Two FEMINISM AND PROMISCUITY Linda LeMoncheck The strength and unifying vision of a feminist philosophical inquiry into sexuality and sexual preference is its recognition that women’s sexuality can be exploited as a powerful tool for women’s social, economic, and political subordination. Many feminists point to the pervasive sexual harassment, rape, prostitution, pornographic degradation, and spousal abuse of women, as well as women’s struggle to secure reproductive choice and adequate childcare, as strong evidence of the prevalence of powerful social institutions supporting men’s subordination of women through heterosexual sex. (See Barry, 1979, Brownmiller, 1975, Griffin, 1981, Dworkin, 1974, and MacKinnon, 1987). According to this view, women’s erotic desires and sexual preferences, as well as their reproductive choices and responsibilities for childcare, are carefully circumscribed and controlled by cultural sanctions aimed at maintaining heterosexual male power and privilege. Such sanctions are patriarchal, according to Marilyn Frye, when they form part of “institutions, relationships, roles, and activities [that] are male-defined, male-dominated, male-dominated, and operate for the benefit of males and the maintenance of male privilege” (Frye, 1983, p. 96). Many feminists claim that, when women live in a patriarchal society, their sexual exploration, pleasure, and agency become targets for their sexual restriction, repression, and violation (Vance, 1989, p. 1). A feminist philoso phy of sex explores the t he nature and extent of this oppressive environment and seeks to expose women’s sexual subordination in an effort toward change. Thus, a philosophy of sex is uniquely positioned to benefit from a feminist analysis, as it is a philosophy of those very relations in which women’s autonomous voices are often submerged, if not silenced altogether. (For feminist analyses of women’s sexuality under patriarchy, see Snitow, Stansell, and Thomson, 1983, Ortner and Whitehead, 1981, Heath, 1982, Suleiman, 1986, Moi, 1985, and Leidholdt and Raymond, 1990). In her fascinating discussion of life as both modern artists’ muse and contemporary ceramicist, Beatrice Wood writes: In a way, my life has been an upside-down experience. I never made
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Women’s heterosexual subordination by men is a subordination of identity. In a patriarchal society, women are defined in terms of their heterosexuality and reproductivity in order to serve the needs and maintain the privileges of men. Therefore, women’s sexuality under patriarchy must be very carefully circumscribed, lest it gain an independent credibility and power of its own. Men’s ideal of women is that they be sexual only in a certain way. America’s good girl/bad girl stereotype defines the parameters of acceptable sexual behavior for women, circumscribing their identity as women under conditions of male status and privilege. Sheila Ruth calls this stereotype one of the heterosexual “serviceability” of women, to emphasize how much a woman’s identity is defined by her sexual access to men: the sexually “serviceable” woman is the heterosexually available mistress or lover, sensuous, responsive, and receptive (Ruth, 1990, p. 87). Wives sometimes fit this stereotype, but only when their husbands have not grown sexually bored with them. The sexually serviceable woman is the sexually “good” woman, playful yet submissive, eager, perhaps slightly mysterious. As a playmate fantasy, she can be even more independent, experienced, exotic, or dangerous. She is to be distinguished from the non-sexual “good” woman/mother/wife who is nurturing where the sexually serviceable woman will be challenging, virginal where the sexually serviceable woman will be carnal. The stereotype of the sexually “non-serviceable” woman is the bitch-temptress, immodest, coarse, and demanding. She is a promiscuous woman who, despite her sexual availa bility to men, is non-serviceable, because she is sexually ungovernable, indiscriminate, and selfish. The seductive lustiness of the serviceable woman becomes salacious, lewd, and uncomfortably lascivious in the non-serviceable woman. Her non-sexual counterpart is cloying, manipulative, and catty. A non-serviceable woman is “bad.” The irony in these distinctions is that they are arbitrarily and ambiguously applied (Ruth, 1990). Feminists not only object to the content and restrictiveness of the stereotypes, but they also object to the fickle, tenuous, and often contradictory ways in which women are asked to instantiate them. A wife may be congratulated by an ambitious husband for the way she successfully flirts with his boss at a company cocktail party. Having lost his chance at promotion, he may regard her identical flirtation as an insensitive assault on his masculinity or refer to her as “the bitch who can’t shut her mouth.” If her clothes are not sexy enough, she is “frumpy.” When in those very same clothes, she seduces the wrong man, she is “sleazy.” Many husbands want a wife who is simultaneously sexually available and chaste, the virgin who is a whore in bed. A woman is “bad” whether she strays on purpose or by acci-
