Straight Sex - The Politics of Pleasure, by Lynne Segal (Virago £8.99) 'PENETRATION enacts the subjugation of women by men' claims Andrea Dworkin. Lynne Segal's book takes issue with this idea, which, in her view, has come to dominate much of feminist thinking on sexuality since the late 1970s.
Central to 'Straight Sex' are the questions of what is at stake in women's sexual desire for men and whether women can express their pleasure in heterosexual sex without increasing men's power.
She argues that the feminist project has been derailed by the focus on heterosexual sex as linked and fundamental to the domination of women by men in all spheres of life.
The book traces both feminist theory and practice, focusing on personal experience and history as well as covering the contribution of sexological and psychoanalytic theory and of 'queer' politics to the debates.
Repurcussions
Segal acknowledges the debt to lesbian feminists in the development of a feminist theory of sexuality, taking up and describing many of the practical repercussions in the feminist movement resulting from some of the debates and battles over sexuality.
She describes the marginalisation of lesbians in the women's liberation movement, the subsequent development of 'political lesbianism' and how its general thesis came to dominate much feminist thinking on sexuality.
How the views articulated by Adrienne Rich, amongst others, in her essay 'Compulsory Heterosexuality' that women's movement. of their sexual lives. not share our culture. tory: heterosexuality was forcibly and subliminally imposed on women' and all women were really part of the lesbian continuum' became centre stage in the In this process straight women were silent and guilty about their sexual practice and desire as were many lesbians who felt unable to talk about the reality Lesbianism was held up as an ideal and heterosexuality as an institution to enforce male dominance. The complexity of sexual desire, the contradictions and the complex issues of power and consent were swept under the carpet.
As American lesbian feminist Joan Nestle commented later, 'We lesbians made a mistake in the early seventies: we allowed our lives to be trivialised and reinterpreted by feminists who did The slogan 'Lesbianism is the practice and feminism is the theory' was a good rallying cry but it cheated our hisfuck'.
Segal asserts that women enjoying 'sex with men, confident in the knowledge that this, just this, is what we want, and how we want it... confound the political and cultural meanings given to heterosexuality.' which define 'sex' as something 'done' by active men to passive women, not something women do.
Equality
She rightly asserts that all of us struggling for women's equality must attack the idea of heterosexuality as a confirmation of 'manhood'.
We must struggle against the idea that there is a necessary correlation between maleness, activity and desire as much as we struggle against the similar notion which associates women with passivity and sexual responsiveness.
As Joan Nestle said amidst great controversy, 'Don't scream penis at me, but help to change the world so no woman feels shame or fear because she likes to
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 69, September 24 1994, Page 13