Is Noam our ally?

I am not of the camp that no men can be allies in women’s struggle for liberation. Certainly, having major male figures amplify our words is a help. And ultimately, it is men who have to change, and men are more concerned with what other men think of them than giving a shit about what women think (or else rape would have stopped by now, right? And there would be no more such thing as rape– i.e. torture–jokes!)

Noam Chomsky is perhaps the most well known of men on the left. I have listened to quite a few of his talks as well as perused his essays online, and I very much enjoy his work. He really limits his scope, though, to U.S. foreign policy, even though he professes a libertarian-socialist economic tradition.

Awhile ago, I came across a response to someone who had asked him about domestic violence. I, of course took this to be a question about men’s violence against women. Instead, it was about the state perpetuating violence against its own citizens. Yet for women, most violence is truly domestic, meaning coming from inside the home. Chomsky could have mentioned that some groups, including women, live under much more of a state of terror than do, say white men, but he chose not to. This is a major critique I have of his work: he treats all citizens as though they are equal, unless, say, he happens to be talking about undocumented folks, but then undocumented women and men are treated the same. He repeatedly mentions the probability of environmental catastrophe, but leaves out that in parts of the world that have been impacted by environmental catastrophe, such as Haiti, women have experienced the worst effects. Come to think of it, I don’t recall him even mentioning the rapes by U.S. soldiers against women in countries “we” have invaded…or the rapes of male U.S. military personnel against their comrades in uniform.

Bitter and angry: fitting the stereotype of a feminist is something to celebrate, my friends!

Dear Sisters,

I feel like a lot of what feminists, do is vent, because there simply aren’t a lot of victories for us, and there’s a whole lot of dead female bodies and intense female pain. Perhaps this is why so many women attempt to ignore men’s violence against us; if male supremacy is a thing of a by-gone era, my brother isn’t hurting anyone by getting a lapdance. If women are no longer subordinate to men, my sister must have done something wrong to get those black and blue marks on her neck. However, I question how many women actually are ignorant about men’s violence. I think it takes a lot of effort to attempt to ignore the violence in front of your face. Is it more work to ignore it or to fight it? Which one pays off more–for both the individual as well as for the group? Food for thought…

For better or worse, I have never gone along with the  “ignorance is bliss” set described above. Thus, I decided to splurge my $$$ and attend the Woman’s Day of Action at Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Unfortunately, the WDoA was not advertised, or at least not advertised clearly, on official OWS sites. I do not blame the organizer’s for this; for events that matter to people (read: men and those with male-identification), events have a way of getting out. Seems anything with the smell of “woman” is not going to be placed front and center. Hell, we can call women cunts, sluts, whores, pussy, sex-kittens, cumdumsters, or, at best, “girls,” but never Women. When no one wants to say it, it’s a damn powerful word, and one to reclaim, in my opinion.

Remembrance Day: Why are only some counted as courageous?

November 11 marks Remembrance Day, or what is more commonly called Veteran’s Day in the U.S. In a warmongering country such as the U.S., I have problems with any special days to celebrate how “great” the U.S. is. However, I do realize (mostly) men join the military for a variety of reasons, not necessarily because they are in love with the U.S. Indeed, it is by far poor men of color who are coerced into fighting abroad. Having a day where the U.S. apologies for its’ actions, announces reparations we/it will be making, and also apologizes to the men and women fighting in the wars would be nice. For those who think that’s asking for a lot: is asking for honesty calling for too much?

And yet, I also find myself wondering why there is no  Day of Remembrance for survivors of the Longest War ever, the War on Women.

I know, I know the answer to that: because women are not yet respected. If we were respected, there would already be such a day, or perhaps such a day would not be needed, since men would be overflowing with respect for women, and women for one another.

Yet, I can’t help but envision what a Remembrance Day for Women might look like.

We could celebrate all that’s been done to combat men’s war on women.  We could celebrate the women in our lives by taking them on picnics. Perhaps this picnic could take place at a playground, so children, especially, girl children, would have the time of their lives. We could  create unique badges of honor proclaiming how each woman in our life has helped us.. We could also have different medals for being survivors of various types of men’s violence–and there would be no shame in wearing them, for there would be no shame in being a survivor. The shame belongs firmly to the perpetrators; this is something we would all know in every cell that runs through our beings.

I’m sure women have many, many more ideas than these. But I imagine something celebratory and non-competitive. Something where no woman would walk away feeling alone or less-than.

