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!)
1 comment:
A similar situation surfaces with an examination of the finitude of life. Life doesn’t hold meaning without our conscious awareness of our finitude. Our life reflects this by our gaining meaning and value through our projects that are necessarily limited by our awareness of the fact that we will die. Where the eroticization of power begins to define sex, I claim that the eroticization of our finitude defines our life.
“You only get one life.” “Carpe Diem.” Our culture reflects our finitude as always-already limiting everything we do. So what? Where is the excess? As in your example, where the excess lies in those that choose to cling to and act on the extreme of the power binary of domination/submission, it is my claim that excess in life lies in acts of extreme finitude/infinitude. As sexual assault “spills over ideological containment”, so too do those that jump off buildings, swallow 800 pills with a bottle of vodka, or drink antifreeze. Indeed, those that accept that they must act or risk ‘wasting’ this life must either accept the inherent limits of their life, or thwart them. Suicide then becomes the “the basic formula of [life] reaching its logical conclusion.”
Then again, maybe we redefine sex every time we hit the sheets, be it alone or with other people(s). Maybe sex involves more than a media-promulgated power struggle. It might even be the case that meaning and value in life reflect more than just our ‘struggle’ with finitude.
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