Men And Women Sexual Liberation Essay - 1,332 words

... way we think about power in sexual relations. She draws her ideas upon the following quote made by the lesbian protagonist in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, "I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed be me." Her interpretation of this statement is the reason why the lesbian protagonist left heterosexuality behind is because of the one way process of "destruction", namely the man's destruction of the women, whilst in a lesbian relationship she can reciprocate this destruction. With this interpretation, the problem with heterosexuality is not that there are power relations within it but rather at this point of time that this power is non-reciprocal process, which the man places on the woman, though not necessarily without her consent. It is important to consider that not all masculinities are uniformly invested in the maintenance of such non-reciprocal power relations, nor is this sexual power the source of all relations of power between men and women (Waldby). So essentially what is needed to resolve the problems in heterosexuality is to make this process of "destruction" reciprocal between men and women.


For this to happen we need to understand how the man does maintain his position of non-reciprocal power, some have argued man has such a position of power because feminists such as Dworkin and MacKinnon have invested too much power into symbolic nature of the penis (Games, 1995). Waldby gives a detailed description on the how the power of the phallus is maintained. She claims it involves focusing all the erotic potential into the penis by a de-eroticisation of most of the body, this also involves a suppression of what confounds the phallic image. This is where phallocentrism becomes problematic for men because it places pleasure on them to have a large penis whilst things such as an inability to attain or sustain an erection due to impotence is seen as lack of masculinity. Furthermore this power is maintained by the man being the penetration but not the penetrated, this means a denial of anal pleasure because this would mean a erotica sation of another part of the body other than penis.


In this light a framework a violent response to sexual advance from a homosexual is deemed acceptable because it counts as violation. Furthermore they denial of anal eroticism because passivity and penetrability is deemed as female. One thing that seems confusing to this theory of the maintenance of phallic power, is that while homosexuality has taken on anal eroticism they still the retain the power of the penis, it could be argued in this content the power is erotic ised yet it does not confer any social power. Similarly how would one interpret lesbians employing the use of a strap on dildo, to one extent is seems to uphold phallocentrism but then it also challenges who holds that power.


Coming back to phallic power, it is possible currently for men to momentarily sacrifice their phallic power and active role in heterosexuality without it possessing any serious threat to the existing phallic power. This is done when a man goes to a prostitute and more often than not takes on the passive role, but because this is prostitution is confined to secret and taboo it doesn't stand to threaten their phallic power they hold with their wives, girlfriends etc (Waldby). With that said the obvious way to deflate the power of the phallus in heterosexuality would be to shift the practices of prostitution from taboo to mainstream acceptance so they men's visits them would stand to affect the power they hold with their wives. Clearly this is going to involve some form of sexual liberation for this to occur. Sexual liberation however, was rendered incompatible with feminism by those who had renounced heterosexuality, they had advocated that the sexual liberation movement, despite discovering such things as the clitoris, ended up just conferring more pleasure and advantages upon men by erotic ising the wife (Jeffreys). This critique though is generally based on the notion that w ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: power relations, men and women, sexual liberation, liberation movement, safe sex

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