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setting is not guarantee of future success, even in the very same setting. The feminine stereotype of an anxious woman fussing over her appearance, caring more about her hair than her opinions, is testimony to the insecurity of her position, not merely personal vanity. By being required to fill contradictory social roles whose demands women cannot confidently predict, they must inevitably fail to be “good.” The above quote from ceramist Beatrice Wood represents the feelings of many women who hear the mixed message that the good girl is bad, and the bad girl is good. What difference does it make, when no matter what she does, she does not get it right? Sexual terms commonly used to describe women are terms used to describe the promiscuous woman: “trollop,” “vamp,” “slut,” “hussy,” “whore,” “pick-up,” “Jezebel,” “tart,” “bawd,” “vixen,” “floozy” (See Morrison, 1992). Such a woman is loose, easy, and indiscriminate, a non-serviceable woman for men, to use Ruth’s phrase. Not surprisingly, these terms are used by men primarily to insult or denigrate women, since a woman who is promiscuous is someone “bad.” Women are so closely identified with these terms, that they are used, by both women and men, to insult women outside of any explicitly sexual context. (“Who does that hussy think she is, humiliating me like that?” or “The slut brought me ham when I ordered sausage.”) Sexualized terms for women like “broad,” “skirt,” and “tail,” do not necessarily connote promiscuity, so they are often used to refer to “serviceable” women, as in “That’s a nice piece of tail,” or “Now that’s a broad!” When feminists object that such language reduces women to sex objects, men often react in disbelief, com plaining that women are taking offense at a compliment. (“But I like broads!” or “What? You don’t like being sexy?”) Where feminists see a woman’s sexuality reduced to her serviceability to men, those same men see a “good” girl. Still, women can never be certain of their sexual serviceability even if so-called sexually complimentary terms are applied to them, given the devaluation of their behavior in such phrases as “Whoever let those broads on the highway ought to have his head examined!” The term “bitch” is always negative, since it refers to an animal in heat, an animal that indiscriminately and promiscuously copulates, certainly non-serviceable when applied to women: “I refuse to take orders from that bitch!” Not only are women being maleidentified sexually by such terms, but they are also being identified with a type of sexuality than demeans them. Women might object less to an identity externally imposed, if the value of that identity were positive. But their promiscuity has become so imbued with negativity, and their sexuality so filled with contradiction, it is no wonder that Beatrice Wood regards her life as an “upside-down experience.”
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they fail to live up to particular men’s sexual expectations of them, no matter how eccentric or contradictory. Furthermore, because women’s identity under patriarchy is a function of their sexuality, such condemnation strikes at the very core of their self-image as women. Some men are lechers and overbearing. Women are broads because they are overbearing. In addition, special condemnation is reserved for sexually promiscuous women, which is not matched by terms used to describe promiscuous men. A promiscuous woman is referred to as “dirt” in virtue of her sexual profligacy alone. A promiscuous man is “dirt,” when, in the course of being promiscuous, he has been deceptive, disrespectful, exploitative, or mean. His promiscuity alone is rarely sufficient reason for condemning him. Indeed, the promiscuous man is often regarded as appropriately fulfilling the expectations of his masculine sexual stereotype. The “dirty old man” who does no more than leer at young women is reviled by men and women alike, not because he is promiscuous (although he would like to be), but because elderly men are stereotypically confined to an asexuality that makes their sexual objectification of women appear out of place. One might speculate that there is no comparable “dirty young man,” because it would be oxymoronic to sexually vilify a man stereotypically expected, if not outrightly encouraged, to be promiscuous. Indeed, a dirty old man wishes he were a roué for good reason. A promiscuous man is often referred to as a “stud,” a “stallion,” a “man of the world,” a “man of experience.” A young, promiscuous man is “sowing his wild oats” or is a “hot rod.” He is not described as “used goods,” “loose,” or “in the gutter” the way a promiscuous woman often is. Once a woman is heterosexually promiscuous, she