As I said previously, this day would not be about fighting and winning, but about celebrating. It would be about giving us energy to continue our hard work in the Battles we fight everyday, small and not-so-small.

I know we have International Women’s Day, but what about a day to celebrate us…to acknowledge our history as survivors and thrivers?

As we don’t currently have this Veteran’s Day, why not call attention to the women survivors of male violence this Veteran’s Day? We should also include women military personnel who have had to endure male sexual violence while in the military. Carolyn Gage writes about her own idea for doing such here. At least at one point in time, women weren’t staying hydrated in order to avoid walking to the latrines alone at night, where they were likely to be raped. And what about the prostituted women used by members of the arms forces? Are these women to be forgotten while we memorialize the men who raped them? Just recently, I learned about women from China being sent to U.S. forces in Iraq for sexual servicing. And as shown in the video above, the occupation of Iraq has made it easier for Iraqi men to prey on Iraqi women as well. I, for one, in no way want to take part in memorializing the men who participated in raping women while abroad or who take pride in making it easier for other men to rape women.

When all is said and done, as the human race, we have a lot of remembering to do. One thing to keep in mind is this: What is remembered is in itself political.

This post was inspired by a conversation with a friend in an airport. An announcement was made that there would be a special room to honor vets–this was not on any holiday that I am aware of–and she pointed out that survivors of the Longest War in history were being excluded.

Link Roundup: What’s caught my eye as of late

Survivor, writer and activist Christine Stark has a wonderful new book out, Nickels, that, although not autobiographical, details a childhood journey through hell. For those of you who have not read Stark’s writing, she’s absolutely brilliant.I am taking the liberties of using the following passage from Carolyn Gage’s review:

“I want to give an example of Stark’s brilliant stream-of-consciousness, literary and spot-on accurate portrayal of PTSD. This is an excerpt from the chapter titled “Age Twenty-five.” A little backstory: When the heroine was ten her father made her wear a purse, where he would put the nickels he gave her after sexually abusing her. Now, she is in a women’s bookstore attempting to purchase a feminist novel:

“Sarah rings me up That’ll be 1.95 with tax I give her two dollars five cents is your change she drops a nickel so shiny and bright into my hand I freeze the nickel rolls off my hand onto the counter I stare at it I want to tell someone something the nickel circles itself on the counter looking for a place to settle I don’t move What’s going on Tara says somewhere over my shoulder I stare at the nickel spinning in a spot next to the pile of bright pink A Room of One’s Own bookmarks I shake my head I don’t want them to think I’m crazy don’t want them to know a nickel dropped out of the sky into my hand made me want to die Keep the change I grab the book walk under the shimmering crystal into the street”

Read the rest of Gage’s write-up here.

If you haven’t checked out the website Sisters Underground, you really ought to. They have a link to a Powerpoint Presentation strategizing ideas for the movement. We need you!

Even if you’re not a podcast kind of gal, I highly recommend listening to Meghan Murphy’s radio documentary on the medicalization of women’s sexuality.  In the first part, a woman talks about how sex, specifically PIV sex is being used to promote health. In the case of cancer, women who have PIV are told they are healthier than lesbian or celibate women. The media messages are everywhere, as you’ll be reminded in this interview. Radio broadcasting doesn’t get much better than this.

PLUS: Looking for something more than male-run occupations? Looking for ending capitalism in a more effective manner? Check out DGR’s ideas, and help make them go viral! Another up-and-running site, focused purely on the bringing feminism to the “occupy” movement, is OccupyPatriarchy.

This is what empowerment looks like: Rachel Lloyd speaks!

Imagine, if you need to imagine, growing up in a home with an alcoholic mother, one who swallows pills while you’re right in the room. Rather than ask for help, she encourages your young, teenage self, to go out clubbing, so she, unbeknownst to you, can die. This is the world that Rachel Lloyd, author of  Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale, an Activist Finds her Calling and Heals Herself
grows up in. Girls Like Us is the best book I’ve read in a quite some time. It’s around 250 pages, but the reading goes quickly, at least if you’re like me, and not sickness nor homework can make you put the book down!

