No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays

Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution

Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution P R E F A C E t's perhaps some indication of the complex, refractory nature of my subject that this isthe third version of my preface to the article that follows—itself the third revision of what began as a talk at a feminist conference in 1981. At that time, feminists were just beginning to engage in a passionate, explosive debate—or rather, a series of overlapping , intertwined debates—about sex.The arguments crystallized around specific issues: pornography; the causesof sexual violence and how best to oppose it; the definition of sexual consent; the nature of women's sexuality and whether it is intrinsicallydifferent from men's; the meaning of heterosexuality for women; the political significance of "fringe" sexualities like sadomasochism and, more generally, the relation of sexual fantasy to action, sexual behavior to political practice (in the early '8os, when feminists used the term "political correctness " it wasto refer sarcasticallyto the anti-pornography movement's efforts to define a "feminist sexuality"). Each of these issues, in turn, became a focus of deeply felt disagreement over the place of sexuality and sexual morality in a feminist analysis and program. In one way or another, they raisethe question of whether sexualfreedom, as such, is a feminist value, or whether feminismought rather to aim at replacing male-defined social controls over sex with female-defined controls. While there has always been tension among feminists with differing sexual attitudes, it was only with the eruption of these debates that the differences came to the surface and defined political factions, creating a serious intramovement split. In my view, the reason for this development (or at least its catalyst)wasthe riseof the new right. The women's liberation movement had emerged in a liberal political and social climate; like the rest of the left it had devoted much I N O M O R E N I C E G I R L S 2.O of its energy to making a radical critique of liberalism. So long as sexual liberalism appeared to be firmly entrenched as the dominant cultural ideology, feminists put a high priority on criticizing the hypocrisies and abuses of the male-dominated "sexual revolution." But as liberalism fell apart, so did the apparent feminist consensus on sex. Confronted with a right-wing backlash bent on reversing social acceptance of non-marital, non-procreative sex, feminists like me, who saw sexual liberalism as deeply flawed by sexism but nonetheless a source of crucial gains for women, found themselves at odds with feminists who dismissed the sexual revolution asmonolithically sexist and shared many of the attitudes of conservative moralists. Since the mid-'8os, the intensity of the sexdebates has waned, not because the issues are any closer to being resolved, but because the two sides are so far apart they havenothing more to sayto each other. "Pro-sex" feminists (as we came to be labeled) can claim some victories : we succeeded in countering the prevailing public assumption that the anti-pornography movement's sexual conservatism was the feminist position and the porn debate a conflict between "feminists" and "First Amendment absolutists"; we were instrumental in defeating ordinances that defined pornography as a form of sex discrimination , enshrining feminist sexualconservatism aspublic policy; and we largely won the battle for the hearts and minds of feminist academics , journalists, and other intellectuals. Yet on the level of the unexamined, semi-conscious attitudes that permeate popular culture and politics, the equation of sexual liberalism with sexism and violence against women is, if anything, more widespread than it was ten years ago. This, of course, reflects the accelerating intensity of the anti-sexual backlash during the Reagan-Bush years. But it also points up a fundamental failure on the part of the "pro-sex" camp: the failure to put forward a convincing alternative analysisof sexual violence, exploitation, and alienation. These issues were of vital concern to an earlier wave of sexual liberationists . From the 19305 through the 19605, sexual radicalism was anchored in a radical psychoanalytic tradition whose paradigmatic figure is Wilhelm Reich and whose basic assumptions derive from Freud's libido theory. For radical Freudians the sexual impulse is a biologically-given energy, a dynamic force that pushes toward grati- Toward a Feminist Sexual Revolution zi fication; sexual desire blocked from expression or awarenessdoes not disappear but takes indirect forms, leaving its imprint both on individuals ' feelings, fantasies...