Human Impersonators
Suzanne Moore wants to know ‘how did we get here’?I will return to her question later. But first to explain what she means by ‘here’.
According to Moore’s latest Graun column, ‘here’ is ‘this new aesthetic of femininity where everything is meant to look as fake as possible. Hair, nails, tan, teeth, tits. Sure, I know the rules: that we are born naked, and “the rest is just drag”. Sure, I get the hyper-femininity of the big queens and the game old birds such as Dolly Parton and Cher. What is strange is that a parody of femininity is now what many ordinary women are aspiring to.’
As the title of her article says, the big question in terms of gender identity that Moore wants answering is ‘why does nobody want to feel like a natural woman anymore?’
My response would have to be in the form of another question: did anyone ever want to feel like a natural woman? From the geisha girls of Japan to the Dandizettes of 19th century England, from flapper girls to cowgirls, from the Pussycat Dolls to Babes In Toyland, I don’t believe that the ‘natural’ woman has ever been a popular concept in culture.
But if Moore is determined to paint contemporary society as one where the ‘falseness’ of femininity has reached new heights and industrial consumerist proportions, I still have some problems, some major problems with her argument.
‘The political language of empowerment about reproductive rights and equality in the workplace has itself been given a makeover’ says Moore. ‘Gok Wan makes women feel better not by giving them more actual control, but by giving them control pants’.
So it seems as if she is saying that the fetish women have for ‘working’ on their bodies, cosmetically, sartorially and even surgically, is a way that consumer culture is convincing them they are ‘empowered’, whilst they continue to suffer gender inequalities at the hands of…. who? Men? Capitalism? Suzanne doesn’t say.
But her article gives us a clue as to what she means.
‘I am not saying that men do not objectify the female body’ she writes, ‘but now the gaze we direct at ourselves, at each other and in the mirror is a harsh one, too. It is sexualised in that we see what the body could become, as well as what it is. It is the gaze of search and destroy, and it certainly affects the inner lives of those who are not perfect. Which is a fair few of us’.
This is really a souped-up silicone-enhanced version of Naomi Wolf’s Beauty Myth of 1991:
“The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us…During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty…pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal…More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.”
I know Moore doesn’t rate Wolf, particularly since Naomi came out in support of Assange, and made statements calling for accusers in rape cases to lose their anonymity. But their versions of how women’s oppression functions at the level of the ‘beauty industry’ seem pretty similar to me. Wolf may think women have ‘come further’ economically than Moore does, and that their physical, bodily oppression is a result of their actual ‘empowerment’ in the public sphere. Whereas Moore seems to think this quest of women to be faker than fake is a way of keeping women down across the board, economically and in terms of human rights as well. She doesn’t say it specifically but I think she suggests that ‘fakery’ affects women from the lower classes even more than middle/upper class women. Or that it damages them more.
I think they are both wrong. My real objection to Suzanne Moore’s argument is hinted at by this sentence:
‘Increasingly, surgery cuts across race, gender and age alike.’ That’s it. That is all Moore says to give any suggestion that ‘the beauty industry’ and notions of ‘fake femininity’ effect anyone else other than ‘natural’ born females. What about trans women? What about intersex or gender queer people? What about er… yes… men?
To speak of oppressive models of female beauty, exclusively in terms of how those models oppress women, in 2011, is as outdated as Gok Wan’s camp queen act. They both belong in 1970s musical theatre.
Enter Mark Simpson, clutching his manboobs.
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2008/03/25/transexy-time/
Mark Simpson has been telling us since the early 1990s, which was, yes, twenty years ago! That when it comes to idealised versions of beauty, to body modifications, to ‘fakery’ and ‘hyper-femininity’, men and women, and anyone who identifies as neither, have been subject to the industrial ‘transexy’ metrosexual make-over:
‘Looking around at our sexually transparent, stimulated-simulated, implanted-imploding cam-fun-anyone? world, it’s difficult not to conclude that most of us are going tranny but without the, er, balls to actually change sex or even properly cross-dress. We’re all becoming male-to-male and female-to-female transsexuals: transexy.’
So, placing this situation as one in which women are the ‘objects’ , the victims, and men are the perpetrators seems incredibly off beam to me.
Suzanne concedes ‘it is the entire culture, not a male conspiracy, that is making impossible demands. Yet none of this is simple’.
Well it is nice to know it is not a ‘male conspiracy’, and as Suzanne says, ‘none of this is simple’. But when it comes to essentialist arguments of feminine v masculine, fake v natural, male v female, the complexity of gendered identities gets rather lost in feminism’s binary onslaught.