must justify her behavior as in some way “serviceable” to men or be called a slut. Feminists like Mary Daly believe that the only way for women to empower themselves sexually is to reconceptualize and reevaluate women’s sexuality, with new terminology, if necessary, so that their “pure lust” has meaning for them (Daly, 1984). Clarissa Pinkola Estes believes that there are “wild woman archetypes” throughout history that women need to regain access to in order to fulfill their sexual destinies as women (Estes, 1992). In both cases, sexual empowerment for women is a function of eschewing patriarchal definitions of their sexuality in order to redefine it in women’s terms. Here we confront a fascinating paradox: in a heterosexual and maledominated society, women are both valued as sexually accessible and devalued for promiscuous sex. Yet, should not the heterosexually identified female be uniformly praised for doing what her patriarchal culture—with its Playboy centerfolds, push-up bras, and Seduction (“lip-plumper”) lipstick—encourages
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triarchal society, this is precisely the role reserved for the heterosexually active male. In such a society, women are sex objects, not sex subjects. Women are to be dominated and controlled through sex, not free to pursue an unabashed love of sex untainted by degradation or shame. If sexual promiscuity is sexual agency, that is, the active pursuit of sex by an autonomous subject, then the sexually promiscuous woman is ipso facto attempting to take control of her sexual life. But this is anathema to a system of power in which the op pression of women through sex is a primary means of establishing and maintaining dominance over them. Thus, the harsher criticism that a patriarchal society lodges against the sexually promiscuous woman can be understood as intended to inhibit her pursuit of the kind of sexual activity that has long been the exclusive preserve of men and as that which signals rebellion against her oppressor. It is a striking feminist irony that the expression “loose woman” is both a symbol of women’s degradation and a testament to women’s attempts to liberate themselves from the sexual dominance of men. What the above uses of language suggest, is that, in a culture whose power and status lie in the hands of men, sex is a badge of honor for men, a sign of power, dominance, and possession. However, race, class, and sexual orientation intersect with gender in the social construction of promiscuity to narrow the range of this dominance. Sex is a badge of honor for white, affluent, heterosexual men. African-American men are often sexually stereotyped by white men and women as primitive and dangerous sexual animals with enlarged penises, a sexuality threatening to many white men and commonly used to degrade and straitjacket blacks. When a black man marries a white woman, he is often regarded by his black community as a traitor to his race and by whites as appropriating and defiling one of a white man’s own (consider, for example, the common complain that if Mike Tyson had been white and affluent, he would not have been charged with rape). When a black man pursues a woman of his own race, he may be regarded by whites as typical of an oversexed primitive in search of an equally lusty partner. If an AfricanAmerican man is homosexual, he may be burdened with the additional heterosexist presumption that he is a rabid transmitter of debilitating, if not deadly, sexual disease. Sexual conservatives and liberals alike have singled out gay men of all races and ethnicities as paradigms of performance-oriented, promiscuous sex seekers whose lifestyle of casual or anonymous sex is regarded as the primary cause of the spread of AIDS (for discussion see Seidman, 1992, chap. 4). Outside his cultural community, an Asian or Asian-American man is often presumed to be sexually reserved where his African-American counterpart
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tion for membership in an otherwise exclusive club of white, male, heterosexual power and affluence (see Greenfeld, 1992). Latinos are frequently categorized in sexual terms, as passionate but ultimately self-serving Don Juans who display a machismo that defines their masculinity in terms of their sexual prowess. However, their Anglo class stereotype as coarse and uneducated often makes these very same macho men sexually unappealing to affluent, white women determined to find a man who will maintain, if not enhance, their social status. Many affluent white men see large Hispanic families as no more than welfare recipients. (For ways in which Mexican men reinforce the macho stereotype and attract American women, see Rodriguez and Miller, 1992.) All of these stereotypes derive their pervasiveness and staying power from the social status and authority conferred on white, affluent heterosexual males in patriarchy. A black man’s sexual stereotype of white men as stiff and