I'd been meaning to post links to this for a while anyway.
Basically, sex as a social practice...
This "Mythistory Monday" sort of straddles the line between "historical" and "topical": the myth in question is the endlessly repeated chestnut Andrea Dworkin claims that all heterosexual sex is rape. No she doesn’t; she never said this, and has repudiated it when asked directly. The myth is historical, in a sense, since it deals with the upshot of key writings of Second Wave feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. The myth is topical, in a sense, since Andrea Dworkin’s still alive and still writing, and since it seems the idiot notion seems to keep coming up no matter how many times it is addressed (see, for the latest example, Mark Fulwiler’s regrettable comments-which he later, in part, retracted-in the Liberty and Power controversy that Roderick and I have managed to stir up). But whether historical or topical, it’s all bunk.
Dworkin’s slanderers, if they bother to cite anything from her work at all (which they usually don’t), usually skim some out-of-context quote or another from Intercourse; often, for example, something like this:
A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth-literature, science, philosophy, pornography-calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into (“violate”) the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy. She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity.
- Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, chapter 7
Or this:
Male-dominant gender hierarchy, however, seems immune to reform by reasoned or visionary argument or by changes in sexual styles, either personal or social. This may be because intercourse itself is immune to reform. In it, female is bottom, stigmatized. Intercourse remains a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her cell by cell her own inferior status, impressing it on her, burning it into her by shoving it into her, over and over, pushing and thrusting until she gives up and gives in- which is called surrender in the male lexicon. In the experience of intercourse, she loses the capacity for integrity because her body-the basis of privacy and freedom in the material world for all human beings-is entered and occupied; the boundaries of her physical body are-neutrally speaking- violated. What is taken from her in that act is not recoverable, and she spends her life-wanting, after all, to have something-pretending that pleasure is in being reduced through intercourse to insignificance.
- Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, chapter 7
But taking the interpretation, from these passages, that Dworkin thinks all heterosexual sex (or all penis-in-vagina intercourse) is rape merely amounts to a misunderstanding-either because the reader has only encountered passages like these, out of context, in a "horror file"-style catalogue or because he or she is not extending the same effort at interpretive charity towards Dworkin that she or he would for anyone else. Both seem to be unfortunately common conditions; as a result, statements that Dworkin makes about the meaning of intercourse are routinely misinterpreted as statements made in propia voce when in fact they are statements of the meaning attributed to intercourse by male supremacist culture and enforced by the material conditions (economic vulnerability, violence) that women face under patriarchy. These are meanings that Dworkin, among other things, intends to criticize (anyone who has had to write a long exposition of a systematic view with which they disagree could probably be misinterpreted in the same way)
[....]
If I had to try to summarize what Dworkin is saying while standing on one foot, I’d try this woefully abridged summary of her major theses: (1) that patriarchal culture makes heterosexual intercourse the paradigm activity for all sexuality; other forms of sexuality are typically treated as “not real sex” or as mere precursors to intercourse and always discussed in terms that analogize them to it; (2) that heterosexual intercourse is typically depicted in ways that are systematically male-centric and which portray the activity as iniated by and for the man (as “penetration” of the woman by the man, rather than “engulfing” of the man by the woman, or as the man and woman “joining” together-the last is represented in the term “copulation” but that’s rarely used in ordinary speech about human men and women); (3) that the cultural attitudes are reflective of, and reinforce, material realities such as the prevalence of violence against women and the vulnerability of many women to extreme poverty, that substantially constrain women’s choices with regard to sexuality and with regard to heterosexual intercourse in particular.....
Andrea Dworkin does not believe that all heterosexual sex is rape
The whole issue of intercourse as this culture’s penultimate expression of male dominance became more and more interesting to me. In Intercourse I decided to approach the subject as a social practice, material reality. This may be my history, but I think the social explanation of the "all sex is rape" slander is different and probably simple. Most men and a good number of women experience sexual pleasure in inequality. Since the paradigm for sex has been one of conquest, possession, and violation, I think many men believe they need an unfair advantage, which at its extreme would be called rape. I don’t think they need it. I think both intercourse and sexual pleasure can and will survive equality. ~Dvorkin, in an interview with Michael Moorcock.
