Mindfucked by the Patriarchy

One of the hardest parts of feminism, for me, is the sex wars. It's easy to see why we have them. There are different kinds of feminists and feminist theories and while we all overwhelmingly agree that women are oppressed by a patriarchal social system, sometimes that's about the only thing we seem to agree on. We have intense disagreements about precisely why and how women are oppressed, and sometimes those devolve into shouting matches and flame wars over which strategies are useful in fighting patriarchy and which strategies merely wish they were useful but only serve to reinscribe/reproduce patriarchal structure.

In at least some ways the sex wars are a good thing because we are hashing out truly complicated stuff about very intimate applications of feminist theory. We are making each other think hard and critically about how we live our feminism, and more thinking of this kind is almost always good. Which doesn't mean that the sex wars aren't also frustrating as all hell, because when our strategic differences manifest in arguments over sex, things get really personal, yo. At some point just about every feminist has to listen to another feminist she respects (or one she used to respect) tell her that the way she likes to fuck is wrong.

These charges are usually attributed to false consciousness, somewhat thusly: You do not really enjoy giving blowjobs, even if you think you do. That you think you enjoy them is a result of your having been mindfucked by the patriarchy. Giving blowjobs is categorically anti-feminist.

And in response to which a lot of feminists get immediately very agitated and defensive: Don't tell me my consciousness isn't sufficiently raised, I know we're all mindfucked by the patriarchy but that doesn't mean I can't like to suck cock and if you can't wrap your brain around my sexuality being different than yours without feeling a need to insult my feminism then I think you're anti-feminist. You’re just reproducing patriarchy and trying to have a different locus of control.

To which the first side responds: So, what you're saying is that the way you want to get off is more important than equality.

And then the goddamned dialogue either stops dead and/or someone starts throwing things.

Now, it’s true that I’m not a big fan of the blowjob. But this is not about subservience at all, and it’s not even about a categorical dislike for cock -- I actually do like some of them. What it’s about for me is a gag reflex that is comically over-exaggerated. No, really. If you ever spend the night with me, you’ll hear me gagging when I brush my back molars. It’s not sexy. (Cunnilingus, which is not really relevant to what I'm talking about but always deserves a mention anyway, is something I love so much I'd do it all day every day if I could account for the nutrient loss.)

But it’s also true that I still have a dog in this fight because two other kinds of sex acts that get this sort of false consciousness/anti-feminist criticism thrown at them all the time are the eroticization of power-plays and pain, both of which I enjoy immensely. No, I’m not one of those people who dresses up in special costumes and uses a whip to get my lovers to call me Sir, but I do get a huge charge out of fucking in ways that I know freak a lot of other people out by playing with power exchanges and pain sensations.

I'm familiar with some of radical feminism's more nuanced and detailed arguments that any kind of power erotics, let alone power & pain erotics, are categorically anti-feminist and pro-patriarchy. These arguments basically rest on the notion that the primary oppression is the oppression of women, and that all other forms of it (race, class, etc.) stem from gender oppression; that we are so completely mindfucked by the patriarchy that even our sexual desire is manufactured by it; that certain sexual desires are not real, natural, or good, but only a result of this mindfucking by the patriarchy; and that unless we tear down the patriarchy we cannot really know ourselves.

And I don't think those arguments or ideas are bullshit. In fact, I agree with pieces of them here and there.

The radfems and I mostly agree that there is no sex act free from patriarchal influence. But my take on that is sort-of: Yeah, and? There's no school or grocery store or post office free from patriarchal influence, there's no automobile or ATM card or coffee mug free from patriarchal influence, and there's no identity or love relationship or even a fucking name free from patriarchal influence. ::shrugs:: Patriarchal influence is inescapable.

But the patriarchy itself is not monolithic; it's not solid or immutable. There are cracks everywhere. I'm much more of a postmodernist than a radfem in this regard; the way I see it, it’s the patriarchy itself, in its attempt to control everydamnthing we think and say and do up to and including who and how we fuck, that generates site after site within itself where we can resist its control and redirect power flows in myriad directions that disrupt and problematize patriarchy's goals.

I conceptualize patriarchy as just one of many available systems of power relations. We can change it. We change it every fucking day with each action we take that defies it, whether openly or privately.

