"Sexy Feminism"
Twisty Faster slagging off "sexy feminism." "What do I mean by “sexy feminism”? Suicide Girls. Bust magazine. BDSM. The “position” that women should be free to “choose” femininity if that’s what bangs their box. The idea that embracing sexploitation is “empowering.” The notion that women “can do what we want despite patriarchy.”
Oh bollocks, I didn't realise. There's no choices. None. Oh to live in such a grim place. To have the false consciousness of choice. And fake orgasms.
Besides the obvious (oh, I'd also forgotten that sex-positives thought Suicide Girls were bringing down Teh Patriarchy, one tattoo at a time. And cheers for the random BDSM shout), I think it's hugely cissexist. Trans people exist despite patriarchy. We're attacked, killed, discriminated against by employers, friends, family, partners. And yet. We exist.
What I dislike this is the reductiveness of it. The problem when drawing such a wide, all-encompassing model of power like The Patriarchy, or capitalism, discourse in Foucault's earlier work, or the MacGuffin that is transgendered women in the nuttier ends of rad-fem thought, is how does change actually occur, then?
Indeed, how does radical feminism even exist, if everything's tainted by the Patriarchy? I think there are continuities, but they're not all-encompassing, and they don't always occur where you think they are. This endless banging on about the rubbishness of sexual women might occur for different reasons in feminist thought, but it nevertheless remains a remarkable continuity with a misogynistic culture that aims some of its worst shame and violence against sex workers. And ditto for the transphobia.
I like the idea of the suture, which is that society unwittingly opening up spaces on its edges that it keeps trying to close up (institutionally, culturally, etc). Bodies, identities can be generally not culturally sanctioned or accepted, but still exist, and not be entirely determined by the co-ordinates of the wider culture. This is the space for feminist, properly radical activism, no?
Remember the whole patriarchal virgin/whore binary? Why would you simply restate that by substituting "sexy feminism" with "whore?" Why?
posted by queen emily @ 12:45 AM
8 Comments:
Excellent post and response.
I just never know how to reply to that never-ending nonsense.
It's kind of awesome; I spent so much energy getting overly exercised over TF's creepy pearl-clutching disguised as "radical feminism" a couple of years ago that I finally wore it out. I have no desire to read her now, and pretty much no emotional reaction to excerpts of her one-hit wonder being replayed these days.
then again, it could just be that annoying and fatuous as she is, Heart & co make her look like a model of generosity and tolerance in comparison.
How change is conceived of in postmodernist/ Foucauldain thought is through the gap that exists between the sign and experience. Because language can never fully capture experience and because new experiences can't always be neatly incorporated into the dominant discourses that allow people to interpret their experiences (such as patriarchy), discourse is always unstable and changing. Feminism, according to this theory, in all its forms is a creation of women's realisation that their experience does not reconcile with the discourse.
You are right, however, (at least according to my interpretation), that this theory does not allow for paradigm shifts, which would essentially mean that we have to work through and move past patriarchy, not just get rid of it in one massive revolution. This I find kind of disapointing.
On the otherhand, transwomen can exist within discursive thought as discourse learns to incorporate experience and adjust its framework to account for new experiences.
What I find problematic about the invocation of the Revolution in a lot of contempo rad-fem thought is that the movement's long since lost any properly revolutionary energy. And when you've lost that, it just becomes this endlessly deferred thing that allows people to focus on absolutes rather than have to produce anything resembling a pragmatic politics, or even a plan *to* get to the revolution.
And yes, trans women do of course exist inside discourse (most particularly the institutionalised apparatus of psychiatry). I don't think I was just suggesting that, just that we are hardly produced according to the needs of Teh Patriarchy, let alone illuminating its logic at its most blatant (I think that was Raymond's point).
Viviane Namaste does make the point that trans people are as much erased by discourse as produced by it - institutions frequently refuse to recognise your identity, and the discourses are arranged so as to discourage you from transitioning (focusing on the needs of the small minority of people who end up regretting it).
I agree. I actually think that transwomen are a major challenge to patriarchal discourse, rather than reinforcing it. If the basis of patriarchy, as I understand it, is a binary model of gender reinforced by biological sex, than anything that mixes that up a bit, is a real challenge. As such, it is understandable that patriarchal society would attempt to erase transwomen.
I also totally agree with the static nature of 'revolution'. We have lost our aims as a movement and have no strategies- this is something I have been thinking a lot about recently but I have yet to come with any answers- which makes me wonder whether revolution is possible (and highlights my complete arrogance that I assume that I could figure it out).
Very well put.
indeed. what I thought. actually, let me be fair, my first thought was "but I LIKE BUST magazine."
Then I realized that I disagreed with the entire premise of her argument, and was tired of being talked down to and told that the patriarchy doesn't allow me full agency.
Because as you pointed out, if the patriarchy doesn't allow me as a sexual being full agency, it doesn't allow her as a 'radical' feminist full agency either.
and in that BUST magazine which I do like so much, Betty Dodson made a crack which I related to a lot more than so-called 'radical' feminism, that this is just replacing the patriarchy with a matriarchy that similarly moralizes and tells us what we can do as good little feminists (which is no different, of course, than being told what to do by men as good little women.)
"Sexy feminism" is not such a bad phrase. And it's clear what the alternative is: "sexless feminism".
Post a Comment
<< Home