Feminist Doublethink, Part II
A better feminism must negotiate and reckon with uncomfortable questions
—Love and Pain, Edvard Munch
III. The Principles of Lust1
What, then, happens to feminism when we accept unflinchingly that we “cannot legislate relationships”2—when we let ourselves be overpowered by our desires?
Perhaps, freedom. In her recent essay collection3, Becca Rothfeld sketches out the aspirational possibility of sex as carnival. Submission to transgressive desires, she argues, is not wrong; instead, it beckons in eroticism—itself a moral imperative. In contrast to the strictures of adult life, typified for Rothfeld by the predictable ritual of a dinner party, sex functions as one of the “few forms of play permitted to adults”, allowing both the casting off—and on—of new identities. Indeed, without implementing institutional reform that addresses the factors responsible for disempowering desires (though how such reform would manifest, we are never told), Rothfeld suggests that forbidding “impolitic cravings” dooms women to engage only in a “restrictive ethics of personal restraint”.
Left with little model of what such carnival even looks like, we are forced to extrapolate from the books underlying Rothfeld’s analysis. In ‘Acts of Service’, a bisexual, stridently feminist protagonist gradually lets go of her politics—and girlfriend—to engage in a secretive, torturous relationship with Nathan, a man whose power seems to reside entirely in the force of his heterosexuality. Portrayed as a sex Svengali, Nathan is able to sweep away (or rather, “cure”4) such troublesome things as political commitments. Moments of his lucidity surely emerge in diagnosis: “First of all,” he tells the protagonist, “you have a straight forward rape fantasy…you’re too afraid to get near it”5. And though she protests, slowly but surely he uncovers—or, possibly moulds—in her something unrecognisable; lustful, selfish, and yet undoubtedly euphoric.
To take such transformation seriously—to conceive of Nathan as not merely disturbing, but truly discerning—is not so far from Rothfeld’s narrativising of her own sexual experiences: “[P]ain ought to contradict pleasure. But I think that it hurt, it really hurt, and yet it still felt good”6. While we may be squeamish to entertain her interpretations, Rothfeld is not alone in seeing sex and violence as, at times, coming hand-in-hand; eroticism—it seems—can have an abrasive edge. Feminist provocateur, Camille Paglia, puts it more crudely: we must accept the possibility, she argues, that there are those who choose to stay in their roles as ‘battered women’, solely for the “hot sex” that ensues; “some women like to flirt with danger because there is a little sizzle in it”7. Just as Rothfeld viscerally recalls a film by Cronenberg where, following her husband’s bestial transformation, the wife both “responds [to] and [is] repelled [by] the best sex she’s ever had but also the most terrifying”8, so, too, does the “sizzle” of depoliticised desire emerge in Tennessee Williams’ play, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’. Despite Blanche pleading her sister, Stella, to leave her barbaric, abusive husband—who ultimately rapes Blanche—Stella is resolute: “there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark—that sort of make everything else seem—unimportant”9.
Rothfeld, it must be said, does not claim that eroticism necessitates this kind of moral blindness—though readers might be forgiven for expecting such a conclusion to materialise. Instead, approaching the thorniness of politics’ intrusion, she allows that “under the most abjectly patriarchal conditions, the degradation that women experience in bed [can become] an extension of the same degradation they experience everywhere else”10. Such a verdict, the very one so incisively argued by second-wave feminists, may feel daunting, if not outright damning—but not for Rothfeld. She accounts for the possibility of societal oppression extending to the bedroom by taking a novel tack; any sex following an agenda is trite, lacking in “all the surprises that eroticism cannot do without”11. Apparently dulled to its horror, we ought only to reject female sexual degradation for the boredom it elicits. At least for our most lurid fantasies, Rothfeld does acknowledge that we need “political protections”12, though this admission is tidily confined to a subclause. In the meantime, Rothfeld’s rewriting of the bedroom as bedroom-cum-laboratory takes centre-stage: it is within our sexual arrangements that she hopes we might, through trial-and-error, discover better political ones.
