“The idea seems to be this: it is understandable that women would want to be men, for everyone wants to be elsewhere than in the feminine position. What is not understandable within the given terms is why a woman might flaunt her femininity, produce herself as an excess of femininity, in other words, foreground the masquerade. –Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade.”
Certain types of radical feminism posit that anything ‘feminine’ is automatically a tool of the patriarchy–jewelry, skirts, makeup, sex with men. To me, though, that seems to be an attempt to do just what Doane is referring to above–to leave behind the feminine position. While it is not an attempt to ‘become’ man, it is an attempt to disavow the feminine, in the same way that Hillary Clinton’s talk of shooting guns and drinking whiskey and bombing countries was an attempt to prove herself unfeminine enough to be President.
In other words, if we can simply disavow the ‘feminine,’ we will have power. This plays out most particularly when it comes to ideas of ‘proper’ sex. If we can declare ourselves ‘political lesbians’ even if we aren’t actually attracted to men, we will be free from the yoke of patriarchy. If we do not give oral sex to men, or we refuse penetration, we are making a political statement, not a personal preference.
But the problem of femininity is that we are both pushed to embody it and devalued for doing so. And so when we disavow it, we are shaking off one part of the double bind only to embrace the other–ditching the love for the physical, the pretty things, for the intellectual, insisting on being valued for our minds, not our bodies. We are embracing the male half of the dichotomy, a dichotomy which is inherently false.
I don’t like dichotomies–I like transgressions. I like contradictions like pink boxing gloves, things that simultaneously leave behind the boxes women were shoved into and embrace the roles that may have been forced on us, but that we adapted for ourselves. I can indeed wear high heels and a pretty dress and hot pink lipstick and still school you on health care policy. I can wear a miniskirt and still know more about Irish literature. I can be both.
“The masquerade, in flaunting femininity, holds it at a distance. Womanliness is a mask which can be worn or removed.” -Doane
We have that choice, to be feminine or not to be, now. We are body and mind, regardless of which mask we wear–that much we can’t avoid. No matter how much Western culture has striven to privilege the mind over the body, they cannot be separated. But being able to play with representations of that body, to change it, present it as we want to, hide it, flaunt it, use it.
“The very fact that we can speak of a woman ‘using’ her sex or ‘using’ her body for particular gains is highly significant–it is not that a man cannot use his body in this way, but that he doesn’t have to…Nevertheless, the preceding account simply specifies masquerade as a type of representation which carries a threat, disarticulating male systems of viewing.” -Doane
Men may not have to use their bodies, but we are free to choose to do so or not to do so. And when we do so, we can do it not simply as a treat offered up to men on a silver platter, but as a way to disrupt and confuse the binary, the false dichotomy, and confound the gaze.
“In theories of repression there is no sense of the productiveness and positivity of power. Femininity is produced very precisely as a position within a network of power relations.” -Doane
So can we choose to produce femininity as a position not at the bottom of power relations, but at the top? Or as a positive? Can we, instead of disavowing everything traditionally named feminine, use those things and enjoy them, and take power in them?
“Empowerment” is a tough word to use these days, but Ren’s post there is a great one. Us “pro-porn” or “sex-poz” types get derided for calling things “empowering” that other types call “patriarchy-pleasing.” But truly, I believe that there is power and pleasure in our bodies as well as our minds, and in beauty as well as in intellect, in art as well as politics. And hell, I think that’s what Pop Feminist’s blog is all about.
So I come to the other half of my title here: heterosexuality. And the question–can heterosexuality be a radical choice?
Before I was sexually active at all, I was active in the gay-straight alliance at school. I can’t say that I was a super-activist back in high school or anything fun like that, but I was aware and accepting of other options. I didn’t go through any Chasing Amy phases or anything like that, but I can say with certainty that I didn’t come to sex with men because it was pressed on me or because it was presented as the only option.
I came to it through my own desires and choices. I didn’t do things until I was damn well ready to, and sure, just like everyone, I had issues to work through (and still do, but don’t we all). But I embraced sex and sexuality on my own terms–and those terms involve men. That’s what I’m attracted to, though there are more women on a daily basis who turn my head and make me smile. It’s just not sexual most of the time. My fantasies 90% of the time revolve around men.
And yes, I mean sexual fantasies, not some dream of ‘finding the One’ or any of that crap that according to Cosmo and even smart women I know are ‘girl porn.’ And acting on those desires, even when they are traditional performances of femininity or even exaggerated performances of femininity (my love for corsets, admittedly not really sexual as much as aesthetic, for example) IS an informed feminist choice for me.
Just as now, freed of the ex who wanted to tell me what to wear, I take pleasure in each time I step out of the house in a low-cut shirt or a miniskirt or short shorts because it was my choice and no one else’s, I take pleasure in each time I decide for myself what I want to do and who I want to do it with, when I make the first move and I break the rules.
And now, here’s a man for you to objectify.
Posted: July 13th, 2008 under Feminism, Sex.
Comments: 4
you know that there is a face and a front of my body, and if you read my blog, you know that there are a gazillion opinions inside me too, when we look at pictures of attractive people, we know that there is a person there. We appreciate how attractive they are because they are people, not because they are things.