Let's Talk About Sex!

Alright folks, I have to be honest; I am a bit tired of the polite, non-confrontational, “good point, I agree with you, what an interesting argument” tone that these blogs are tending to take. Don’t get me wrong, I am loving the blogging, but I think we are all a bit too nice. In the spirit of Rhodes and Kipnis, I’m going to attempt to stir things up a bit – to disrupt our tidy conversation with something a bit more guttural, and, I figure, the best way to do that is to dare to get personal, to hit below the belt. So let’s talk about sex.

Significant feminist commentary has been devoted to representations of female sexuality in the media, particularly in pornography (Mackinnon, Dworkin etc.). Much of this work posits that the dominant representations of sexuality found in mass cultural texts are about an eroticization of power, in particular, an eroticization of male domination and female submission. The female body is represented as the vessel by which men gain sexual gratification, and female gratification is achieved by gratifying male sexual desires. Thus women are denied any sexuality that is truly their own. No one escapes this heteronormative sexual formula as, while the genders of the sexual subjects involved in any given sexual encounter may vary, all sexuality is largely understood as involving a power struggle, and it is this power struggle that defines the experience as sexual (i.e. the rape scene from the L Word).

Can sex exist without an element of power? Can our desires escape the ideological tangling of sex, power, domination, and submission? Can we be hailed as sexual subjects without subjecting ourselves to this discourse of sexuality as the eroticization of unequal power relations? If it can be said that sexuality is, in some major way, defined by the eroticization of domination and submission, then would it not be fair to say that sexual assault is nothing more than the basic formula of sex reaching its logical conclusion? Perhaps sexual assault could be interpreted as a real world example of excess. Sexual assault represents a moment in which the ideology of sex as domination spills over its ideological containment and reveals the norm as problematic. “Sexual assault is not about sex, it is about power and control.” But if sex is about power and control as well, then sexual assault is absolutely about sex. Sexual assault simply reveals the ugly truth of sex. Sexual assault is the hyperbolized version of sex. If this is the case, sexual assault will not disappear until we drastically revision sex.

Discuss (Come on! If nothing else, that had to have provoked some strong feelings/opinions…let me have it!)

Here I am World!!!

"And why don't you write? Write! Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it" (Cixous 246).

I don't know about you fellow-bloggers, but I feel like I took something Thursday night and it felt really good.

Cixous writes as though she might burst, as though we all might burst, as though every woman is secretly or not so secretly bursting at the seams, aching to release our "unheard-of songs" on an unprepared world. Upon my accidental initiation into the world of feminism two years ago (thank you Mebbie), I remember feeling as though there was suddenly so much that urgently needed to be said and not enough time or words or forums in which to say it. The flood gates had been opened, but I had no idea where the water was going to go. Unfortunately, as time went by, I found no solution to the problem and thus, my insides remained flooded while the world at large remained impeccably dry.

Cixous urges women to write. That never seemed like enough to me, but perhaps it is a necessary first step. Rhodes speaks of the urgency of radical feminist textuality (both of the second wave and contemporarily) in a way that seems to mirror Cixous. We write because someone must! We write because we have to start somewhere! We write in order to take back our corner of the world, to rearticulate that corner as ourselves and thrust that corner into the spotlight, even if only for a moment. It seems endlessly simplistic, but to simply demand the recognition of one’s existence is really powerful.

So cyber world, I AM A FEMINIST AND I AM HERE!

Cixous, Helene. 1981. "The Laugh of the Medusa". In New French Feminisms, eds. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron, 245-264. New York: Schocken Books.

Frustrated!!

So, I’m a little frustrated - no, I’m a lot frustrated. Kipnis calls for a populist intervention to change popular culture. Maybe it’s just because I’m having a bit of a “glass half empty” kind of day, but I’m not really sure what to do with that. How the hell do we change popular culture? Writing on stop signs and cheering in Tory atrium are really neat and they might even make a few people stop for a split second and really think, but in the grand scheme of things, what are these brief moments of refunctioning or dissent really accomplishing? Oppositional antagonistic discourses are always provisional and temporary and partial (insert other postmodern tropes here), but there doesn’t seem to be much that is provisional or partial about mass culture. I know things change and there is uneven development and cracks and fissures etc. etc., but, as far as the big picture goes, I don’t see anything changing. And I don’t see Kipnis coming up with any concrete strategies to help with the whole changing thing.

Postmodernism loves to tear things down, but nothing every gets built back up in any productive way. How do we build anything while at the same time maintaining that everything is provisional? The point, I know, isn’t to build anything permanent, but this leaves me feeling like I’m trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun. I feel like I am running in circles chasing my own tail. I buy it. I get that everything is provisional and changing and temporary and there are only partial truths, but not many people like that idea. Truths are comforting, and, frankly, useful. Theory is really neat and Kipnis is admittedly very clever and maybe even right, but all she presents is the vague notion that we should act rather than just talk and deconstruct. Of course, she says this at the end of twenty-odd pages of deconstructing, in an impressively wordy and academic fashion.

I’m going to bed… maybe the glass will be half full tomorrow.

Politicization or Aestheticization? How's a Girl to Decide?!

aestheticization of politics = BAD/politicization of aesthetics = GOOD

In the context of the examples given in class, I get it. It seems really clear. An obvious line can be drawn between aesthetic representations that are political and those which are dumbing down political issues. But upon considering the issue further, I don't know if it is so very clear. Any aesthetic representation will be informed by an ideological framework and will be produced by an ideological subject(s). Most aesthetic representations seem to be produced in the name of a particular purpose, often a distinctly political purpose; this seems to be the case for artistic endeavours that constitute politicizations of aesthetics and for those which represent aestheticizations of politics. The 9/11 video we watched in class was clearly produced with a political message in mind. I get how it aestheticized politics. But what if we simply changed the verbal message behind the "In Memoriam" video to something more acceptable to us left-wingers - perhaps an indictment of the use of such a horrific event to justify war? Would the movie instantly become a politicization of aesthetics or would it still be an aestheticization of politics? Does the distinction simply depend on what we feel to be the "correct" political message to send? How can we objectively judge this? Can we?