‘Artificially enhanced femininity is on display everywhere’ writes Moore. ‘Older women pay to look younger. Young women start altering themselves very early on. One result is a kind of glazed uniformity. You see it in porn. You see it in all those late-30s, Botoxed faces that look neither old nor young, just done.’
Comparing that paragraph to this one by Simpson about men taking steroids, I don’t see much difference:
‘The vast majority of males taking “the juice” are not doing so to be stronger or faster or scarier, all traditionally masculine ambitions, but simply to look more attractive in the gym, on the dance floor, at the beach, or in their online profiles — to look, in other words, like male strippers: Stud-U-Like. Or what is much the same thing, Vin Diesel.But steroids, like transexiness itself, can have a paradoxical effect. In addition to testicle shrinkage and erectile problems, in large doses they can turn into estrogen in the body, which causes “bitch tits” and female fat distribution: Stud-U-Like into Chick-U-Love. Perhaps this is why Sylvester Stallone looks more and more like his mother, Jackie. Given his recent steroid scandals, the tagline for his new Rambo movie, “Heroes never die…they just reload,” probably refers to syringes rather than ammunition’
I have picked a small section of one article by Mark Simpson, out of a large and impressive -ahem- body of work, that shows, over and over again, how when it comes to things like ‘objectification’ ‘sexualisation’ ‘drag’ and the ‘beauty industry’, men are just as much affected if not more so, than women these days. And that the concepts of ‘men’ and ‘women’ as we have come to know them are becoming as useless to our understanding of gender as a load of tissues stuffed in your bra. The female ‘beauty myth’ is just that. It is a myth.
Moore ends her article with one pertinent point about Lady Gaga’s particular brand of ‘fake femininity’:
‘Lady Gaga may sing Born This Way, while clearly demonstrating with her hard body – complete with internal shoulder pads/prosthesis/spare ectoplasm – that she wasn’t, that this is all an act.’
This is true. But I think Suzanne Moore’s eulogy to the ‘natural woman’ is an act as well. Her final paragraph reads:
‘A look that has comes to us via porn, ladyboys, transsexuals, queer culture and high fashion is a look I now see on the bus. This excess of femininity may compensate for endless anxiety about appearances. There is nothing natural going on here, and some women are not hiding that fact. To become a woman is to become a female impersonator. How, in such a world, can we say to any young girl: “You are fine just as you are”?’
To become a woman is to become a female impersonator. I know. And back in the 1990s, Mark Simpson said the same about ‘male impersonators’ and masculinities. Maybe that is even where Moore got the idea from. But to try and take the complex issues around masculinity, femininity, transgender identities, drag, ‘queer’ and gender performance, and turn it into a Guardian-friendly, feminist dogma-strewn dirge about ‘women’ and ‘girls’? In this day and age I think that is a sad (transphobic at the very least and possibly misandrist too) kind of show.
Moore asked ‘how did we get here?’
Well. When it comes to feminist theories of gender identity, I think we got here by a series of manoeuvres. Feminists in the late 1980s-1990s had a choice-they could either get involved in the exciting changes to gender theory that were occurring, mainly in ‘queer theory’ but also that were acted out in the form of movements such as ‘riot grrl’ and ‘Queer Nation’, the art of figures such as Leigh Bowery (top image) and the literature of writers such as Jeanette Winterson and Jackie Kay. And in every day arguments and activities in people’s households and workplaces. Campaigns against Clause 28, AIDS awareness movements, the explosion of the fanzine culture, actions by trans people which led to increased visibility and improvements to their legal status, the inclusion of ‘male rape’ on the statute books, the lowering of the homosexual age of consent, all related to a breaking down of the traditional gendered order. Or, they could stick their heads in the sand (whilst simultaneously consolidating their middle class power base in the media, politics and legal institutions) and wait until it was ok to come out again, when the crisis had passed, when a more conservative, essentialist feminism would tickle people’s (Tory?) tastebuds once more.
In fact, if you look at who is allied with feminism these days, you will find a surprising number of Big C and little c conservatives, from the ex-Tory lawyer and ‘skeptic’ David Allen Green, to the anti-pornography campaigner and pal of radical feminist Julie Bindel, Gail Dines to the Conservative feminist MP who argued with Naomi Wolf on newsnight- Louise Bagshaw
On twitter earlier today, Moore told me that in politics you have to take ‘sides’. But judging by feminism’s bedfellows at the moment, I think it is legitimate to wonder which ‘side’ she (not to mention feminism, and The Guardian) is actually on.