It is curious, then, that every instance of carnivalistic experimentation rigidly returns to the status quo, revealing that there is not so clear a line separating the bedroom, idealised by Rothfeld as potential tabula rasa, and the political sphere. Might it be that, in “seeking ecstasy on the battlefield”13, we can only be greeted by a feminism that, in Dworkin’s angry words, is “fighting for the right to be humiliated [...], or the right to be tied up and proud”14. Such political ends, which only recapitulate existing dynamics, feel little like a feminism at all; indeed, in the furious—unpublished—piece from 1983, ‘Goodbye to All This’, Dworkin anticipates the insidious repetitiveness of these liberatory visions, “oh so femme fatale, daring to be blond, daring to wear make-up [..] keep fighting for the right to be femme, honey, take it all the way to the Pentagon, bring the military industrial complex to its knees”15. Yet despite her, rightfully bitter, concession that the movement she, alongside her peers, articulated is dead—“Goodbye to the dummies who thought sex could express reciprocity and equality and still be sexy. Goodbye to the dummies who thought this movement could change the world. [...] Goodbye Women’s movement, hello girls.”16—recent re-examinations have still claimed this resentment on her part is “frankly bananas”17.
In refusing to acknowledge our turn to a feminism which venerates girlhood-as-subversion, this critique misses precisely what Dworkin foresaw, and was so afraid of: a politic in which women’s resistance is precisely tailored to men’s preferences. Consider attempts at revolutionary hyperfemininity (“not in the conservative, conforming to patriarchy [...] type of way, but rather in the fourth-wave feminist, borderline misandrist, [...] sofia coppola movie type of way”18) which are ultimately belied by “having to explain [this] to every new man [they] meet”19. Simultaneously, others suggest the praxis of “prey-mode”, wherein women, “radical[ly] accept[ing] bottom-feeder status20”, find power in ‘strategically’ surrendering to girldom: “If she’s so incapable, if she's so clueless, then we should really just give her a break already”21. The bedroom, thus, functions not as a haven for experimental expression, but—once again—an extension of a worldview which hastens feminism’s political dead-end.
We ought not to engage in hagiography, however. An approach which willingly concedes that feminism is opposed to desire will likely also fail. By assuming a clear distinction between militant women, capable of taking up the mantle, and women content to stay, like Tennessee Williams’ Stella, “in the dark”22, the feminist project becomes insipid and uninspired, confined to being the purview of zealous radicals, rather than an exercise in coalition building. Indeed, we may wonder, given what we know of the doublethink that plagued the second-wave, whether such a militant feminism really ever even existed.
A better feminism, then, must negotiate and reckon with uncomfortable questions. It must avoid taking a solely rules-based approach, that “allow[s] no room for what [we] might actually feel, what [we] might actually want or not want23”, and resist that doomed dichotomy between erotically ‘enlightened’ women and “hysterical moralists”24, desperate to “legislate the ambiguities out of sex”25. It need not be so diametrically opposed to our desires.
Of course, this endeavour is not without its challenges—namely, as Rothfeld convincingly argues, the transformative, “jarring”26 nature of experiences like sex. We are motivated not by pleasure alone, but also by novelty, by revelation, by the prospect that yielding to an experience might metamorphose us, even if we can’t always predict how. Knowing the unpredictability of our change, we can only hope to simulate what our future self will feel; rational decision-making eludes us. More pressingly, we are not always capable of knowing what we want. Given an impossibly broad option-space, where both participants’ desires are formed through a lifetime of interactions, we must accept that desire is generative, formed in conversation, not “something to satiate rather than create”27. Simultaneously, consenting with the hopes of transformational, mystical ends, also means—as uncomfortable as it may strike us—accepting an alternative, less pleasurable result. This is true for relationships writ large: we may date, or indeed befriend, individuals we think will transform our lives for the better, only to be disappointed by the outcome.
