POWER AS A COMPLEX STRATEGAL SITUATION
If repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost.
Sobering thought. It is true that here in the United States, at the end of the 19th century both medical and religious institutions developed aggressive programs that were sponsored by the government. These programs were specifically created to restrict variant sexualities and completely stifle sexual identities that deviated from a perceived norm. In spite of the fact that there is little anyone can do about their sexuality, non-compliance with these programs was frequently threatened with the same consequence as were enemies of the State. This is only possible when several powers while working together create a collective over-mind and targets a common cause. In this case that target was variant sexuality which was unceremoniously taken from its natural place in our biological mindset and artificially relegated to the realm of deviance and perversion.
Michel Foucault understood this very well for it was apparently true everywhere in the Western world. From France he taught that sexuality is targeted by institutions and these institutions are actually products of various powers that create a collective over-mind.[1] Certainly this was true in the United States when in the wake of the 20th century, religious taboos combined with medical professionals to designate appropriate sexual behavior. The rest were relegated to pathologies around sexuality and generally all sexual identities that deviated from their now identified norms. Once created, major social institutions generated fear that justified additional strength and support from the United States government and by the three powers mobilizing together, consistently diverted attention away from the personal and biological aspects of sexuality to replace it with artificial behavioral-environmental constructs.
Conveniently, religion already had structures in place to reward the good and punish the bad, so religion became the vehicle for social indoctrination that could be carried beyond religious constraints. Looking at the 1994, Oxford English Dictionary, it defines indoctrination as not only: "an instruction, teaching," but also "the 'teaching' of prisoners of war." Thus religion smoothed the way for the U.S. government to join religious and medical institutions that developed programs directing us into dogmatic ways of thinking about sex and sexuality most of which were contrary to our natures. Once our sexuality was defined and stifled civilly, spiritually and medically, many voices went unheard in the name of the "greater good." Finally, our State and Federal government instituted laws with strong religious overtones preventing individuals from naturally developing into healthy, happy citizens. All institutions would like nothing better than to hide so well that the social majority feels their own fears could not possibly arise from brainwashing techniques, but rather the logical reasoning of an obvious reality. One would think if truth was self-evident then exploring the truth would seem agreeable to all parties. Thus, to explore whether or not there is sexual repression in the United States and to what extent, a good place to start is the motivation behind the Declaration of Independence to verify that neither the Declaration of Independence nor the United States Constitution emerged from a void and that this repressive over mind did NOT begin at our government’s foundations.
Civil Rights vs. U.S. Government
The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Lord Acton
And until the day he died, Thomas Jefferson was constantly at odds with his own style of racism. Part of his obsession to resolve his attitudes towards Blacks, as author of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, he relied heavily on contemporary political philosophers of the Enlightenment, particularly the ideas of Charles Montesquieu (“The Spirit of the Law”[2]), David Hume[3] and John Locke. It is Locke who said, “using reason to try to grasp the truth and determining the legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for the individual and society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare.[4]” Using concepts like these, Thomas Jefferson reacted to tyranny by leading others towards creating a new country from the colonies. He wanted to imbue this new government with the philosophies he most admired and by establishing safety valves attempted to ensure a system that dispersed power throughout a republic. He believed that it was our duty as American citizens to empower ourselves with the rights guaranteed us by our Constitution and resist anyone or any thing that attempted to prevent us from living in truth through our own authentic live-styles.
On July 4, 1776, in his Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson said:[5]
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Among Mr. Jefferson’s many approbations for reasons to declare independence of England and the king, he includes wanton pillaging of foreign lands and transporting abused and unwillingly peoples enslaved to the new colonies:
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.[6]
Jefferson made it very clear that the Institutions supported by our government were for the benefit of everyone – no matter what race. Yet, only sixty years after the Constitution was signed, United States President Andrew Jackson forcibly displaced non-caucasian Native Americans in The Trail of Tears of 1838-1839 establishing the precedence where an elite few blatantly violated the rights of Americans for personal agendas and justified these acts through racial constructs. Thomas Jefferson was an idealist that was trying to develop a civic Utopia. But Utopias must be earned and do not just happen at the stroke of a pen. Major conflicts surrounding issues of not only race, but gender and sexual discrimination would soon follow. We have successfully taken steps to protect the power to some citizens through ratifying Amendments securing both Rights to Vote regardless of race (Article XV – Ratified 2/3/1870) and gender (Article XIX – ratified 8/18/1920).[7] We are finding, though, Free Will is complex. One has as much right to try and take power as give it and use whatever means they can.
