wrong, I feel like they condemn the act not the underlying meme that makes it oppressive.
It’s a complicated subject
It stops being a complicated subject when you portray those who disagree with you as inventing “thought-crimes” and being selfish and classist. Then it becomes self-congratulatory reductionism. Dworkin and Mackinnon did better than that–can’t you?
And what history_mom said. There’s a big difference between saying that sometimes it’s OK to ‘give’ to the other person, and insisting that Evolution and God made women to be fuck toys whose own pleasure is at best a side effect.
I was shocked and angry when the counselor suggested that my sleeping body should be a masturbation tool - pity, too, because outside of that huge blind spot, the premarital counseling was pretty good (with 2 pairs of divorced parents, we really wanted to hash stuff out before planning a party). I have no idea what she was thinking or why a fellow woman would suggest such a thing when she didn’t seem nutty in any other way outside of giving me the stank eye from that point on. My husband, being the cool dude he is, thought she was crazy to make the suggestion.
Then again, why would a baby feminist like me put up with my abusive ex-boyfriend (who introduced me to sex without consent) for over 3 years? We get taught to sacrifice a lot - even bodily integrity - to keep that normal facade of “being in a relationship” up. Discussions like this help show how empty that is.
This is not so much a consent issue as an “unconscionable bargain” issue. One can consent to the terms Gray mentions, but why would a reasonable person do that? No man would, the implicit argument goes, so why would any reasonable woman?
Libido can be different for partners, male or female. On can be a “hair trigger” orgasm producer and the other not. Maybe that is a result of skewed upbringing, maybe it is genetic, maybe it is a combination. In my experience, the one who is slow to orgasm is not going to be satisfied to be tossed a vibrator and told “have at it.”
Coordinating libidos is not as easy as it seems once partners are raising kids, balancing long work hours, tired at different times, not getting much sleep, battling depression, worrying, etc.
The goal is to have orgasms for both partners, for vicarious and non vicarious pleasure of both. Is that always reasonably possible? No. Does that mean that all sex without orgasms on both sides should be considered non-consensual (or not actually consented to) and minimized? No - friendly and cooperative sex is good for you, in mind and body, even without orgasm.
Both sides need to do the best they can reasonably do seeking orgasms for all with the toys and biology and mental states available. Anything more seems too much to ask.
Matthew: I was asked how I got here. I explained. Yes, the owners of the site can boot whomever they want. And I am likewise free to note that their own behaviour on other sites is far worse than what gets you booted here!
SarahMC: “So it’s terrible, but we shouldn’t talk about it because anything that doesn’t focus completely on The Mens isn’t worthwhile.”
That’s a bizarre interpretation of my comment. MacKinnon, as I take it, was trying to make a point about the oppressed status of women by citing that statistic. But, since men kill more men than they do women, that statistic doesn’t make the point she wants. She may have many other good arguments as to why women are oppressed, and it is certainly a worthwhile goal to reduce the number of women killed by men. Neither of those conditions makes her argument sound.
(See, Matthew, discussing the topic and all!)
The irony, it burns!
Nick — a link to this alleged misbehavior would be appropriate. Frankly, I don’t believe you. Amanda is rational, and I can’t imagine her going to another site and suddenly turning irrational. What I suspect really happened is that you got slapped in the nose by her calling you out on your male privilege and don’t like it much.
What exactly do you think feminism is, Nick Danger?
The feminism he wants to believe in is, if his “friend” (i.e. him) is the person I think he is, is the kind that thinks rape is swell. It was kind of weird. We were talking about porn and his “friend” went off on something about false rape accusations and came to the same conclusion these misogynists usually do, which is that we have to make rape de facto legal in order to protect men from the hoardes of lying bitches.
I saw McKinnon give a series of lectures when I was in grad school in the late 1980s. Her talks were in turn brilliant and infuriating. There was one moment in particular that best captured what I felt was wrong with her argument.