Yet, just because these interactions hurt us, does not mean we have been morally injured or violated, and to draw comparison with instances of grievous, abusive harms risks minimising the latter. Kristen Roupenian’s infamous New Yorker short story, Cat Person, explores precisely this gap—between unsatisfactory and actively harmful sex; Margot, the protagonist, surprises herself by crushing on an older man, though as the story progresses, she oscillates between disgust at her attraction and affection towards him and, in particular, his low self-esteem. “Margot had trouble believing that a grown man could possibly be so bad at kissing. It seemed awful, yet somehow it also gave her that tender feeling toward him again, the sense that even though he was older than her, she knew something he didn’t.”28 When she inevitably finds herself having sex with him, despite having consented to the encounter—indeed, being principally responsible for initiating it—she feels a wave of revulsion, the “perverse cousin to arousal”29. Still, as the encounter transitions from one she wanted, to one that she no longer does, instead of being able to renege on her consent, Margot feels static, unable to stop what she has “set in motion”: “It wasn’t that she was scared he would try to force her to do something against her will but that insisting that they stop now, after everything she’d done to push this forward, would make her seem spoiled and capricious”30. In Margot’s internal monologue, Roupenian thus inadvertently reveals what we are loath to admit: that a feminism which encourages regression to girlhood offers no real protection. Indulging in patriarchal expectations of passivity only leaves us stuck, like Margot, feeling that we owe men something, even through our own discomfort.
Perhaps it is the case, per Rothfeld, that desire is “equali[s]ing” in its “disempowerm[ent]31”—yet, even so, feminists ought not disarm themselves too early. Indeed, Camille Paglia offers up a more promising solution when she proposes a feminism that is “bawdy, streetwise, and on-the-spot confrontational32”, which emboldens women to realise “sexuality [...] belongs to them” and that lust “should not be something men are directing towards us”33. Though for Paglia, this solution ultimately edges into apologist territory, the principle—of a feminism built on confrontation and bravery, rather than passivity—feels hopeful34.
Wanting bad things may come easily; getting them, though, is another matter entirely.
For some girls who left to a mixed school, peripeteia struck quickly; it was not uncommon for students to return, head hung low, one month into the academic year. For others, though, assimilation was intoxicating; the boys were confident—but not like us, nothing like us. Talking back to a teacher wasn’t tinged by bashfulness, but by a tenor of rowdy self-importance. This brashness, this Juvenalian satire—mocking ‘Sir’—was something new; perhaps even something brilliant. Those of us left behind became anxious; ashamed by our continual clinging to immature female friendships, we were newly aware of our status as psychosexually stunted.
But then, in March of 2021, there is a shift. A rupture in the fabric. What feels easily dismissable becomes remade, newly disturbing. Sarah Everard’s kidnapping, rape, and subsequent strangulation at the hands of a police officer catalyses weeks of protest across the UK. Incensed about the blisteringly real, but neglected threat to their safety, women organise in droves; in just two weeks, the government’s consultation on violence against women receives 160,000 new responses. We, though, are more focussed on the Instagram account everyonesinvited, watching, rapt, freshly eighteen, as testimony after testimony is posted, implicating boys at schools we know; the schools we compete in ‘friendly tournaments’ against, the schools our brothers attended, the schools our girls left to. All of a sudden, moments of the last two years are redefined and overwritten; the reckoning occurs in retrospect.35
VI. Consciousness-Raising
If, then, we recognise the implausibility of militant feminism, given our tendencies towards hypocrisy, and, simultaneously, are dissatisfied with the alternative—an individualistic pursuit of pleasure, devoid of politics—what ought a contemporary feminist to do?
