The Man’s Got A Sure-Fire System
It is perhaps time for someone to say “totalitarianism”. Dworkin’s view of male supremacism is total: a system, in which the most privileged and emancipated live alongside the most subordinated and degraded. The point is underlined in Right Wing Women, where she writes: “Every woman – no matter what her sexual orientation, personal sexual likes or dislikes, personal history, political ideology – lives inside this system of forced sex. This is true even if she has never personally experienced any sexual coercion, or if she personally likes intercourse as a form of intimacy, or if she as an individual has experiences of intercourse that transcend, in her opinion, the dicta of gender and the institutions of force”. The experience of personal sexual freedom is undoubtedly real, but its reality is that of an exception, an exemption, which remains ineluctibly contoured and circumstanced by the threat of force, by the reality of force in the lives of others.
The underlying moral argument here is identical to that of Ursula le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas: even a superlatively peaceful society, if its peace depends on the systematic use of force against even the smallest minority, is by that token a society of violence. This is not the same as saying that any violent act immediately and irrevocably contaminates the entire society in which it occurs: the violence must be systematic, not accidental; directed against one class by another as a function of the organisation of a class system. The understanding of the radical feminists was that the rape and battery of women were not predominantly spontaneous outrages, crimes of passion or manifestations of individual sociopathy, but hate crimes more akin to the lynching of black men or the battery and murder of homosexuals. That is to say, they were seen as crimes directed by one class of persons towards another – with pornography acting as a targeting system, identifying what was to be done to whom, and how. When the radical feminists said “men” and “women”, they meant classes: not biological essences, and not evanescent cultural illusions either. They meant the distinct outcomes of a gender system established and maintained through violence: “the dicta of gender” supported by, and co-ordinating in their turn, “the institutions of force”.
The context in which Dworkin was writing was a little different – not a lot different – to the present situation. In particular, the law at the time did not formally recognise forced sex within marriage as rape; it said, in effect, that the woman’s body was the husband’s property and any sexual use of her by him was therefore lawful by definition, whether she willed it or no. There at least some reform has been won. But in practice, the law has very seldom recognised any kind of forced sex as rape, either then or now, unless the force employed was exorbitant: more than the normal, usual, healthy degree of force. The consent standard as currently upheld means that when a person says yes to force, says yes when pressured or intimidated or desperate, the force is taken to be obviated by the consent, rather than the consent obviated by the force.
“Yes means yes” even when not saying yes would mean being thrown out into the street, or not having the money to pay for medicine for your children, or being called frigid or a prude or a prick-tease and then asked again, not so nicely this time. The acknowledgement that a person might be pressured or intimidated or desperate is held to infantilise them somehow, to remove the sovereign power of their consent to make the force used to obtain it instantly not matter. Our word is our bond; but it takes force, ubiquitous and inexorable force, to make a person give their consent when there is no mutual desire, no mutual respect, no mutual accountability. The consent standard says nothing about such mutuality, nothing about exploitation and inequality. It grants a formal right of refusal but does nothing to empower that choice, to make it viable in the circumstances where it is most needed.
We must ask whether the class analysis of the radical feminists was correct, whether their understanding of the systematic character of rape and battery was true, whether the arrangement of forces in society is now as Dworkin described it, such that the relative sexual freedom of individual women is at best a state of privileged exemption within a context fundamentally structured by coercion. Does the fundamental moral argument, that the coercive sexual use of women in rape and prostitution and pornography makes ours a society of sexual violence even if the experience of the majority of women is one of comparative peace and safety, still hold?
March 21st, 2009 at 12:59 am
It is perhaps time for someone to say “totalitarianism”. Dworkin’s view of male supremacism is total
But Dominique darling, that’s just the problem; EVERY GOOD SYSTEM IS A LITTLE TOTALITARIAN !!! Will you please tell me whether, and how exactly, Andrea proposed another, better system. Then we can discuss whether there was more to her than just WYMIN ON TOP business.
Meanwhile you could send me a snapshot of your boxer shorts, I like that sort of stuff.
March 21st, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Dejan’s hilariously tragi-comic sexual fetishizing (OCD/’totalitarian’?) reminds me of a certain old Hollywood film (suitably edited):
Sullivan: I want this picture to be a commentary on the conditions of modern women. Stark realism. The problems and the intimidation that confronts the average woman.
Hollywood Executive One: But with a little sex.