Over the course of three lectures, McKinnon carefully constructed an argument that to view pornography (a category that she defined very broadly) was essentially to engage in rape.
After each lecture, to her credit, she had a very open-ended q&a period. Among those who asked the most pointed questions were sex-positive feminists and scholars working in queer theory. Although she had not addressed the issue in the talks themselves, McKinnon suggested that her argument applied to gay pornography as well as straight pornography. Then someone asked her about Pasolini’s Salo. A parable of Fascism, this rather infamous film features copious amounts of de-eroticized sexual torture of young boys. McKinnon responded by saying that to see Salo was to engage in child abuse, “and if you don’t believe me, just watch it.”
Everyone was, to put it mildly, stunned at this last comment. To me it signaled that McKinnon didn’t take her own argument entirely seriously. And it made me reflect on what had come before. McKinnon had argued that the very act of viewing pornography degraded the viewer, turning him or her into a sexual abuser. And yet, she made this argument on the basis of hours of viewing pornography (which she described in some detail in these talks). Clearly McKinnon believed that she (and presumably her scholarly interlocutors) could view this material critically. But to admit as much undid much of her argument, which was built on the claim that it was literally impossible to view this material in such a way.
MikeEss wrote:
“I’m sure there was no nuance in any of this unhinged screaming either, ’cause bitches is CRAZEE!!!”
There were both men and women in the discussion, all behaving civilly. I would have been every bit as puzzled had a man acted like Amanda did.
“And I’m sure it went down EXACTLY the way you describe, and if it did, you have positive proof Amanda actually did the posting, etc.”
Here’s the thread:
http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/05/under_18_softco.html#comment-69091196
Either it was Amanda posting, or someone else has access to her blogging account, because the link on her name brought me straight here.
“Nick, you could be Gotto, Herc, Scummy Bear, or any number of other known trolls. Why should anyone believe anything you say?”
Check for yourself above.
Ben, exactly my point as well. MacKinnon removes the meaning behind an action (or image) and condemns the act removed from any meaning. So, a photo of a naked woman is inherently demeaning no matter what the context. But meaning is contextual and if we want to effectively condemn something, we need to hit the message not just the messenger.
I just checked out the Ezra Klein post in question, and it seems to be that someone brought up Amanda’s name, Amanda made a couple comments (no hysteria whatsoever) and then someone named “jerry” started slamming her. Color me confused.
Dear Amanda,
I am not Jerry. Since you are a poster here, you can e-mail me to confirm this if you want to.
Nor is Jerry my friend. I had never been to the site before. I started reading the thread, and it was quite interesting, until… the masturbation slurs began. (And *you*, not me, were the one who was using masturbation as a slur.) And I certainly did not interpret anything Jeerry wrote in the way you did — perhaps I need instruction in your special brand of hermeneutics? I followed the link on your name here, without knowing anything about you at all — indeed, whether you were really a woman — because I was curious to see who this person was.
“Screaming” is a metaphor. I would have used it whether it was a man or woman posting. Are you sure you’re not just hiding behind an accusation of “sexism” to cover up the fact you were behaving badly?
Nick Danger: I actually went looking through the last few Ezra Klein threads for anything that Amanda said, and I didn’t find any “screaming”. I was confused, but now I understand that making the point that it’s disingenuous to talk about agency and freedom for women in the context of them acting in a sexually pleasing manner for the speaker is actually screaming. In lowercase, too, no less!
Also, please look up “scatological”, and stop using it to mean “causes me to clutch my pearls”.
It’s fascinating that the concern trolls are coming out to derail, of all things, a conversation about the mundane notion that women should enjoy sex and participate equally. Dare I say that men who are scared of this conversation maybe are concerned that the requirement of making sure your female partner enjoys herself is too onerous and they can’t live up to it? I think I dare.