‘Certainly, the way to counter what is going on here has to be strategic.’ wrote Moore. I think her article shows that feminism does have strategies, strategies which, despite all its incoherence and ridiculous posturing, have kept it in the ‘game’ of media, politics and gender discourse, long after it should have shuffled off the stage, its false eyelashes wilting.
That’s fine Ladies, because I have some strategies of my own.
The chief problem with Moore’s article it’s yet another example of the ‘war’ on femininity, where the mission is: ‘Kill Barbie’. (Much like how Laura Barton in the same paper couldn’t understand how women could read the likes of Heat and Grazia and not the news.) Moore tries to set up a ‘natural’ woman against the exaggerated femininity of (other) contemporary women, but the concept of the ‘natural’ is just as ideological as its supposed opposite and, secondly, capitalism is perfectly capable of selling ‘us’ the ‘natural’ as well (see Dove’s ‘real women’ campaign). And some women are perfectly capable of using their hard-won economic and social independence to buy girly pink stuff because it’s their money and they live in a capitalist economic system and they don’t want an iPad. (Incidentally, radical feminism is lousy when it comes to economics since it can’t factor in social class.)
An even bigger problem for Moore is that even she’s aware that ‘I Blame the Patriarchy’ won’t cut it any longer. For me, the killer passage was the following:
Somehow, though, something else is going on that is blowing apart any idea of “the natural”. Some women are not saying, “this is what I really look like”, rather they are saying, “enjoy the performance”. Just as a drag queen would. The media then scrutinises this performance of femininity entirely as a construction. This radical idea – that gender is constructed – is being acted out in all this fakery. But as an aesthetic, depoliticised “style”.
In other words, women are fully aware that ‘femininity’ is constructed, impermanent and a form of ‘masquerade’. It can be ‘just’ a style, or also a challenge – but then so can the idea of the ‘natural’ (I was catching up on Desperate Housewives recently, and it turns out that Gabrielle’s ‘natural’ nose was the result of plastic surgery – see also the ‘natural’ make-up look and so on.) But then we already knew this from Madonna.
But then Moore still wants to name the guilty me—sorry, people, so she picks on ‘porn, ladyboys, transsexuals, queer culture and high fashion’ – as if the ‘fashion is made by gay men who hate “real women”‘ argument is somehow a new concept. Porn is just as capable of fetishising ‘real’ large breasts as fake ones.
The whole thing ends up being just Greer’s ‘female eunuch’ revisited (and Moore’s attracting some flak from transpeople in the comments). Moore wonders ‘How, in such a world, can we say to any young girl: “You are fine just as you are”?’, when saying so is what any good parent would do. Making the young girls all read Fat Is a Feminist Issue, or executing Katie Price are alternatives, but might be more problematic. There’s no single ‘authentic’ or ‘natural’ female (or male) body, just the all-too, too solid ‘flesh’.
PS: If you want a lazy ad hominem, here’s Moore on wearing high heels: “As with a lot of things, width matters. Don’t be an Ugly Sister squashing your feet Cinderella-style into shoes that are too narrow. My most comfortable heels are vintage Ferragamos. And I love Vivienne Westwood’s PVC ones that smell like bubblegum. That’s really comforting.” So, no Birkenstocks or Doc Martens then.
excellent points as usual red pesto. I know Moore ‘dresses up’ I dont think that is necessarily a contradiction in her argument. Mark Simpson is a gym bunny and he critiques men’s ‘metrosexuality’….
But he doesn’t call for a return to ‘natural manhood’ as Moore seems to be doing with femininity…
@QRG – re. what about plastic surgery for men: (1) it’s a separate article; (2) the fact that Anglo-American male political leaders are increasingly expected too look good, have a full head of hair, and be slim and youthful-looking, means they all want to be like Arnie (whose Austrian birth means he never got to be the perfect Republican presidential candidate against some Democrat ‘girly-man’ [his term, not mine]); (3) it’s about men, so it doesn’t fit the ‘narrative’ – boob jobs are somehow worse than pec implants, rather than just more common; (4) FTM transmen don’t count; (5) Michael Jackson – but that means talking about ‘whiteness’ as an ‘ideal’ rather than gender.
Mark S has written about arnie and the ‘girly man’ comment but I have forgotten where!
