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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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Page 94
Sex radicals also remind cultural feminists that because the s/m community is scattered and marginalized, it has difficulty in securing proper facilities and equipment for safe individual s/m use and in disseminating its health and safety concerns either to neophyte practitioners or to the public at large. Such difficulties serve the interests of the status quo, since in this way abuses can be publicly isolated and distorted. Yet according to Gayle Rubin, "far more people end up in the hospital as a result of playing sports, driving cars, or being pregnant than from having s/m sex."
87
Furthermore, the community is small enough that practitioners with bad reputations are identified relatively quickly. For a sex radical feminist, it is both predictable and sinister that patriarchal society tolerates wife beating, child abuse, rape, and war more easily than it tolerates lesbian sadomasochism, since lesbian s/m represents a threat to the heterosexual monogamy and repressive intimacy that restrict women's sexual roles to those of subordinates to men.
Furthermore, according to sex radical feminists, butch/femme sexual roles and lesbian sadomasochism can be healing exorcisms of the daily psychological battering women often receive from male coworkers or acquaintances. Such sex provides a cathartic reenactment of a power struggle that they cannot seem to win at work but that they can win at home. For many, dramas of sexual dominance and submission help heal old wounds of childhood neglect, abuse, or incest, even the current wounds of rape. In addition, many sex radicals see in lesbian sadomasochism a revelation of the subtler relationships between sex and power. Master/slave theater and reenactments of political fascism add a dimension to sex that for some women is both provocative and deeply erotic. From this view, to deny women access to such erotica is to deny them exploration into that which is most personal about each woman's sexual needs.
88
Since the pursuit of women's sexual agency and self-definition is a feminist goal, sex radical feminists claim that the pursuit of alternative sexual practices can not only mean safe, healthy, and mutually enjoyable sex but can also be an important part of a feminist sexuality.
Similarly, a sex radical points out that man/boy love relationships can be equally safe and healthy. Indeed, for many gay men and boys, any other sex would be anathema to their sexual desires. Advocates of man/boy love say that their relationships can be as mutually attentive and affectionate as any cultural feminist's ideal of woman-identified sex, since such partners are, like cultural feminists, looking for alternative ways to satisfy a sexual need oppressed under hetero-patriarchy.
89
Though their sex may recreate dominant/submissive patterns that do not fit a cultural feminist's vision of egalitarian sex, sex radicals warn that feminists cannot assume that such sex is dangerous, inattentive, unloving, or bad. Here too, according to sex radicals, if feminists are to break patriarchy's stranglehold on defining the relationship between sex and power, we must refrain from assuming that man/boy, dominant/submissive sex is the degrading patriarchal sex of the status quo. Children must be protected from sexual abuse; but according to this view, it is a mistake to trust such protection to social institutions designed to stigmatize children's sexuality in the service of oppressive norms.
90
Still Antifeminist and Morally Wrong
A cultural feminist's response to sex radicals' arguments for butch/femme sexual role-playing and lesbian sadomasochism is to
 
Page 95
point out to radical feminists that by their own admission, their purported reclamation of power in sex is nothing more than
play-acting
. As such, a sex radical's eroticization of power is merely a parody of the real power over women that men wield under patriarchy. Cultural feminists claim that such parodies have no way of releasing women from heterosexual submission, since the fantasy world in which they reside leaves the concrete political world behind. From such a view, dramas of dominance and submission can only delude women into believing they have gained control over their sexual lives when they have not. Cultural feminists contend that such fantasies of power are typical of those for whom power is out of reach, who resign themselves to a kind of childlike magical thinking that would appear to make their real adult oppression disappear with the crack of a whip.
