Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

In comments over at FeministCritics, where I’ve been trying to explain why I think skepticism about feminism is way, way, way less important that skepticism about mainstream anti-feminism ought to be, typhonblue said

My problem with feminism is where it doesn’t challenge ‘patriarchial’ notions of male disposability, responsibility and moral inferiority. Additionally, it’s very obvious to me that ‘patriarchal’ notions of male disposability lead to a situations in which a woman is valued far, far, far more for her femaleness then her personhood; which I find profoundly offensive.

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I also find the notion of ‘patriarchy’ incoherent.

Maybe it’s just me but I think the notion of patriarchy is actually pretty straightforward. Here’s what I think it means (or at least where it came from) and how I think both the ideas of women’s value as property and men’s disposability come from values handed down from that system.

Formal political capital-p Patriarchy was and in some places still is the organization of society into extended multi-generational families, “houses,” or clans. Inside that system the extended family is held to be more important than any member in it. Except, maybe, whoever was the titular head. (Though even then it’s presumed their privilege comes from the decisions they make on behalf of the family.) That the heads of those houses were almost always men isn’t as important as the fact that they were the most senior relative in their particular branch of their family. They were more likely to be grandfathers or, occasionally, grandmothers of extended families than fathers or mothers of contemporary nuclear families.

Under political/economic patriarchy alliances are made through marriage — the idea being that if your children are married and, more important, their children are both descendants of the respective household heads, then betrayal would be literally an abandonment of one’s own flesh and blood.

Technically under patriarchy children of both sexes are “given” in marriage to form alliances with other houses. In theory (and often in practice) subordinate family members were given no more real say in who they were to marry than a suitcase full of money or a deed to piece of property would be.

In practice, though, women family members were often given in marriage to particularly “worthy” male outsiders — soldiers, say, or wealthy individuals. The stereotypical example of the latter would be when a king announced his daughter’s hand in marriage to whoever won a major tournament. (Or, in mythology, slew a dragon.) In other words it was possible for an ambitious or particularly infatuated man to “earn” a desired woman (or at least an alliance to her family) by pleasing her father and family interest.

And if the striving man dies in battle? Well, that’s male disposability for you — the king gives his daughter to the guy (possibly even the enemy who killed the first guy) and even though the first guy is dead and the daughter has to put out for and have offspring by some guy she has no interest in (and in the case of war might not even speak the same language as) the family, and its leader, come out ahead.

While that sort of formal organization isn’t as major as it once was you can still see it in operation of it in, say, the polygamy of the FLDS where wives are used as a way to accumulate property and/or influence and where marriage is denied to “excommunicated” men and boys. You can also hear about it from time to time in Afghanistan when “clan leaders” a.k.a. family heads settle violent disputes by “giving” female family members to rival families.

So that’s patriarchy: a hierarchical system in which both individual men’s and women’s interests… and even their physical bodies… may be sacrificed for the “good” of the family or community. It makes (nearly all) men disposable, reduces women to the desirability and utility of their bodies, uses access to sex as a way to reward men for earning or to punish men by withholding all while treating women’s desire and preferences as a really annoying interference. Oh, and it makes marriage a financial transaction where, generally, the man brings in wealth or at least productivity and the woman brings sex and, for extra credit, childcare and domestic labor.

You can see how under that system

• it’s a really, really bad idea for women to have, say, financial independence or equal earning power.
• it would be really bad for men to ever get the idea that they didn’t have to a job, or a car, or money, or a fancy place, or else maybe lies, or pure grain alcohol in the punch, or a dark alley for women to be willing or even champing at the bit to love them or make love with them.
• it would be a really bad idea for anyone to get the idea that woman who admitted or demonstrated that she just really enjoyed sex with men because it felt really, really good wasn’t a “bimbo” or a “slut” or a “whore” or “crazy” or “wild” or “childlike and naive” or otherwise unusual and maybe broken but was instead a normal, healthy human being.
• it would be really, really bad for men to get the idea that 90-95% of women with full economic, political, social and especially biological independence and self-determination would still want and like men.
• it would be really, really bad for men to get the idea they don’t have to die for love either in feats of derring do to “get the girls” or in the slow, Willie Loman sense of grinding one’s self into an early grave to keep them.
• it would be really, really bad if men ever got the idea that wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters, and daughters — feminist or otherwise — really don’t want their husbands, sweethearts, sons, brothers, and fathers “disposably” dying young, or even early on their behalf

You can also see how under a system like that

1. any woman with a brain would take one look and think “woah, that’s fucked up, I don’t want any part of this.”
2. any woman with a brain would get pretty exasperated that men kept falling for the sucker role the system assigns them

With minor variations items #1 and #2 encompass almost all of “mainstream” feminism. Substitute “any woman or man or any age, race, class, or body” any time you see the words “woman” or “man” in clauses #1 and #2 and you’re got an emerging consensus in feminism. Of which I’m very comfortable considering myself a part: I have a brain and I think the system’s fucked up and I don’t want any part of it and I get pretty exasperated whenever men, and women, keep falling into the sucker roles the system wants to assign them.

