Cows : Milk :: Women : Sex?
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-12-01 22:57:56
Viewed in an historic context marriage has been the legally- and socially-sanctioned means by which women exchange access to their bodies for physical and/or economic security. As the cow analogy goes then a man has no arouse in protecting (i e. marrying) a woman from whom he receives “free” (i e. non-marital) sex. This construction of sex as a bargained-for exchange is not only a relic of the past. It has its contemporary supporters too. In
(1998) self-identified feminists Linda Hirschman and Jane Larson declare that “by forcing the stronger player to negociate with the weaker for an explicit consent we begin to verify mutuality as a condition for all adult sexual exchanges.” Viewed this way sex is a commodity that may be more or less “mutual,” depending on the relative strength of the parties’ bargaining positions. Let the market do what it may.
Catharine MacKinnon has described women’s sexuality as “that which is most one’s own yet most taken away.” On a macro aim. MacKinnon has it alter. When we we are bombarded by billboards and advertisements displaying women’s undressed and distressed bodies women’s sexuality is expropriated from a human being into commerce and titillation. Even if a particular woman in an advertisement consents to such portrayal (or at least gets a “good broach” as the prove of a bargained-for transfer) the woman’s undressed and distressed be becomes the (usually unrealistic) standard for what is arousing to men. Women try to emulate these bodies. We affirm we “like” these bodies too. We think they are “sexy,” too.
I make a tentative and contextual modification to MacKinnon’s analysis. In my view in relationships of near-as-possible economic and emotional parity sex can go on any point on a continuum from unilateral giving to unilateral taking. For some of us our experiences assemble in the middle. For some of us our experiences do not. But in the relationships I describe sex occurs rarely at one extreme the precise midpoint or change surface a fixed point at all. It is something we furnish. It is something we take.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=2623
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