COnstruction Of Female Sexuality Essay Research Paper

COnstruction Of Female Sexuality Essay, Research Paper

“The construction of female sexuality and it is position in heterosexuality

drawing upon recent feminist discussions”

An area of great focus in contemporary feminist theory has been looking at the construction of female sexuality, particularly its

position in heterosexuality. Of the recent discussions, much of this has been influenced or at least based around Freud’s theory

of psychoanalysis and the his account of sexual development that follows from it. In very simplistic terms his account places

masculine sexuality at its centre, making the penis the only recognised and valued sexual organ (Smart). Female sexuality is

constructed as lack of or a void because her genitals offer us nothing to see (Irigaray), thereby her desire is framed as an urge

to come to possess the valued organ, which is the penis.

Freud’s account of sexuality was initially dismissed by Kate Millett in 1969 as she argued his ideas were self-interested and just

plain silly, however in 1974, Juliet Mitchell brought Freud back into feminism (Smart). She argued that his references to the

penis shouldn’t be taken so literally, in attempt to split the symbolic phallus from the biological penis, the problem however

remerged because men have both power and penises, so penis continued collapsing in the phallus (Smart).

With Freud now subsumed into feminism, heterosexuality posed a real problem for women because it represented a submission

to the phallic power of the penis. For many women they felt this left them with only two choices: either renounce their

heterosexual desire or remain oppressed by men’s phallic power (Jeffreys). Yet for those that renounced heterosexuality their

actions did nothing to challenge man’s power within heterosexual relations, they only attempted to put themselves outside the

oppressive force of the male sex drive.

If anything by advocating only two courses of action they seemed to say woman’s position in heterosexuality was only

escapable but not changeable, otherwise there would have been a third option to resolve the problems and reform

heterosexuality. So despite feminism’s claim that change is always possibly as means to improve women’s position there has

been a tendency to offer what seems a fixed and once and for all meaning of heterosexuality, for example Dworkin argued that

penetration was the expression of men’s enduring hatred of women (Smart).

Though this provides a very straight forward understanding of the oppression women do encounter in heterosexual relations, by

offering a fixed meaning where men are actively sexual and women are passive by its definitions it also makes these acts against

women natural and inevitable (Waldby). Sharon Marcus exemplifies this point when she writes “To take male violence or

female vulnerability as the first and last instances of any explanation of rape is to make the identity of rapist and raped pre-exist

rape itself” (Wadlby).

The point to consider is that Freud’s account of sexuality may have normalized heterosexuality and the positions it offers for its

subjects but it did not necessarily make it natural or inevitable. If anything it can provide us with a framework for understanding

how change can occur for men and women’s positions due to its polymorphic notions of sexuality, that is shaped by culture and

psychological processes. Having established that heterosexuality is capable of change we need to find the aspects that make it

problematic and address ways to solve them.

The most problematic aspect of heterosexuality for women is the issue of penetration, for this is what established

heterosexuality as problematic to begin with because it was seen as submission to man’s phallic power. This is evident in early

feminist work such as, Simone de Beavoir, who in The Second Sex documented several women’s first experiences of

penetration which were described as painful, from which she argued that the first penetration is always a violation even when

consented. Now her research was done quite a while ago, in a time when sexual education was limited, however does seem

part of the problem with penetration is not so much the act itself but how we described it.

If one looks up “penetrate” in the thesaurus it will list the following synonyms: – barge in, force, gore, impale, invade, puncture,

trespass, infiltrate. None of these synonyms carry any notions of mutuality or positivity, so quite clearly part the problem with

penetration could be attributed to using that word to describe it. One alternative is referring to it as the “vagina’s embrace or

grasp of the penis” (Waldby) this would shift penetration from the singularity of the man’s active penis and the women’s passive

vagina to the idea of mutual activity. Though changing the word is not going to instigate any change on its own, it will change

how we think about it.

Another problematic aspect of penetration is that it maintains itself as the only recognised sexual practice, at least within

mainstream he

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать