The Fireworks at the Sexuality Conference:

Whom Should Feminists Fuck?

by Marcia Pally

New York Native, May 24, 1982

With a title like "Towards a Politics of Sexuality," the ninth annual conference of the Scholar and the Feminist promised to be a bit spicier than most academic gatherings. It was; some of the sparks came from the scheduled lectures and workshops and some came from rifts within the feminist movement, rifts that are called political when things are under control and personal when they start getting nasty. First, the scheduled spice.

Several speakers were interested in examining when and why feminist are conservative on sexual issues and when feminists are liberal or progressive. Why, for example, have some feminists focused on the family and begun to regard sex as the proper expression of a revised, more egalitarian marriage or love relationship while some consider sex from the perspective of personal pleasure? Why have some feminists claimed that pornography or sexual practices like S-M, butch/femme (b/f), fetishism, and so forth contribute to violence against women while some claim otherwise? How do these variances cluster together in political action and how do these clusters change over time?

Linda Gordon and Ellen DuBois spoke about nineteenth-century, middle-class feminists who associated sex with unavoidable pregnancy, difficult deliveries, incurable VD, rape and wife-beating, and therefore felt that sex was more a danger than a pleasure to women. Because they were economically dependent on marriage, they reasoned that the way to protect women would be to make marriages attain the purported standards of middle-class respectability. The resulting "moral purity" political program called for temperance, an end to prostitution, improvements in the condition of marriage, and strict control of sex. With the availability of birth control and employment, one might think that twentieth-century feminists would be less fearful and puritanical - but are we?

Alice Echols' discussion of the women's movement from 1965-1980 indicated that we aren't. Fifteen years ago, Echols said, feminists began to consider how women could have and control their pleasure, but there's been a shift in recent years towards a more protective, conservative stance. Culture, not sex, is the essential factor in this line of thinking (as pursued by Mary Daly, Sally Gearhart, and Susan Griffin, among others). Male culture is aggressive and appetitive, while female culture is nurturant and the important take is to protect women from male violence. In this view, the abolition of rape and pornography should be the first concern of feminists today, with battles against S-M, and b/f (for their uses of power) as close runners-up.Eighteen workshops were run simultaneously during the afternoon of the conference; topics included techniques of organizing for gay rights, teenage sexuality, sex manuals, sex and theater, sex and aggression, sexual identity and the psychoanalytic relationship, sexual restriction and abortion, sexuality and the infant, sex and money and-well, you get the general idea. A great many issues were discussed at these smaller gatherings, but the ones I found most interesting were those that continued to explore the matter of sexual conservatism and sexual liberalism. For example, the workshop on pornography and the construction of a female subject (led by Kaja Silverman and Bette Gordon) criticized the genre on the grounds that women, who are never really subjects in society in general, are depicted most literally as objects to be used, branded, and owned by men. Besides the fact that all the examples were taken from one source ("The Story of O"), there was no consideration of subjects that turn women on when they read pornography, nor of whose mind is selecting, interpreting, and controlling the fantasy.

Silverman read a passage from "O" describing the attachment of rings to O's labia to make her "orifice" more conspicuous. First of all, we can't assume that this is any more painful than ear piercing or any number of other beauty rituals; as a matter of fact, we can't assume this is painful at all. Furthermore, though Silverman argues that this visibility is meant to excite and satisfy male desire by making a woman into an object, I can imagine that women might be turned on by the sheer thrill of having female genitals made big, important, and prominent. In a society that regularly ignores or hides female desire while celebrating the erect phallus, I should think the titillation would be obvious. And in the female reader's mind (not to mention her body), why shouldn't the excitement and satisfaction be her own? Why shouldn't this become a ritual of beauty? It is, after all, her book and her fantasy and she can presumably make of it what she likes.

Nor did Silverman's analysis include any consideration of who the subject - or the object - might be in gay male pornography. If men are, by fact of their gender, subjects in this society, and if it's the objectification of the one being penetrated that is pornography's crime, then Silverman can't use her theory to explain what is wrong with gay male porn. If Silverman tries to save her argument by saying that men who are fucked become objects then she would not only be endorsing the heterosexual notion that gay men are "like" women and therefore despicable, but she'd be taking penetration out of any context and arbitrarily labeling it "objectification." Why not call it "the receipt of pleasure?"

More problematic, however, is the fact that Silverman (and the discussion that followed her paper) assumes that there is something wrong with pornography and that all we have to do is figure out what it is. She assumes what she ought to be proving. After beginning with the notion that pornography is dangerous, she constructs a theory of subjectivity to explain how the evil works, but she doesn't explore the possibility that women, their fantasies, and pornographic images might interact in ways that allow women not only the privilege of subjectivity, but the privilege of pleasure as well.