For some reason I’m suddenly discovering all these cool bloggers who’ve been well known for years. To everyone except, seemingly, to me. Oh well, I’ve alway been a slow learner. For instance…

Kelly Diels of Cleavage recently wrote so passionately about why she blogs about sex that it made me wish it was why I did.

The first time I had sex, I said, Let’s do that AGAIN!

Read the quote in context here.

She talks about how unflappably happy she was in her newfound discovery of herself, of her partner… of what can be done, of her transformation.

Slings and arrows and fashion digs aside, I glowed all day. I wondered if it was obvious I was glowing. I glowed about glowing.

And all these flowing, glowing paragraphs of giddiness she writes of has a lovely, polemical, political purpose… to confront how uncomfortable societies can be with such newfound ecstasy.

Virginity, she says, can not be lost because there is no loss, there is only gain.

Feeling uncomfortable yet? I have to admit little winces here and caveats there — oooh, it’s not so wonderful for everyone. Oooh, he could get a disease. Ooh, she could get a reputation. Ooooh, they could be exploiting each other. Oooh, the first time isn’t so great for lots of people. You know what I mean, right? You read something as obliviously joyous as that and you find yourself thinking “that’s wonderful, hon, and sure it’s like that for some people but…”

And as if in anticipation, and maybe to illustrate on of her main points, she writes

This, of course, is why there are so many rules about sex. Sexuality is a basis for power and agency and awe. Stepping over the divine line into the miracles of body and self makes you wonder: what else is possible? What could possibly be impossible?

This is why cults encourage celibacy or polygamy. Dyads are dangerous to cult authority. They give you an ally. Directing your passion towards the cult with celibacy or fracturing your affection across multiple relationships is a great way to ensure that your first loyalty is your guru. Religions, too, encourage celibacy or monogamy or rigidly circumscribed polygamy. How would the Vatican get rich if priests had families? Families tend to accrete resources rather than direct them to the Church. In any case, in any system, the first order of business is to regulate sexuality.

Which gets to what motivated me to blog about sex: if you pay attention you begin to notice, as Diels does, that pretty much all the negative consequences of sex derive from our negative attitudes about sex. Even religious ones. Even feminist ones. Even irresponsible, over-the-top exploitative ones. Even 70’s-style mafia-tainted pornographer ones. Even mine. Even yours.

STIs? Unwanted, unplanned pregnancy? Exploitation? Yep. “Love-em-and-leave-em?” Yep. Sexual assault and rape? Yep. The extraordinarily banal way that sex as selling is smeared across magazine cover after billboard after police procedural after liquor bottle? Yep, yep, and yep. (I’ve skipped the details but if provoked I can bloviate about them for… longer than you probably care to read about it.)

Even things claimed by “natural law” conservatives like that whole homophobia business are frowned on for exactly the same reason contraception and abortion are: it short-circuits sexual scarcity, without which… um… well, trust them when they say the end of sexual scarcity would be a Really Bad Thing. And, really, if you didn’t trust them there wouldn’t be anything bad about sex at all.

All of which makes Diels’ orthodoxy anathema even to people who grin grimly and assure us they’re “sex positive:”

Sex is a language. Kisses and touch and connection are the vocabulary of personal, heartfelt, libidinous expression.

Despite what our culture tells us – that chick flicks and chick lit and pursuit of romance and love are frothy and frivolous – relationships can provide a grammar for growth.

And that’s why I write about sex. I write about sex as an antidote to the titillate and condemn, titillate and condemn, again-and-again pornification of our world. I write about sex because sex is a school and love is an ashram. They are sacred sites for learning, laughing, growing, stretching, unfurling.

It’s ok if such unbridled exuberance makes you a little nervous. But if it does please take a little time to ask yourself why. Especially if you think it’s obvious why.

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Along similar lines see: Amanda Marcotte’s “The ‘Sex Addiction’ model isn’t harmless“ or Heather Corinna’s “With Pleasure: A View of Whole Sexual Anatomy for Every Body“

Deepali Gaur Singh of RHRealityCheck.org talks about another… peculiarity of patriarchal culture, this time in India, particularly in the state of Bahir. Since it’s about men being forced into marriage it could easily be brushed off as another “man bites dog” story but there are a lot of interesting implications for men and feminism. Here’s the gist:

From what once sounded more legend, less fact, it is a menace that has assumed alarming proportions in recent years and spread to the neighboring districts too. The massive pressure of increasing dowry demands and the inability of most parents to fulfill them has resulted in families seeking the services of criminal gangs that kidnap unmarried men and force them into wedlock. Even as cases might appear rampant in certain areas many go unreported out of fear of these local criminals.

