Within the context of genders, those things are oppressive. I don’t imagine sex of any kind would be problematic in a feminist society.
If you want a more in-depth view of heterosexual sex under patriarchy, I recommend Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin.
But in short, consider the utility distribution of PIV sex for men, and consider it for women, under patriarchy, and consider whether it is really usually in women’s best interest to have PIV sex. I’ll leave this as an exercise for you, rather than spelling it out explicitly.
under patriarchy, and consider whether it is really usually in women’s best interest to have PIV sex.
What happens if a woman desires to have PiV sex, seeks out a man to have it with (rejecting unqualified men in the process), and enjoys the experience ? The reason Andrea Dworkin (and radical feminists in general) is often portrayed as “sex-negative” (*) is because, as far as I can tell, she denies that such a scenario can exist, thus directly contradicting the life experience of many women.
Thus, we end up in a peculiar situation where radical feminists appear to be seeking to actively make women’s lives worse, by denying them an activity that many women see as an important aspect of their self-expression (not to mention, a lot of fun).
Of course, a radical feminist might answer by saying, “my end goal is not to improve the lives of women, but to destroy the patriarchy by any means necessary”, but I’m not sure if any real radical feminists would answer this way.
(*) It’s also why Dworkin is considered to be a kind of troll by some liberal feminists; IMO unjustly so, since she sincerely believes the things she says.
I did read through Intercourse in college, but it was a long time ago, and, knowing my past self, I probably only skimmed it. My main impression of it at the time was that Dworkin a). really dislikes men, and b). dehumanizes women. IMO (b) is even worse than (a); at least she recognizes that men are people, albeit unpleasant ones.
Anyway, that was a bit off topic. What is it that I’m supposed to be figuring out by reading Dworkin ? And what happens if I do read the relevant passages, but still conclude that she is wrong ?
She talk about women’s wants a lot less than I expected. About cis women who want intercourse with cis men, she writes:
Women have wanted intercourse to work and have submitted—with regret or with enthusiasm, real or faked—even though or even when it does not. [...] Women have also wanted intercourse to work in this sense: women have wanted intercourse to be, for women, an experience of equality and passion, sensuality and intimacy. Women have a vision of love that includes men as human too; and women want the human in men, including in the act of intercourse. Even without the dignity of equal power, women have believed in the redeeming potential of love. There has been—despite the cruelty of exploitation and forced sex—a consistent vision for women of a sexuality based on a harmony that is both sensual and possible.
She might be saying “Women only ever want intercourse with men they love”. Even if you count any kind of liking and desire for intimacy as “love”, this rules out cruising for casual sex.
She also says things about women wanting very gentle intercourse without thrusting, whereas men go poundy-poundy. This is quite unlike the reports of sex bloggers and friends, whose preferences are varied.
Then she says women who seek intercourse are like women who accept and perform genital mutilation and foot binding. So yeah, basically “hate it but brainwashed into thinking they like it”.
This seems to be completely unfalsifiable; anyone who says “But I like penis in my vagina, there are nerve endings there that like stimulated” can be told “You’re brainwashed by the patriarchy”, or “You’re not (enough of) a woman so you can never understand”.
There does seem to be a bit of a trope of certain sorts of scholars (the early Wilhelm Reich comes to mind) developing strong and specific opinions on what kind of sex other people are supposed to have — down to specific positions and motions! — in order to be enlightened, liberated, rational, or holy. One wonders by what means a person could arrive at such knowledge, and what other hypotheses were raised to attention and dismissed by evidence.
This isn’t just about sex, of course. There are all sorts of claims that people don’t really want what they say they want, and they don’t want what they seek out, either.
This essay introduced me to the idea that such claims are pervasive. Anyone have a more general overview?
Even at Less Wrong—you won’t really like that shiny toy so much, give the money to SI instead!
And yet people here, apparently with a straight face, have made analogous arguments about alcoholic beverages. If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
Blind taste test. Preferably several, where you don’t know if Amaro Montenegro is among the drinks you’re tasting in any particular test.
If you can’t single out for a high rating the one that you profess to like the taste of, then you’ve falsified the hypothesis that you like it for the taste.
If you can single it out for a high rating in blind taste tests, and want to further test whether you actually enjoy it, or merely recognize it and assign a high rating for signalling purposes, get an MRI during the blind taste test.