Power and Military Institutions
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord Acton, Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887
Michel Foucault agreed, but he had a more organic vision of power. For him, “all the negative elements – defenses, censorships, denials, which the repressive hypothesis groups together in one great central mechanism destined to say no, are doubtless only component parts that have a local and tactical role to play in a transformation into discourse.[8]” The ability to either identify or discourse as well as the ability to prevent anyone else this opportunity is a fundamental aspect to the access and use of power. One example of this is the U.S. notions of gays and lesbians in the Military.
The United States Army has been officially anti-gay since World War I when the Articles of War went into effect outlawing sodomy. Ironically, 20 years later, during World War II, while trying to filter out gays and lesbians, they used distinctive markers that supported a mainstream view of masculinity that were easy to avoid. It is ironic that this established a dialogue that “introduced hundreds of thousands of young Americans to the idea of gay and lesbian identity, inadvertently foregrounding the very sexuality the military had hoped to rid itself of. And once in the military, gay and lesbian service members found themselves living in same-sex environments that often facilitated their meeting each other and the creation of fledgling homosexual communities.[9]”
In 1950 the United States established another social precedence when Joseph McCarthy and Undersecretary of State John Puerifory claimed a "homosexual underground" was abetting a "communist conspiracy." Through a reaction to the Cold War, The McCarthy Era ushered into our country the means to directly attack not military personnel, but private citizens with a wartime vigor based on their sexuality that has continued to this day.
As of 2007, the Military continues with the same Cold War ethics. Officially, a primary reason the military upheld its ban against gay service members was the necessity to provide "cohesiveness." They say this issue is complex since Military life is extremely intimate. Men shower together, eat together, and sleep together, sometimes in small spaces, which is why men are separated from women. But in reality military personnel are simply uncomfortable living in close proximity with gays and lesbian and since the armed forces are considered a business around life and death, they wish to keep the personnel’s morale high to keep up effectiveness.[10]
On March 14, 2007, General Peter Pace commented in an interview with the Chicago Tribune that he believed homosexuality was immoral and compared it to adultery.
So, it must have been a shock for all ranks of the United States Military when on May 27, 2007, Sarah Lyall reported from the New York Times:
LONDON -- The officer, a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, felt he had no choice. So he stood up in front of his squad of 30 to 40 people. "I said, 'Right, I've got something to tell you,' " he said. " 'I believe that for us to be able to work closely together and have faith in each other, we have to be honest and open and frank. And it has to be a two-way process, and it starts with me baring my soul. You may have heard some rumors, and yes, I have a long-term partner who is a he, not a she.' "
Far from causing problems, he said, he found that coming out to his troops actually increased the unit's strength and cohesion. He had felt uneasy keeping the secret "that their boss was a poof," as he put it, from people he worked with so closely.
Since the British military began allowing gays to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears -- about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying, or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness -- has come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services, and academics specializing in the military.
Both sides of a continuing discourse depend on the opposite opinion to create a “cause.” The rhetoric sets a stage from which all sides speak,[11] but, the continued repression in the Military might be as much the consequence of our society’s attitudes which has been developing over many centuries. After all,
until Freud, the discourse on sex, the discourse of scholars and theologians, never ceased to hide the thing they were speaking about… The mere fact that one claimed to be speaking about it from the rarefied and neutral viewpoint of a science is in itself significant…Claiming to speak the truth, it stirred up people’s fears; to the least oscillations of sexuality, it ascribed an imaginary dynasty of evils destined to be passed on for generations; it declared the furtive customs of the timid, the most solitary of petty manias, dangerous.”[12]
Freud was a product of his Victorian environment and so based his career on labeling and treating what he considered dangerous sexual predilections as pathologies and we have been disentangling ourselves from his couch ever since.
