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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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Page 74
("Her condition became so unstable that we had to take her to the emergency room.")
The term "perverse" is the contrary but not the contradiction of the term "normal." Perversity does not refer to everything that the normal lacks, since a teenager who does not like rock 'n' roll is not typically considered perverse, even if normal teenagers like this kind of music. The term "perverse" can be used to describe the teenager who is obstinate in the face of efforts to change his mind over the question of musical taste, but obstinacy is hardly the odd or the unusual. Similarly, marital sex on demand might be considered intolerable or abhorrent to a woman, but she need not consider such abnormal sex to be a ''perverse" feature of her marriage; and the woman with a three-day fever is not a "perverse" sufferer simply because she is not well.
Furthermore, perversity is not equivalent to the exceptionally odd or the very eccentric, the extremely objectionable or the seriously ill. Otherwise, people with no eyelashes or twenty manicured French poodles, no manners or terminal cancer would all be considered perverse. So, too, sexual eccentricity or sexual unacceptability is insufficient to characterize sexual perversion. Painting my toenails purple before sex may be eccentric, and insulting my lover when he doesn't perform may be unacceptable, but neither is commonly considered perverse.
Yet when people confront the bestiality, necrophilia, or pedophilia commonly considered to be sexual perversions, a typical response is indeed a kind of objection in extremis: such perversions are abhorrent, disgusting, revolting, vile, not merely eccentric or unacceptable. I suggest that such responses are themselves derivative of a more basic revulsion. An individual's fear or horror at perversion is the fear of the subversive, the twisted, the unnaturalthat which, according to Michael Slote, could not possibly be a part of us (the "normal" ones).
16
Sexual perversion challenges the nature and value of sex prescribed by the status quo by transforming the personal and social meaning of sexuality. Mortimer Kadish suggests that while sexual deviance is an offense
within
the system, sexual perversion is an offense
against
the system.
17
Such a view of sexual perversion is consistent with the claim that the moral deviance of adultery or the statistical deviance of twelve-hour continuous sex is not considered sexually perverse, even though each is contrary to a sexual norm. Nor is it surprising that category 4 in the earlier discussion of deviancethe category in which the term "subversive" appearsis also the category of the "unnatural," since the unnatural is a common synonym for sexual perversion.
18
What is often fundamental to an individual's conception of sexuality is that which is essential to human nature; anything else is freakish, monstrous, grotesque, or twisted. Indeed, such terms are commonly used to describe bestiality, necrophilia, and coprophilia. Sexual perversion that is subversive by defiling what it touches is labeled corrupt, vile, degenerate, dirty, or depraved. Homosexuality, pedophilia, sodomy, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and sadomasochism are often described in just this way. By all but the highly trained specialist, an incomprehensible psychopathology is typically ascribed to the transsexual, the transvestite, or the fetishist; such "perverts" betray to many people a mental instability that challenges the very foundations of what is meant by human nature and "normal" sex.
The claim that sexual perversion is a reconceptualization of the sexual is consistent with the view that sexual perversions are not occasional dalliances or infrequent
 
Page 75
fantasies. Persons, acts, or states of mind may be sexually perverted, but persons are referred to as perverse in virtue of a disposition or inclination toward entertaining perverse desires. If perversion is defined as a psychological state, acts are perverse only in virtue of the perverse desires that motivate them. Moreover, a person's sexual self-identification may not match that person's actual sexual practices, as when a married man who has frequent affairs with gay men continues to regard himself as heterosexual. In this way he can reassure himself, and reinforce in others, that he is "normal." This way of thinking about perversion accommodates both perversions that are deep-seated sexual orientations and those that are consciously chosen preferences. However, choosing to practice sexual perversion as a substitute for the normal sex that one in fact desires does not make one a pervert. Perversion is subversive in its total annihilation of "normal" desire.
19
This conception of sexual perversion is at odds with Sara Ketchum's claim that sexually perverse preferences constitute the
reverse
of a sexual ideal.
20
I suggest that sexual perversion is more than a reversal of an ideal, since one's failure to live up to a sexual ideal can simply result in wrongful or unpleasant behavior that is socially deviant but not sexually perverse. Adultery is the "reverse" of the cultural ideal of marital sex but does not thereby constitute a perversion. Indeed, Ketchum's criterion for perversity is its lack of reciprocity or mutualitya moral failure perhaps, but not a necessary feature of perversion. The sadist who returns the masochist's requests for the whip with lashes timed in synchronicity to her partner's orgasms is not clearly in violation of a reciprocal or mutual relationship, yet such sadomasochism is still regarded by many as perverse.
Furthermore, understanding perversion as subversive offers some insight into those perversions that are not sexual. Perversions of the law, medicine, and morals are called perverse because they challenge the way such institutions are conceived by the status quo. For example, some antiabortion activists believe it is a perversion of the law to think that a constitutional right to privacy authorizes the right to kill an unborn child. Certainly it is a perverse surgical doctor who cuts into his patients simply to see how much they will bleed. Such examples suggest why the connotations of perversion, particularly sexual perversion, are, according to Gayle Rubin, "uniformly bad."
21
If perversion challenges the ideological stability of the status quo, then the social institutions that represent and reinforce that ideology cannot afford to invest perversion with the moral complexity that would recommend or excuse some perversions and condemn others. The unremitting derogation of perversion is much like a taboo that, in Jerome Neu's words, "puts the demand for reasons out of place[,] . . . imposes strict liability and so puts the offering of excuses out of place as well."
22
Therefore, medical, legal, psychoanalytic, and educational institutions conforming to the status quo can be expected to act so that sexual perversion is perceived as a menace to social security and public health. According to such institutions, sexual perversion, quoting Michael Slote, "involves at least the idea of deviation from some favored, explanatorily rich, ideal-typic causal model of the development of human sexual motivation."
23
This is not to suggest that particular individuals always agree on what constitutes sexual perversion. As Michael Ruse points out, the incomprehensibility of perversion is as much a function of individual ways of understanding sex as it is a function of
 