For those of you for whom the name “Rachel Lloyd” does not ring a bell, Lloyd is the founder of the organization GEMS. GEMS assists girls and young women in getting out of “the life,” a name commonly used to refer to the world of paid rape (i.e. prostitution). While most of the book focuses on the individual stories, struggles, successes, and relapses, of girls in GEMS, what makes the book so powerful is that Lloyd interweaves her own tale of sexual exploitation and trafficking to make her points clearer.  While arguing against the glamorization of pimping, she also explains that girls stay with their pimps for a reason. Indeed, Lloyd asks: why is it that the feminist movement no longer blames women for staying with batterers, but still sees women as making a choice to stay with a pimp? She also points out that pimps provide girls with things they desire, material things such as food, clothing, and shelter, but also a feeling of home. She describes girls who are found by pimps the first hour they get off the train after running away from a home that was not really a home. Pimps do not have to provide adolescents and pre-adolescents with much for them to feel cared for. Indeed, one GEMS participant describes going to a “fancy restaurant” for dinner; Lloyd later finds out the restaurant is Red Lobster, a popular chain restaurant in parts of the U.S.  As I have been in an abusive relationship(s), this analogy made a lot of sense to me. Not everything was bad all the time. But eventually there becomes a point where the cons outweigh whatever one is getting from the relationship.

While Lloyd does describe pimps as an integral part of the lives of the girls she works with, it is important to note that not everyone who is prostituted has a pimp. Sometimes women end up prostituting themselves, for any of a myriad of reasons, most especially money, mental illness, and addiction.  This may occur after pimping. I don’t want readers who have prostituted themselves for money or any other reason to feel badly reading this, as selling one’s body simply could not happen if there wasn’t a demand for it. Nor if women weren’t solely seen as The Sex Class.

Lloyd discusses choice in a brilliant way. After leaving a mother that could not take care of her, Lloyd ends up spending all day in a German city, desperately attempting to find a job.  As she is not old enough to legally work and can only speak a word or two of German, she gets turned down from absolutely every place she looks for work. Without money and desperate for food, she sees a sign that says, Girls, Girls, Girls. This is how Lloyd makes the “choice” to work in a strip club–only until she can earn enough money to go back to her mother–but ends up meeting her pimp, JP, there (75).

Lloyd writes, “For a long time I’ve felt guilty about the way I entered the sex industry.” She has been told straight out that since she was “older” than most of the girls she works with (seventeen) “obviously she made a choice (77).” This kind of judgement is exactly what survivors fear from telling “square” people.  This is not even to mention how harshly women judge themselves for their “choices.” That is why Lloyd tells the young women of GEMS that they need to forgive themselves in order to alleviate their profound sense of shame. Lloyd says to them, “Whatever you thought you had to do to survive or stay alive, it’s okay (77).”  She does note that it’s easier to see the girls lack of choices as just that when looking at them from an outsiders perspective; when looking at one’s own life, it’s easier to say, “why didn’t I do X, Y, or Z?”

Lloyd’s book focuses on underage girls, even though Lloyd herself fights for abolition for all women and prostituted persons. She wonders why there are people–and I have encountered them as well–who think it’s perfectly fine for a 16-year-old to make the “choice” to enter the sex industry, when most parents are wary to give their car keys to a child that age (80)! Even if an adult woman does “choose” to enter the sex industry, there is no way she can no what she is getting herself into, or how she will never quite fit into the square world again.  Always, there will be a wall, thin as glass, between you and the outside world.

For example, when Lloyd began working at the strip club, she had no idea this would eventually lead her to JP, who attempts to kill her on several occasions. With a knife at her throat, Lloyd must repeat that she loves JP and will not be unloyal. This begins at 3:14 a.m. and she must continue repeating the words, knife at throat, until 8:30 in the morning (151).

Lloyd describes another near-death experience, when a man she is seeing, Mike, drives her to a ditch in an attempt to murder her. However, she begs him to believe her when she says there is no one else she is seeing, and he “relents”–by making her take her shoes and socks off and run after the car for well over an hour. Lloyd’s feet are covered in blood by the time this exercise is over. Once back on the road with Mike, she runs out of the car and escapes to the police station.  The police bring in Mike, but he makes up a story that she likes rough sex, and male cops being male cops, they buy it (122). Notably, there is a woman officer at the station who believes her, but she is not able to make the cops arrest Mike. Nor is she able to make Mike give back all of her savings he stole, which he now claims are his.