As a representative of the Medical Institution, Freud set the stage for married heterosexuals to be the only people with the rights to have sex. The United States, as with every society, needed a moral back bone and throughout the ages morality has always been relegated to Religion. In Western civilization, religion kept sex within the confines of a husband and wife’s bedroom specifically to create a family unit. Family is a social construct, thus for an American Institution, anyone existing outside the main family unit was anti-American.[13] The government could now deny a person constitutional rights based on his sexuality and/or sexual identity because sex was now not only an environmental construct, but treasonous as well. Since now we recognize sexuality is not defined so much within an intimate marriage between a man and woman, but more within the confines of a discussion around nurture and nature, the issue is to answer for ourselves when sexuality is a normal part of nature and when it is “immoral” and/or pathological.
Nature and Nurture
DNA doesn't do anything,’ A gene is an instruction for making a protein. Reading that instruction, following it, folding the protein into the shape it must have to do its job--all this is the job of the cell, and the cell is affected by its environment. We begin to see that there are no easy answers. We are not simply biological, but are in fact very vulnerable to the relationship our potentials have with our environment.’” James Shapiro, a cell biologist at the University of Chicago Medical School.
So, the gene is not affective without the cell, the cell is helpless without the environment. There has been evidence of fetuses being sexual in the womb.[14] To tie these concepts together, Matt Ridley, a geneticist, wrote several books explaining how human nature is actually an intimate relationship between inherited genes and the environment in which it exists. Ridley reminds us that breeders have always known that dogs come in different behavior types and in fact breed for temperament.[15] He also shows us that man is a form of Ape so is part of the animal kingdom.[16] Thus, as inconvenient as it may be for those obsessed with keeping sexual rites within the confines of breeding in the sanctuary of a heterosexual marriage, we have to reconcile ourselves that a huge part of human behavior, including our sexuality, is genetically driven. The story, though, doesn’t end there since the environment adds a complicated process into the picture.
One could argue that the three most influential schools of thought around childhood and human development were not only Sigmund Freud who promoted this high drama in the first place, but also Jean Piaget (1896–1980) and one of Freud’s protégés, Erik Erikson (1902-1994). As a scientist, Freud who received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Vienna[17] understood the strong connection between a person’s sexuality and their development, even if his own morality and conformity to social taboos colored his judgment. Erikson, whose interests were anthropological, specialized in the environmental processes which actually complimented Freud’s work. He disagreed with Freud’s concept that behavior came completely out of human sexuality. Instead, Erikson expanded Freud’s five years of development to 10 years and that human growth and development stretched throughout the life cycle through a number of "crises" that developed naturally and inevitably at various points in the life cycle. Successful resolution of each crises would determine whether one later experienced relative happiness, or discontent and neurosis. In addition, each of the different phases -- and the skills that came from resolving each successive crisis -- built upon those that came before.”[18]
Where Erikson focused on the human psyche’s development within its environment, Jean Piaget illustrated how our human psyches grew biologically. By the 1970s, the research of Piaget, a “genetic epistemologist” was internationally influencing education. Because of Piaget, we understood that each stage of the brain’s development works differently and independent of the other.
While working in Binet's IQ test lab in Paris, Piaget became interested in how children think. He noticed that young children's answers were qualitatively different than older children which suggested to him that the younger ones were not dumber (a quantitative position since as they got older and had more experiences they would get smarter) but, instead, answered the questions differently than their older peers because they thought differently … Piaget believed that biological development drives the movement from one cognitive stage to the next. Data from cross-sectional studies of children in a variety of western cultures seem to support this assertion for the stages of sensorimotor, preoperational, and concrete operations
Ridley is showing us how sexuality is instinctual. Piaget showed that a child experiences their world in a completely different way than an adult. A child, therefore, maybe born sexual, but what would that have to do with their understanding of the world and their sexual identity?