MRI wouldn’t help. If you can recognize amaro, you’ll go “Oh, that’s amaro, I’m supposed to like this” and produce a pleasure response, the same way wines believed to be expensive do to identical wines believed to be cheap.
I think you could get somewhere by doing a taste test of several different amaros (which are not actually wine,) where rather than a blind test, the subject is incorrectly told that they’re all, say, privately brewed and distributed at a liqueur festival, or something along those lines, but one of them is really Amaro Montenegro.
That one doesn’t sound quite so bad; get MRId while drinking, and you can prove you really feel pleasure. That doesn’t disprove the brainwashing assertion (wines genuinely taste better with a price hike) but you can still answer “So what if I like it because of that? I like it. And it doesn’t even support a culture where 12% of the population has had amaro slipped into their drink.”
Well, I don’t want to want to spend more money on wine if I couldn’t tell it from cheaper wine in a blind tasting… (EDIT: But I don’t know what aspect of heterosexual intercourse that maps to, if any.)
Wine can taste Good or Bad, have a real cost that’s Cheap or Expensive, and be LabeledExpensive or LabeledCheap. Good Expensive wine is better value for money than Bad Cheap wine.
If Expensive wine is Good and Cheap wine is Bad and label is irrelevant, Good Expensive LabeledCheap wine ~ Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine ~ Bad Cheap LabeledExpensive wine.
If LabeledExpensive wine is Good and LabeledCheap wine is Bad and real price is irrelevant, Good Cheap LabeledExpensive wine > Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine > Bad Expensive LabeledCheap wine.
Learning that the latter model is true is only useful if you can pay for cheap wine then be told it’s expensive when you drink it. In most situations, you see what you’re paying for—wine is LabeledCheap iff it’s Cheap. Your only options are Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine and Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine, and you always prefer the former to the latter. So learning which model is true shouldn’t change your wine-buying habits.
That’s quite possible in real life, but then you don’t need all that evaluation of preferences in various models—you always buy cheap wine, regardless of label and taste.
Within the context of genders, those things are oppressive. I don’t imagine sex of any kind would be problematic in a feminist society.
If you want a more in-depth view of heterosexual sex under patriarchy, I recommend Intercourse by Andrea Dworkin.
But in short, consider the utility distribution of PIV sex for men, and consider it for women, under patriarchy, and consider whether it is really usually in women’s best interest to have PIV sex. I’ll leave this as an exercise for you, rather than spelling it out explicitly.
You might also want to read the blog articles from radtransfem.wordpress.com that I linked above.
What happens if a woman desires to have PiV sex, seeks out a man to have it with (rejecting unqualified men in the process), and enjoys the experience ? The reason Andrea Dworkin (and radical feminists in general) is often portrayed as “sex-negative” (*) is because, as far as I can tell, she denies that such a scenario can exist, thus directly contradicting the life experience of many women.
Thus, we end up in a peculiar situation where radical feminists appear to be seeking to actively make women’s lives worse, by denying them an activity that many women see as an important aspect of their self-expression (not to mention, a lot of fun).
Of course, a radical feminist might answer by saying, “my end goal is not to improve the lives of women, but to destroy the patriarchy by any means necessary”, but I’m not sure if any real radical feminists would answer this way.
(*) It’s also why Dworkin is considered to be a kind of troll by some liberal feminists; IMO unjustly so, since she sincerely believes the things she says.
Why don’t you read Intercourse for yourself and figure out if that is indeed the case?
Figure out if what is the case ?
I did read through Intercourse in college, but it was a long time ago, and, knowing my past self, I probably only skimmed it. My main impression of it at the time was that Dworkin a). really dislikes men, and b). dehumanizes women. IMO (b) is even worse than (a); at least she recognizes that men are people, albeit unpleasant ones.
Anyway, that was a bit off topic. What is it that I’m supposed to be figuring out by reading Dworkin ? And what happens if I do read the relevant passages, but still conclude that she is wrong ?
She talk about women’s wants a lot less than I expected. About cis women who want intercourse with cis men, she writes:
She might be saying “Women only ever want intercourse with men they love”. Even if you count any kind of liking and desire for intimacy as “love”, this rules out cruising for casual sex.
She also says things about women wanting very gentle intercourse without thrusting, whereas men go poundy-poundy. This is quite unlike the reports of sex bloggers and friends, whose preferences are varied.