Fizgig, the logical extension you’re coming up with isn’t the same I come up with. There’s no way to say who is ‘more enlightended’. That’s very much an abuse of the idea. I tend to think of this in the same way that I think of this in the same way as I do subtle and internalized racism. I agree with you that all people are making strategic choices, but anyone’s ability to make a choice is inhibited or enhanced by a number of other issues - including there own self perception, which is so often influenced by the perception of us in the people and world around us.
There is a huge difference between doing a quickie because you have a shared care for the relationship with your partner and don’t mind doing one every once in a while and being told in blatently or subtley that you should even if you really don’t want to. I don’t think the idea is to judge other people as to who is more enlightened but to become aware, ourselves, of why we’re doing a particular thing. Is it because we have really made that decision or because we are being influenced, against our own wills, to fulfil some role that negates us as people because our culture pressures us in so many ways to do so?
In other words, the extension I come to for this idea is more one of helping to raise the level of consciousness of other women, not to judge them as lesser in some way. In terms of sex workers, this would involve helping them to fight for more autonomy and rights because they can perceive themselves as worthy of them, as well as beginning to understand ways to get out of the industry, if that is what they choose.
The following is the entirety of Amanda’s comments in that thread. Feel free to go back and read the comments of jerry, to whom she responded several times, for context. Exactly where does she “become unhinged?”
She 1) brings up some advantages and disadvantages to the proposal being debated, 2) questions the authenticity of one poster’s views, based on the fact that his only “pro free choice” views were those that enabled him to more effectively have access to viewing young women, not those positions that allowed those women to have more freedom from men, and 3) points out that Jerry believes that part of his male privilege is the privilege to have access to the bodies of women for sex and viewing. She uses strong language in these points of view. She does not, however, “come unhinged”.
And in what universe are the preceding comments “rational” and “civilized”? Jerry in particular comes across as someone who should come with a warning label.
Her comments seemed normal and apropos to me. I don’t see where she was “behaving badly” (almost like a puppy or something)
Nick: Also, masturbation wasn’t used as a slur. Calling jerry a basement-dwelling cheeto-muncher would have been a slur, but the point was that jerry seemed to have ulterior motives for his sudden interest in the rights of women–that perhaps he wasn’t so much interested in their freedom as he was in their delicious ta-tas, and that he was interested in enjoying pictures of said ta-tas. If you know a more common method of enjoying said pictures than wanking, please share.
Do you need the dots connected a little more closely, or is that good enough for you?
SarahMC, I’m sure Nick would never LIE about something like that. Maybe you need those special man-ears to hear the pointless screaming Nick heard from Amanda…
[/snark]
Amanda seems to have that effect on a lot of guys, who cannot face the simple truth of their own faults and the faults of other men. Deal with it…
then they take it one step further and suggest that currently we can never assume that members of oppressed groups are able to see beyond the systematic oppression and therefore are literally unable to make an actual “free choice.� In other words, as a women (i.e. member of an oppressed group), I am literally unable to make an actual choice about my life because I can’t see beyond the deeply ingrained patriarchal system that has me bamboozled.
I’m not sure I agree with that analysis. I think that there’s a difference between saying “We can’t assume that members of group X are doing Y freely” and saying “You, as a member of group X, can’t possibly be doing Y freely.”
Consider: We do a major study and analysis and discover that 95 out of 100 times that a member of X does Y, X does so because of social pressures, and not because X wants to do Y. In many cases members of X don’t even realize that they can ~Y.
In that case, we could say that it’s unfair to assume that members of X are doing Y freely. That doesn’t mean that no X are freely doing Y- it only means that we can’t assume Xs are doing Y freely.
I won’t even start going into their anti-porn stance which is based on the fundamental belief that the women participating are suffering false consciousness and that no “free� women would actually choose to do such a dirty thing.
It’s been a long time since I read either of them, but, again, that’s not how I remember it. I don’t remember it being so much about porn being dirty as it being about the nature of things as they currently exist. It’s not “No woman would freely choose to be involved in porn” it’s “No woman would freely choose to be involved in porn the way things are right now.”