Although Lloyd leaves out many of the details of her time in the life, these stories by themselves are obviously incredibly disturbing. What kind of person would just say “prostitution should be decriminalized!” after reading this book, I find myself wondering. And yet, Lloyd has faced criticism from the left, apparently for being too religious. I find this extremely odd, because Lloyd rarely discusses religion, and certainly doesn’t preach it to her readers. If one actually reads her book, one will see she finds people who care about her in the church community. This acts as a crutch for her to move forward with her  feminist and progressive, passions. This is not to say finding a higher power isn’t helpful to her, as it is to many people–including women and men in groups such as A.A.

I worry those who read this review will believe it is another incredibly depressing book about sex trafficking. But despite the horrors Lloyd so eloquently articulates, she is not only a survivor, but a thriver. She starts GEMS out of an act of desperation–you’ll have to read the book to find out all the details–but she now is able to provide the kind of support she would have wanted to get out of the life to female  youth in NYC.

Oh, and Lloyd writes in her Acknowledgements: Thanks to my mother for supporting me in telling my story. I love you much and always, and I’m so glad we have the beautiful relationship  that we now have. I’m proud of you and thankful you’re my mom. Truly.

It’s nice to know that some relationships are mendable.

Do non-prostituted women belong in the aboloitionist movement?

Dear Sisters,

As someone who has never had to enter the sexploitation industries, I sometimes question my own role in the movement to end modern day slavery. As sociologist David Karp writes of depression,”The only way anyone can ever get something is to be it and experience it exactly as those who live it do. Cognition alone of a human experience always falls short of understanding. Moreover, when it comes to human pain and suffering, why would anyone be emotionally predisposed to truly get it (1996:42)?”

I very much agree with Karp’s analysis here. There is no way someone who has not undergone a certain experience can truly understand what it’s like. I’m not saying that prostituted persons are a monolith, or that they agree about everything. This is not true of any group, including civilians in a war zone. What I am saying is there is a certain insider knowledge that those of us who have never experienced life in this war zone will never have. Rachel Lloyd, founder of GEMS, discusses this in her book, Girls Like Us. She talks about the girls/young women being more trusting of her because she is a survivor; at one point, she describes a group session where the girls start telling various stories about their time in the life, the awful things their pimps did to them, and so forth. They are comfortable talking about this because they all “get it.” There is no judgement here, especially judgement surrounding the P-word.

I recognize there are survivors who are okay with the use of the p-word (see here and here), but I have also heard the term “paid rape victim,” used. While prostituted  is meant to show something was done to you, if not by an individual than due to the force of money, there still is tremendous hatred of the prostituted class, and I recognize not every exited women, including those who identify as abolitionist/radical feminists, prefers this term. Referring again to Lloyd’s book, she discusses learning the phrase, “commercially sexually exploited child/youth” (CSEC for short) and discusses her attempts to get media reporters to use this friend in place of “ex-child prostitute.” A prostitute, she explains, is what somebody is, and that allows for an identity that can never be shed. Indeed, Lloyd tries fervently to shed her past by returning to school after dropping out at the age of thirteen; she ends up overcompensating (her words) and goes on to very quickly earn a Masters.

The hatred of prostituted women is everywhere, at the same time sex-for-money is glamorized on television and in movies. For example, when I search in my school database for a particular article about what women paid as escorts said about the men who paid them, what I come up with instead are articles about the (supposed) “psychopathology of the prostitute.” ALL the articles focus on the women whose bodies are in the marketplace and what is wrong with THEM; not a single one comes up looking at the buyers, though I know a few such studies do indeed exist. If women in the life are the ones with the problem, what does this say about who our society values? Need one even ask?

Because so many people–almost everyone, really–does judge former or current women in the life–why should women who have exited the paid rape industries trust me, a woman who has faced her own set of sexual traumas, but none that rival being raped and gang raped several times a week? When a female social worker employed in a drop-in center that works with women in the life  jokingly calls herself a whore because of the perfume she is wearing and says, “that’s not what I do to pick up a date,” referring to how the women she’s working with make money, why should a never-been-prostituted women be trusted?

I very much think the abolitionist struggle should be survivor run-and-led. I have seen it as my place to enhance survivor voices. However, is it not always preferable to be with one who has been through similar experiences, because there is so much that can’t be explained in words about the experience? About the anger at self and others and the total injustice, the way the men who did those things to you will never ever be bought to justice and there are no ways to describe the rage…

These is where my thoughts are right now. I hope survivors especially will reply to this one.

Pretty soon we’ll be called “slutphobic”: A radfem’s thoughts on slutwalk

Trigger warning. This post discusses how much women, especially the prostituted, are hated.