Thinking "aloud..."
I suppose if you're not accepting of this idea of **patriarchy (or male supremacist society as this blogger calls it) then such analysis and theory may read as strange or even over-blown.
But I do think it takes merely looking at the language and the actions that make up our discussions about and surrounding sex to see some of what is being discussed.
Sex is something that is not seen in as an act engaged in between two equals. It's seen as something women have that men want. It's seen as something women can/may/have to give up. It's seen as something men can/may take.
Language and actions? Nailed. Fucking (where man is the fucker and woman the fuckee). Taking. Women giving it up. Notches on bed posts (for how many women you've managed to "nail.") Good girls don't.
(You know, I didn't get that last one from my parents, but it sure as hell got fed to me in other mediums, be it from other people, peers, or things I read, watched, or heard. It was never something that particularly affected me, but I did notice it.)
Shall we get into the whole concept of daddy-daughter/purity balls and purity rings shite that puts the onus of sexual gate keeping on young women? (Where are the mommy-son dances/balls/and purity rings?)
The socio-political aspects of sex and sexuality are interesting.
**The patriarchy is very like the Matrix, in that it is a false construct laid over the top of a reality, that makes things look very different. Viewing the same thing while fully and uncritically socialized into the patriarchy and while cognizant of its falsity creates two very different pictures.
Like the Matrix, which Morpheus described as “everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room… It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth,” the systemic sexism known as the patriarchy is so comprehensive and profound that “seeing it” actually takes some effort, some willingness to see it. And, like those who find themselves awakening from the Matrix, people who find themselves awakening from the patriarchy learn to identify its patterns, upon which it is dependent for the transmission of its ideals and its continual self-generation. - McEwan
This "Mythistory Monday" sort of straddles the line between "historical" and "topical": the myth in question is the endlessly repeated chestnut Andrea Dworkin claims that all heterosexual sex is rape. No she doesn’t; she never said this, and has repudiated it when asked directly. The myth is historical, in a sense, since it deals with the upshot of key writings of Second Wave feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. The myth is topical, in a sense, since Andrea Dworkin’s still alive and still writing, and since it seems the idiot notion seems to keep coming up no matter how many times it is addressed (see, for the latest example, Mark Fulwiler’s regrettable comments-which he later, in part, retracted-in the Liberty and Power controversy that Roderick and I have managed to stir up). But whether historical or topical, it’s all bunk.
Dworkin’s slanderers, if they bother to cite anything from her work at all (which they usually don’t), usually skim some out-of-context quote or another from Intercourse; often, for example, something like this:
A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth-literature, science, philosophy, pornography-calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into (“violate”) the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy. She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity.
- Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, chapter 7
Or this:
Male-dominant gender hierarchy, however, seems immune to reform by reasoned or visionary argument or by changes in sexual styles, either personal or social. This may be because intercourse itself is immune to reform. In it, female is bottom, stigmatized. Intercourse remains a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her cell by cell her own inferior status, impressing it on her, burning it into her by shoving it into her, over and over, pushing and thrusting until she gives up and gives in- which is called surrender in the male lexicon. In the experience of intercourse, she loses the capacity for integrity because her body-the basis of privacy and freedom in the material world for all human beings-is entered and occupied; the boundaries of her physical body are-neutrally speaking- violated. What is taken from her in that act is not recoverable, and she spends her life-wanting, after all, to have something-pretending that pleasure is in being reduced through intercourse to insignificance.