Page 76
the larger society.
24
Rape has been variously regarded by feminists as the essence of heterosexual sex, a sadistic sexual perversion, and a crime of violence, not one of sex.
25
Thus, one person's sexual norm may be another's perversion. Indeed, sexual perversions appear to be limited in form and content only by the imagination and needs of the practitioner. (A man might expose himself while fondling a favorite shoe; another might have continuous sex with three dead sheep.) What cultural norms succeed in doing is establishing the negative evaluative content of sexual perversion by stigmatizing those individuals whose sexual habits or opinions fall outside an acceptable sexual range.
Feminists who are sensitive to the ways in which patriarchal social institutions have disguised androcentric cultural norms as natural and inevitable are particularly wary of normative evaluations of deviations from those norms. Indeed, some lesbian feminists have argued that it should be heterosexuality that ought to be questioned, since patriarchal institutions offer us so little information about, and access to, sexual alternatives.
26
Especially for sex radicals in search of sexual freedom from sexually repressive norms, what began as Freud's natural polymorphous perversity appears to have become an unnatural sexual deviance in the service of patriarchal stability.
Indeed, it might be argued that while the normative connotations of the term "subversive" may be negative for members of the status quo threatened with the overthrow of treasured norms, the term has often signified to oppressed minorities a positive liberation from those norms. Thus, the political aims of both cultural and sex radical feminism could be construed as the attempt to
subvert
patriarchal sexual norms in the pursuit of a woman-identified sexual autonomy. On this interpretation, to accept the "invincibly pejorative" nature of sexual perversion would be to accept the negative connotations of the term "subversive" that the status quo uses to marginalize and silence dissidence. According to this line of reasoning, a truly subversive and liberating feminist approach to women's sexuality would involve reclaiming the subversive element of perversion by retaining the use of the term "perversion" in the language but ascribing to it a positive normative content.
27
My concern with such an approach is with the insular nature of the "liberation." The preceding argument makes no claims that a reappropriation by the feminist community of the normative content of sexual perversion will ultimately result in a patriarchal or nonfeminist change in normative usage as well. The primary aim is for individual women to be able to value and make central to their lives that which has been on the periphery. However, I would argue that unless feminist activism aims at fundamental change in the status quo, normative changes that remain within the women's community run the risk of reifying and marginalizing already marginalized groups.
Lesbian separatists argue that the only way for women to escape patriarchal oppression is to divest themselves of male-identified ideology and institutions altogether. On the contrary, I believe that such separatism only reinforces the separate but unequal status that women already have; and many women want to rid themselves of oppression but not rid themselves of men. While many lesbians argue for the importance of appropriating androcentric language in order to give women a sense of being centered where once marginalized, I would still respond that without
 
Page 77
continuing activism outside the women's community, women's sense of our own centrality will remain illusory.
28
I agree that feminism is in an important sense subversive in its challenge to patriarchal norms, but I disagree that the best way to subvert the status quo is to redefine terminology for a limited audience. The tradition of institutionalized heterosexuality associates perversion with revulsion, corruption, and mental illness for good reason: to compel compliance by stigmatizing those who would do otherwise. Revalorizing perversion requires more than reclaiming its norm for the needs of a feminist community, since a heterosexist and patriarchal community need only ignore or misunderstand the reclamation.
Furthermore, it is unclear just how much can be gained by using patriarchal language for feminist purposes, since linguistic intentionality and use are easily confused by those whose ear is accustomed to the semantics of the status quo. Accusations of identifying with the aggressor or internalizing oppressive norms are common among feminist groups whose attempts at changing patriarchal norms appear co-optive to other feminists. Indeed, many members of the feminist community will not construe the practice of sexual perversion as liberating to any woman, and this situation can result in a feminist divisiveness that gives patriarchal power the upper hand. If we wish to include all members of the feminist community in the pursuit of women's sexual agency
and
change the sexual ideology of patriarchal institutions, my contention is that we must jettison the notion of perversion entirely so that it can no longer be used to reinforce the status quo. As I shall argue in the following pages, by replacing the notion of sexual perversion with the notion of sexual difference, we can allow for a wide variety of sexual practices without the pejorative stigma that is such a powerful tool of sexual oppression.
Philosophically Misleading Conceptions of Perversion
Several philosophers have concluded that sexual perversion is in some important sense morally
wrong
. Their conclusions are misleading, however, for two reasons: (1) when moral wrong becomes a criterion of perversion, investigations into controversial cases become irrelevant; and (2) the moral wrong indicated does not require that perverse sexual behavior be in any sense
subversive
or
incomprehensible
sex as I have described it. Sara Ketchum's characterization of perversion as the failure to live up to an ideal in sexspecifically, as a lack of sexual reciprocityis one example, since reciprocity in sex appears to be compatible with some perverse sexual behavior, and adultery is not perverse at all. Another example is Donald Levy's claim that "
[p]erversion degrades
is a necessary truth" (Levy's italics). Levy's view is that the pervert denies himself or others some "basic human good" purely for the pleasure of perverse sex, rejecting the good life that other sorts of behavior could afford.
29
Yet certainly sexual pleasure is a basic good for some people, and some sexual perverts practice the mutually enjoyable and consensual sex that affords them more of what they need for a good life
in their terms
than if they were not doing so. Indeed, this is one of the arguments that a sex radical feminist uses against those who would claim that her sex life is immoral. Levy's analysis seems to rely on the perspective from the "view from nowhere," in which
Levy's
sense of a basic human good is
everyone's
sense of a basic human good.
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