I took it less as a moral opposition to the “dirtyness” of porn, and more about the ways that women are disproportionately harmed by the porn industry. i.e. Women wouldn’t really choose to be involved in pornography under the current system, unless there was coercion and manipulation happening.
Again, though, it’s been a long time since I’ve read either of them, so I may be way off base on that.
I never said there was anything wrong with masturbation. If you can argue honestly, Nick, you are allowed here. I very specifically was amused at the terror shown by your wingnut friend at the idea that he would have to masturbate to images of 21-year-old hags who are way over the hill and he needs that 18-year-old flesh.
Lying is not permitted. Wingnuts must use the facts, and if they can’t hack it with the facts, they have to go. Also, threadjacking is off-limits. So if you don’t have an intelligent thing to say about the actual post, please leave.
If they were required to actually please a woman, in every sexual encounter, they know they’d never get laid again. Hence the screaming.
“I tend to think of this in the same way that I think of this in the same way as I do subtle and internalized racism.”
mmm…floating in the same ways…
SarahMC wrote: “I just checked out the Ezra Klein post in question, and it seems to be that someone brought up Amanda’s name, Amanda made a couple comments (no hysteria whatsoever) and then someone named “jerryâ€? started slamming her. Color me confused.”
Jerry criticized one of Amanda’s arguments — no ad hominem, no insults. And here’s Amanda’s *initial* post in response:
“And no, jerry, I was saying your argument about “agency” is disingenous, because you’re only concerned about women’s right to full adulthood in those instances where that right protects your ability to jerk off to naked teenagers. Abortion? Birth control? Couldn’t hear you over the wanking.”
So, Jerry says, “Amanda’s argument is unsound,” and Amanda replies, “You’re just saying that because you want to jerk off to naked teenagers.” Not really a polite form of argumentation, is it?
Now, it’s true that Jerry escalated after that as well, but, Sarah, you’re just not going to get away with your made up description of what happened, because, you know, it’s on the Internet and everyone can read it.
(And, by the way, I didn’t come here to bring this up, just to find out who “Amanda” was — I only mentioned it when asked why I was at the site.)
I think they’re more threatened by the idea that if they have to get consent, they might end up not getting to rape their partners, and boy, is there anything more threatening than that?
(Seriously, though; I don’t think the problem is the idea that women have the same right to enjoy their sex as men do–the troll contingent hasn’t reached the “women are people” bar yet.)
We have been here before. Quite recently, in fact.
Reprise of Dworkin, Intercourse, from the infamous Chapter Seven:
OK. She’s talking about intercourse under conditions of capitalist patriarchy.
But the prose style does not lend itself to ready interpretation along those lines. If someone says that
1) A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused.
and
2) Violation is a synonym for intercourse.
It’s not a tremendous leap to get to
3) Intercourse is abuse.
Not necessarily rape, but certainly abuse.
And since Dworkin did spend some time explaining “I never said that”, perhaps some of the problem lies with the writer.
Damn. ScummyBear’s been banned already? I had a bunny video even he might have liked.
Back to the topic of the post, I liked this part in particular:
To say that Lucy is a victim is not to “victimize� Lucy; that happened when her husband treated her like an object instead of a person and that happened when her therapist objectified her under the guise of helping her.
It smelt to me of the exhortations to rape victims to “get over it” lest you “let him win” and “make yourself a victim.” The same brush-off of the person’s pain being annoying and burdensome to society, but still the responsibility of the hurt person, not the person who hurt them. It seems similar to me to how PTSD soldiers are treated. They, like women, are similarly seen as tools to be used by others, so when harm comes to them, it’s more pesky than horrifying, as if your printer was acting up.
I don’t think SB was conservative so much as scared you were going to take his porn away.
It’s quite worrying, the stories of therapists telling women to “lie there and put up with it”. It seems the general impression (admittedly not data) is still that women need to make all the concessions (I’m thinking of one of the V-monologues too), when I would have thought relationships counsellors would be the ones to know better.