In a 20/20 episode My Hidden Self, Barbara Walters interviewed 3 children who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. In this episode, each child chose a way of expressing themselves that completely negated their birth gender. Even though the families understood coming out publicly would increase chances of harassment of their children, they felt living in Truth to the world is the only chance these children had to live lives authentic to their natures. No one can walk away from this film and not be affected. The message it leaves with us is that everybody exists within a body and identity that is not constructed by their environment. To prevent people the means to communicate something as potent as their sexuality is a heinous violation against the person’s rights for either life, liberty or any pursuit for happiness.
Adult perspectives in our culture regarding sex is not sophisticated enough to mediate a child through a crisis situation so a child’s world is extremely vulnerable and dangerous as it proved to be for Nicole, a transgendered girl who committed suicide to finally escape the torment of other High School students. There must be appropriate role models, schools and playmates to support everyone’s talents, however, millions of children are set up from the start to be tragically confused and depressed with who and what they are, even though a biological “norm” has yet to be precisely identified.
The ability to marginalize our sexuality into some sort of controllable aspect of our environment was championed by John Money, a Psychologist at John Hopkins University.[19] After studying 131 intersexed individuals, Money came to the conclusion that people were psychosexually neutral until the age of 2 at which time they developed their sexual identity. He wrote, “Sexual behavior and orientation as male or female does not have an innate, instinctive basis… It becomes differentiated as masculine and feminine in the course of the various experiences of growing up.” Money believed that a human baby could be assigned to either sex, a belief doctors used to justify changing boys with unknown genitalia into girls. Mickey Diamond challenged Money saying that the evidence from intersexed people were irrelevant since it’s only logical that if their genitalia were ambivalent, their minds would be ambivalent as well. Money was challenged to produce a psychosexually neutral normal child that had accepted gender assignment.
In 1963, Money took on the case of a normal boy whose penis was mangled through a “botched up” circumcision. On Money’s advice, the boy was surgically reassigned as a girl then raised by his parents as a girl and never told of her origin. In 1972 Money published a book describing the case as an unqualified success. It was hailed in the press as a definitive proof that sex roles were a product of society, not biology; it influenced a generation of feminists at a critical time; it entered the psychology textbooks; and it influenced many doctors who now saw sex reassignment as a simple solution to a complicated problem.
In 1979 the BBC first investigated rumors that the “little” girl was not what she was reported to be. Upon investigation they found an unhappy 14 year old girl with masculine body language and a deep voice. Years later when they picked up the trail again, the “girl” was a happily married man with 2 adopted children. His parents finally told him of his operation when at 14 he rebelled against anymore girlish things. He was then changed back.
Gender roles are at least partly automatic, blind, and untaught…Hormones with the womb trigger masculinization, but those hormones originate with the body of the baby and are themselves triggered by a series of events that begin with the expression of a single gene on the Y chromosome. (There are plenty of species that allow the environment to determine gender. In crocodiles and turtles, for example, the sex of the animal is set by the temperature at which the egg is incubated. But there are genes involved in such a process, too. Temperature triggers the expression of sex determining genes. The prime cause may be environmental, but the mechanism is genetic. Genes can be consequence as well as cause.)…
[Baby boys] do not come into the world with all these preferences fully formed, of course, but they do come with some ineffable preference to identify with boyish things. This is what he child psychologist Sandra Scarr has called “niche picking:” the tendency to pick the nurture that suits your nature...
The institutions have run out of ways to conveniently deny our instincts fair expression. There are even new guidelines now for pediatricians because girls who start developing breasts and pubic hair at age six or seven are not necessarily "abnormal." Clearly, cause and effect are circular. Reconciling nurture with nature is not so difficult if we allow that people both like doing what they find they are good at and are good at what they like doing.[20]
Religion, Taboos and Morality
But it is under compulsion rather than by an act of free will that civilized man has accepted the discipline of sexual control. Arthur Keith
And this is because power works through biological vulnerability and manifests itself through institutions. Institutions hoped to delegate sexuality exclusively into the bedrooms of the heterosexual family and silenced all discourse around children’s sexuality since anything without proper context did not exist.
Thus without discourse, there is no language and without language – well what can we say? Cultural institutions fanned the fears making open communication all but impossible.
