Straight sex: the politics of pleasure
By Lynne Segal
Virago Press 1994
Reviewed by Tyrion Perkins
Male power "authentically originates in the penis", claims Andrea Dworkin in her book Pornography: men possessing women. Such views, advocated by many influential feminists in the First World since the late 1970s, implicitly relegate sex between men and women (especially feminist women) to the scrap heap of political incorrectness.
It is this type of politics, intended to liberate women from all forms of exploitation, but based on a narrow and inadequate understanding of female sexuality and ultimately on a conservative moralism, that Lynne Segal challenges in Straight Sex.
This is a well-researched, honest and powerful expos of the hegemony that sexual separatism has gained in the women's movement over the last decade. For participants in the second wave of feminism who were challenged and changed by the wide-ranging discussions around the nature of female sexuality, but who, if they were straight, found their self-image and self-confidence undermined by the growing dominance of anti-straight ideas, reading Segal's analysis of this period of the women's movement is a cathartic experience.
Segal argues that it was then and still is the limitations on achieving wider social change, not heterosexuality per se, that causes women problems. In this context, she embarks on a feminist redefinition of heterosexuality which emphasises the diversity of women's lived reality. She challenges feminists of all sexual orientations to mobilise against any restrictions on non-coercive sexuality, whether those restrictions originate in certain strands of feminist theory or in the status quo.
Segal locates the present politics of sexuality firmly in a historical perspective. Following the social conformism and conservatism of the 1950s, the relative prosperity of the 1960s and '70s allowed young people to rebel against their parents and society in general, including embracing greater sexual permissiveness. This rebellion was assisted by women's greater access to the newly developed contraceptive pill, which meant that sex no longer automatically brought the threat of pregnancy.
The struggle for sexual liberation in those decades also inspired the more general political dissidents of the time. Sexual freedom was central to the new self-conscious counter culture, including a New Left which arose on the basis of a critique of personal everyday life and culture. By the end of the '60s, says Segal, sexual pleasure was being seen as capable of liberating all human relations.
At the same time, however, literature and film continued to be mostly about men and displayed the same old sexism. Even the radical social movements continued to be dominated by men. The persistence of women's inequality, despite the sexual revolution, began to be questioned by more and more women who insisted on their right to put their own point of view.
Against this background, Segal outlines in detail the different approaches the feminist movement has taken to sexuality since the late 1960s. In efforts to counter the dominant myths and lies about female sexuality which defined it as weak and passive, the second wave feminists asserted that women's sexuality was much the same as men's â the orgasmic release lay in the clitoris, women's sexuality was active rather than passive. From this analysis it was concluded that, by taking control of their sexuality, in particular by achieving orgasms, women could achieve their liberation.
However, women soon found that men were still in control in almost all other aspects of relationships. Rather than looking to wider social structures and processes to try to understand the failure of the sexual path to women's complete liberation, the explanation which emerged, says Segal, was to blame men, as individuals and as a group.
As a result, a strand of the women's movement emerged which declared lesbianism as the key to ending women's dependence on and exploitation by men. In the context of a relatively new movement grappling with new ideas and experiences â as well as the failure of the broader left to escape the shackles of Stalinist perspectives and methods of organising around women's liberation â a significant number of feminists accepted the separatist argument, and heterosexual sex rapidly came to be seen as sleeping with the enemy.
The separatist approach to women's liberation was fuelled by the establishment of women's services which exposed the hidden extent of violence perpetrated daily against women and children throughout society. Separatist politics was further validated in the eyes of many women by the discrimination experienced by lesbians in some of the more conservative women's organisations.
In this climate of the sexual separation of women and men, many feminists now began to assert that women's sexuality was completely different from men's. Female sexuality was presented as inherently gentle, diffuse and egalitarian as opposed to the phallic-centred, aggressive and dominating sexuality of men.
Segal argues strongly against this reduction of male power to male sexuality, and male sexuality to violence, pointing out that such gender-based reductionism was precisely what women's liberationists had entered the political arena to attack. Rather than simply criticise it, however, Segal provides a historical and sociological explanation of how such a regressive view was able to evolve and gain dominance in the movement.
Segal argues that separatism could develop only in a movement already in decline. In support of her case, she documents the various defeats feminism experienced at this time â for example, on abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment in the US â and the growing coincidence of interests between the anti-straight-sex feminists campaigning against pornography in the late 1970s and the right wing, which supported censorship for its own reasons.
In her efforts to define just what sexuality is and what it involves, Segal goes on to look at sexology and psychoanalysis. She comprehensively reviews the sex research on the functioning of the body and sex counselling by those such as Masters and Johnson in the 1960s. Identifying both the value and the limitations â in particular the concentration on physiology to the exclusion of other impacts on sexual relationships â in this literature, Segal reviews writers on the psychology of sex such as Sigmund Freud and Lacan, as well as various lesbian and gay writers, in order to explain some of the impacts on sexual desire.
In doing so, Segal makes real progress in developing a feminist approach to sexuality which challenges the traditional masculine and feminine roles of dominance and submission, and understands sexuality as a very diverse set of ideas and practices. At the same time, Segal's review of the literature, and her own commentary on it, highlighted for me our lack of understanding about the psychology of sex, particularly sexual desire.
Throughout Straight Sex, Segal emphasises her contention that feminists who see men as the problem are not only out of step with the majority of women, but are in fact a barrier to achieving women's liberation â sexual or otherwise. She documents how conservative forces have continued to mobilise against abortion, homosexuality, divorce and so on, and how the feminist voices which dominate the mass media play into their hands.
She argues that the real bases of the relations which continue to limit and distort women's sexual experiences are still not being effectively challenged by feminism. These are the economic dependency and exploitation of women as a group.
Whether we are straight, lesbian or gay, bisexual or transsexual, this book challenges us to take action in defence of women's right to define, describe and practice their own sexuality as they see fit. It is essential reading for everyone wanting to participate in creating the social conditions which will allow the development a sexuality which benefits all women and indeed all people.