At the other end of the spectrum were several workshops intended to promote fairly progressive ideas, like the notion that b/f roles, labeled sexist and banished by feminists during the late Sixties, should be played out and explored so that we might understand their appeal and significance (Esther Newton and Shirley Walton). The sexual rights of individuals and the positions taken by our social and legal systems, and by the women's movement were discussed in Gayle Rubin's workshop, "Concepts for a Radical Politics of Sex," in the workshop on "Politically Correct, Politically Incorrect Sexuality" led by Dorothy Allison, Muriel Dimen, Mirtha Quintanales, and Joan Nestle, and in Amber Hollibaugh's closing address, "Desire for the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Pleasure." (For further discussion of female sexuality and social and legal discrimination, see Rubin's "The Leather Menace: Comments on Politics and S-M" in "Coming to Power" by Samois, P.O. Box 2364, Berkeley, CA 94702, and the "Sex Issue" of "Heresies", c/c Heresies Collective, 225 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012.) Generally speaking, these women argued for an acceptance of all the ways women experience and play out their desire, be it as hetero- or homosexual, butch or femme, sadist or masochist, bisexual, fag hag, fetishist, or all or none of the above. After all, Hollibaugh pointed out, with all the horrors that have been done to women, the beatings, rape, chastity belts, clitorectomies, and psychological clitorectomies of Victorian upbringing - all the things that have been done in the name of love, sex, reproduction, protection, morality, and God - it's a wonder we have any desire left. As it is, we don't really know much about what we like or why we like it. Before we find out, can we afford to proscribe, inhibit, or prevent each other from doing whatever it is we want to do? Can we afford to in fact wipe out the very things we need to examine? Do we know so much about sex that we can be so sure about what kind of sex is best? And whose tastes are prevailing in all these "beneficial" decisions? We need to understand and stand by "consent," not only to punish the rapist, but, to quote Hollibaugh, "to allow women to be sexual the way they need to be, not the way we need to be.” Do we want to create a movement that decides what sexual practices determine who belongs in the group?"

Apparently not all feminists take such a tolerant, live-and-let-live approach. In front of the conference's registration center, the Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality and Against Sadomasochism, including Women Against Violence Against Women, Women Against Pornography, and New York Radical Feminists, passed out a few flyers including one protesting the presence at the conference of "a tiny offshoot of the women's movement" (I wonder how they know it's so tiny) that "support and practice pornography, that promote sex roles and sadomasochism, and that have joined the straight and gay pedophile organizations in lobbying for an end to laws that protect children from sexual abuse by adults." The flyer goes on to name the offending parties: No More Nice Girls and two of its members, Ellen Willia and Brett Harvey; Samois and Lesbian Sexual Mafia (based in San Francisco and New York respectively, these lesbian-feminist organizations support the right of consenting people to do the kind of sex they like); the woman who "has been selected to give the closing address," who "champions butch-femme sex roles" (of course everyone at the conference knew that woman is Amber Hollibaugh); and Pat Califia, writer, "Advocate" staff member, and member of Samois.

In addition, during the week prior to the conference some people connected to Women Against Pornography and the anti-porn movement called members of the staff of Barnard's women's center to protest the participation of - and again names were cited - Gayle Rubin, Amber Hollibaugh, Dorothy Allison, and Joan Nestle on grounds similar to those outline in the flyer. It's no wonder that the leaders of six workshops chose to bar the press from their talks. I regret the exclusion and I regret the witch hunt that made these women feel the need to protect themselves. Once you start tampering with one person's supposedly inalienable right to speak, then the whole system of such rights must go awry.

To add to the stir, the day before the conference, the administration of Barnard impounded the conference diary on the grounds that it contained cheap and violent imagery. This booklet, compiled by Beth Jaker, Marybeth Nelson, and Hannah Alderfer (who helped design the abovementioned "Sex Issue" of "Heresies"), was supposed to be distributed to each conference participant and included official statements by the conference organizers, personal statements about sexuality, and brief descriptions of the workshops (which would have been most helpful since each participant could attend only one out of eighteen). Though Barnard endorsed the compilers' proposal and showed no objection to the material in drat form, the administration wanted Barnard's name removed from the book; thought the compilers agreed to block out the name, the administration refused to return the copies. Because Barnard had been reimbursed for printing costs by the participants' fees, since the copyright is in the compilers' names, and since the diary was designed for use on the day of the conference, Barnard's suggestion that the book be reprinted, at a later, unspecified date came as little consolation to the women who put the book together or to the women who never received it.