Then she says women who seek intercourse are like women who accept and perform genital mutilation and foot binding. So yeah, basically “hate it but brainwashed into thinking they like it”.
This seems to be completely unfalsifiable; anyone who says “But I like penis in my vagina, there are nerve endings there that like stimulated” can be told “You’re brainwashed by the patriarchy”, or “You’re not (enough of) a woman so you can never understand”.
There does seem to be a bit of a trope of certain sorts of scholars (the early Wilhelm Reich comes to mind) developing strong and specific opinions on what kind of sex other people are supposed to have — down to specific positions and motions! — in order to be enlightened, liberated, rational, or holy. One wonders by what means a person could arrive at such knowledge, and what other hypotheses were raised to attention and dismissed by evidence.
This isn’t just about sex, of course. There are all sorts of claims that people don’t really want what they say they want, and they don’t want what they seek out, either.
This essay introduced me to the idea that such claims are pervasive. Anyone have a more general overview?
Even at Less Wrong—you won’t really like that shiny toy so much, give the money to SI instead!
This is one of my favorite essays on libertarianism, by the way.
Most likely they are just rationalizing in a pseudo-scientific/moralistic light whatever sexual fantasies/phobias they happen to have.
And yet people here, apparently with a straight face, have made analogous arguments about alcoholic beverages. If I claim I like Amaro Montenegro then I must have been brainwashed and/or be (consciously or subconsciously) lying for signalling reasons or something. How could I demonstrate that I actually enjoy its taste?
Blind taste test. Preferably several, where you don’t know if Amaro Montenegro is among the drinks you’re tasting in any particular test.
If you can’t single out for a high rating the one that you profess to like the taste of, then you’ve falsified the hypothesis that you like it for the taste.
If you can single it out for a high rating in blind taste tests, and want to further test whether you actually enjoy it, or merely recognize it and assign a high rating for signalling purposes, get an MRI during the blind taste test.
MRI wouldn’t help. If you can recognize amaro, you’ll go “Oh, that’s amaro, I’m supposed to like this” and produce a pleasure response, the same way wines believed to be expensive do to identical wines believed to be cheap.
Good point.
I think you could get somewhere by doing a taste test of several different amaros (which are not actually wine,) where rather than a blind test, the subject is incorrectly told that they’re all, say, privately brewed and distributed at a liqueur festival, or something along those lines, but one of them is really Amaro Montenegro.
That one doesn’t sound quite so bad; get MRId while drinking, and you can prove you really feel pleasure. That doesn’t disprove the brainwashing assertion (wines genuinely taste better with a price hike) but you can still answer “So what if I like it because of that? I like it. And it doesn’t even support a culture where 12% of the population has had amaro slipped into their drink.”
Well, I don’t want to want to spend more money on wine if I couldn’t tell it from cheaper wine in a blind tasting… (EDIT: But I don’t know what aspect of heterosexual intercourse that maps to, if any.)
Wine can taste Good or Bad, have a real cost that’s Cheap or Expensive, and be LabeledExpensive or LabeledCheap. Good Expensive wine is better value for money than Bad Cheap wine.
If Expensive wine is Good and Cheap wine is Bad and label is irrelevant, Good Expensive LabeledCheap wine ~ Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine ~ Bad Cheap LabeledExpensive wine.
If LabeledExpensive wine is Good and LabeledCheap wine is Bad and real price is irrelevant, Good Cheap LabeledExpensive wine > Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine > Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine > Bad Expensive LabeledCheap wine.
Learning that the latter model is true is only useful if you can pay for cheap wine then be told it’s expensive when you drink it. In most situations, you see what you’re paying for—wine is LabeledCheap iff it’s Cheap. Your only options are Good Expensive LabeledExpensive wine and Bad Cheap LabeledCheap wine, and you always prefer the former to the latter. So learning which model is true shouldn’t change your wine-buying habits.
Better value for money? If you check the coefficients on the perceived quality increase, they pretty strongly recommend saving your money.
That’s quite possible in real life, but then you don’t need all that evaluation of preferences in various models—you always buy cheap wine, regardless of label and taste.
Yes, that was my initial criticism of that argument. There are other flaws as well.
For what it’s worth, I second this recommendation. But the book is mostly literary criticism.
If her mother hadn’t had PIV sex, she wouldn’t exist in the first place.