I split with the radfems again because I don’t think it’s possible to tear down the whole patriarchy allatonce. I think that would be like monolingual English-speakers trying to tear English down allatonce -- impossible because we use the language in order to understand each other and be understood by each other, and if we tore it down, we’d have no way of communicating well enough to replace it. But that doesn't mean English hasn't changed dramatically over time. I mean, if you dropped me off in 1777 in rural England I probably wouldn’t understand the first goddamned word some British farmer said, but no one would deny we’re both fluent in English.

I see systems of power relations very much like languages, only somewhat more complex. We use them as mechanisms of comprehension and communication; it’s just that they’re the ways in which we understand things like our identities and relationships rather than the objects and actions represented by nouns and verbs. Even if we were able to make patriarchy go away allatonce (which I doubt we could), then we couldn't communicate comprehensibly enough to build something to replace it (we might not even be able to articulate ourselves at all). Just as no language is going to arise fully formed without people communicating in language about it, no social system of power relations can arise fully formed without people interacting inside of some social system of power relations in order to build it. But that doesn't mean that the patriarchy hasn't changed over time, either. Look back just 50 years here in America and it's changed a lot.

Anyway, because that’s how I conceptualize the system of oppression, my strategies for fighting/resisting veer off in a different direction than a lot of radfems. I think the only way the patriarchy is coming down is when it dissolves over time as it becomes something else. There’s a lot about that which is frustrating but the good part is that everything we modern feminists do (and resist) is part of what contributes to changing the patriarchy into something else. We are always chipping away at it, transforming aspects of it, tweeking mods, and using the occasional substantial momentum we gain to enact larger structural changes. Feminism is a critical part of the set of social repetitions that will, eventually, change the patriarchy into something else.

So while I think it's great that we spur each other on to think more critically about the sex and power dynamics in our personal lives, what they represent and what they reinforce, I also think that the questions involved shouldn't be all about whether the ways you want to fuck are ways that have been dictated to you by the patriarchy such that they are intended to serve their patriarchal master. I think it’s obvious that they have, for one thing. Any way you can think of to fuck already has the patriarchy inside of it trying to reproduce itself. Duh.

But no one should mistake that for the existence of some universalizing interpretation of sexual acts and meaning. Such an interpretation defies observable facts, like changes in human sexual behavior over time and across cultures, and it denies agency to feminists -- whom, presumably and on balance, know how to assess their levels of feminist consciousness and check them against their own desires.

My interpretation of the facts and my consideration of agency lead me to the conclusion that there are as many different sexualities as there are people. So it’s useless (at best) to frame questions around whether particular sex acts or particular mechanisms of obtaining sexual pleasure are categorically anti-feminist. At worst, those are the kinds of questions that only reinforce the way patriarchy wants to control who and how we fuck in the first place.

I propose that we work harder up front at framing better questions. “Is the act of giving a blowjob categorically anti-feminist/pro-patriarchy?” is a bad fucking question on its face. It’s too simplistic; it presupposes that sex acts have essential qualities that there is actually substantive evidence that they do not have; it presupposes that everyone’s experience of a blowjob is the same; and it sets feminists up to fight with each other over personal shit rather than challenge each other’s theoretical bases of interpretation in ways that strengthen and improve feminism.

One of the questions I like a lot is: How can I fuck in ways that maximize both my own & my partner's(s') sexual pleasure at the same time as we subvert the patriarchy?

The answers to questions like that one are always going to be highly individualized, which avoids the senseless conflict that always accompanies attempts to universalize sexuality. It lets everyone have their own feminist theory without creating a forced choice false binary that pits factions of feminists against one another; it allows feminists to adjust their own consciousness and sexuality where and how they see fit, which is distinctly feminist. Plus: individualization is anti-patriarchy; mutual pleasure is anti-patriarchy; creative sex where everyone involved has agency is anti-patriarchy; hell, just freeing a desire to fuck in ways that subvert the patriarchy is anti-patriarchy, &c.

(I suppose I could have just said that when it comes to feminism I strongly prefer instigative, constructive approaches over stagnant, conflictive approaches, but that wouldn’t have afforded me the always-desired opportunity to talk about sex while I flip off the patriarchy.)