Ugly in Pink: The comparison to soldiers with PTSD is very apt. Women who have lived in domestic terror situations, and women who have been raped very often have PTSD, and this is often minimized or made to be the problem “caused by” the woman. In fact, the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, which is assumed to be innate to the person who displays the symptoms, is often used to label women with PTSD from domestic terror and rape.
It’s true! Otherwise, he’s never been here before.
It seems the general impression (admittedly not data) is still that women need to make all the concessions (I’m thinking of one of the V-monologues too), when I would have thought relationships counsellors would be the ones to know better.
Well, if you have the “women as appliance” mentality, the purpose of relationship counsellors is not to make everyone happy, but to fix the printer.
Nick, can you go ahead and address the post, if you’d like to stay unbanned? People here don’t share your assumption that a woman with opinions is a horrible bitch, so you’re not going to convince anyone my teasing of your misogynist buddy was a bad thing. You’re free to quit your threadjack and participate in the community, if you follow the rules of no lying and no threadjacking. Next comment that features either of these will result in banning. I’m sick of this thread going nowhere. You’ve been caught lying already, so you’re one more lie or threadjack away.
Onlooker, if the quote is taken out of the context of capitalist patriarchy, then it’s the reader’s fault, not the writer’s.
I’m feeling a Lenny Bruce monologue about fucking welling up and penetrating my very being…
Ugly in Pink, if I’m a printer, I’m going to stay broken, damn it. Then maybe someone will start noticing all the functions I do for them, unappreciated. (My office printer goes down enough for this to be a VERY apt metaphor)
yay! kitties and bunnies!
That’s one unhappy kitty. But did you notice it didn’t complain until after the fact. Typical post-sex regret that’s gonna end up destroying that poor bunny’s life [/MRA}
Fizgig - I think what Dworkin and McKinnon are trying to suggest is when there are books on the bestseller list for literally years that say explicitly that women are obligated to have quickies when they don’t want to, and that their enjoyment is not a central feature of sex, we have a problem that’s bigger than what an individual women may feel comfortable negotiating with her partner, because she’s not making that negotiation in a vacuum. She’s making it in a real-world context where there is a lot of pressure on her to make that deal. If patriarchy didn’t exist and there was no such expectation, then an individual woman would be on equal footing to make that kind of trade, if she so desired. Until that time, she isn’t able to consent freely because of the social pressure, because she can’t really know how she would feel without that pressure - says McKinnon and Dworkin.
Now, like almost everyone trying to prove a point, McKinnon and Dworkin go too far at times and end up overstating their argument - Ben Alpers gives one such example above. But I don’t think that nullifies their basic point.
I was going to feed the troll again, and then I came to my senses. Sorry for slipping up…
On topic, I was told a long time ago by guys I respect that “vaginal masturbation” was stupid and wrong. If she’s in the mood, enjoy it together. If she isn’t, either wait ’til later (next day or whatever) or take care of it yourself.
Either way, your dick ain’t going to fall off, so deal with it…
“It’s true! Otherwise, he’s never been here before.”
I was sure I recognized that handle before…
Odanu - You’re right of course, rape and abuse victims do also have PTSD. I was more interested in the tool comparison, and wondering if there’s any other groups we view in that way.
I didn’t know about the BPD thing - I had a roommate once that was diagnosed with it. Thinking back, her relationship with my friend might well have had something to do with it. Crap.
Hava, I agree with you 100%. I think we are all profoundly and deeply influenced by social systems such as racism and sexism and we all, over our life times will make some poor choices based on internalized beliefs that we might not even recognize the basis of. I totally agree that the best way to combat this is self-awareness and awareness raising in general. I will scream from the roof tops that there is an oppressive social meme out there suggesting that it is a wife’s job to sexually satisfy her husband and I will also yell that no woman should ever feel any obligation to sexually please someone if she doesn’t want to.
