Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Where is Camille Paglia when we need her?
In the last few months, the pop culture has been pulling back the layers on what sex in the age of post-feminism looks like–and it’s not pretty. Exhibit A is the terribly written but–to many women in their twenties and thirties–sexy book 50 Shades of Grey. The erotic novel is about Ana, a twenty-one-year-old woman who lets herself become the sex slave of a rich and powerful twenty-seven-year-old man named Christian. In this unexpected bestseller, Christian makes Ana sign a contract that stipulates some pretty grim things. And she does.
Exhibit B is HBO’s new comedy Girls, created by and starring the twenty-five-year-old Lena Dunham. Girls is about four highly educated and adrift young women in their mid-twenties trying to manage their degrading and awkward sex lives against the backdrop of an unmerciful New York City. The show’s protagonist is Hannah Horvath (Dunham). Hannah regularly hooks up with a creepy hipster named Adam who never wears a shirt and fantasizes that Hannah’s a hooker. He’s the kind of guy who never texts her and tells her to stop talking during sex. And yet, she still pines for him to call her. She still goes over to his apartment. She even refers to him as her “boyfriend,” which would be a surprise to him.
In a cover story for Newsweek, Katie Roiphe tries to figure out what’s going on in these two pop phenomena. Why, Roiphe asks, does this “particular, watered-down, skinny-vanilla-latte version of sadomasochism have such cachet right now? Why have masses of women brought the book to the top of the New York Times bestseller list before it even hit the stores?”
It is intriguing that huge numbers of women are eagerly consuming myriad and disparate fantasies of submission at a moment when women are ascendant in the workplace, when they make up almost 60 percent of college students, when they are close to surpassing men as breadwinners, with four in 10 working women now out-earning their husbands, when the majority of women under 30 are having and supporting children on their own, a moment when—in hard economic terms—women are less dependent or subjugated than before.
…
When Maggie Gyllenhaal appeared in Secretary, a 2002 comic commentary on a boss disciplining his assistant, she was worried about a feminist reaction against the flamboyant depiction of sexual domination. But she said, “I found women, especially of my generation, are moved by it in some way that goes beyond politics.”
That thing that goes beyond politics is called human nature. As Roiphe writes:
Gloria Steinem writes that these women “have been raised to believe that sex and domination are synonymous,” and we must learn to “finally untangle sex and aggression.” But maybe sex and aggression should not, and probably more to the point, cannot be untangled.
That was one Paglia’s main points during the nineties, when she was at her polemical peak. The feminists, Paglia argued, have neutered male sexuality and that has killed sex. “If you live in rock and roll, as I do,” she said back then, “you see the reality of sex, of male lust and women being aroused by male lust. It attracts women. It doesn’t repel them.”
In Girls, Hannah’s best friend and roommate is a put-together, uptight girl named Marnie (Allison Williams). Marnie has been dating her metrosexual boyfriend Charlie for four years. The problem is, Charlie is cloyingly sweet and loving–too loving. He defers to her on too many issues, including sex. And Marnie is repelled by him. Whenever he touches her, she explains to Hannah, it’s like “a weird uncle putting his hand on my knee at Thanksgiving.” She doesn’t even want to look at him when they’re hooking up, an act that he refers to as “making love.”
“Make love to me?” she laughs.
Marnie later tells Hannah, “He’s so busy respecting me, you know, that he looks right past me and everything I need from him.” Hannah, who is in a pretty degrading situation with Adam, the guy she’s hooking up with, responds: ”I’m just unwilling to accept the idea that you have too great a boyfriend. Although if you want someone to feed you abusive rhetoric, just send him to Adam’s house for the night. He’ll learn a lot.”
Which brings us back to sadomasochism.
Roiphe opens her piece by writing “every era gets the sadist it deserves.”
True, and let’s not forget the original sadist, a man that Roiphe does not mention once in her piece–the sadist that we derive the term “sadomasochism” from: the Marquis de Sade.
Paglia considered Sade to be “the most unread major writer in western literature.” When you think about 50 Shades of Grey and Girls, you realize why. Sade–and Paglia–understood that when the social constraints break down, when sexual liberty reins supreme, that degradation follows suit. Here’s Paglia (from Sexual Persona) on Sade:
For Sade, getting back to nature (the Romantic imperative that still permeates our culture from sex counseling to cereal commercials) would be to give free rein to violence and lust. I agree. Society is the not the criminal but the force which keeps crime in check. When social controls weaken, man’s innate cruelty bursts forth. The rapist is created not by bad social influences but by a failure of social conditioning. Feminists, seeking to drive power relations out of sex, have set themselves against nature. Sex is power. Identity is power . . . My theory is that whenever sexual freedom is sought or achieved, sadomasochism will not be far behind. Romanticism always turns into decadence. . . . The search for freedom through sex is doomed to failure.
In its realistic and stark portrayal of casual sex, this is the message of Girls. Hannah, who calls herself the voice of her generation in the show, is not seeking sexual empowerment or liberation in her relationship with Adam. She passively submits to Adam, but it’s clear that she’s not into his weird fantasies. She wants to talk to him, to kiss him, to call him on the phone. In one scene, she asks Marnie, “What does it feel like to be loved that much?”
In 50 Shades of Grey, Ana daydreams about love, too: “Deep down I would just like more, more affection, more playful Christian, more . . . love.”
Marnie may be the most put together of the Girls, but she’s more adrift than her friends when it comes to one thing: In the age of post-feminism, women do not want to hook up. They want love.
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Comments:
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
pagina segunda ''¡ Gracias Eh hay !"
