sexual Politics. - Hetero - book reviews

Journal of Sex Research, Spring, 1997 by Rebecca Chalker

(Hetero)sexual Politics. Edited by Mary Maynard and June Purvis. Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis, Inc., 1995, 212 pages. Paper, $24.95.

Reviewed by Rebecca Chalker, M.A., 171 East 99th Street, #18, New York, NY 10029.

In this collection of papers, originally given at a 1994 Women's Studies Conference at the University of Portsmouth in England, the authors examine contemporary sexual politics from a spectrum of feminist perspectives. Most authors are academics who teach women's studies or are activists who work in related fields. The title pays homage to Kate Millett's watershed work, Sexual Politics, which, the editors note, emphasized the profound interconnections between "sexuality" and "politics." The fact that the editors feel that "hetero" can now be put in parentheses signals that, because of the work that has been done since the late 1960s, heterosexuality can no longer be assumed to be the hegemonic sexual paradigm that it has been in most cultures throughout history.

In their introductory essay, Maynard and Purvis briefly survey the important changes that have occurred in the past two decades in feminist efforts to analyze the complex phenomena of gender and sexuality and their relationship to each other. They see the emergence of feminist interest in pleasure and the erotic as an important advance, in opposition to the view promoted by conservative feminists that pleasure cannot exist under patriarchal constructs. Interest in the erotic is manifest in recent feminist efforts to redefine the body as a material aspect of women's sexuality--an aspect that Maynard and Purvis argue has been undertheorized in the social constructionist analysis of sexuality and gender that currently dominates the feminist academic arena. They suggest, however, that feminists have tended to embrace social constructionist arguments because of the presumed dangers of the essentialist perspective that supposes that men are biologically preordained to dominate women. In addition to social constructionism, they also note other important influences on feminist thought, particularly poststructuralist theory, especially the work of Lacan and Foucault; the arguments of "difference feminists" that focus on differences between women and men; lesbian theory that has been used to analyze and celebrate sex between women; and bisexuality, which, they note, has the potential to blur the rigid boundaries of heterosexuality. In the conclusion to her essay, "Back to Basics: Heterosexuality, Biology and Why Men Stay On Top," Caroline Ramazanoglu notes that feminists "need to clarify the connections between lived experience, theories of gender and power, and the constraints and possibilities of our material bodies" (p. 12). If the articles in (Hetero)sexual Politics have an underlying theme, it is that all, in some fashion, respond to this challenge.

Both Ramazanoglu and Stevi Jackson, in her essay, "Gender and Heterosexuality: A Materialist Feminist Analysis," amplify the idea broached by Maynard and Purvis in the introduction that there must be a reasonable alternative to analyzing sexuality and gender through the single lens of social constructionism or its polar opposite, essentialism. Ramazanoglu insists that "it should be possible to take account of biological existence in understandings of social life, without having to assume that people's bodies rule their behavior" (p. 28). She makes a cogent and well-reasoned argument for the inclusion of bodies and experience as legitimate, and indeed, critical elements in feminist analyses of sexuality. To illustrate her point, she provides a brief critique of the work of lesbian/queer theorist Judith Butler, citing numerous instances in which Butler's analysis fails to deal with the basic question of "why men so often come out on top" (Jackson, p. 12). Jackson also looks for solid ground between the polar opposites of social constructionism and essentialism and finds that it is not poststructuralism and postmodernism, but the somewhat earlier work of French materialist feminists (beginning in the early 1970s), that is the most useful in explaining the central issue of "why and how the social world is divided into the two groups we call `women' and `men'" (Ramazanoglu, p. 37). Jackson also addresses the painful debate between "radical" lesbians and heterosexual feminists over what penile penetration really signifies--an issue that split the materialist feminist movement and divides much of feminism today.

On a more material level, several authors look at women's images in the media and, to the surprise of none, find them aggressively anti-feminist. Esther Sonnet and Imelda Whelehan, in "Contemporary Identities in Women's Magazines," trace the reification of the concept of "post-feminism" in the pages of Cosmopolitan and Elle, as well as in Diva, the new British lesbian "lifestyle" magazine. They find that in the glossy pages of these publications, feminists are consistently represented in a negative light, and feminist ideas that were hotly debated by early second wave feminists, such as the questions of whether women should fake orgasms or shave under their armpits, are unabashedly recycled and labeled as being "post feminist." Surprisingly, they find that Diva falls into line with the anti-feminism of the heterosexual women's magazines, rehashing debates of the 1980s, such as the butch/femme controversy and the discussion of S/M role playing, while portraying older feminists as frumpy Big Sister puritans who just don't know how to have a good time. Yet, in spite of the pervasiveness of this anti-feministic rhetoric, the authors conclude that it is not coherent enough to represent a threat to feminism.