Sterile behavior [what is sterile behavior] carried the taint of abnormality; … Nothing that was not ordered in terms of generation or transfigured by it could expect sanction or protection. Nor did it merit a hearing. It would be driven out, denied, and reduced to silence. Not only did it not exist, it had no right to exist and would be made to disappear upon its least manifestation—whether in acts or in words. Everyone knew, for example, that children had no sex, which was why they were forbidden to talk about it, why one closed one’s eyes and stopped one’s ears whenever they came to show evidence to the contrary, and why a general and studied silence was imposed. These are the characteristic features attributed to repression, which serve to distinguish it from the prohibitions maintained by penal law: repression operated as a sentence to disappear, but also as an injunction to silence, an affirmation of nonexistence, and by implication, an admission that there was nothing to say about such things, nothing to see, and nothing to know.[21]
If we are now convinced that sexuality is a biological construct that has nothing to do with being anti-family, anti-country and anti-religion, we need to rethink old attitudes about variant sexual behaviors and separate acceptable tendencies from those that are unacceptable. Let’s begin by Repeating After Me: "Gay" and "Pedophile" Are Not Remotely Related.
Fr. Oliver O’Grady, for example, is a convicted pedophile that had been exploiting children of both genders for decades.
Fr. Thomas Doyle, a lawyer of canon law and medieval historian, explains that the Roman Catholic Church is a monarchy. The layperson, it seems, simply does not argue with their priest and confessor, much less the Priest’s superiors. This is one of the reasons subjugation and indoctrination into a church is so lethal. Paritioners are especially vulnerable since there is a ritual around every important event of their lives and a person feels they’ve missed something when they are not able to participate in that ritual. This is excluding that one day a week that is ideally invested in going to church. They can bring their worst errors out in confession and lay them at the feet of a priest to take whatever punishment he may give. In this way, the church takes on every aspect of being an active parent.
When the problem of Fr. O’Grady was brought before church authorities, their stance was that for a priest, all sex is bad, whether with a child or a prostitute. This Institution’s over mind was that what Fr. O’Grady was doing was not a crime but a sin. There is, of course, a difference between the harm that Fr. O’Grady was inflicting and children exploring their own natures, no matter what a religious institution chooses to say about it. The thing that separates pedophilia from any variant sexuality is an implication of rape.
Reflecting back on Piaget, the danger with adults initiating their sexuality on a child is that the child is seeing this experience in a completely different way than an adult. Even if human beings are sexual from conception, the shifts from one developmental stage to another is biological. Forcing adult sex on a child, therefore, has a high probability of causing irreparable damage that can last a lifetime.
There is support for the notion that Fr. O’Grady’s pedophilia was a pathology inherited by him from his family. If we look at sexuality biologically, this problem could be avoided through interviews with Fr. O’Grady before offering him any pastorial positions. There are no such things as monsters. It does not seem difficult to figure out that you keep pedophiles away from children. It is important, then to distinguish a crime from a prejudice, a pathology from a fear.
Some sexual experiences are not necessarily physical, but are really quite ecstatic. One could argue that religious fervor might be a sexual predilection if they’d ever read the verses of Rumi. Indoctrinations are only harmful when used with the natures that do not share the predilection. Indoctrination is a good example of where nurture and nature happily meet. It would be interesting to explore specific indoctrination processes that honor specific natures. To quote Matthew 19:14[22], Jesus loves everybody, including his little children, many would wonder at first if this were love:
As horrifying as extreme Fundamentalism may seem to an outsider, until we are able to understand human nature better, we are in no position to judge for anyone but ourselves. It could be much like rape, though, if a Religious Institution imposes an indoctrination process on someone who is not wired for the experience.
Taboos and Women’s Sexuality
It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason. Lord Acton
Women’s sexuality has transcended cliché. It is ubiquitous in advertising, in religious discourse, in entertainment…The public craves it. Woman is empowered by it, as much as she is exploited by it. Wherever there are discussions regarding exhibitionism, prostitution or pornography, women’s sexuality in religion and spirituality, within the family, dating and birth as well as birth control there will be public opinion and certainly dialogue.