91
Not only is a sex radical's sexual power illusory according to cultural feminists, but as I mentioned earlier, some feminists argue that this illusion is
not
harmless. According to this view, what may be one person's erotic play at power may be another's real efforts at domination. If feminist dominant/submissive sex is defined in terms of role-playing, there will be no way for play-actors to discern at the outset whether their partners will in fact act out their roles or make real attempts to dominate them. From this perspective, code words and health and safety rules do not protect women from those who would exploit partners expecting everyone to play by those rules. Some feminists suggest that the emphasis on trust in lesbian s/m implies the very danger of its abuse.
92
Lorena Leigh Saxe and Melinda Vadas argue that the sadomasochistic eroticism derived from simulations of Nazism, slavery, prostitution, and incest exists in virtue of the real oppression such simulations represent. Thus, practitioners of this kind of s/m are not
playing
at dominance and submission at all; rather, they are recreating degrading scenarios constitutive of the very kinds of oppression that as feminists they should ideologically reject. Melinda Vadas writes, "The experience of the simulation is mediated by the meaning of the injustices simulated. To take pleasure in the simulation is to make one's pleasure contingent on the actual occurrence and meanings of rape, racist enslavement, and so on. Pleasures taken in this way are not feminist, and cannot be."
93
Moreover, even if lesbian sadomasochistic sex is a mere performance of violence, grounded in artifice and subversion
for the performer
, it is contended that such play-acting will not undermine the attitudes of those whose entrenched conceptions of sexual deviance allow them to see only perversion, not subversion. Indeed, whether the violence is illusory or real, many cultural feminists argue that a sex radical's eroticization of power merely serves to reinforce the image of woman as Other, inferior, marginalized, dominated, and degraded. Such an image is necessarily public in virtue of the public dress, habits, and community activism of sexual minorities and so reinforces the social stereotype of women as the sexual subordinates of men.
94
Cultural feminists respond to sex radical arguments for man/boy love by pointing out that boys' approaching men for sex does not make such sex acceptable. Such claims only show cultural feminists once again how pervasive and deeply internalized patriarchal subordination in sex really is. For a cultural feminist, a sex radical's mistake is to invest an inherent rightness in sexual desire that makes sexual pleasure a good in itself.
95
Yet while sexual pleasure may be prima facie good, cultural femi-
 
Page 96
nists argue that such pleasure must always be evaluated by the social context in which it arises. Because the social context in which a sex radical practices is defined in terms of adult male dominance, cultural feminists claim that sexual pleasure must be defined in terms that do not imitate and reinforce that dominance. For cultural feminists, the sexual difference advocated by sex radicals remains sexual perversion in its subversion of a truly woman-identified sexuality.
Negotiating the Social Meaning of Sexual Difference
On the one hand, this feminist debate over sexual difference appears to be a debate between diametric opposites. According to cultural feminists, man/boy love or lesbian dominant/submissive sex is necessarily nonconsensual, dangerous (if not abusive), and antifeminist. For sex radical feminists, man/boy love and lesbian dominant/submissive sex can be consensual, safe, healthy, mutually pleasurable, and profoundly feminist. For cultural feminists, gay men's and lesbians' dominant/submissive sexual roles are replications of the oppressive sex of hetero-patriarchy. Sex is a gendered political practice whose traditional heterosexual model victimizes women. For sex radical feminists, gay men's and lesbians' dominant/submissive sexual roles are vehicles for the liberation of men and women from the oppressive sex of hetero-patriarchy. Sex is a socially regulated but potentially liberating practice whose variety can be tapped to subvert the stigma of sexual deviance designed to advance the power and privilege of the status quo. For cultural feminists, women's sexual pleasure, agency, and self-definition are a function of our ability to pursue and develop intimate relations between moral equals in nonpolarized roles. For sex radical feminists, women's sexual pleasure, agency, and self-definition are a function of our ability to pursue and develop a wide range of sexual interests, which include anonymous or casual sex between partners exploring the eroticization of dominance and submission.