Perhaps, she ought to face her imperfections, and wilfully engage in a little doublethink. Just as Amia Srinivasan’s conception of liberation is—rightfully—as “a process”, “not some final end state”36, so, too, must our re-aligning of desire with feminist conviction take time. Yet, Becca Rothfeld astutely notes that, for a woman with hopes of reforming her desires, Srinivasan offers limited instruction; while we may wish to “dwell in that ambivalent place where we acknowledge that [...] who is desired and who isn’t is a political question37”, to do so does not resolve our conflicts “to sleep with men or not, to crawl to [our] lovers’ feet and surrender or not”38. And, though “want” may be a potent propelling force, which compels us to “stop dwelling and start acting”39, we ought to remember that a wide range of possibilities can emerge between formulating our desires and following them to the letter. We may, for instance, take pleasure in our partner’s possessiveness in threatening not to allow us to wear overly revealing attire, while, equally, knowing that were they to do so, such an action would lose all eroticism, and function only as a source of misogynist horror. Our inner fantasies need not always be borne by reality; indeed, a feeling of surrender may feel more titillating by virtue of existing in an unliteralised territory—the thought is transmuted; the action, incomplete. We must remember that wanting is not always as satisfying as getting.
Yet, we must also be open to doublethink, for it lets us court extraordinary experiences, while knowing both, that we must take responsibility for our experimentation and that societal shaping may be to blame, in the event of disappointment. Such actions, though, should be complemented by the very consciousness-raising that the second-wave feminists engaged in—though in a space open to our flaws, rather than intent on purging them. Relationships may be a secret, “inscrutable to outsiders”40, but our relations to craving need not follow the same structure: among friends, among our sisters, we should aspire to be vulnerable. Our project, then, would not shy away from the “dark, unconsoling mysteries41” of desire; rather, surrounded by peers, we could start to resolve these hypocrisies as feminists—discussing them, making sense of them and, perhaps, reshaping them.
Camille Paglia, in ‘Sex, Art, and American Culture’
ibid
Becca Rothfeld, in ‘All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess’
Lilian Fishman, ‘Acts of Service’
ibid
Becca Rothfeld, in ‘Rhapsody in Blue’
Camille Paglia, in ‘Sex, Art, and American Culture’
Becca Rothfeld, in ‘All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess’
Tennessee Williams, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
Becca Rothfeld, in ‘All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess’
ibid
ibid
Sophie Lewis, in ‘Battlefield Ecstasies’
Andrea Dworkin, ‘Goodbye to All This’, in ‘Last Days at Hot Slit’
ibid
ibid
Sophie Lewis, in ‘Battlefield Ecstasies’
@dreamingofdior on TikTok
ibid
Alex Quicho, in ‘Everyone is a Girl Online’
ibid
Tennessee Williams, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’
Mary Gaitskill, in ‘On Not Being a Victim: Sex, rape, and the trouble with following rules’
Camille Paglia, in ‘Sex, Art, and American Culture’
Mary Gaitskill, in ‘On Not Being a Victim: Sex, rape, and the trouble with following rules’
Becca Rothfeld, in ‘All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess’
Brandy Jensen, in ‘The Polycrisis: Why can’t we stop talking about nonmonogamy?’
Kristen Roupenian, ‘Cat Person’
ibid
ibid
Becca Rothfeld, in ‘All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess’. Note that Rothfeld is here citing Gillian Rose, in ‘Love’s Work’.
Camille Paglia, in ‘Sex, Art, and American Culture’
ibid
I plan to expand on this ‘rebuilding of womanhood’ in a later piece
My friend
has written powerfully on these moments of reckoning in her piece, ‘I HATE MEN AND MEN HATE ME’Amia Srinivasan, in ‘What Should Feminist Theory Be?’
Amia Srinivasan, in ‘The Right to Sex’
Becca Rothfeld, in ‘All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess’.
ibid
Brandy Jensen, in ‘The Polycrisis: Why can’t we stop talking about nonmonogamy?’
Camille Paglia, in ‘Sex, Art, and American Culture’