According to the police, over the years it has turned into a high-profit, low-risk business that many gangs thrive on as they earn a sizeable commission from these marriage-related kidnappings. And by stretching the saying of “honor among thieves” a little further, their responsibility does not end with the abduction alone. They ensure that the marriage is solemnized and the girl sent to the boy’s home.

Read the quote in context here.

Just to be absolutely clear the primary motivation for kidnapping men for marriage comes from “traditional values” in the area that, combined with poverty, turn already-undesirable daughters into financial and social catastrophes for families. The families of sons demand extortionate dowries of the families of daughters. The families of unmarried daughters are scorned and scandalized. Enough so that it’s pretty common to slaughter infant daughters at birth. Enough so that despite infanticide-induced shortages of girls (average age of marriage: 13!) families of sons still demand dowries the average local family can’t afford. Also, it’s made clear in the post that even when the groom is forced into marriage he and the bride are sent back to his parents/family, which can’t exactly be a bed of roses for her. The post also makes clear that the area is made even muddier by the fact that very, very often it’s families, not individuals, who arrange marriages even though it’s usually the individuals, not the families that bear the brunt of any and all unhappiness with these arrangements. And finally, it’s important to remember that bride’s families coercing men into marriage isn’t terrifically common even in India, let alone the rest of the world. That said…

It’s a wonderful illustration of the principle that the goals of feminism aren’t just for the benefit of women.

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Quick note: They’re not as familiar to English speakers with Western European heritage but for thousands of years arranged and/or forced marriages are and have been a feature of patriarchy for both women and men. There’s I have a tendency to equate “patriarchy” with “male dominance” and in recent centuries that’s been a lot more true. But in the past, and in much of the world today, it’s more accurate to call it an extended-family hierarchy system where, yes, the senior-most male is the titular patriarch but subordinate children, and not just subordinate female children, are regarded as instruments of their seniors. Just one more way the objectives of feminism worldwide go beyond benefits to women.

In comments to my previous post about the universality of victim blaming, Christina B, who’s studied rape in the context of warfare made clear the piece I realize I was missing

I studied (not extensively) the effect of rape on the social fabric and the reason why it is being used as a tool of war in the context of Darfur, which is a shame based culture.

I don´t want to generalize to all ¨shame based cultures¨, but in the context of Darfur it is the responsibility of the woman´s guardian (father, brother or husband) to keep her safe and pure. It is part of his masculinity, his identity as a man. Hence, when a woman is raped or has consentual sexual relations outside of marriage, culturally, her ¨guardian¨ is seen to have failed in his charge of protecting/controlling her. He has failed as a man, which is why it brings shame on the family. This is the basis of rejecting women/girls who have been raped. It isn´t really about ¨blaming¨ the victim. It is about the man´s inability to ¨be a man¨.

Of course, this particular view of masculinity is based in the idea that women are inferior and that men can´t control themselves sexually. However, the specifics are different than in ¨guilt based cultures¨, and I think it is important to keep that in mind.

She said it here.

In some patriarchal cultures (ahem, America would be one of them even though Christina was speaking specifically about Darfur) rape is used not only to injure and humiliate the actual victim but to humiliate and degrade the men who’s identities are tied up in protecting “their” women. In other words in many cases in the eyes of the rapists the intended victims include the real victim’s custodial men.

And in that context (and against our particular core values) killing, assaulting, or shunning the woman is perceived as a way for the male victims to mitigate their humiliation.

But rather than absolving those male “victims,” (who incidentally may indeed feel victimized) their actions double the horror.

1) Because not only are they totally, um, missing the point, they’re acting in a context where it’s still the victim who’s blamed rather than the perpetrator.

2) However culturally determined, murdering, assaulting, shunning the real victim (or, in America, just declaring she must have “asked for it”) in no way changes the universal dynamic that however broadly the culture defines “victim” it’s the victim that’s being held responsible and being blamed. When, instead, responsibility lies with the perpetrator(s)!

Getting that through our collective thick skulls is gonna take some work, and might take different forms in different cultures, but since its a universal fallacy we can legitimately criticize and oppose it no matter how it manifests.

And the reason I keep beating on this is that getting away from the idea that “she was asking for it” or, I guess in some cases that the custodial patriarch or family was asking for it is necessary in order to move towards the general case of setting expectations for men and holding them responsible for our sexual and sex-linked behavior.