sex, feminism and liberalism, part two

Part one can be found here.

Female sexuality is an absolute nightmare for feminism. It all but tore feminism apart during the feminist sex wars. The feminists who started spouting their slogans about all men being rapists, all sex being rape, about pornography being exploitation of women, about the wickedness of awful things like BDSM (bondage dominance and sado-masochism) that the patriarchy imposes on women. They naturally expected their pronouncements to be met by a chorus of praise from women.

Much to their horror many women, even fully paid up members of the feminist sisterhood, violently disagreed with them. These women objected that they actually liked having sex with men, many of them had no real issue with pornography (some of them enjoyed pornography). Even worse, it transpired that there were women who were happily engaging in consensual BDSM sex (even more embarrassing was the revelation that BDSM was incredibly popular among lesbians).

The stage was set for the bitter long drawn out war between the anti-sex feminists and the sex-positive feminists. It ended with a virtually complete victory for the sex-positive feminists.

This might sound like a happy ending. The anti-sex feminists like Andrea Dworkin were a crazy miserable lot and totally out of touch with the reality of female sexuality. Unfortunately we’re talking about feminists here so it goes without saying that there was and is lots of craziness on both sides. The sex-positive feminists can be pretty loony as well, and they’re the ones who’ve been supportive of much of the trans madness.

And being feminists even the sex-positive feminists tend to be control freaks. It’s not enough for them to be tolerant of outright perversions – they have to force everybody else to celebrate those perversions.

The problem of female sexuality remains unresolved for feminism. One problem is that for most women sex means sex with a man. The danger in that is that the man might enjoy it. Feminism can just about deal (with certain very stringent limitations) with the idea of a woman enjoying sex, but a man enjoying sex is definitely problematical.

Much more problematical is the feminine desire for dominant men. The reality is that lots of women actually enjoy feeling dominated, at least to a limited degree, in the bedroom. And some women take that desire to its logical conclusion and enjoy sexual practices that feminist theory simply cannot cope with. Feminist theory tells feminists that all that nasty stuff used to be forced on unwilling women by the patriarchy. There’s no room in feminist theory for women who think that the beastliness and aggressiveness of male sexuality is incredibly exciting and they want it. And feminists cannot abandon their theories – that would be terrifying.

Pornography was the main battlefield of the feminist sex wars. The total victory of the sex-positive feminists has to a large extent ended the debate on pornography. There are still Christians who are opposed to pornography but no-one listens to them.

One other thing that needs to be remembered is that male sexuality as it exists could not have survived the process of evolution unless it had a great deal of appeal to women. Sexual selection is a very potent evolutionary force. And female sexuality as it exists could not have survived unless it had a great deal of appeal to men.

An essential tenet of both feminism and liberalism is that men and women are basically interchangeable. Sex presents them with an enormous problem. No matter what they do they can’t eradicate the profound differences between male and female sexuality, and no matter what they do neither male nor female sexuality will conform to good liberal principles. Women will continue to want strong masculine men and men will continue to want pretty feminine women.