Feminist Institutions (N.O.W. for example) is polarized around sex and has a well established discourse still engaged on both sides of the fence. On one hand, feminine exhibitionism has been a hugely profitable industry and for a long time feminine sexualized movie stars were one of the few avenues to express feminine power. In spite of this, some would take the sex industry to task saying that icons such as Marilyn Monroe work towards diminishing the worth of women. This has not yet been proven, but if there was any truth to it, whose fault would that be?
A provocative tribute to photographer, Richard Avedon, was featured in the News and Features section of the New York Times who invited five photographers to create images of Avedon’s famous portrait of the unmasked Marilyn Monroe in their article, The Title of This Photograph Is Marilyn Monroe, Actress, New York City, May 6, 1957.
Through Richard Avedon’s portrait we can see the wonderful aspect of Marilyn since photography makes it possible to become voyeurs into one of her sacred moments. Richard Avedon tells us how Marilyn, as a proper exhibitionist, didn’t fight but submitted completely to the shutter. Her stance in this image seems to say, “Here I am, capture me NOW.”
Did Marilyn Monroe, succeed to create role model that drew senseless young girls down a path of sin and destruction? Or is it more likely that she unwittingly resurrected the Egyptian Goddess Hathor with all of Her fecundity, music and beauty. Perhaps that’s how everybody was so drawn to little Norma Jeane Mortenson – including the President of the United States and his brother our Attorney General. What did one little girl from Los Angeles have that captivated both Hollywood and the United States Government, or even for that matter, the Kennedy family itself? It is common knowledge how horribly John and Bobbie Kennedy exploited this woman. Since her natural innocence and unbridled sexuality attracted the attention of both the “Silver Screen” as well as two of the most powerful executives of the United States, it would seem that the erotic presence she adopted became a weapon against her. Joe DiMaggio, baseball hero and ex-husband, felt there was strong evidence to prove she was murdered to protect closely held national secrets which may have passed to her through “pillow talk.” Is there a trash novel that can rival the intrigue around the death of Marilyn Monroe?
One could argue that because her strong sexuality was promoted so aggressively, Marilyn was not taken seriously enough to merit a more complete disclosure of her death. Is the President of the United States and United States Attorney General more important than the law? Marilyn Monroe was a public figure, arguably more lasting than a President. Coincidentally both Kennedy’s were murdered so if they had committed murder, perhaps justice did prevail after all. Be that as it may, much like Mata Hari, Marilyn Monroe successfully used her sexuality to bring something powerful and eternal into the world that whether she was dead or alive would always seem to influence our views of femininity. But then men have been trying to subjugate women for millennia and that’s because women have limitless ways to manifest power, Norma Jean was simply one of them.
On June 4, 2007, The Independent, a British publication, featured the feminist Ariel Levy author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. It’s important to question any movement especially one that vanguards women’s rights to no-holds sex. Feminists such as Ariel Levy, vividly shows how one Power uses a feminine institution to conflict with another. In this book, Ariel Levy wants to tell us that women who are active in the Raunch Culture are being coerced by men to expose themselves to a sexuality they really aren’t interested in. Raunch and the discussion around it seem reminiscent of the 1960s when free-love was supposed to be when girls actually exercise their rights as individuals and have sex anytime they wanted to. This “Free Love” would elevate the young girl to a status of hero/lover rather than stigmatized as a whore and a disgrace to her family. The dark side of this, though were the risks of pregnancy and disease the girl and her family were taking since young men weren’t really trying to settle down with a job and family. “Illegitimate” babies became more the norm. The flip side was that the government no longer labeled a fatherless child at birth illegitimate. The feminist movement helped make the system aware of increased need for childcare and better recognized single-family homes which were not considered as much in the past. Feminists on both sides are concerned about developing institutions that exploit the women that would be coerced and vulnerable. Care should be taken, though, not to relegate women to being constant victims and give them the right of having some say in their own destiny, which is why the “Rauch” movement is so important.