ineffectual lovers will be of little consequence to the wealthy white man whose institutionalized power gives him a sexuality all his own. “He’s so rich! Isn’t he sexy?” Unlike white women and people of color, affluent, white men represent success objects who have become sex objects without becoming sexually subordinated or vilified. A rich African-American or Hispanic man may also be made sexy by his money, but whites’ stereotypes of him have notoriously restricted his social stature to that of the successful drug dealer, pimp, or professional athlete. Similarly, an affluent Asian man’s wealth alone does not eliminate whites’ perception of him as a sexual wallflower. Even less well-to-do white men can ignore blacks’ stereotypes of them simply in virtue of an entrenched racist social standard that marginalizes the perspectives of people of color of all classes. Sexual stereotypes exist both within as well as across social categories, but the prevalence of any one stereotype is determined by the power of the stereotyper to define the parameters of the category. Women of color may be multiply oppressed in a patriarchal society, both by the appropriation of their sexuality by men and by the particular sexual stereotypes associated with their race or ethnicity. Specifically, in addition to being typed as heterosexual, many women of color living in a patriarchal society are sexually stereotyped as promiscuous. If they are poor women, they may be further victimized in virtue of their economic status. AfricanAmerican women are frequently stereotyped by whites as wild and untamed sensualists who can offer white men a kind of exotic sexual thrill that white women cannot. When a black woman chooses a white lover, she is often considered by both black men and black women as a traitor to her race, and, if
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black man, she may also be warned by other white women of the dire social consequences to the children of such a union but may be asked to consider whether her partner, not her, is attempting to upgrade his social status, even if he is already affluent. Asian and Asian-American women are commonly typed inside and outside their cultural community as docile, submissive, and restrained sexually, making them tempting targets for men whose more sexually assertive or eager playmates fail to reinforce men’s sense of dominance and control. It is frequently assumed that Asian woman eschew promiscuity, only tolerating sex because it is required of married women or forced on them by unscrupulous mercenaries in the commerce of prostitution know as “sex tourism.” The sexual willingness of geishas does not dispel this assumption, since they are typically regarded as women for whom sex is a job, not a joy. In addition, an underlying social prohibition against women’s adultery reinforces the presupposition that Asian women much prefer monogamy or no sex at all (for discussion, see Zhou, 1989 and Wolfe and Witke, 1987). By contrast, Latinas and Native American women are stereotyped by many Anglos as poor, illiterate, and eternally pregnant. Single young Latinas are often categorized as promiscuous, despite the acknowledged sanctions of the Catholic Church to which many Latinas belong, but especially when those same sanctions discourage contraception or family planning. Affluent, white men attracted to the sexual fecundity of the Latina stereotype often also ex pect a feistiness they associate with a fiery and sexually exotic Latin spirit. Ironically, many modern Latin households maintain traditional double standards whereby husbands may have affairs, but wives should be virgins prior to marriage and faithful afterwards. On the other hand, the machismo image of the Latina’s peers makes it especially difficult for Latina teenagers to say no to sex when young Latinos buy into their own stereotype (Espin, 1989). Many heterosexual men regard lesbians as sexually frigid and unattractive women who could not land a man if they tried. When model-beautiful, lesbians are often propositioned by men who cannot understand what such women are doing “wasting their looks” on other women. Poverty makes les bians and heterosexual women alike especially vulnerable to abusive men who propose financial security in exchange for sex. Women’s vulnerability in such situations is exacerbated not only by their limited economic options, but also by what they have been taught to believe is expected of them as sexually “serviceable” women. Because each woman has a social location defined by her race, class, and sexual orientation in addition to her gender, her oppressions multiply when she is not white, not affluent, or not heterosexual. Her
