Heterosex

[greenie_breizh]

Reading about heterosex and feeling a little down at how male hegemony is just so closely intertwined with the way we see sex - it's like even when we think we're in an egalitarian relationship where the woman is treated the same as the man, our accounts of sex reveal systemic inequalities. :/ I find myself wondering if it's possible to have non-

Comments

[greenie_breizh]

As nice as it would be to be able to say you have only ever had non-hegemonic sex, it's kind of impossible without knowing the meaning that the men you slept with have constructed around the sexual acts you've done with them. You're a member of the non-dominant group here (aka a woman) and even though part of the trick is that women themselves articulate hegemonic discourses, it's men that are the center of it. Actually I just realized you said you did sleep with both assholes and men who have these hegemonic models in mind, well, that pretty much says it all. The dominant group is the only who ultimately has the power to articulate discourses - that's what makes it dominant - so if the men think in hegemonic terms? In a way, it doesn't much matter what you think. As a non-straight person I might convince myself that I've never been a victim of heterosexism or that I've never played into heterosexist script but 1) that's probably just me not being very attentive and 2) I can say that a hundred times a day, it's not going to change the fact that (let's say) the first thing I ask when a baby is born is "is it a boy or a girl" and that action, no matter the meaning I put on it, is the hegemony of heterosexism at work.

There is also the fact that straight sexuality is by nature hegemonic in our world - so as long as you take part in this system you are being hegemonic, kind of like just because we were born white we're part of an hegemonic system of skin color. You don't create meaning in a vacuum - so just because you, as an individual, did something in a non-hegemonic way doesn't mean that it is part of a larger hegemonic framework.

For example something that we were discussing yesterday with a friend - on an individual level there is nothing wrong with a straight woman who is honest in her desires and wants to sleep with another woman to know what it's like. The problem is that, no matter how she frames her experience, in a heterosexist world, it's always going to be part of a larger context where heterosexuality is valued above other sexual orientations and where her experience is perceived as her dabbling into something 'spicy' or 'sexy' or 'unusual' but (thank the gods) she went back to normal.
So for me a lesbian who has a single experience with a man for example is less problematic because she's not enacting a hegemonic script in the same way (other issues arise, but that's something else).

I think part of trying to challenge hegemony is admitting that we all partake in it, willingly or not, whether we're aware of it or not. It sure doesn't feel too good, but it's a necessary step. You say your acts only have the meaning you give them, but that's not really true - they also have the meanings that other people attach to them, and they relate to the structure that they help construct. Did you watch the video of whiteness? It kind of touches upon that - how we need to own our whiteness, and the privilege that comes with it, so we can do anything about the hegemony of whiteness in this world.