@QRG: I’m not that bothered about Moore’s footwear preferences – though her spat with Greer did involve the latter making jibes about ‘fuck-me heels’ – yet ideas of ‘natural’ womanhood are frequently symbolised by sartorial choices, especially by high heels v some form of a flat ‘non-fashion’ footwear. Drag queens and porn stars don’t wear Scholl sandals, and apparently neither do ‘real women’.
I agree it isn’t meaningless. But like we have said it’s because her version of ‘fake’ femininity and the one she is criticising both show that the concept of ‘natural’ womanhood is dodgy in the first place. I don’t think scholl sandals are ‘naturally feminine’ either!
As ever, I’m coming from behind in these discussions, being poorly read in this area and, I suspect, the class (heteronormative) square. BUT I do have five daughters – four teenage – and I am confident that I have something to bring to the conversation, even if it’s naive.
Redpesto says “Moore wonders ‘How, in such a world, can we say to any young girl: “You are fine just as you are”?’, when saying so is what any good parent would do.”
I think this is an important point. My daughters are self-confident and, happily, attractive young women. At the moment, their ages range from 14 to 19, so whilst the eldest had to find her own way, the younger ones have had plenty of shared experience to work and play with. Consequently, they do a lot of messing with hair, make-up, false eyelashes et cetera but, ultimately, they do know they are fine as they are. To them, this is all fun. They totally get that drag element and they can fool around with it.
However, I think there are a lot of less confident, less attractive, more anxious, more media-seduced young women who can’t see the fun in this, who go into surgery etc for reasons that are more to do with compensating for their own perceived shortcomings. That’s the element that concerns me.
Incidentally, I have a son, too. Even at eight years old, he cares about how he looks. I hope he’ll be the same as his sisters. God knows I hope he never feels he needs ‘pec implants’ ( a surprise discovery for me in these posts). I hope he will also develop a sense of fun and irony about his appearance.
Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that I do see Suzanne’s point but I think that QRG has explored it more effectively. What interests me, though, is not so much the what as the why. The shifting interface between fun and desperation for self-esteem. The difference between a boob job that goes from A to C and one that goes from C to F.
Good question Fenner I don’t know how to answer it. But I dont think we can using Moore’s narrow framework.
as Mark’s quote about steroids shows, men can be just as desperate as women to use their bodies to boost their sense of self. There will be socio-economic factors, but they won’t be organised along the male/female binary line.
QRG, once again you have shamed and flattered me into commenting on something I would normally just sheepishly avoid.
First off, the remark about the provenance of Suzanne’s idea of female impersonation: I’m sure she was well aware of the notion of ‘femininity as masquerade’, which had been around for some time before ‘Male Impersonators’ – a book which was based on the newer idea of masculinity as masquerade. An idea that, seventeen years on, is alas probably still quite fresh to most people, certainly most feminists, who generally seem to believe even more in the idea of ‘real men’ than ‘real women’. As in: ‘this is what men are REALLY like.’ The biggest problem with feminism today isn’t philosophical, it’s the way it’s made a very kinky fetish out of masculinity.
Full Disclosure: Suzanne is a friend of mine, and she has helped publicise my work in the past. Fortunately for me, I generally rate her work very highly. But I can’t share her attachment to feminism. And if she overlooks men, more or less completely, in a column about body image I can’t complain too loudly because then I’d be out of a job.
But I will moan about a long feature in the Sunday Times magazine recently by a female reporter which was all about the horrible effect all this nasty porn – watched by boys – is having on ‘our daughters’: the bikini waxes and the anal sex, that kind of thing. Not only were girls reduced to utter passivity in all of this – just a kind of b- product of filthy male voyeurism rather than people who might watch and enjoy porn (and anal sex) themselves – but the effects of porn consumption on men’s own view of themselves, and their pubes, and their penis size, were not discussed. The ‘problem’ of porn consumption only really ‘mattered’, in the hand-wringing values of the article, in terms of the effect it had on the girls’ bodies and the boys’ ability to form ‘long lasting relationships’ with them.
Suzanne’s latest column probably needs to be put into the context of the Guardian, where many of the female columnists seem to have turned themselves into parodies not of women (or men) but of feminists. There are various reasons why this has happened, but the main one has a lot in common with the behaviour of the young women being problematised by their writers: THEY WANT TO GET NOTICED. In a world in which the nostrums of feminism have become part of official discourse. Even worse, because of the multiplication of media and the rise of visual culture (the same visual culture that has women AND men using plastic surgery and drugs to make themselves more attractive to the eye and the camera lens), columns in newspapers aren’t nearly as glamorous as they once were. Or as important.