Sullivan: A little, but I don’t want to stress it. I want this picture to be a document. I want to hold a mirror up to life. I want this to be a picture of dignity and integrity. A true canvas of the suffering of women under patriarchal capitalism.
Hollywood Executive One: But with a little sex.
Sullivan: With a little sex in it.
Hollywood Executive Two: How about a nice musical?
Sullivan: How can you talk about musicals at a time like this? With the
world committing suicide? With corpses piling up in the street? With grim poverty and death gargling at you from every corner? With people exploited like sheep?
Hollywood Executive One: But with a little sex in it.
Otherwise, Dominic, I largely confer with your analysis here (including previous posts on Dworkin). Though it should be said that the contention that “even if the experience of the majority of women is one of comparative peace and safety” is, in global terms, certainly untrue (not to hijack with statistics, but a city like Bangkock has over half a million prostitutes, most under eighteen – an ‘industry’ created by the West during the Vietnam War. It isn’t prostitution that’s the ‘oldest profession’, it’s militarism
March 21st, 2009 at 10:15 pm
[... continued]
… militarization – where the military go prostitution invariably follows. Indeed, if anyone can point to an exception to this rule, I’d like to know about it, as the topic is one I’ve been researching for some time).
And among that ‘free choice’ privileged female minority in the West “in comparative peace and safety” we find the most uncritical acceptance of institutionalized and consumerized sexism, manifested in such programmes as “Wife Swap”*** [now making appeals to philosophers!] …
***This e-mail is currently making its way around the internet:
“Hello,
I hope you are doing well! I am a casting producer for ABC Television’s hit reality show, Wife Swap. I am currently trying to cast families that promote philosophy as a discipline for a special episode of our show and thought perhaps you might know some scholars that would be interested in such an opportunity. An ideal family would have 2 parents that are both philosophers and children that also believe in the discipline.
Requirements: Each family must consist of two parents (you don’t have to be married) and must have at least one child between the ages of 7 and 17 living at home full time … This is a very unique experience that can be life changing for everyone. In addition, each family that tapes an episode of Wife Swap receives a $20,000 honorarium for their time. Anyone who refers a family that appears on our program receives $1000 as a ‘thank you” from us. Please feel free to forward this email on to anyone that you feel might be interested.
In case you are unfamiliar with the show, the premise of Wife Swap is to take two different families and have the moms switch place to experience how another family lives. Half of the week, Mom lives the life of the family she is staying with. Then she introduces a “rule change” where she implements rules and activities that her family has. It’s a positive experience for people to not only learn but teach about other families and other ways of life.
Wife Swap airs on Disney owned ABC television on Fridays at 8 pm- the family hour! There is another show that copies ours. We focus on having fun, learning and teaching. They focus on conflict. I just want to make sure our show doesn’t get confused with theirs! I appreciate you taking the time to read this. If you have any questions, please email me at the address below. Thank you for your time!”
March 21st, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Though it should be said that the contention that “even if the experience of the majority of women is one of comparative peace and safety” is, in global terms, certainly untrue
Well, indeed. It’s a minority that thinks it’s a majority, as us privileged folks tend erroneously to do.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Beckett, that joke was part of a repressed false memory which I just had about that time in th 1980s I used to visit Dominique Saturdays for math lessons; due to my female genes, I never excelled in exact sciences. We would sit in the living room and listen to the Culture Club while Dominique explained equations with two functions. Every now and then I would play with his lovely Modern Talking haircut, and when I noticed that he didn’t mind, my hand started cautiously crawling towards his crotch. Then one time when we were playing Super Mario on Commodore 64, Dominique was so eager to win that he didn’t even notice I had pulled down his jeans. He kept looking to the side but I could tell he was having a very hard time biting his lip, trying to hush down his pleasurable moans. Dominique’s mom kept baking pancakes in the kitchen, delighted that her brilliant son was willing to help this Serbian refugee get a good English education. The poor woman was so deluded I could sometimes continue with the blow job behind the math books; she didn’t flinch.
March 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 am
that he didn’t even notice I had pulled down his jeans
should be ”that my hand wasn’t holding the joystick”
March 22nd, 2009 at 9:22 am
Strictly ZX Spectrum round my place. And later Acorn computers of various sorts.
Anyway, that’s your lot Dejan. Run along and do some drawings now, will you?
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
Every day is like survival,
you’re my lover – not my rival!