“Critique television, not porn”

One debate point I encounter repeatedly from pro-women-for-sale advocates is the idea that radical feminists spend too much time fussing about the pornography industry when the mainstream television and movie industry is at least as bad. I think this is a point that needs to be addressed, which is what I aim to do here.

Guest post on lesbian feminism

Since I’ve been so busy with school–insert groan here–I haven’t had time to do what I really love: write posts for this blog. However, a wonderful writer and staunch feminist, Karla Mantilla, said it was okay for me to republish an article she wrote some time ago.

Here it is. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

A Lesbian’s Perspective: Biology, My Ass

by Karla Mantilla

---

The religious right’s recent media blitz about how gay people can change comes as no surprise to me. Partly that’s because I have a long commute and so listen to a religious right radio station to keep abreast of their thinking. And partly it’s because I have long thought the strategy
used by the gay rights movement of saying that it’s biological is incredibly lame. In a strange way I agree with the religious right. Of course it’s a choice–how could it not be? We make decisions (constrained choices, but choices nevertheless) about everything else in our lives–where we want to live, what we like to eat, how to dress. So we cannot make a decision about who we are lovers with? Of course we do.

If that’s what it takes to be a lesbian, then all women are lesbians. When I was coming out I went briefly to a support group for women coming out of marriage. At one point I asked, “How do you know you’re a lesbian?” One woman answered that she had never felt emotionally close to men and that she always could talk better with women. Another chimed in, saying she too had felt that way, that she could only be emotionally open with women. The rest nodded in agreement.

What’s wrong with this picture? Practically all women feel that way. Every straight woman I have ever known has felt more comfortable confiding in her girlfriends, felt closer to them, felt more understood by and able to open up to women. If that’s what it takes to be a lesbian, then all women are lesbians. The age-old complaint of straight women is that their men don’t talk to them, don’t understand their feelings, and don’t seem interested in what they are saying. One of the most common article topics in magazines like Ladies Home Journal and Woman’s Day, is how to get your husband to open up and talk to you.

Clearly, if the reason these women felt they were lesbians was because they felt emotionally closer to women, then being a lesbian cannot be biological. First of all, since most women feel that way, we would have to say that most women are born lesbians and that can’t be true (except perhaps on a theoretical level). Secondly, whether you feel emotionally close to someone does not seem likely to be biological: it seems much more plausible that it has something to do with the emotional and psychological characteristics of the person.

…that it was biological, appealed to them because it absolved them of guilt… When I replied to the group, “But all women feel closer to women,” the conversation slammed to a halt. They were not going there. Instead, the line was, “my husband is a great guy, really he is, it’s just that I’m a lesbian–that’s why I have to leave him.” Over time, it became clear to me that these women experienced tremendous guilt over leaving their husbands at a time when divorce is billed as the cause of all social ills. So the idea that they couldn’t help being a lesbian, that it was biological, appealed to them because it absolved them of guilt, and of responsibility for their actions. When I tried to suggest that they were dissatisfied with the current state of relations between women and men, their husbands in particular, they could not think about it because that took away their special dispensation to feel less guilty about leaving their husbands–the dogma was they had to since they were lesbians. (Even conservative radio talk show “psychologist” Dr. Laura approves of gay people getting a divorce while allowing no other legitimate reason for divorce except extreme circumstances like battering or alcoholism.)

Biology as an explanation

Biology is evoked all the time to explain or justify human choices and social patterns. There is a long history of using biology to justify inequality as inevitable due to the genetic characteristics of women or people of color. In general, biological explanations serve to delude people into believing that they can’t help their choices; that it can be no other way; that their actions are not borne out of human volition or choice but rather inborn inescapable drives. But while the idea that if gays can’t help it because they are born that way seemingly might arrive at our acceptance into society, it also diminishes us as thinking purposeful beings.

Hunger may be biological, but eating M&Ms is a choice

Clearly, there is some biological element to sexuality, but it is limited to the generic desire for sex, in the same manner that hunger is biological which leads us to want to ingest food. But what we end up eating is as varied as human cultures are; what we are convinced is nourishing varies as well. And our gastronomical proclivities change over time too. In the United States, during the first part of the twentieth century, a healthy and nourishing diet was considered to be one which included plenty of meat and potatoes; only the poor ate beans and rice and greens. It has now flip-flopped almost completely, and the tony restaurants will serve rice and beans long before they will serve meat and potatoes (admittedly some obscure variety of bean and specially flavored rice) So while hunger itself, in its most basic state is biological, the means with which humans have acquired to sate it vary to a large extent.

