Freedman - Sexism

Freedman sexuality

            In her article on sexuality, Freedman defines sexuality as an arena of both oppressive inequalities as well as a struggle to reach liberation for women. Freedman is very critical of men and masculinity as she believes that male domination in today’s society shapes female sexuality. One of the ways that this takes place is through rape, which happens much more often than we would like to think it does.  However, Freedman does not fall into the trap of simply criticizing men for the oppression of women in today’s world; but rather, she lays out the reasons as to why women are such prominent victims of sexism.

            For example, Freedman is not afraid to be critical of the fact that feminists need to work together in order to end this oppression and not be so divided. She uses the example of the radical feminist view (gender controlled by men) versus political theoretical tradition (historic repression of sexuality). In order for the feminist movement to flourish, feminists must be one collective entity rather than scattered pieces sharing the same vague concepts. Another example of the split between feminists has been the anti-pornography literature. Many feminists began to ask questions as to what exactly the tone and content of the literature was as they were frightened of the possibility of the movement conflating sexuality and violence, even going so far to say that the literature against pornography ‘played into the traditional antisexual attitudes of American culture.’ As Freedman goes on she explains that rather than engaging in fair dialogue, these two opposing forces soon engaged in ‘polarized debtate’. All this split did was create further chaos among an already difficult time for many feminists and women fighting for rights. In essence these feminists were being sexist towards each other in that they were criticizing each other for their own views on sexuality; women were oppressing women.

            To further this topic of feminist’s being split are the two views of radical and liberal feminist positions, both of which have differing views on many features, particularly those of sexuality. However, as Freedman explains, both are ‘ahistorical and insufficiently complex’ views that do little to better the feminist world. Each of these views has their own personal paradigm of sexuality. These debates within feminist society about sex and sexuality, exemplify the centrality of the languages of sexuality as well as control within the modern feminist world.

            According to Freedman sexuality is about pleasure and intimacy. Assuming we understand sexuality, we see it as a socially constructed term. Sexuality is mainly about having control over one’s body in that sexuality shapes one’s own identity. In today’s society it is very difficult to even start talking about sexism and sex in more general. In order to be critical of different ideas revolving around sexuality we must overcome resistances externally and internally as we live in a society that is quite inhospitable to any sort of analysis of sexuality. To be more specific, the sexuality of the female in particular is considered taboo in many cultures. We must be brave to overcome these obstacles as the majority of the time if one is speaking about sexuality one will be speaking in opposition and to do this is to encourage strong and negative reactions.