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The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism I Edited by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G

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The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism I Edited by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G The ATHENE Series General Editors Consulting Editor Gloria Bowles Dale Spender Renate Klein Janice Raymond The Athene Series assumes that all those who are concerned with formulating explanations of the way the world works need to know and appreciate the significance of basic feminist principles. The growth of feminist research has challenged almost all aspects of social organization in our culture. The Athene Series focuses on the construction of knowledge arid the exclusion of women from the process— both as theorists and subjects of study— and offers innovative studies that challenge established theories and research. On Athene— When Metis, goddess of wisdom who presided over all knowledge was pregnant with Athene, she was swallowed up by Zeus who then gave birth to Athene from his head. The original Athene is thus the parthenogenetic daughter of a strong mother and as the feminist myth goes, at the “third birth” of Athene she stops being Zeus’ obedient mouthpiece and returns to her real source: the science and wisdom of womankind. Published by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue New York, New York Copyright © 1990 by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G. Raymond All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Sexual liberals and the attack on feminism I edited by Dorchen Leidholdt and Janice G. Raymond. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (Athene series) Essays which originated as speeches and panel presentations at a conference on April 6, 1987, at the New York University Law School. Includes index. ISBN 0-8077-6239-3 ISBN 0-8077-6238-5 (pbk) 1. Feminism—United States—Congresses. 2. Women's rights—United States—Congresses. 3. Sexual ethics—United States—Congresses. 4. Pornography—Social aspects—United States—Congresses. I. Leidholdt, Dorchen. II. Raymond, Janice G. III. Series. HQ1403.S49 1989 305.4'2'0973—dc20 89-32594 CIP Printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 99 98 97 96 95 94 93 92 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction, Dorchen Leidholdt ix Part I: Feminism and Liberalism 1 Liberalism and the Death of Feminism, Catharine A. MacKinnon 3 Sexology and Antifeminism, Sheila Jeffreys 14 Woman-Hating Right and Left, Andrea Dworkin 28 Part II: Family Structures: The Patriarch and the Pimp 41 Making an Issue of Incest, Louise Armstrong 43 Taking Our Eyes Off the Guys, Sonia Johnson 56 Family Matters, Ann Jones 61 Confronting the Liberal Lies About Prostitution, Evelina Giobbe 67 Part III: The New Reproductive Liberalism 83 The New Reproductive Technologies, Gena Corea 85 Mothers on Trial: .Custody and the "Baby M" Case, Phyllis Chesler 95 Sexual and Reproductive Liberalism, Janice G. Raymond 103 In the Best Interest of the Sperm: The Pregnancy of Judge Sorkow, Pauline B. Bart 112 Abortion and Pornography: The Sexual Liberals' "Gotcha" Against Women's Equality, Twiss Butler 114 Part IV: Sexuality 123 When Women Defend Pornography, Dorchen Leidholdt 125 Eroticizing Women's Subordination, Sheila Jeffreys 132 Resistance, Andrea Dworkin 136 Sex Resistance in Heterosexual Arrangements, A Southern Women's Writing Collective 140 Toward a Feminist Praxis of Sexuality, Wendy Stock 148 Sexual Liberalism and Survivors of Sexual Abuse, Valerie Heller 157 Part V: The Male Backlash 163 The Many Faces of Backlash, Florence Rush 165 Liberals, Libertarianism, and the Liberal Arts Establishment, Susanne Kappeler 175 You Can't Fight Homophobia and Protect the Pornographers at the Same Time— An Analysis of What Went Wrong in Hardwick, John Stoltenberg 184 A View from Another Country, Susan G. Cole 191 Women and Civil Liberties, Kathleen A. Lahey 198 Part VI: Politics and Possibilities 209 Be-Witching: Re-Calling the Archimagical Powers of Women, Mary Daly 211 Not a Sentimental Journey: Women's Friendships, Janice G. Raymond 222 Author Index 227 Subject Index 231 About the Editors and Contributors 241 Series List 245 Acknowledgments Without the help of many individuals and organizations, this book and the conference that gave birth to it would not have been possible. First of all, we would like to express our deepest appreciation to the dedi­ cated activists who helped organize the conference: Dolores Alexander, Sue Batkin, Jillouise Breslauer, Zesara Chan, Michael Christian, Amy Elman, Evelina Giobbe-Kane, Ralph Hummel, Annie McCombs, Maura Maguire, Kristen Reilly, Leslie Rimmel, Evelyn Rivera Radinson, Norma Ramos, David Satz, and Dorothy Teer. Lorelei Pettigrew, Catharine MacKinnon, and Twiss Butler provided invaluable advice during the planning of the conference. Lettie Cottin Pogrebin and Gloria Steinem together gave a statement and show of support that heartened both the organizers and the audience. New