Mind the Gap

I’ve been holding back on the whole internet feminist sex wars until I felt I had something really constructive to contribute. (In fact, from now on, the word “pornography” will ever be mentioned in my posts, if at all, as its abreviation in the Table of Elements, Pfy, and this post ain‘t about it, so get your hand out of there or go find a different blog).

After all, the debate is so completely omnipresent and divides people so much, it’s easy to have an opinion on it and to blather on at some length without saying anything new, something that‘s very tempting, because both sides are equally off-pissing and judgemental. And it tends to piss us all off equally, because each position makes some basic and sometimes pretty categorical assumptions about our personal sex lives, that we don‘t necessarily want to accept from a total stranger in Akron, Ohio or King‘s Lynn, Norfolk – or anyone from anywhere. If a penguin from Antarctica made those assumptions about my sex life, I would steal its unborn kids, make omelette out of them, and feed them to the ugliest, smelliest bastard of a dog I could find. And I love penguins.

So, there is no way the two sides can ever agree – or get over themselves – , since both positions are so radically opposed, right? Well, that’s where I disagree. I’m going to argue that both positions are very similar, almost identical, in fact, except for a few minor details. Why? Well, they both treat the body as private property. In fact, the position that Pfy empowers women only takes the idea a little further, by making capital gain from the property in question.

What’s possessing me to argue this? Well, something Laura Woodhouse wrote at the F-Word got me thinking. In the context of where Laura would have seen that quote, she has every right to be offended by it, and is absolutely correct in everything she says in her post. But that idea, in the context where it originated, is actually pretty intriguing. I don’t agree with it, but it’s a little less offensive in its original context than it is when used to tell heterosexual women that, sorry girls, but you’re all being raped by the man and / or men in your life.

In fact, the idea can be traced back to something New York Radical Woman Robin Morgan said:

“I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire.”

Robin Morgan herself is quite intriguing. I find myself agreeing strongly with parts of her ideas and disagreeing equally strongly with other parts, both of those often occurring in the same sentence. I would say she had quite a sensationalist streak, which was apparently an important part of her activism, as evidenced by the fact that she was a founding member of W.I.T.C.H., which variously stood for Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, Women Inspired to Tell Their Collective History, Women Interested in Toppling Consumer Holidays, and so on, depending on how creative members of the various groups were feeling, or what was bothering them more (I have to say, I can identify with the desire to Topple Consumer Holidays. Where do I sign up for that?). One of W.I.T.C.H.’s main tactics was guerrilla street theatre, which kind of betrays their arty middle-class background, but also justifies the, shall wel say, element of surprise in some of Ms Morgan‘s pronouncement. They also had strong Marxist components, as evidenced by some of Ms Morgan’s quotes:

“The oppressors are indeed FUCKED UP by being masters (racism hurts whites, sexual stereotypes are harmful to men) but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism — the oppressed have no alternative — for they have no power — but to fight. In the long run, Women’s Liberation will of course free men — but in the short run it’s going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women — kill your fathers, not your mothers. “

This I can sort of get behind.

“A genuine Left doesn’t consider anyone’s suffering irrelevant, or titillating; nor does it function as a microcosm of capitalist economy, with men competing for power and status at the top, and women doing all the work at the bottom (and functioning as objectified prizes or “coin” as well). Goodbye to all that.”

This I whole-heartedly agree with, with one reservation: for that to be the case, there doesn‘t need to be men at the top and women at the bottom. And as Laura identified even from a third-hand modified quote in someone’s comments thread, there is an almost biologically determinist component to Ms Morgan’s feminism (emphasis on “almost”):

“Biological determinism has for years struck me as a failure of intellectual nerve. So I don’t mean to counter sexist theories along those lines with a mirror-image feminist version… Yet it is undeniable that history is a record of most women acting peaceably and of most men acting belligerently — to a point where the capacity for belligerence is regarded as an essential ingredient of manhood and the proclivity for conciliation is thought largely a quality of women.”

Conveniently, this allows her not to take into account her own privilege and how it places her with regards to women’s liberation, and how it might affect her activism. As I said before, the people carrying out the oppressing aren’t necessarily the source of the oppression. This has happened to a certain extent with feminism, probably in much the same way it happened with the “male left“, even though there is little testosterone involved. It ends up being framed in such a way that you need amounts of time and money to become involved, going back and forth to events, that are not available to the most oppressed women, with the danger of it becoming a kind of rich people’s playground, with no interest in the issues being resolved at all – otherwise, no more playground. But I guess that’s a whole other subject.

Anyway, back to the original quote. The thing I’m interested in here is the usage of the word “rape”. Obviously, she’s not exactly referring to the crime as we currently understand it. Yet the understanding of that crime has a long history, which makes it strange, to me, that radical feminism would want to claim the word and apply it to more things, not fewer things. Wouldn’t it be better to completely change the way we think of the crime? The word does carry a certain weight and make people sit up and listen, which is one rationale for using it a lot. But aren’t there a few problems with that?

Etymologically, rape doesn’t actually refer to assault, but to the seizing of something by force, with no sexual connotations (it comes from the Latin rapere. The Latin word for rape, vim, in fact means ‘assault’. I’m not suggesting we look to the Ancient Romans as an example of ideal gender equality, by the way, no need for those butterfly nets and white suits just yet). For quite a long time, the victim of the crime was considered to be the husband of the raped woman, or her father, or her “proprietor”, not the woman herself. One way to right the wrong was to marry off the woman to her attacker, with the consent of her father or husband to be. Even when the woman’s state of mind was taken into consideration, rape was still considered to be impossible within the confines of marriage. In different contexts, like war for instance, the idea of the woman’s body as someone else’s private property becomes even more obvious, since it goes hand in hand with pillaging and burning down enemy resources.