Bagels vs. cow’s blood

Yet, when we crave some food, we feel it is biological. It seems that our body cries out for bagels, perhaps. But if we were Maori tribespeople, our stomach would surely cry out not for bagels, but cow’s blood.

In a like manner with sexuality. I know someone who believes he was born to have a sexual penchant for wearing lacy silky women’s underwear. But, come on, how could that be biological? Would some random Maori have a sexual fetish for underwear from Victoria’s Secret any more than he might have a hankering for a bagel with cream cheese and lox? Clearly, however early in youth this man perceived his sexual proclivity beginning, there is no gene that codes for Victoria’s Secret.

But how can people’s experience be denied? If a gay man says that he was born that way, how can I deny his experience? First, no one can deny someone’s experience, but people’s interpretation of their experience is what is truly in debate. And I think people’s interpretations, even about their own experience, can be and have been wrong. I had one friend who was born in Nicaragua and a very committed catholic. He told me that the reason he was so committed to catholicism was that he could tell that it was the true faith. I asked him if he didn’t think perhaps growing up in a country where 95% of the population was catholic might have influenced his beliefs. Absolutely not, was his answer. I then asked him if he had been born and raised in Saudia Arabia, whether he would still see the truth of catholicism, and he was positively certain that, having been raised muslim, he would still have seen the truth of the catholic religion and changed his faith.

I think he is wrong about his interpretation both about his religion (catholicism is not the one true religion) and his experience (of course he was influenced by his culture whether he was aware of it or not). People can and frequently do underestimate the influence of their culture on their own beliefs and tastes. So just because people think they were born a certain way, that is they were that way ever since they can remember, this does not mean it is true. And I also do not agree with the increasingly popular compromise position that maybe for some people it’s biological and for others it’s not. I see no convincing evidence or plausible explanations that it is biological for anyone, I only see that some people feel they know what its etiology is.

Finally, why do we think that individual people have more insight into their own genetic make-up than science has? Just because something feels fundamental to a person, does that make her an authority on her genetic structure, able to authoritatively interpret her feelings as having biological roots? I think not.

In a strange way, the christian fundamentalists have this right–they believe homosexuality is a choice people make and that people can choose another way to live. I cannot conceive of rationally arguing otherwise. Of course any homosexual could choose tomorrow to reject homosexuality and attempt to find a partner of the opposite sex. But they don’t want to, it would not feel right, they would be unhappy (why they think fundamentalists would care about the little detail of personal unhappiness only reflects their thorough misunderstanding of the fundamentalist project).

But this is the point. Homosexuals choose to be homosexuals because something about homosexuality appeals to them, they like it, they prefer it to heterosexuality. When this is attributed to biology, any further examination must stop there. Why do some people prefer same sex partnerships over opposite sex partnerships? What seems preferable about it to them? What don’t they like about heterosexual relations? That is the rub right there. What if there are reasons that people reject heterosexuality and embrace same sex relations? What reasons would people have to prefer same sex relations over heterosexuality? Calling it biology does not allow us to even ask the questions.

The truth is, a lot of heterosexuals don’t like heterosexual relations either. When Ellen came out on the Oprah Winfrey show, she said that she tried having sex with men, but something was missing, she just didn’t feel something she hoped to feel. What was overlooked in the hubbub was Oprah’s response: she responded, “A lot of heterosexual women feel the same way [about sex with men],” kind of under her breath and meant to be taken only as a funny complaint. But it is true that a lot of heterosexual women are deeply disappointed in heterosexual sex, or to their thinking, with sex. To wit, the great Ann Landers survey in which over 70% of women answered that they would prefer cuddling to “the act,” a survey which was taken to mean that women don’t like sex much. No one thought that it meant that these women don’t like heterosexual sex as it is currently played out in the problematic gender relations between men and women.

They would be special rights for fundamentalists

Well, I don't know about the "love" part...

