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Gender Rampage
Sep. 29th, 2004 05:07 pm( Work related bitching )
I've gotten to a point in Intercourse where I'm questioning Dworkin's analysis of gender. Or...maybe I'm not questioning her analysis per se but rather her analysis is raising questions for me. In chapter 8, titled "Law," Dworkin discusses the religious, social, and legal policing of intercourse, explaining that sodomy laws and the like are a public way of seeing to it that men do not engage in sexual activity that in anyway compromises their dominence over women through the fuck. On page 148 she writes,
Gender is what the state seeks to control: who is the man here? which is the woman? how to keep the man on top, how to keep the man the man; how to render the woman inferior in fucking so that she cannot recover herself from the carnel experience of her own subjugation.
In previous chapters Dworkin has suggested that the very act of fucking is a way for men to dominate women through framing the act of fucking, of conquering, of surrender, of having the boundaries of one's body violated as the quintessential way of becoming female. A woman is not allowed to own her feminity until she has been fucked, and not just fucked but infected with carnel desire. Being fucked isn't enough, a woman must WANT to be fucked to prove herself a woman. Within the context of that analysis the previous paragraph makes sense. It fits perfectly into the line of thought Dworkin has been travelling up to this point. What laws policing sexual acts between adults really aim to accomplish is the continued differentiantion between men and women with an eye towards keeping men dominant. Or, in Dworkin's words...
The legitimacy of a man's civil dominance depends on the authenticity of his masculinity, whihc is articulated when he fucks. Masculity itself means being as differentiated from women as it is possible to be; and so the laws regulating intercourse in general forbid those sex acts that break down gender barriers and license those sex acts and conditions that heighten gender polarity and antagonism. (p. 150
Homosexuality, BDSM, bestiality, even inter-racial couplings all blur gender lines and by extension, lines of power. I'm with her up to this point. Then on page 151 she writes,
The laws regulating intercourse are the laws most vital to making gender a social absolute that appears to have a metaphysical base, an inevidability rooted in existence itself.
Now my first thought after reading that sentence was "Hmmm, I wonder if Kate Bornstein would agree?" (See? I'm "making connections." Prof. Johnson and Natania would be so proud.) I don't really think she would. Kate has shown the world nothing if not that gender is a far more complex beast then most of us have fathomed. I doubt she would agree that laws regulating sex acts are the single most vital way of publicly policing gender. I think Bornstein would make a far deeper analysis of the issue, an example of which I wish I could give, but since I don't have any of Bornstein's books in front of me at the moment, I can't.
On page 152 Dworkin writes,
The rules on intercourse are intended to keep people away from the slippery slope God appears to dislike the most: a lessening of differences between the sexes, the conflation of male and female natures into one human nature.
In the previous chapter Dworkin raises the question of how our society would change if the way we engaged in intercourse were to change. She quotes Hite while discussing the idea of a more female centered form of intercourse:
Shere Hite has suggested an intercourse in which "thrusting would not be considered as necessary as it now is...[There might be] more a mutual lying together in pleasure, penis-in-vagina, vagina-covering-penis, with female orgasm providing much of the stimulation necessary for male orgasm"
So...what all this quoting and theory leads up to is the question of how much effect you think the revamping of sexual intercourse, and the repealing of sexual laws would have on the way we do gender? Personally I think they are but as small piece of the puzzle. Gender difference and dominance can still be maintained even insituations in which sex itself isn't involved. Take for example the gay men who teased Adrienne when we reached the end of the Dyke March. Here were a couple men who did not fuck women, yet still felt that her woman's body was theirs to poke fun at, to transgress, thus underlining Dworkin's point that the female body is considered public property. Intercourse itself, while contributing to that way of thinking does not single handedly maintain it. Of course Dworkin isn't saying it does, but I do think she is giving it more weight in the maintenance of gender then it rightly deserves.
What do you think?
I've gotten to a point in Intercourse where I'm questioning Dworkin's analysis of gender. Or...maybe I'm not questioning her analysis per se but rather her analysis is raising questions for me. In chapter 8, titled "Law," Dworkin discusses the religious, social, and legal policing of intercourse, explaining that sodomy laws and the like are a public way of seeing to it that men do not engage in sexual activity that in anyway compromises their dominence over women through the fuck. On page 148 she writes,
Gender is what the state seeks to control: who is the man here? which is the woman? how to keep the man on top, how to keep the man the man; how to render the woman inferior in fucking so that she cannot recover herself from the carnel experience of her own subjugation.
In previous chapters Dworkin has suggested that the very act of fucking is a way for men to dominate women through framing the act of fucking, of conquering, of surrender, of having the boundaries of one's body violated as the quintessential way of becoming female. A woman is not allowed to own her feminity until she has been fucked, and not just fucked but infected with carnel desire. Being fucked isn't enough, a woman must WANT to be fucked to prove herself a woman. Within the context of that analysis the previous paragraph makes sense. It fits perfectly into the line of thought Dworkin has been travelling up to this point. What laws policing sexual acts between adults really aim to accomplish is the continued differentiantion between men and women with an eye towards keeping men dominant. Or, in Dworkin's words...
The legitimacy of a man's civil dominance depends on the authenticity of his masculinity, whihc is articulated when he fucks. Masculity itself means being as differentiated from women as it is possible to be; and so the laws regulating intercourse in general forbid those sex acts that break down gender barriers and license those sex acts and conditions that heighten gender polarity and antagonism. (p. 150
Homosexuality, BDSM, bestiality, even inter-racial couplings all blur gender lines and by extension, lines of power. I'm with her up to this point. Then on page 151 she writes,
The laws regulating intercourse are the laws most vital to making gender a social absolute that appears to have a metaphysical base, an inevidability rooted in existence itself.
Now my first thought after reading that sentence was "Hmmm, I wonder if Kate Bornstein would agree?" (See? I'm "making connections." Prof. Johnson and Natania would be so proud.) I don't really think she would. Kate has shown the world nothing if not that gender is a far more complex beast then most of us have fathomed. I doubt she would agree that laws regulating sex acts are the single most vital way of publicly policing gender. I think Bornstein would make a far deeper analysis of the issue, an example of which I wish I could give, but since I don't have any of Bornstein's books in front of me at the moment, I can't.
On page 152 Dworkin writes,
The rules on intercourse are intended to keep people away from the slippery slope God appears to dislike the most: a lessening of differences between the sexes, the conflation of male and female natures into one human nature.
In the previous chapter Dworkin raises the question of how our society would change if the way we engaged in intercourse were to change. She quotes Hite while discussing the idea of a more female centered form of intercourse:
Shere Hite has suggested an intercourse in which "thrusting would not be considered as necessary as it now is...[There might be] more a mutual lying together in pleasure, penis-in-vagina, vagina-covering-penis, with female orgasm providing much of the stimulation necessary for male orgasm"
So...what all this quoting and theory leads up to is the question of how much effect you think the revamping of sexual intercourse, and the repealing of sexual laws would have on the way we do gender? Personally I think they are but as small piece of the puzzle. Gender difference and dominance can still be maintained even insituations in which sex itself isn't involved. Take for example the gay men who teased Adrienne when we reached the end of the Dyke March. Here were a couple men who did not fuck women, yet still felt that her woman's body was theirs to poke fun at, to transgress, thus underlining Dworkin's point that the female body is considered public property. Intercourse itself, while contributing to that way of thinking does not single handedly maintain it. Of course Dworkin isn't saying it does, but I do think she is giving it more weight in the maintenance of gender then it rightly deserves.
What do you think?