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:15 am
Dworkin’s been proven wrong so many times it’s hard to take her seriously on certain issues. Pornography consumption has been proven, quite conclusively, to have no direct correlation to rates of rape and sexual assault. In fact, countries with the highest per capita consumption of porn have lower than average rates of rape and sexual assault. (I want to say that the higher the consumption of porn the lower the rate of rape, but I’d have to look it up…) I like Naomi Wolf’s New York Magazine article on this topic from a few years ago. Worth a read.
In Dworkin’s day, date rape and spousal rape still weren’t recognized legally, and I’m sure she and others within her wing of the movement did quite a bit to help get these specific violent acts recognized for what they were.
But currently, date rape, spousal rape, statutory rape, and forcible rape (any kind of forced “consent”) are all recognized as the same act legally and receive the same penalties. Slowly, thanks to better education, government funded programs, and legislative victories, women have begun to feel less stigmatized by and are therefore more likely to report rapes of all kinds. [Next on the agenda: destigmatize male rape]
I would say that for feminists, these days, the real crux of the rape issue is a legal one–and it hinges on the practice of putting rape victims on trial for their own victimization. Although this is technically illegal, cultural/social attitudes are still such that rape victims are often seen as complicit in their victimization if they were drinking, walking late at night alone, working as prostitutes, etc., and defense attorneys capitalize on these attitudes. I think most people involved in the U.S. judicial system would tell you that increased awareness of feminist issues, plus better childhood and teen education regarding the fact that no woman is complicit in her own rape, no matter what, are the best roads to better rapist conviction rates– which would in turn drastically reduce repeat offenses.
[This isn't a stab at "equality"--whatever that may mean-- but it is a pragmatic way to get rapists off the streets, which has some chance of actually reducing rapes. Barring a full-system overhaul, I think this is sort of action is desperately needed.]
If you look at the demographic breakdown of rape and domestic abuse victims today, I think you’ll see that they’re shifting somewhat. More women now make their own money, so it follows that not as many women from the middle and upper middle classes (though yes they obviously exist) are forced to stay with abusers for financial reasons (though some stay because they were battered children). In certain countries or economies, I would definitely agree that there are no sex workers who are doing sex work voluntarily, because the state of affairs (social or political) obviates consent in all possible scenarios. This is certainly the case in many eastern European countries, and there are even many cases of women being trafficked into the U.S. from these countries, and held against their will to work in clubs/brothels. But class and ethnicity count in this as they do anywhere–your average Emperor’s Club worker from Manhattan is not coerced into anything, is probably a college graduate from a middle class family, and is doing just fine psychologically, probably better than your average wage slave.
So to make a long story short: in the U.S., things have certainly changed quite a bit since Dworkin was writing, and thankfully they’ve changed for the better. There are relatively few cases where consent is obviated for sex workers who are born and raised in the U.S., even though rape is still quite common among the general population. In cases where consent has been obviated, even in the U.S., I’m more than happy to join the fight to free the enslaved. Where it hasn’t, I think we should leave women to their freedom even if we don’t like their choices. I don’t think it’s very difficult to tell the difference between these cases.
March 23rd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
“When the radical feminists said “men” and “women”, they meant classes: not biological essences, and not evanescent cultural illusions either. They meant the distinct outcomes of a gender system established and maintained through violence: “the dicta of gender” supported by, and co-ordinating in their turn, “the institutions of force”.”
I’ve always taken such classes to be referred to as ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’, to distinguish both from reductivist ‘biological essences’ and mere illusion: as cultural scripts that occupy a position in a structure (patriarchy, and ‘the institutions of force’). Such positions (often, but misleadingly termed “constructions”) of masculinity and femininity are then used for purposes of ideological mystification – in Western mass culture specifically to repress awareness of other forms of patriarchal dominance. As Susan Jeffords argued, “Masculinity is the primary mechanism for the articulation, institutionalization, and maintenance of the gendered system on which patriarchy is based … It is itself constructed and manipulated by interests other than those defined by gender.”
Anodynelite, one point: in your first paragraph above you write that it has been ‘proven’ – and ‘conclusively’ to boot – that there is no direct correlation between levels of pornography consumption and rates of rape and sexual assault, but then immediately follow this with the claim that those countries with the highest per capita consumption of porn have lower than average rates of rape and sexual assault, concluding that “want to say that the higher the consumption of porn the lower the rate of rape, but I’d have to look it up…”. In other words, you move from a position of there being no correlation to one of there being a definite (albeit inverse) correlation, despite the former having already been ‘proven conclusively’. Whatever about the former having been proven (surely mass pornography serves to completely change the terms of reference with regard to what ‘choice’ and ‘consent’, further normalizing a system of exploitation, the commodity form called pornography, with consequences for actual sexual/social relations) the latter is used everywhere as an alibi for yet more pornography, which of course is precisely the hedonic consumer pornographer’s dilemma: they can never have enough.
