Female Sexuality

I was studying up and found this essay that I think would add to the current women's thread discussion about female sexuality and power. This essay I found helps to point out the complexity of something we would define in dualistic terms like “women's sexuality.”

The essay is short and was in a newspaper format, so don't chastize me for the font.

Association for Feminist

Anthropology

MEGAN SINNOTT AND REBECCA UPTON,

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

This past fall Megan taught an undergraduate

seminar at Yale entitled “Women’s Sexuality.” She

invited students from that class to write a column

discussing issues of female sexuality from a feminist

perspective. The following essay was written

by Loren Krywanczyk, an undergraduate student

majoring in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality

Studies. Loren is also an associate of the Larry

Kramer Initiative and coordinator of the Yale

LGBT Co-op. She can be reached at krywanczyk@

yale.edu.

“Women’s Sexuality”

By Loren Krywanczyk (Yale)

The mere assertion of the existence of “women’s

sexuality” can be a feminist statement. The concept

of a “women’s sexuality,”

independent of

male desire, carries with

it feminist implications

for any female-bodied

individual, whether or

not her/his gender

identity and performance

align with her/his

biology. However, ambiguity

in the criteria

for determining who is

included in the category

of “woman” tends to reassert the troublesome

association between women’s sexuality and passivity.

In a discussion about women’s sexuality

the difficulty of defining “woman” can result in

the marginalization of individuals who do not

neatly fit into one of the two socially-accepted

categories of sex and gender. This process of mar-

ginalization also diminishes the potential for a

“women’s sexuality” free of stereotypical passivity

to emerge.

An experience of women’s sexuality is not necessarily

tied to any specific body. Non-normatively

gendered—for example transgendered—and intersexual

individuals, demonstrate that physiology

fails to adequately define a woman. Not all women

have XX chromosomes, ovaries or can bear children.

Not all women have a “woman’s experience,”

per se, because not all “women” are perceived or

treated as “women.” Women’s sexuality, therefore,

does not apply only to a conventional notion of a

“biological” woman. Does womanhood include

male-to-female transsexuals who arguably have not

had a “woman’s experience”? Does it include

women-identified, male-bodied individuals? Does

it include men who are perceived to be women and

are therefore “treated as women” even though they

do not identify as such?

The reduction and essentialization of the complex,

malleable category of “woman” is reflected

in attitudes about women’s sexuality. The correla-

tion of sexual passivity with womanliness, though

widespread, conforms to oppressive notions of

femininity and fails as a reliable or accurate definition

of women’s sexuality. Penetrability proves

troublesome as a defining factor of women’s sexuality

for this reason, as well as the fact that this

stereotypically “feminine” role is not exclusively

female but can be and often is assumed by male

or man-identified individuals. Also, it must be recognized

that women can take an active role in sex

and that not all women fit this stereotypically

receptive role. This is illustrated by the untouchability

of the stone butch lesbian. Though a stone

butch tends to be masculine and to superficially

appear to adopt a “male” sexual role with her

partner, untouchability distinguishes her sexuality

from that of a man. There is, therefore, a commonality

to women’s sexuality, something specific

that differentiates it from men’s sexuality; however,

the broad scope of womanhood makes pinpointing

that difference very difficult. Despite the

slipperiness of the notion of “woman,” it is

important to acknowledge the prevalent assumption

of a general category of woman that is

observable in modern society. Whether women

are united by personal identity, biology or chromosomal

characteristics, women’s sexuality has a

subversive potential for anyone with a “woman’s

experience” of sex and sexuality, however that

may be defined.

The phrase “women’s sexuality” directly associates

“women” and “sexuality,” with no hint of

an imperative male presence, refusing to accept a

prevalent correlation of sexuality with maleness.

It does not specify women’s sexuality as heterosexual

or even dependent upon another physical

body. The concept of women’s sexuality enables

a female-bodied individual to stand on her/his

own as a sexual, active, desiring being. It can dispel

the myths of the nonsexual, purely emotional

woman and the other extreme of the “oversexed”

woman whose motives for sexuality are

manipulative or psychological, both of which so

frequently relegate female-bodied people to the

role of passive recipient of male desire. By seizing

sexuality as a female possession that does not

necessarily hinge upon male pleasure or male

desire, women’s sexuality as a concept can potentially

rebel against the compulsory heterosexuality

that has historically been imposed as a tool to

perpetuate male dominance. It does little good to

reject the concept of woman in favor of new,

increasingly fragmented identity categories that

will inevitably prove just as restrictive and inadequate.

Rather than denying the notion of

women’s sexuality due to the complexity of

womanhood, we must broaden our understanding

of woman to comprehend its magnitude and

flexibility. We must acknowledge the category’s

deficiencies and flaws while incorporating them

into a notion of womanhood which extends

beyond physiology or personality traits or gender

performativity and into the realm of the political,

in order to recognize the feminist implications of

women’s sexuality.