Is the sexual Disneyland of the 1960s on the rise again through the advent of the “Raunch” movement? No matter what the trend is, when do we say that every woman is harmed by their exhibitionism? The article, Ariel Levy on Raunch Culture, admits women also enjoy reading Playboy, (not Playgirl) which is obvious since Playboy advertises women’s clothes. A woman doesn’t have to be a lesbian to know a sexy woman when she sees one. Not all non-romantic sex involving women is tedious, dangerous and exploitive. There is another feminist point of view that promotes women to have as much right to the pleasures of life as men and enjoy the freedom of experimenting with sexual aggression. Many claim they do their share of bringing home wages, so in turn they should feel sexy and explore their sexuality as much as any man. So, sometimes women want to watch porn and maybe even make it. Let’s turn the exploitive notions of pornography upside down and see it from a Femininst perspective.
Anusha Allikhan interviewed Becky Goldberg for an article in New York Cool.com regarding Becky’s documentary film about feminist pornography: “Hot and Bothered.”
In 2002 she came to film school at New York University, to make socially conscious documentaries. The first of these was a student production entitled Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography. “The film grew out of culture shock,” said Becky. “I wanted to explore the difference between how sex was sold in two very different worlds…In 2002 she came to film school at New York University, to make socially conscious documentaries. The first of these was a student production entitled Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography. “The film grew out of culture shock,” said Becky. “I wanted to explore the difference between how sex was sold in two very different worlds. In 2002 she came to film school at New York University, to make socially conscious documentaries. The first of these was a student production entitled Hot and Bothered: Feminist Pornography. “The film grew out of culture shock,” said Becky. “I wanted to explore the difference between how sex was sold in two very different worlds.”
“The feminist pornography movement was started by a group of women within the porn industry who embrace their sexuality and support porn that empowers women and presents them in a positive role . Hot & Bothered brought this movement into the forefront by profiling directors, activists, and adult movie actresses who fight against industry sexism, and stereotypes. “Mainstream pornography is specifically focused on men’s pleasure,” explained Becky. “Feminist pornography depicts women doing what they want, it arouses women without leaving them feeling disgusted.”
Since the start of the women’s movement progress has been made in the workplace, the household, and the political arena. But female sexual equality remains in the shadows of feminist debate. Becky believes that feminist pornography, while “not for everyone” does work to bridge this gap. “Many women learn about sex in a very clinical way,” she said. “Porn can send a message that this is not a man’s world, you can enjoy this-- you can control your own sexual destiny.”
Becky’s ambition brought her face to face against governmental resistance when she sought out sponsors who supported her cause, but was afraid of losing their own funding if it was found they supported her publicly. There are other examples of safe unexploitive erotica like Scarlet Harlot Sex Videos which is an online website for women who are interested in sex education, effective erotica and porn. Also, enjoyable and fun is Jack Hafferkamp from Chicago who once published Libido Magazine but totally shifted his attention to Libido Films. Jack’s porn creates authentic erotic experiences targeted to women.
We need to recognize the many different ways sexuality is authentically expressed. Not every woman wants to show off her body to an unfamiliar crowd, but there are women who do.
TO THINE OWN SELVES BE TRUE
and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare Act 1: Scene 3
and to whom else is honesty most important? Since gender and sexual drives are a mixture of biological and environmental constraints, the idea of Sexual Citizenship recognizes that sexuality is NOT pathological,[23] but is a healthy expression of nature which is genetic and can only be expressed, not controlled, changed or molded by our environment. It is important to legally establish that varying sexualities deserve legal recognition and protection under the Constitution.
In 2000, David Bell and Jon Bennie raised the premise that a sexual citizen could be yet another way to expand a cultural bias.[24] Since the city, they said, is the place where variant sexualities are enacted, we need an opportunity to explore the relationship between sexuality and urban space. Political agenda are often motivated by personal agendas which sometimes market cities as places of diversity and difference while at other times they focus on the “clean-up a city’s image” by redlining districts according to sexual subcultures into a sort of moral “topography.” The other opportunity is to clarify the rights with sex as a private matter without the danger of silencing sexuality publicly and maintaining the same public space without sexual preference being an issue. We may choose, for example, to be in a family with same sex head of household that include children.