However, both cultural and sex radical feminism have a broad range of similar goals. Both cultural and sex radical feminists believe that women's sexual pleasure, agency, and self-definition are values that require the freedom and responsibility of women individually and as a class to define our sexuality in our own terms. Furthermore, both groups would agree that any sex that conforms to, replicates, or reinforces ideological and institutional patterns of male dominance is oppressive to women. Cultural and sex radical feminists both regard their agendas as advocating the kind of care respect for women that acknowledges, understands, and promotes the individual sexual needs of women. Yet ironically, each feminist group accuses the other of undermining women's sexual autonomy, conforming to ideological formulas of male dominance, and misunderstanding the needs of individual women.
The similarity in goals of the two feminist groups is aptly illustrated by the fact that it is often difficult to discern which side is doing the talking. For example, Wendy Stock, a strong opponent of lesbian s/m, writes:
[W]e have the ability to imagine a different sexuality and to struggle to create it. We must continue to question our assumptions and, through feminist analysis, to detoxify ourselves from a culture that hates women. Through these experiences we are formulating new ways of living and being. Deconstructing patriarchal sexuality and abstaining from patriarchal sex may be a stage in the articulation and creation of a feminist
 
Page 97
sexuality. . . . By turning our backs on our own sexuality, we are admitting defeat to the same degree that we would if we accepted the patriarchy's constructed version of sex. We must sustain a vision of what the erotic can be. By nurturing our sexuality with a critical feminist awareness, we can resist the social structure that would take away this vital part of ourselves.
On the same side of the debate, Judy Butler conceives of women's sexual power as
the power gained through re-claiming my sexuality as an expression of
my
life, shaping my choice to honor my desires, and desiring my own sense of choice more than any other desire. The failure to do this is what Adrienne Rich calls "the worst thing of all . . . the failure to want our freedom passionately enough."
96
Yet given the aims of sex radical feminism, there is no reason to think that a sex radical feminist would disagree with these conceptions of the meaning and value of the erotic.
Therefore I propose that we adopt the perspective of the "view from somewhere different" to explore how the feminist tensions I have detailed can be incorporated into an inclusive feminist philosophy of sex. First, adopting this perspective means understanding sexual relations in terms of a dialectic between gender and sexuality. This dialectic situates women's sexuality in terms of women's victimization under patriarchy and women's pursuit of sexual exploration, pleasure, and agency. Thus, both cultural feminism, whose emphasis is on the ways gender oppression informs sexuality, and sex radical feminism, whose emphasis is on the ways that sexual liberation informs gender, can find an audience within the perspective of this broader dialectic.
Second, recall that the "world"-traveling implicit in the "view from somewhere different" recommends that we not only acknowledge the partiality of our own locations but also make an effort to understand the locations of others. Adopting this perspective precludes advocating the kind of politically correct sexuality that would derogate all but those deferring to a favored ideology. Therefore, such a perspective rejects the moral authoritarian approach of any cultural feminist who would restrict women's sexuality to all but a narrow range of ideal preference in deference to a "view from somewhere better." So, too, such a perspective reminds sex radicals not to press the exploration of sexual difference on women whose personal desire for more traditional sex may only reinforce the expectation that all women will want the same. Adopting the ''view from somewhere different" shows women how their choices can be both constrained by patriarchy and liberated by their own sense of agency and self-definition, so that their sexual lives can be lived creatively
and
responsibly.
Given the ways in which gender location intersects with other social locations, the women whose sexual agency both cultural and sex radical feminists would maximize will be of diverse races, classes, sexual preferences, ages, nationalities, religions, and physical abilities, among other categories. Therefore, a feminist philosophy of sex from the "view from somewhere different" contextualizes its perspective so that the specific sexual concerns of any given group can be heard. Such a perspective points out, for example, that a cultural feminist's advocacy of egalitarian, nonpolarized sex, particularly as part of an essential female sexuality, will simply not ring true for those women whose strongly identified nationalities or religions cherish different sexual values. Some women's desire for increased sexual experience may
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