York University Law School's Law Women deserve a vote of thanks for their sponsorship, as does the NYU Law School administration for providing funding for sign lan­ guage interpreters. Words are inadequate to express our gratitude to the individuals and - foundations who provided necessary moral and financial support: Laura Lederer and the L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation, the Butler Family Foundation, and Helen Hauben and the Joe and Emily Lowe Foundation. Finally, our thanks to Susan Matula, who painstakingly typed and edited the transcripts of the conference presentations. Introduction Dorchen Leidholdt Most of the essays in this volume began as speeches and panel presen­ tations at a conference that, although all but ignored by the main­ stream media, reverberated throughout the women's movement. On April 6, 1987, eight hundred people packed an auditorium at New York University Law School, while hundreds more sat riveted to television monitors outside. They came to hear many of the major feminist writ­ ers, thinkers, and leaders address an ideology and a program that, they asserted, was undermining feminism in the guise of being its best friend. The subject of the conference was liberalism or, to use British fem­ inist historian Sheila Jeffreys' more precise terminology, "sexual liber­ alism": a set of political beliefs and practices rooted in the assumption that sexual expression is inherently liberating and must be permitted to flourish unchecked, even when it entails the exploitation or brutali­ zation of others.1 To sexual liberals, sexuality is not a construct of cul­ ture that reflects and reinforces a culture's values including its deval­ uation of women, as feminists contend, but an icon of nature, so fragile that any analysis, criticism, or attempt at change threatens not only the existence of human sexuality but everyone's freedom. Conflict between feminists and sexual liberals is nothing new. In­ deed, the two groups have been at odds from the beginning of the second wave of feminism in the 1960s, if not before. The early con­ sciousness-raising groups and the activism and publications they gen­ erated squarely confronted the sexual attitudes and mores of liberal and left-wing men. In Notes from the First Year, for example, a collection of essays published by New York Radical Women in 1968, Shulamith Firestone identified and then dissected what she called "the seeming freedoms" for women championed by so-called progressive men. At the top of her list was sexuality: 1The title of the conference and this volume— "The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism"—is the inspiration of Sheila Jeffreys. As for sex itself, I would argue that any changes were as a result of male interests and not female. A relaxing of mores concerning female sexual behavior was to his advantage; there was a greater sexual supply at a lower or nonexistent cost. But his attitudes haven't changed much.2 One participant in a late sixties consciousness-raising group anticipated the analysis that antipornography feminists would make two decades later: " A man's sense of personal worth comes through his cocksman- ship, in the Playboy mystique. It's the old business of raising your self- image by lowering someone else."3 By 1970, Dana Densmore and others in a Boston-based radical fem­ inist group called Cell 16 made male supremacist sexual values the fo­ cus of their theorizing. Densmore argued that the image of the sexually liberated woman extolled by sexually liberal men was nothing more than a repackaged version of the oldest and most dehumanized con­ ception of women: People seem to believe that sexual freedom (even when it is only the freedom to actively offer oneself as a willing object) is freedom. When men say to us, "But aren't you already liberated?" what they mean is, "We said it was okay to let us fuck you . What more could you want?" The unarticulated assumption behind this misunderstanding is that women are purely sexual beings, bodies and sensuality, fucking machines. Therefore freedom for women can only mean sexual freedom.4 As the 1970s progressed, activism often loomed larger than theoriz­ ing, as feminists organized against rape, battery, sexual harassment, and child sexual abuse, and protested beauty pageants and sexist ads. Each new phase of feminist work was greeted with fierce and unre­ lenting opposition by sexually liberal men. Male academicians and so­ cial commentators reacted to speakouts by women who had survived rape with disdain and hostility. Although professing to be against rape, these men defined it in the narrowest terms possible, as forced pene­ tration of a sexually inexperienced woman by a stranger, and they de­ fended the mindset underlying rape—that sex is conquest—as natural and inevitable. Sexual liberals argued that "sexual harassment" was a misnomer; that what feminists were misguidedly calling sexual abuse in the workplace or on the street was merely the natural expression of males' sexual attraction to females.
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