In my reading of, especially MacKinnon, I feel that she is pointing out the oppressive meme, and then proposes that any woman who pleases her husband is inherently oppressed. For example, MacKinnon really does equate women to children in Only Words and suggests that women who are sex workers are all suffering from false consciousness. To me that is her “judging them as lesser in some ways.�
The sex workers I interviewed felt betrayed by feminists such as MacKinnon because they felt like she was advocating for laws that would have made them feel less safe and more likely to be coerced or assaulted. Most (though not all) of the women I interviewed felt humiliated by the work they did, but they also argued (with one exception) that the reason they do it is for the money. If we want to help women escape sex work, there are a whole slew of social and economic problems that need to be addressed. Until a single mother can find some other way to make $80/hour, sex work will be a hard choice chosen by many women.
Now I’m all motivated to unpack my thesis or some of my boxed books to find the actual quote where MacKinnon literally compares women to children….
I’m part of that inner circle of men who have learned that when she enjoys it, it’s A) better for both of you and B) more likely to happen again.
We have a brochure, if anyone’s interested. It’s got pictures and everything.
What I see in that post Nick linked to is Amanda responding pretty decently after she had already been attacked before even becoming involved in the discussion, and then Jerry responding with hateful, hysterical posts.
But is it actually MacKinnon doing that, or is it her saying that the patriarchy reduces women to children? Not the same thing.
Brklyngrl, yes, I do agree that is their point and I understand why they make that argument. I am just not comfortable with the “she isn’t able to consent freely because of the social pressure� part of that argument.
I do not think it is a sound argument to suggest that women are unable to make informed choices because of external social pressures that confuse us. Not only does it imply that I am unable to make informed choices about my own life, it also opens the door to a million arguments with very anti-feminist consequences – “a woman in college is socially pressured to have an abortion because college girls are not supposed to have babies out of wedlock, so she can’t really consent to an abortion because we don’t know how she would feel without that social pressure.�
I think that’s what most of us see, Astraea. I’d love to hear the justification for calling her hysterical, and for suggesting that she “barged in” to a discussion that mentioned her by name.
Hava and Fizgig: Is what you’re talking about the situation where a woman will say, “but I enjoy working in porn”, and someone will say, “no you don’t”? Because the situation where a woman is being coerced into saying that sounds exactly like the situation where she’s doing it of her own free will, and I think that’s the heart of the problem. On the one hand, you don’t want to infantilize women, but you also don’t want to fall for another in the set of Stupid Patriarchy Tricks.
It reminds me a bit of an old video I saw in a documentary on the Civil Rights era, where a bunch of white men were looming around this one black guy, who was haltingly explaining how things were just fine and everyone got along without any trouble. It’s not infantilizing to point out that he’d be lynched if he said “these people would cut me to ribbons if I didn’t do as they told me”, but the situation isn’t always so clear-cut.
Fizgig - I’m not that familiar with MacKinnons’ writings (I’m at near Wikipedia level, but I’ve read Dworkin and have great respect for her. I don’t think she’s an easy read and is easy to misunderstand. I’m going to take Djur’s advice and not mix up the two of them.
I would like to see what MacKinnon actually says in the comment you’re referring to re: comparing women to children - though I hestitate to ask you to unpack just for that! I’m curious if she is describing the meme in the culture that that insists on keeping women on the level of children.
My previous comment in moderation was a little late and now just looks silly. But I did want to respond to Onlooker..
I don’t know how you come to the conclusion that the quote you selected suggests that Dworkin is calling penetration a violation, when it very clearly says right in the quote that
“The discourse of male truth—literature, science, philosophy, pornography—calls that penetration violation. ”
It is the patriarchy that defines penetration as violation. You don’t even have to look far to find a current, vivid example: Purity Balls.
Okay, going to respond to this, in the interest of the original point I made about feminists respecting each other’s work, whether we agree or not.