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Anodynelite, one point: in your first paragraph above you write that it has been ‘proven’ – and ‘conclusively’ to boot – that there is no direct correlation between levels of pornography consumption and rates of rape and sexual assault,…
That whole discussion is irrelevant since capitalism has turned us all into ho’s.
Anodynelite why do you so desperately want to steal my gentle stud, girl? I’m sure there’s plenty of meat amongst the lesb’ans!
March 23rd, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Haha, I keep forgetting, Parody. I’m a disgusting whore.
No, Beckett. I said there was no direct correlation. I wanted to say there was an INVERSE relationship, but I couldn’t be sure without looking it up, so I said what I knew to be true, which is that the highest rates of porn consumption do not correlate with higher than average rates of rape. Apologies if that was hard to understand.
Dworkin, on the other hand, very clearly and emphatically stated that increased porn consumption would cause rape rates to rise. This is not what has happened, even as porn has become exponentially more accessible and mainstream. She was, alas, wrong. Porn doesn’t turn men into rapists, it just makes “sex” boring and banal. It makes straight men even worse at sex than they already are, by raising expectations while at the same time unrealistically depicting female pleasure. It makes them even more selfish and immature. But it doesn’t make them violent.
It’s like if you ate chocolate cake all day everyday, it wouldn’t be a special treat anymore.
Of course, I don’t think sex needs to be special, but then, I’m not into “mystifications” like that. You can be, though, that’s your get out.
Anyway, about “women”–What about seriality? Why do women and men have to be “groups”? I’m all for de-essentializing.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
It isn’t that it is ‘hard to understand’, it’s perhaps a confusion of terms. What you’re claiming is that there is a negative correlation, as opposed to a positive one, between pornography and sexual violence. That’s still a claim of a ‘direct correlation’, which contradicts your assertion of there being ‘no direct correlation’ (a term that means no statistical correlation, whether positive or negative). In some ways Dejan is right to say that all of this is irrelevant (though not for the cynical, zombie-conformist reason he gives ), because pornography is itself exploitation, is itself sexual violence, including ‘lap dancing’ hellholes (BTW, I was directly involved in the shutting down of one in Dublin two years ago: that scumbag sexual criminal Peter Stringfellows tried to set another one up there [he owns a chain of them]; interestingly, and tellingly, it was mainly working class women who lobbied and protested against it. Apologists for lap-dancing clubs are seriously deluded fantasists; but then, that’s part of the agenda of pornography: to legitimize and normalize such stark exploitation as the ‘lap dancing’ garbage.).
Nor does the “law and order’ approach, so manic in the US, to sexual violence even begin to address the underlying causes: it just further expands the runaway industrialized prison/penal system (the US, despite having over half a million in prison for ‘drug-related crimes’, for instance, [that's greater than the entire prison population of the European Union, an area with double the US population], as the country continues to witness a growth in drug abuse).
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:38 pm
though not for the cynical, zombie-conformist reason he gives
That’s rich coming from a zombie-existentialist!
March 24th, 2009 at 12:24 am
Yawn.
March 24th, 2009 at 12:28 am
Beckett, you do understand that in math/statistics there’s a difference between direct relationship and an inverse one, right? Porn does not cause rape, period. In places where there is more porn consumption, there is actually LESS rape.
Interestingly, it’s mainly Christians who lobby against lapdancing clubs, because it’s their repressed husbands who are frequenting them. And their sick imaginations cooking up some kind of “evil” in all forms of female sexual expression outside of monogamous relationships.
March 24th, 2009 at 12:54 am
Anodynelite, no: a direct correlation implies a statistical correlation, which can be positive (forward) or negative (inverse) in direction. You’re claiming that a negative, inverse correlation exists.
Peter Stringfellow is a Christian, a Catholic in fact (who, predictably, votes Tory, and who, at 69, just married a 27-year-old). It is those opposed to sexual violence who ‘mainly’ lobby against lapdancing hellholes (what are you calling them ‘clubs’ for? Like golf-clubs?). So lapdancing is now elevated to a form of ‘female sexual expression’? Is this, like, slavery as a form of ‘black empowerment’?