Re: Female Sexuality

Thanks, Rick.  :)

arthur

see also  Transcendent Sex
              The Good Body - Eve Ensler
              Post-Porn Priestess of Pleasure

Re: Female Sexuality

And the uncommented on article I posted, The Whore and the Holy One.

Re: Female Sexuality

holden: And the uncommented on article I posted, The Whore and the Holy One.

~~~~~

People reading this thread are more likely to go there if you provide a link, Rick. :)

spirals,
arthur

Re: Female Sexuality

here ya go.

http://pods.zaadz.com/ii/discussions/view/165522

Here's the abstract:

Abstract

This text explores the intersection of the women's spirituality and sex worker's

rights movements in which a growing body of sex workers describe and experience

themselves as “sacred whores.” In this cultural encounter, the women's spirituality

movement's vision of sexual empowerment has merged with the sex workers rights

movement's recontextualization of prostitution and other forms of sex work as valid,

fulfilling, and skilled labor. These women are establishing themselves as heirs to a

mythology of ancient religious practices in which priestesses made love to men

within temples as a holy rite and a spiritual service. My exploration of this movement

is grounded in an inquiry into the history and mythology of the “temple prostitutes”

of the ancient Near East, and unfolds into an ethnography of the currently emerging

sacred whore movement.

Re: Female Sexuality

Thanks, Rick.  I just did some cross-linking - while on a break from my indexing assignment, lol.  This article on female sexuality is interesting basic pomo stuff.  I agree with what Pelle said about the need to make the masculine/feminine distinction alongside male/female - this article demonstrates how confused the subject is otherwise.  I was also struck by the last part of the article, how she was really evoking (in my mind) the need to go integral, and yet she took it into politics instead:

~~~~~

It does little good to

reject the concept of woman in favor of new,

increasingly fragmented identity categories that

will inevitably prove just as restrictive and inadequate.

Rather than denying the notion of

women’s sexuality due to the complexity of

womanhood, we must broaden our understanding

of woman to comprehend its magnitude and

flexibility. We must acknowledge the category’s

deficiencies and flaws while incorporating them

into a notion of womanhood which extends

beyond physiology or personality traits or gender

performativity and into the realm of the political,

in order to recognize the feminist implications of

women’s sexuality.

Re: Female Sexuality

Good points. What I've noticed about Harvard and Yale articles and my experiences with Rice students, is that they are often kept so busy, that they have little time to venture beyond the reading material assigned to them. Age is also a factor.
I also have a soft spot for the political, though. Everything, when more than one person is involved, is political one way or another. I was thinking about getting my master's in political anthro., but decided on crossing business with environmental and doing developmental anthro. if I can get a job doing it.

Re: Female Sexuality

Thanks Rick.
A nice post-modern article on sexuality :)


The author would do well to stress the difference between female and feminine as well as male and masculine. These are the minimum four terms we need in order to say anything intelligent on the topic. Kudos though for encouraging women to balance and own their sexuality.

IMO a predominantly feminine sexuality will be more likely to enjoy being penetrated, and a predominantly masculine sexuality will be more likely to enjoy penetrating. Even gay men know this, hence the terms “top” and “bottom”.


Pelle

Re: Female Sexuality

Actually, looking at the article again, the author is pointing at the fact that a direct one-to-one correlation between the female form and femininity doesn't bare out to reality, so she is saying that we need the female and feminine, male and masculine.

Then again to me, these are just cultural categories that tell us more about a group's ethnosemantic domain, or mental maps, than about reality in any way.

Pelle: “IMO a predominantly feminine sexuality will be more likely to enjoy being penetrated, and a predominantly masculine sexuality will be more likely to enjoy penetrating. Even gay men know this, hence the terms “top” and “bottom”.”

Exactly. The terms “tops” and “bottoms” are not univeral categories, nor is “western gay culture” universal. Funny though that in Brazil the act of penetration is always considered masculine, so that a man that always penetrates, even other men, is not considered gay. So your on to something.

Re: Female Sexuality

The ancient Greeks also considered themselves masculine as long as they penetrated another person, even boys…
IOW they tied their sexuality more to polarity (being masculine) than the sex of their partner.

Re: Female Sexuality

True, and the Samurai of Japan practiced a form of apprentice love like the Greeks, but it's something about Japanese history that very few know about. The main difference, was that in Japan the young apprentice was expected to make the first move if he was interested.
The practice was later outlawed when commoners began to practice this without the meaning or ceremony involved. This meant that it was considered more than just sex.

Re: Female Sexuality

I think the writer is coming from a non-evasive identity politics point of view. This is pretty much the postmodernist take on feminism which to me isn't feminism anymore if we are talking about both feminine and masculine identities. It should really be called something else.

What I mean by “identity politics” is whenever there is a set of definitions based on gender alone example, the female defined within the masculine perspective of males, it poses a problem of “true” identity of individuals who may define themselves other than from that masculine perspective. It shifts the power of identity to the masculine perspectivo and it doesn't work for let's say a female (gender) identifying with masculine features and set of behaviors.


I'm not sure what the Integral perspective would be on female “identity”.