What Robin Morgan’s use of the word “rape” does is re-attribute that property to the woman, and allow her to dispose of it as she pleases (and possibly, guard it jealously from oppressors). The other thing she does is remove the idea of it having to be “seized by force”, because obviously the position of power of the man involved means there’s inherently some force involved, even if it’s not physical. In a sense, she’s quite right – if something is taken that wasn’t offered, that’s theft, and given Ms Morgan’s view of the power relationships between men and women, then yes, it’s consistent to doubt whether it’s even possible for a woman to offer anything willingly to a man at all, whether it’s sex or a cup of tea. And as for the problematic use of the word “initiated”, well, it’s nebulous where sex begins and ends, but yes, the woman’s participation in it should certainly be initiated by herself for it not to be theft of the “property” that is her body. Without her participation, no sex occurs, at least not between the two partners, though the man is free to go off and remedy his own predicament if he so chooses.

My problem here isn’t so much with saying that women have limited agency – after all, a big part of feminism is trying to prove that women are denied agency – and more with the idea that the body is a piece of private property. After all, I would argue that a lot of women’s current predicament comes from institutions set up to uphold the idea of private property, like marriage and the nuclear family. Surely we’ve reached new heights in terms of capitalism if we’ve started to view our own bodies as our property. And that’s where you see that the pro-porn position isn’t so opposed to this, in fact it’s a logical extension of it. If your body’s your private property, why not sell it for personal gain? In fact the main opposition to this from the “other side” seems to be that men might stand to gain something from it, or that they control the whole deal anyway, not the idea of the body as private property. How did a movement originating in the Civil Rights movement and the New Left of the 1960s turn into this? Well, quite possibly via the same process Robin Morgan observed in the New Left, of the movement turning into a microcosm of capitalism through people competing at the top, continuing to think patriarchally.

If the body is a piece of property that is ours to objectify in whatever way we choose, though, one question remains: where the hell are we? Obviously, we’re not outside of our bodies – in fact, that’s one thing that makes sexual assault so traumatic, and after-effects often include feeling disconnected from the body. One description of sexual abuse that I find pretty harrowing is young Karen in the Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, who learns to project herself out of her body during her uncle’s repeated assaults and “hides” behind the curtains of her bedroom watching it happen to what seems like someone else, and as an adult, eventually changes her name to Charis, the name she gave that other self she created to escape what was happening to her.

In fact, the idea of women’s minds being separate from their bodies is very common. When women talk about a sick friend amongst themselves, you quite often hear “well, she’s strong-willed, but it’s up to her body now”. And women’s magazines are full of it too, with “mind and body” sections, and emphasis on keeping “a health mind and a healthy body”, always in parallel of course. This implies that there is a separate “you” that’s just saddled with this thing you have to keep yourself in harmony with, that ends up being no more a part of “you” than your back garden or your house, and a “happy new you” generally has to involve dieting and a new kitchen, or at the very least a spring-clean and some new eyebrow tweezers. But one of the most harmful part of this is that there is a single “you” that all of this has to reflect, that you have to be true to, when in fact we all have multiple identities that shift all the time, so that it’s impossible to pin yourself down under one identity without lying to yourself, which can lead to a feeling of guilt about lying to others that is familiar to those of us with multiple nationalities or nebulous sexualities – which is more people than you’d think. In fact, possibly most of us, since sexuality and nationality are both pretty nebulous things.

It would seem that the idea that your spleen or your left arm belong to you rather than being a part of you is at the root of all this current emphasis on identity in feminism, and at the root of a lot of women’s magazine bullshit too, which goes some way to explaining, with all due respect, the resemblance of a small part of feminist thought to women’s magazine bullshit. So, are men equally affected by this? Well, if you think of any male celebrities who define themselves in terms of one identity and being true to who they are, one example of this I can think of right now is Russel Brand – and he’s hugely feminised, I’m sure a lot of us have older relatives who have aggressively enquired “Is he a homosexual??!” when encountering him on TV.

So what do we do about it then? Well, there is a third way, and it has been explored in the 60s sexual revolution: abolishing private property in terms of sex. But the flaw in this thinking is that it’s still treating your body as if it ever was your private property in the first place, which is still not recognising the difference between your nose and a spoon. That’s probably why it proved so easy, as Amy pointed out, for Hugh Hefner and his ilk to capitalise on the sexual revolution in the 60s. And the other flaw with the whole sexual revolution thing back then is that there was a strong component of “be true to yourself”. Which actually makes sense, because the whole thing took place when people’s middle-class sons and daughters discovered and adopted the lifestyle of various minorities and fringe groups, so again, private property and privilege are a huge factor in destroying the effort to, um, abolish private property and privilege.

If we want a sexual revolution that can’t be capitalised on, we need to see where the oppression is coming from, but also what causes it – something Robin Morgan’s thinking seems to be lacking at first glance. We need to keep private property, and ideas about “being true to yourself” or wondering what or who you are out of it. If we want free, egalitarian sex lives, we need to see where capitalist thought has hounded us right into our very bedchambers, and how our intimate lives don‘t exist separately from the rest of the world.

That doesn’t mean we all have to invite any beardy German theorists into the bedroom when we have sex, in fact I’m sure they’d object to that idea, as it would be quite contrary to the tenets of socialism. Still, rather them than Milton Friedman or Maggie Thatcher, right?

Now I’m off to take a Rohrshach test…