Bidisha, for example, is a complete tart. But a feminist textual tart. She’ll say anything, no matter how daffy or offensive – about men, that is – if she thinks it will get her attention. And it works. Inasmuch as a column in the Guardian can get you attention. In that context, Suzanne in this column is at least positioning herself apart from the ‘male-conspiracy’ cartoon feminist Bidishas and offering a more nuanced view.
I don’t think you’re wrong in your criticisms, QRG, but I do think you’re quite hard on Suzanne. But perhaps that’s because you have/had high expectations of her.
Regarding the way steroid use has become mainstream for males – blink and you’ll have missed it. The link below is to a tiny piece I wrote for CIF on the subject – which if it had been about an equivalent ‘body image’ issue affecting women would have had its own supplement. That’s why I ironically dubbed it ‘Size Hero’. I originally tried pitching it as a documentary programme, but the producer I was working with gave up after talking to several commissioning editors. The bottom line was that no one was interested in young men. ‘Our viewers wouldn’t identify with this,’ was what they actually said. Meaning: ‘We don’t think our female viewers, who make up the majority of our demographic and whom we aim to please all the time, are interested in male problems.’ Most of them were men, by the way.
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2007/12/06/size-hero-how-muscle-marys-conquered-the-post-industrial-world/
In a way, I’m kinda-sorta glad that men can’t be problematised and their changing bodies turned into a national panic in the same way that women have. Even if it means I get less gigs.
Mark, your points on porn are very good. The idea that the pressures porn might put on girls (some girls that is…weak-willed girls perhaps…the sort of poor little things who need protecting from predatory men…) are greater than the pressures put on boys (some boys…weak-willed boys…sissies, perhaps, “not real men”…) is absurd. Personally, I (a man) say, yes I can see the problems those sorts of pressure bring, but really anyone of either sex seriously affected by something which is so obviously false is really responsible for that themselves and should deal with it – or to putit another way, “man up”. Men are supposed to be too strong and silent to be affected in this way, women are supposed to be sensitive, and what’s more since the man isn’t sensitive it becomes his responsibility to make sure the poor woman isn’t affected – hence, “the patriarchy”.
Like, I watch porn and yes I get that occassional pang of “why don’t i get to have hot, filthy sex whenever I want it with these attractive and easy women who want nothing in return?” but it doesn’t last longer than the split-second it takes to remember this is fiction, and no-one in the real world is actually living that lifestyle! And the male stars are probably not taking any more pleasure out of the scene than the females anyway. Apparently, according to people like Suzanne, women watch it, get a pang of “he wants her because of her big (fake) tits, if I’m going to get a man I need to compete with that”, then either go off and get a boob job or go off and write an article about how boob jobs are destroying society…
Also Mark – although I agree that there are equivalent male physical issues, steroids, going to the gym and all that, I don’t think they are equal. I have always argued that the most meaningful equivalent is what I alluded to in my post below, something which I would call ‘status’. The obvious example being wealth, but there is more to it than that, it’s about social status as well, being the “alpha male” as well as the provider. I always use this idea in counter-examples against the “beauty industry” articles, and to feminists it’s somehow “not the same”. Somehow the ridiculous pressure of attaining the type of body 99% of women can never hope to aspire to is fundamentally greater than the pressure of driving the type of car that 99% of men can never hope to aspire to afford.
I know female impersonators existed in our psyches before ‘male impersonators’ but the way Suzanne wrote the term here, just reminded me of your work. I think what I mean is, that phrase stood out as a symbol for how she could have mentioned you, knowing your theories of masculinities so well, and made a deliberate point of not doing so.
In terms of the rest of your comment. I read everything you say in the context of your friendship with the author in question, and in the context of your tendency towards diplomacy when it comes to writing about feminism and journalism!
My view is that Bidisha is the attack-dog of Guardian feminism, and Moore and others are able to pretend to be more reasonable and respectable in comparison. But that they are all part of the same ‘strategy’.
When it comes to being ‘hard’ on Suzanne, yes I expect that is because I have looked up to her in the past. And more recently had struck up an online friendship/communication with her that has broken down since she started writing for the Graun!
My rift with feminism is bound to seem harsh, as I have been in feminism all my life. My feelings go deep. But I don’t think this takes away from my ability to analyse it. If it does I really hope someone will tell me as I hate kneejerk, emotional arguments in others.
Worth noting that “it’s unnatural” is (or used to be) considered by some morons a valid argument against homosexuality.