Dejan, you were oh-so-eagerly reducing everyone to the status of ho’s. Why would you want to do this?
As with lapdancing, this is something to be resisted, not embraced (zombie-like).
March 24th, 2009 at 6:28 am
oh-so-eagerly reducing everyone to the status of ho’s.
As the widely known phenomenon of the pimp and the ho’ on MTV, which has long since become de rigeur amongst the youth, illustrates, the omnipotent market has commodified most human relations save for those of the privileged few so that the very act of working implies prostitution. In this sense, we are all whores on the market.
March 24th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Some time ago dr. Sinthome also used the expression ”pimp my thesis”.
March 24th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Right, because dancing is inherently bad, women having sex except as some part of some monogamous I LOVE YOU FOREVER XOXO hallmark card White Wedding romance role play is inherently bad, the only time it’s ok for women to express themselves sexually is–well, never. Unless it’s in Badiou’s bedroom and the priest signed the papers. With no mirrors around and–god forbid–definitely no cameras or other people who didn’t sign the papers.
Blah blah I’m sure I’ve heard all of this before somewhere.
Parody Center, I’ve already spent far too many words explaining why there’s no difference between a prostitute and a wife in this psychosexual economy– that is, if you’re going to insist on bowing down to the heterosexist status quo that already privileges male sexual expression and experience over the female kinds so that women can only ever be sexual subordinates, victims of masculine desire, and never desiring subjects. So ok, if you want to believe we can’t escape or ignore this status quo and its norms, then be prepared to, as Dworkin was fond of telling couples with kids, recognize your own children as “the product of a rapist and a whore.”
Trust me, you won’t get through to these people, it’s like talking to a brick wall of Christian guilt and body shame. We’re icky and sinful, don’t you get it!? We are not supposed to enjoy sex, that is bad. We are supposed to wear hair shirts and constantly compare ourselves to child sex slaves in the third world, no matter what, even if this is trivializing and insulting to the actual suffering and plight of these children because our lives are nothing like theirs.
What it really comes down to is that women can’t actually like sex outside of marriage, women are special angelic beings who don’t enjoy casual sex, they can only get off on Pure Love <3 <3 (*sends creepy possessive jealous insecure vibe*) When women sign their names they usually draw hearts above the “i”s, that is how angelic and romantic they are. They are scared of teh penis. That is why they love only mine and mine only. 4ever.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
This is just hopeless defensive flailing. If you’ve nothing better to bring than vacuous, bratty sarcasm, insecure boasting about what a playa you are, and cliched ad hominems against those boring, repressive, religiously hung-up straights, then you may as well just piss off, to be honest. Go and be shallow and obnoxious on your own blog.
March 25th, 2009 at 1:28 am
It’s nothing of the sort.
All of this, and we *still* haven’t heard when it’s right, or true, or real, or what possible scenarios in which women, in yours/Dworkin’s schema, to have sex–intercourse, or any kind of sex. Apparently, all women are always already whores, so female sexual expression is impossible, in your world. We’re hopelessly deadlocked in misogyny and patriarchy. I’ve already explained why it’s obvious that this is not the case in the U.S., where women are excelling and taking over every sector as we speak, so I’ll refrain from repeating myself on this point.
Beyond this, I find it absurd to that you accuse someone who thinks that sex and “love” need not and are not the same thing, and do not need to be conceived of theoretically as such, of doing so because they are “shallow”… I’m in good company with several of Badiou’s own intellectual mentors, Lacan included, and I’m sure you know this.
I don’t care about stupid pop cultural identifications and “playas” and whatever dismissive term you want to hurl at me for not living up to the monogamous heterosexual status quo (as a woman, I’ve heard them all, believe me–how dare I unapologetically have casual sex? I *must* be a brat, or “insecure”, or “boastful”, or damaged, or a “whore”). I live my life the way I want to, according to my own wants and needs, and I don’t care what you think. I’m sorry if that’s offensive to you, and doesn’t fit in very well to your schema where “love” needs to be at the center of erotic relations, and women are scared of/scarred by intercourse–but that’s the way it is.
What’s bratty and adolescent is to insist that everyone needs to live their lives, sexually and otherwise, according to some dictum that you’ve drawn up and that’s right, well, *because you say so*…and if they don’t agree, they’re only being “defensive” because you are the center of everyone’s psychosexual universe.
Can I get a :P?