Feb '12
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
EJHill- and what she whispered in his ear at the end of the Quiet Man has never- to my knowledge at least- been disclosed.. Discreet.
Aug '11
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
The original love scene, Adam and Eve meet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H52vSwYyODo
ADAM (vaguement): Homme, tu n'est plus seul!
(Pour la première fois il aperçoit la femme.)
O séduisant mystère! quelle forme éclatant a passé devant moi!...
EVE (extasiée):
Ah! quel ardent rayon m'éclaire! Quelle flamme est en mon sein!
ADAM (avec admiration):
Creature du ciel de l'air ou de la terre, C'est par toi que s'acheve ici l'oeuvre divin.
etc...
Apr '12
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Paglia talks about how society socializes to control and I absolutely agree. Society also seems to decide what is erotic too, such as Chinese loving the bound foot, thinking it looked like a beautiful lotus flower.
Mar '12
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Nicegrizzly
The reason educated modern women swoon over Fifty Shades of Grey and Marnie is repulsed by her boyfriend is because of something else we've been missing in our culture: the clearly defined roles of men and women. As much as feminism has attempted to program it out, and political correctness tries to keep it out, most women still naturally desire men of strength, leadership, and prowess. The bedroom is no exception.
True, but there is a twist here. The "new" trend for BDSM seems to be driven by women who have gone for feminist men. Because they don't have, and even shun, clearly defined male and female roles in their own relationships, then they need pretend in the bedroom. They want dominance without actual dominance. That this is a bad idea for men and women doesn't seem to have occurred to them. Men are usually stronger without the handcuffs, and men should never in a million years engage in this kind of sex play in the modern rape law climate. See today's Daily Mail on John Lewis worker false rape claim.
May '11
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Ricochet needs to update their software. Under each comment, in additon to: like, quote, flag, share, and direct link, there needs to be translate.
Edited on April 20, 2012 at 3:17amMay '11
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
And I am sure that that link would be clicked more often under my comments than like.
Nov '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
@ Southern Pessimist: I am moderately certain that I don't want to know what a few of these comments mean.
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Re comment #6
Edited on April 20, 2012 at 4:06amI only vaguely remember hearing about something called " The Story of O". Around 1989, I remember reading a pretty gut wrenching story about a young, independent woman who becomes emotionally addicted to a sadist. The book is "Nothing Natural" by Jenny Disky. Has anyone any thoughts on it?
May '11
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Lucy, you speak as a non-post-feminist woman, I think.
Mar '11
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
This is a very rare Newsweek article - it's pretty good.
There is a basic conflict between male and female sexuality and post-modern feminism - reflected in the sales of 50 shades of grey (which I may read for purely research reasons - even if it's badly written).
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
I just read what seems to be a reliable review of "50 shades of grey". Is this book kind of similar to books that were called "bodice rippers" that a lot of women (all the women who lived around me in a semi rural, working class area) were nuts about reading in the 1980s? The reviewer makes it sound more like that than like "Nothing Natural" or like " The Story of O".
Jul '11
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Not sure what everybody is getting worked up about. It I just another romance novel, which is women's version of porn. While I have not read it I suspect it will have the following elements, angst, forbidden love, uncertainy, doubt, misunderstanding, shame, redemption, pride, sexual tension, commitment, true love. I am not sure why women want all this in their porn but it seems to sell.
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Well, back in the 1980s, the neighborhood feminist told us interest in bodice rippers would fade as women became more accustomed to being empowered. Apparently, this isn't what happened.
May '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
It still makes no difference whether we are in the age of feminism, pre-history, or post-feminism. Males and females are different, a blindingly obvious observation made by Stephen Fry a couple of years ago (an episode for which the responses illustrated the fundamental difference between males and females- male commenters talked about frequency/quantity, the females talked about quality in the occasional romp), and as Woody Allen memorialized for all time in Annie Hall.
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Re comment # 35Yes. Stephen Fry is right.
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Women and men are different, yes, but Stephen Fry is exactly wrong when he argues women don't actually enjoy sex.
When Fry argues that women only submit to sex so that they can get a relationship, he has cause and effect backwards.
The difference between men and women is that it takes more time and effort to bring the majority of women to orgasm, and that's a big part of reason that women put more emphasis on a secure relationship.
When selecting a sex partner, her best strategy is to find a man who is willing to stick around, to learn over time what works best and what doesn't, and is committed and affectionate enough to want to put in the effort.
A woman isn't generally going to get that kind of effort out of a one-night stand with some guy who doesn't even take the time to learn her name. Hence, no heterosexual "cruising areas".
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
Misthiocracy, I agree with you. I thought Fry was exagerating to be funny. But I understood him to mean that the prospect of impersonal sex, as an end in itself, isn't very erotic for women. What's erotic for women is the idea of a passionate relationship. That's why heterosexual hook ups are a bad idea. The two people have radically different, often unacknowledged desires.
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
I think the key difference between male and female sexuality can be more biomechanical than emotional, for a couple of different reasons:
I believe that the emotional differences largely follow from the biomechanical differences.
Aug '10
Re: Sex in the Age of Post-Feminism
I'm not sure what biomechanical means, but it makes sense that our emotions, and our sexual desire, would be influenced by what our bodies are (or were) designed to do. I think women more often find the idea of sex within a relationship erotic because they are designed to bear and breastfeed children, and a relationship with the father of their unborn or small children provides aid and protection to those children and to them.Maybe I'm wrong, but I think there are fewer promiscuous women than promiscuous men. Again, I think that's related to the difference in what male and female bodies were designed to do. But are we perhaps saying the same thing in different words? My husband thinks so.
Edited on April 21, 2012 at 5:53am