Whatever one may say about the imagery in the diary (it includes a drawing of a chain, razor, and safety pins, but there are no human figures or action of any kind in these pictures), and whatever one may think about S-M, b/f, fetishism, or pornography, consider the tactics used here: naming names with the intent to prevent people from speaking, and the hale and hearty practice of book seizure. Whatever the content of books or speeches, can we ever afford to censor them, to destroy the principle that everyone has the right to speak? If vanilla lesbian feminists can take the first and fourth amendment rights away from S-M lesbian-feminists, then what's to prevent straight feminists from taking those rights away from gay feminists, or the Moral Majority from everyone farther to the left than they are? Can anyone really afford to go without the protection

At a speakout sponsored by the Lesbian Sexual Mafia, held the day after but with no connection to the Barnard conference, fifteen women, including several of those mentioned above, talked about being outside the sexual mainstream. Some spoke about being black or Latina And a lesbian, about being a lesbian interested in S-M or b/f, about being persecuted first by the world at large and then by the feminist community - by the very community that was supposed to be "home." Some women read poems or short stories, some spoke about personal experiences, and some discussed the sexual repression in and out of the women's movement. In one way or another, all the women made a plea for tolerance, for the right to pursue their lives unharmed as long as they do no harm in turn.

Perhaps this strict liberal presentation should be enough to end discrimination, but there's something seductive in the argument advanced by the Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality and Against Sadomasochism (henceforth, the Coalition) that the liberal platform doesn't address. That argument goes something like this. People learn not only from schools and textbooks, but from all the information/advertising/propaganda that the media throw at us every day. Pornography is one of the conduits of information, and the lesson, in this case, is that it's okay for men to rape and mutilate women, that it is sexually exciting to do so, and that women really want it anyway. Having learned this, the argument goes, people then go out and do likewise. Men rape, and both men and women reinforce violence against women by participating in ritualized uses of force and power in S-M and b/f roles.

Besides the by-now-tiresome fact that we don't yet know if pornography leads to rape or S-M (Nixon's 1970 Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, for example, found that rapists see somewhat less porn that non-rapists and that pornography leads not to rape - not even to sex - but to masturbation), there is some ambiguity about the learning process that the Coalition seems to take for granted. While we know that Nazis and McCarthyites put anti-Semitic and anti-Red material in the media in hopes of inciting the public to violence against Jews and communists, do we know that the media representations caused the Holocaust or the HUAC trials? Could those presentations more appropriately be considered part of the result, right along with the camps and the blacklists? And if books and films weren't the primary cause, doesn't it make sense to identify and change the forces that were central to these persecutions? Might this not apply to race?

More importantly, while people learn from all kinds of material, they also learn to make distinctions. No one suggests that people shouldn't watch sports because it'll send them into the streets, running, tackling, swinging bats, and otherwise assaulting innocent bystanders (and from what I hear of pre-game pep talks, they're easily as hateful and violent as pornography). How do we know that people don't learn to make similar distinctions between pornographic images and action, between fantasy and reality, between what they consent to and what they don't? Isn't it possible that not all fantasies are meant to be acted out in "real life," that people who want to be tied up by their lovers don't want to be tied up by a gang of thugs or by the police? Isn't it possible that people who want to have sex don't necessarily want to rape or be raped?

Context and consent are crucial in any discussion of human behavior, and sexuality is no exception. They are complicated questions to be sure, especially when age or power differences are involved, but better to explore every possible distinction and to correctly identify every possible circumstance than to call all sex "violence." Women in the nineteenth century, without birth control, penicillin, safer pregnancies and deliveries, or economic independence may have had good reason to see all sex as dangerous and to clamor for abstinence and temperance, but in the process they throttled their own desire and their own potential for satisfaction.

We need not limit ourselves so. We need not interfere with consensual sex to identify and prevent rape, and we needn't prohibit S-M in order to combat political and economic violence. And let's not forget Amber Hollibaugh's point about false consciousness. Though some feminists are fond of telling others that to enjoy S-M, b/f, or even penetrations is to be burdened with this mental defect, it might be more appropriate to leave such evaluations up to the individual. If a person doesn't have the final say about his or her own mind, we are talking about thought control. And that reminds me of Katherine Hepburn's lines in the film "The Lion in Winter": "How," said Katherine sighing into the camera, "from where we started did we get here?"