The whole idea that “natural si good” is bullshit. OK there are drawbacks to civilisation, but they are far outweighed by the fact that the vast majority of us live unnaturally long lives in an unnaturally high level of comfort. Yes it’s possible to argue certain aspects of our unnatural lifestyles are worse, but she doesn’t seem to actually argue that, just assume it. Why? No real answer, althoguh I suspect if I asked her I’d get a very long and detailled answer with no real meaning. As you say QRG, you get the feeling she desparately wants to shout “it’s the patriarchy, stupid” but has cottoned on, like many feminist writers, to the realisation that that doesn’t cut it any more.
To be fair, to an extent I can kind of see the point about extremes of beauty “fakeness” (such as a boob job) but what I have never heard from anyone railing against that sort of thing as to why it is fundamentally any different to make-up, push-up bras, high heels and the thousands of millions of other techniques women have used over the millenia to accentuate and/or fake attractive physical features to attract men.
The whole article, like so many, seems predicated on the assumption that women having a powerful desire to attract men is a Bad Thing. Yet men working harder to earn more money, or wasting that money on ostentatious things like flashy cars and expensive suits, to attract women (whether consciously or unconsciously, this is obviously a large part of the motivation) – do we see articles bemoaning how tragic this is for masculinity? Implying that it’s the unseemly influence of shallow women? If we do see it criticised, it’s in terms of the shallowness of men. Yet when it’s women tarting themselves up it’s painted in terms of…the shallowness of men.
Mark Simpson:
Suzanne’s latest column probably needs to be put into the context of the Guardian, where many of the female columnists seem to have turned themselves into parodies not of women (or men) but of feminists. There are various reasons why this has happened, but the main one has a lot in common with the behaviour of the young women being problematised by their writers: THEY WANT TO GET NOTICED. In a world in which the nostrums of feminism have become part of official discourse.
I think that’s true of some of their female writers, though it’s interesting that Zoe Williams has become a better columnist without having to indulge in the shouty, fight-picking rhetoric of Bidisha. But the problem isn’t just about tone; it’s about ideology – the ‘mainstreaming’ of, say, Julie Bindel is not just about her wanting to ‘get noticed’ (and paid), but about defining what kind of feminism (or feminist arguments) get ‘house room’. (In this respect ex-Women’s Page editor Kira Cochrane was either complicit or in agreement.) So on the one hand, I’m glad Moore’s writing for the Guardian; on the other, the damage may already have been done.
sex without love…
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/4922/
I like the way she calls it ‘puritan’… I think she is onto you Roland. And me.
@elflojo84:
The whole article, like so many, seems predicated on the assumption that women having a powerful desire to attract men is a Bad Thing.
But is this a problem of masculinity or of heterosexual desire? Or of feminism’s problems with both?
I’m not sure the two can really be separated, certainly not in feminism’s confused eyes! But yes, in broad terms I think the problem is with heterosexual desire, or at least heterosexual desire of a certain type – arguably it is ‘normal’ sexual desire they have a problem with.
The issue for me is ‘objectification’, a bullshit weasel-word which paints the very act of looking at and enjoying the site of a physically attractive woman to be oppressive. Morover, it fundamentally misunderstands male sexuality, I have used this phrase so many times on CiF I have lost count – MEN DO NOT WANT TO FUCK OBJECTS! That a concept so central to their beliefs on sexual politics is so fundamentally misunderstood to me really says a huge amount about this sort of feminism.
I wonder if maybe the unease at this sort of thing is linked to the ‘have it all’ idea? Middle-class feminist women see the great achievement of feminism in the past (rightly in my view), and an important part of their lives today, as being able to be taken seriously in a non-sexual context, as offering far more than a hot body to be fucked. But, with few exceptions, they do also want a man. And of course they want a ‘good’ man – and of course a large part of their ideology is based around the assumption that these are in the distinct minority!
Much as they dislike it, sexual politics is fundamentally based on competition, and physical attractiveness (as well as availability) is one of the key weapons for women over other women. But this clashes with their other goals, of being a career woman, taken seriously (n.b., nto just by men – equally important if not more so is being taken seriously by other feminists), not ‘objectified’ etc, so we reach the point where a reasonable person accepts that a decision has to be made. Caring obsessively about sexual attractiveness diminishes how seriously you can be taken; but not prioritising sexual attractiveness disadvantages you in the competition for mates compared to women who do. But these feminists want to ‘have it all’, having to choose between the two is nto acceptable – so they want to remove the sexual attractiveness element from the equation as far as possible.