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promiscuity degrading, if not life-threatening in an era of AIDS. Men and women both suffer from strict sexual stereotyping; but the cultural expectation that women be sexually subordinate to men undermines many women’s self-respect in a way that expectations for men to live up to the sexual dominance and agency definitive of the masculine ideal do not (LeMoncheck, 1985 pp. 63–66; 92–94). Many feminists regard the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as its contemporary vestiges, as serving primarily the interests of men, precisely because the movement made more women sexually availa ble to men without affording women enough of the economic and political tools to escape being sexually subordinated by them. According to this view, sexual liberation convinced women that sex without love or marriage was a good thing, without giving women the opportunity to define what good sex is for women (Seidman, 1992, pp. 78–81, 97). Heterosexual and lesbian feminists alike have argued that truly liberating sex for women requires a fundamental reconceptualization and reevaluation of women’s sexual exploration, pleasure, and agency (Seidman, 1992, chap. 3). A woman’s control over her body has been one of the most important political platforms of the women’s movement. To tell women that they cannot or should not be promiscuous seems to run counter to the feminist effort to gain sexual subjectivity and self-definition for women. Should a feminist reconceptualization of women’s sexual desire include a sexually promiscuous lifestyle? Or are promiscuous women simply appropriating a masculine sexual value that is ill-suited to their temperament as women? What exactly counts as promiscuous sex and what, if anything, can promiscuity contribute to women’s sexual exploration in an environment apparently exploding with sexual violence, disease, and death? Exploring such questions is essential, if the sexual agency that feminists seek for women is to be truly liberating.
Works Cited
Barry, Kathleen. (1979) Female Sexual Slavery. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. Brownmiller, Susan. (1975) Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. New York: Simon and Schuster. Daly, Mary. (1984) Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy. Boston: Beacon Press. Dworkin, Andrea. (1974) Pornography: Men Possessing Women. New York: E. P. Dutton. Elliston, Frederick. (1975) “In Defense of Promiscuity,” pp. 222–243. In Philosophy
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Frye, Marilyn. (1983) The Politics of Reality. Trumansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press. Greenfeld, Karl Taro. (1992) “The Broken Dreams of the Blond Geishas,” Los An geles Times Magazinem, 8 (November). Griffin, Susan. (1981) Pornography and Silence. New York: Harper & Row. Heath, Stephen. (1982) The Sexual Fix. London: Macmillan. Kingston, Maxine Hong. (1989) China Men. New York: Random House. Leidholdt, Dorchen, and Janice G. Raymond, eds. (1990) The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism. New York: Teachers College Press. LeMoncheck, Linda. (1985) Dehumanizing Women: Treating Persons as Sex Objects. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Allanheld. MacKinnon, Catharine. (1998) Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Moi, Toril. (1985) Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. New York: Methuen. Morrison, Patt. (1992) “War of the Words,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, 6 (Decem ber). Morton, Patricia. (1991) The Historical Assault on Afro-American Women. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. Omolade, Barbara. (1983) “Hearts of Darkness,” pp. 350–367. In Snitow, Stansell, and Thompson, eds., Powers of Desire. Ortner, Sheryl, and Whitehead, Harriett, eds. (1981) Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Rodriguez, Cecilia, and Marjorie Miller. (1992) “Muy Macho,” Los Angeles Times Magazine 6 (December). Ruth, Sheila, ed. (1990) Issues in Feminism, 2nd. ed. Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Company. Seidman, Steven. (1992). Embattled Eros: Sexual Politics and Ethics in Contemporary America. New York: Routledge. Simson, Rennie. (1983). “The Afro-American Female: The Historical Context of the Construction of Sexual Identity,” pp. 229–235. In Snitow, Stansell, and Thompson, eds., Powers of Desire. Snitow, Ann, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds. (1983). Powers of De sire: The Politics of Sexuality. New York: Monthly Review Press. Suleiman, Susan, ed. (1986) The Female Body in Western Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Vance, Carole. (1989) “Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality.” In Vance, ed., Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. London: Pandora. Wolf, Margery, and Roxane Witke. (1978) Women in Chinese Society. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Wood, Beatrice. (1987) I Shock Myself: The Autobiography of Beatrice Wood . San Francisco, Calif.: Chronicle Books. Zhou, Xiao. (1989) “Virginity and Premarital Sex in Contemporary China,” Feminist Studies, 15, pp. 279–288.
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