Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

specific racial characteristics are exploited to indicate particularmodulations of sexuality. As many black feminists have pointedout, “women” almost always means “white women. ” So all womenare saddled with the supposed sexual nature of white women, whilewomen of color have added onto that nature the sexual attributesimposed as a consequence of color in a society in which color is seenas deviant from the norm. Conversely and at the same time, sexualphilosophers in white-supremacist societies search so-called primitivetribes, subcultures of persons of color, and societies in whichpersons of color are the majority for endless examples of wifebeating and other sexual violence against women to demonstratethat such violence is natural (the natural will of women), notculture-bound. T he sexuality of the woman of color is supposedlyoutside the constraints of civilization, that is, natural. T he sexualityof the white woman is the norm of civilized sexuality. In bothcircumstances, the violence. women experience is postulated asbeing the will of the women; in both circumstances, she wants it,they all do. T he degree of force (force perceived as such) usedagainst the white woman establishes the norm of force acceptable insex in white-supremacist civilization. T he degree of force, then, iswithout limit because she wants it to be. N othing done to thefemale can possibly violate her because the white woman demandsviolence and pain; her demand gives force its sexual value. T hewhite woman, the civilized woman, whose transcendent femininityis realized through submission, requires force. Force to exist as suchrequires violence. Violence inevitably means the infliction of pain.T he norm of femininity as it manifests in normal women ismasochism. Force actualizes femininity. Violence is sex. Pain ispleasure for the woman. T he pornographic conceit is that thenormal female demands the force, the violence, the pain. Thispornographic conceit is precisely reiterated in the works of the mostdistinguished sexual philosophers, who as purveyors of malesupremacy necessarily share the values implicit in it. This pornographicconceit accounts for the fact that men in general do notbelieve that rape or battery are violations of female will. Film criticMolly Haskell, at the end of a decade of vigorous feminism in the