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

particularly undertook to shatter Freud’s concept of sublimation bypointing out that the sexual histories of male artists did not confirmthat they were sexually inactive, and sexual sublimation— orinhibition or repression— could not be proven by looking to womenbecause the concept does not take into account “the high incidenceof relatively unresponsive females who never had any appreciableamount of sexual energy to be diverted. ”40 According to Kinsey,psychotherapy is wasted on persons with a low sex drive, and mostwomen are sexually apathetic: “But such inactivity is no moresublimation [or repression or inhibition; Kinsey used the wordsinterchangeably] of sex drive than blindness or deafness or otherperceptive defects are sublimation of those capacities. ” 41 Despitethe low sex drive of the female, her resultant moralism, her sexualinhibition here used to mean refusal of sexual access, “we do notfind evidence. . . that the individual, rid of her inhibitions, wouldnot be capable of response. ” 42 All she has to do is to say yes. M utesubmission would also pass as “response” in Kinsey’s systembecause[i]t cannot be emphasized too often that orgasm cannot be takenas the sole criterion for determining the degree of satisfactionwhich a female may derive from sexual activity. Considerablepleasure may be found in sexual arousal which does notproceed to the point of orgasm, and in the social aspects of asexual relationship. W hether or not she herself reaches orgasm,many a female finds satisfaction in knowing that her husband orother sexual partner has enjoyed the contact, and in realizingthat she has contributed to the male’s pleasure. 4’A t the same time, predictably, “[i]t is inconceivable that males whowere not reaching orgasm would continue their marital coitus forany length of tim e. ” 44T h e function of the female in the conventional sexual relationship,as described by Kinsey, in which the woman participates notfor her sexual benefit but for that of the male and gets a socialreward for her compliance is stated clearly by Kinsey: under thesecircumstances, it is “impossible to draw a line between the most