The reason fundamentalists think homosexuals can change to heterosexuality is that they know people can force themselves to adapt to circumstances which they do not find particularly pleasurable. And so they resent the assertion by homosexuals that they must do what feels right; for fundamentalists, this is giving homosexuals special rights which they themselves do not have–doing what feels good or right for themselves is not something they do, after all. So there are millions of heterosexual women for whom sex does not feel right; they would prefer not to have it and only cuddle, but they do not follow their feelings and abstain from sex–they continue to have sex without liking it much or without getting that “special feeling’ that they would like. This explains the romance novels which so many heterosexual housewives indulge themselves in–it is what they are lacking in their own lives. They dream of it, and yet console themselves that it is an impossibility and so settle for their husband.

That might explain lesbians, but what about gay men?

It is my suspicion that similar forces operate for gay men. They don’t like being in heterosexual relationships perhaps because they rebel against the role that straight men must play to a woman counterpart. They find themselves dissatisfied –it seems uncomfortable–certainly too stoic and self-restrained. They prefer being more emotional, more spontaneous, more pleasure-seeking, so they conclude that they are gay, rather than critique the role of men in patriarchy. Of course I do not mean to characterize all gay men as being the same on this count; I only want to suggest one scenario in which preferring men might occur which comes out of problems with the expectations of being a straight male and not biology.

Reasons for women to be dissatisfied with heterosexuality

Unfortunately, rather than looking into what parts of sex heterosexual women don’t like and what things they do like (ie., cuddling–does this mean they don’t get enough affection to feel like sex?), many heterosexual women feel that they simply don’t like sex. But what does “sex” mean? It can be can be many different things. Clearly sex between same sex partners is very different from sex between opposite-sex partners, enough so for sizeable segments of the population to exclusively prefer one or the other. Sex can be construed any way we choose–if we like more cuddling, then cuddling could be construed to be an integral part of sex. Sex does not have to be the heterosexually male model of sex–very little foreplay, cuddling, tenderness or caressing, followed by intercourse, followed by little or no talking. It could be entirely different. Sex between women, for example, involves a much longer time span than heterosexual sex, with more communication and expressions of affection.

The discontents of heterosexuality

So we have a situation where sizeable numbers of heterosexuals are dissatisfied either with sex or their heterosexual relationships or both, and yet think that “that’s life,” sex and relationships are just like that. And then we have a group of people who are also dissatisfied with heterosexual relations and think “I’m gay.”

The problem with the biological explanation is it does not allow people to seek to understand what precisely it is about heterosexual relations they did not like, what made them uncomfortable, what was unpleasant. Homosexuals in a way have an edge, because they are willing to have enough imagination to seek something better when they do not like (hetero) sex. But they don’t have enough imagination to see that they are not alone in their dissatisfaction with heterosexual relations.

Conclusion

I think that using the biological explanation is a poor strategy for several reasons. First, it maintains the current social order (the way heterosexuality is socially constructed currently) as stable and only gives individual escape hatches to a small number of people. Calling it biology is a neat way of sidestepping any critique of patriarchy or gender relations by attributing rebellion against the current structure to biology rather than dissatisfaction. Secondly, it does not allow people to think very deeply about why they choose on thing or another and so helps maintain the status quo of heterosexual relations. If people could say, heterosexuality sucks, and that’s why I’m gay, then we could begin to see more clearly that patriarchy sucks, that male-female gender relations suck, that marriage sucks, etc. Third, it inhibits agency among gay people. Rather than being responsible for and proud of our choices, it makes us seem we are helpless pawns reacting to our biology. Fourth, it keeps other who are dissatisfied with patriarchy or gender relations from making the choice to become gay. We ought to recruit–we don’t have much of a movement if we restrict new members only to those “born” to be gay. And finally, it is an exceptionally inadequate defense against the religious rights assertions that we can change. We would do better to say of course we could change if we wanted to, but we don’t want to, because it is better to be gay.

Womyn-only space in disguise

It should be apparent to anyone with half a brain that females generally don’t want to be associated with their own sex class. That is because we are The Sex Class and not treated as actual human beings, especially with regards to our sexuality. Starting at a young age,  boys learn to associate “yucky” with girls. Having spent a fair amount of time doing childcare for both boy and girl children, I can only think of one boy who never said a bad word about girls. It may be as simple as not wanting to use certain crayons because they are “girl colors.” Or boys insist they cannot color ballet dancers, only robots, when the girls are happy coloring either (and the girls are fine coloring with supposed  “boy colors” as well as so-called “girl colors”). Indeed, marketers use this to their advantage; they know when advertising toys that are marketed to both boys and girls, if they show only boys in the commercial, girls will still want the toy. On the other hand, if they show only or mostly girls, boys will not want the product.