The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

AFTERWORD
establishing its strength and uniqueness in books such as The
Sexuality Papers by Lal Coveney et al. and Women against
Violence against Women edited by Sandra McNeill and Dusty
Rhodes. 2 In the area of sexuality, more than in any other area
of human social life, the inequality of power between men and
women is most clearly expressed. Thus an analysis of sexuality
which bases itself on economic class or which fails to accept as
its starting point the power relationship between the sexes, is
doomed to failure. When looked at closely, those two supposedly
opposed positions on sexuality which are variously classified
as pro- and anti-sex, sexual liberalism and sexual conservatism,
or even left and right wing, can be seen to have a common
thread which is much greater than their differences. This
common thread is the idea of a powerful, well-nigh
uncontrollable, imperative male sexual drive. According to the
‘anti-sex’ position, this is dangerous and requires all of a man’s
best energies in its control. According to the ‘pro-sex’ position
it is good and necessary and women and girls of any age cannot
be justified in resisting its demands. The possibility that this socalled
‘drive’ or ‘urge’ is a social construct and that male
sexuality need not be uncontrollable, aggressive and
exploitative, must be the basis of a feminist perspective on
sexuality.
This feminist perspective must include the understanding that
many women can and do live an alternative to male-orientated
sexuality. Such a perspective must include acceptance of the
need to build a world in which loving women is seen as a
positive choice for women, where the spinster and the lesbian
are not stigmatised, and in which sexual intercourse and
heterosexuality receive no special emphasis as sexual
possibilities. In such a world many more women would choose
to be lesbian. For that very reason we are far from attaining
such a world, and the idea that aggressive male sexuality should
be the organising principle of the universe is promoted with
such obsessive anxiety.
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