A country which is as diverse as the United States would need more discourse about differences. It has become clear that sexuality is a potent issue that people feel the need to talk about and act on. If this is true, the many varieties of sexualities must be respected and protected under the law. Thomas Jefferson attempted to create an “Ideal” Society through his Constitution but even with this “all attempts to design society by reference to one narrow conception of human nature, whether on paper or in the streets, end in producing something much worse.”[25]
We are informed that if repression has indeed been the fundamental link between power, knowledge, and sexuality since the classical age, it stands to reason that we will not be able to free ourselves from it except at a considerable cost: nothing less than a transgression of laws, a lifting of prohibitions, an irruption of speech, a reinstating of pleasure with reality, and a whole new economy in the mechanisms of power will be required. For the least glimmer of truth is conditioned by politics. Hence, one cannot hope to obtain the desired results simply from a medical practice, nor from a theoretical discourse, however rigorously pursued. [26]
To be honest, even if society has been subjugated in many ways, we really do not need a revolution…we already have the Bill of Rights. Perhaps what would be beneficial for everyone now is a different attitude about sex and more importantly, a sense of humor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS:
Bell, David and Jon, Bennie (2000) THE SEXUAL CITIZEN, Polity Press Oxford
Caputo J., Yount M. (2006) FOUCAULT AND THE CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONS Penn State Press
Foucault, M. (1980), THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY Volume 1: An Introduction , Vintage Books Edition
Ridley, M. (2003) Nature via Nurture, HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Smith, Ralph R. and Windes, Russell R. (2000) Progay/Antigay, Sage Publications, Inc.
ARTICLES:
Bateman, Geoffrey W, (2004) Military Culture: United States - glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture
Jakobsen, J (2002) CAN HOMOSEXUALS END WESTERN CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT? queer globalizations
Kier, Elizabeth (1998) HOMOSEXUALS IN THE MILITARY: Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2. (Autumn, 1998)
White, L. (Jan. - Mar., 1976), On a Passage by Hume Incorrectly Attributed to Jefferson Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 37, No. 1
WEBSITES:
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl206.htm
http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration.htm
http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration_transcript.html
http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Amend.html
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_49.html
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/kjv.browse.html
[1] Caputo J., Yount M. (2006) FOUCAULT AND THE CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONS Penn State Press (pp. 5-9)
[2] http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl206.htm
[3] White, L. (Jan. - Mar., 1976), On a Passage by Hume Incorrectly Attributed to Jefferson
Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 37, No. 1 pp. 133-135 doi:10.2307/2708714
[4] http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration.html
[5] http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration.htm
[6] http://www.archives.gov/national-archives-experience/charters/declaration_transcript.html
[7] http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Amend.html
[8] Foucault, M. (1980), THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY Volume 1: An Introduction , Vintage Books Edition (p. 11)
[9] Bateman, Geoffrey W, (2004) Military Culture: United States - glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture – p. 1
[10] Kier, Elizabeth (1998) HOMOSEXUALS IN THE MILITARY: Open Integration and Combat Effectiveness International Security, Vol. 23, No. 2. (Autumn, 1998), p. 6.
[11] Smith, Ralph R. and Windes, Russell R. (2000) Progay/Antigay, Sage Publications, Inc.
12 ibid, THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY Volume 1 (p. 53)
[13] Jakobsen, J (2002) CAN HOMOSEXUALS END WESTERN CIVILIZATION AS WE KNOW IT? queer globalizations p. 50
[14] http://www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_49.html
[15] Ridley, M. (2003) Nature via Nurture, HarperCollins Publishers Inc. (p. 51)
[16] ibid Nature via Nurture (p. 27)
[17] http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96may/freud.html
[18] http://www.nndb.com/people/151/000097857/
[19] ibid Nature via Nurture (pp. 55-59)
[20] ibid Nurture via Nature (pp 58-59)
[21] ibid, THE HISTORY OF SEXUALITY Volume 1, (p. 4)
[22] King James Bible
[23] ibid HISTORY OF SEXUALITY (p. 47)
[24] Bell, David and Jon, Bennie (2000) THE SEXUAL CITIZEN, Polity Press Oxford
[25] ibid Nurture via Nature (p. 96)
[26] ibid History of Sexuality (p. 5)
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