Irvine511 said:
it seems to me that you are saying that there's something irreducable about gender, that women are always and will always be threatened by the culture of the straight male, and there's little to be done about it. that women cannot break free, that women are basically dependent upon men to change their attitudes towards women, to be made aware of their tendencies to reduce women to object, and that a woman's job is to teach her man to treat her better because she cannot escape these cultural heirarchies that are, ultimately, predicated upon biology and the greater strength of the male (whereas gender dominates the context but is absent from the dynamic of a homosexual subject-object).
Yes, guilty as charged, that is pretty much how I see it--though I would want to qualify that a lopsided hetero "dynamic" is, IMO, in the big picture stunting for both sexes and for society generally...thus, *in principle*, there
are incentives for men to change beyond just the "Women say yes to men who say no" approach (which I've always found to be both childishly manipulative and ironically self-debasing).
i understand what you mean about the objectification of women in areas outside of pornography, however i wonder just how bad this is seeing how my "group" (so to speak) is routinely reduced to snappy court jesters and fairy godfathers in most of popular culture. if women's sexuality is overvalued and overrepresented, then gay male sexuality is never represented in anything outside of an explicitly "gay" context (i.e, "Queer as Folk")...
while i often find her a bit much, i tend to be a bit more sympathetic to Paglia than you. this does trend back to the earlier "Rescue Me" thread. and in some ways i'm torn. having a little sister, i shudder to think that she might be so insecure that she would feel as if she'd have to french kiss her best friend while waiting in the keg line in order to get a beer from the man at the tap. yet, if this were me in some sort of alternate gay context, i feel as if i'd be well in on the joke and fully capable of doing something that might, on the surface, appear to be degrading, but something that i retain total control over. but i wonder if we can transfer so easily.
I don't think we can, because A) the homoerotic "male gaze" lies
outside the normative gender binary (though it's obviously influenced by it...but more on that in a minute), and B)
in principle at least, gay men have the opportunity to "pass" socially to a degree that women--straight, bi or lesbian--simply do not, and this has consequences for the broader social effects women's sexual self-expressions might potentially have, like it or not.
My problems with Paglia have less to do with the idea that she's an "enabler" in the tendency to reduce women to bodies-as-objects, and more with what I see as the careless and opportunistic way in which she expropriates various "tropes"--the renegade call girl, the "phallic" rebel hero(ine)--and presses them into service within the context of an argument that has little if anything to do with the real-life socioeconomic contexts in which the real-life versions of these "tropes" appear (or don't), thus overrepresenting their strictly sexual aspects. And this isn't just with regard to gender issues--for example, in response to some of Paglia's comments touching on race ("We don't need Derrida, we have Aretha"..."My mentors have always been blacks and Jews, 'cause they're the only ones who can appreciate my personality...when we get together it's like, Whoo hoo! Now we can let it
all hang out!"), the African-American feminist scholar bell hooks acidly replied, "Naturally, we black folks are only too happy to give Miz Paglia this vote of confidence, since we exist to give white women like her a chance to feel good about themselves...You go, girl! Just expropriate that 'difference' and run with it!..." On a less academic note, the lesbian feminist and sex columnist Susie Bright and for that matter Courtney Love(!) have taken Paglia to task for boasting (to
Playboy--where she appeared with her clothes on, natch) that she is a "true pornographer," and for reducing the artistic power of Led Zeppelin to (to quote Love) "their big Teutonic dicks hanging out of their pants." Of course, Paglia is fond of epic gestures and frequently exaggerates for effect, I do understand that; and of course there's also the eternal struggle between literary scholars and social scientists to determine whose social analyses are more valid lurking in the background here as well, and obviously I have my own biased tendencies in that matter. Nonetheless, while sympathetic to her critiques of anti-pornography feminists (e.g., MacKinnon's ridiculous assertion that "all heterosexual sex is rape"), I'm inclined to think her style of argument disingenuously dodges some very real questions about privilege, dependency, vulnerability--and the resulting incentive to rationalize away coercive potential--that her opponents are trying to call attention to.
Both perspectives run a high risk of engendering (ha ha) defeatism about the underlying power imbalances.
But to get back to insulting popular caricatures of gay men as "court jesters," and the enforced invisibility of gay sexuality outside of safely delineated "gay" contexts. Yes, obviously there's a parallel--and even, I think, an overlap--here, because (from a homophobic perspective) the problem gay men present is not only that, sexually speaking, they're failing to affirm male privilege, but even worse, they're also attempting to "feminize" other men (by directing the "male gaze" at them) in the process.
But it's precisely because gay men
are men that this reaction occurs--the normative, hetero gender binary simply leaves no room for "reinterpreting" or "reclaiming" gay male sexuality as Ooh la la, those bad boys, nudge nudge, wink wink. Sure, gay men can do that to each other, and for that matter straight women can fantasize about watching two men get it on too. But neither of these things changes the normative framework one iota. It is
inherently "alternative" in a way, and to a degree, that female "transgressions" cannot be. So while I think(?) our perspectives can converge here to the extent that we might both see this as an example of how sexism ultimately stunts everybody, nonetheless, the fact remains that you aren't ever going to
have to decide whether to French-kiss your friend for a beer, unless perhaps it's in a context where mutual recognition and acceptance of alternative-ness can be safely assumed.
Is this "paternalism"? No, I think not, because I'm not speaking here out of a desire to control women's behavior and corral it back into compliance with "what men want" (though the contradictory possibilities for interpreting the latter are a red flag right there). But you are right that it's a fine line...and I'm reminded here of your journal entry about the problems of critiquing the valorization of promiscuity in what on the one hand is an age of AIDS, and on the other, an age of increasing gay rights. These are the kinds of dilemmas you get into when you're talking collective strategy in a situation where (thankfully) everyone has some rights, but some experience more repercussions in exercising them than others.
Well when you find an equal amount of women pouring alcohol down men's throat and coercing them to strip, then you can use this line of thinking...