- Andrea Dworkin, Intercourse, chapter 7
But taking the interpretation, from these passages, that Dworkin thinks all heterosexual sex (or all penis-in-vagina intercourse) is rape merely amounts to a misunderstanding-either because the reader has only encountered passages like these, out of context, in a "horror file"-style catalogue or because he or she is not extending the same effort at interpretive charity towards Dworkin that she or he would for anyone else. Both seem to be unfortunately common conditions; as a result, statements that Dworkin makes about the meaning of intercourse are routinely misinterpreted as statements made in propia voce when in fact they are statements of the meaning attributed to intercourse by male supremacist culture and enforced by the material conditions (economic vulnerability, violence) that women face under patriarchy. These are meanings that Dworkin, among other things, intends to criticize (anyone who has had to write a long exposition of a systematic view with which they disagree could probably be misinterpreted in the same way)
[....]
If I had to try to summarize what Dworkin is saying while standing on one foot, I’d try this woefully abridged summary of her major theses: (1) that patriarchal culture makes heterosexual intercourse the paradigm activity for all sexuality; other forms of sexuality are typically treated as “not real sex” or as mere precursors to intercourse and always discussed in terms that analogize them to it; (2) that heterosexual intercourse is typically depicted in ways that are systematically male-centric and which portray the activity as iniated by and for the man (as “penetration” of the woman by the man, rather than “engulfing” of the man by the woman, or as the man and woman “joining” together-the last is represented in the term “copulation” but that’s rarely used in ordinary speech about human men and women); (3) that the cultural attitudes are reflective of, and reinforce, material realities such as the prevalence of violence against women and the vulnerability of many women to extreme poverty, that substantially constrain women’s choices with regard to sexuality and with regard to heterosexual intercourse in particular.....
Andrea Dworkin does not believe that all heterosexual sex is rape
The whole issue of intercourse as this culture’s penultimate expression of male dominance became more and more interesting to me. In Intercourse I decided to approach the subject as a social practice, material reality. This may be my history, but I think the social explanation of the "all sex is rape" slander is different and probably simple. Most men and a good number of women experience sexual pleasure in inequality. Since the paradigm for sex has been one of conquest, possession, and violation, I think many men believe they need an unfair advantage, which at its extreme would be called rape. I don’t think they need it. I think both intercourse and sexual pleasure can and will survive equality. ~Dvorkin, in an interview with Michael Moorcock.
Thinking "aloud..."
I suppose if you're not accepting of this idea of **patriarchy (or male supremacist society as this blogger calls it) then such analysis and theory may read as strange or even over-blown.
But I do think it takes merely looking at the language and the actions that make up our discussions about and surrounding sex to see some of what is being discussed.
Sex is something that is not seen in as an act engaged in between two equals. It's seen as something women have that men want. It's seen as something women can/may/have to give up. It's seen as something men can/may take.
Language and actions? Nailed. Fucking (where man is the fucker and woman the fuckee). Taking. Women giving it up. Notches on bed posts (for how many women you've managed to "nail.") Good girls don't.
(You know, I didn't get that last one from my parents, but it sure as hell got fed to me in other mediums, be it from other people, peers, or things I read, watched, or heard. It was never something that particularly affected me, but I did notice it.)
Shall we get into the whole concept of daddy-daughter/purity balls and purity rings shite that puts the onus of sexual gate keeping on young women? (Where are the mommy-son dances/balls/and purity rings?)
The socio-political aspects of sex and sexuality are interesting.
**The patriarchy is very like the Matrix, in that it is a false construct laid over the top of a reality, that makes things look very different. Viewing the same thing while fully and uncritically socialized into the patriarchy and while cognizant of its falsity creates two very different pictures.
Like the Matrix, which Morpheus described as “everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room… It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth,” the systemic sexism known as the patriarchy is so comprehensive and profound that “seeing it” actually takes some effort, some willingness to see it. And, like those who find themselves awakening from the Matrix, people who find themselves awakening from the patriarchy learn to identify its patterns, upon which it is dependent for the transmission of its ideals and its continual self-generation. - McEwan