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Reconcilable Differences: Confronting Beauty, Pornography, and the Future of Feminism

University of California Press

It is easy to assert that differences in relative emphasis have separated considerations of sex from sexism in contemporary feminism. But to understand why is more difficult, requiring a theoretical explanation. It is not sufficient merely to observe a recurrent divide in second-wave American feminism from the mid-1970s onward. Unless feminism is placed within its own social and historical context, feminists may seem responsible for problems that are not of our own making. Indeed, several broad cultural factors have impinged on feminism's development and contributed to its defensive predicament.

Yet isn't it limiting to focus only on impediments imposed on feminism from outside? Any social movement that fails to recognize that groups of people acting in concert possess agency and thus that it is not predestined to proceed in any particular direction may find itself stuck; it may become caught in a historical vise, its changes having little effect, finding solace only by blaming hostile outside forces. Thus in this chapter I identify a set of factors that may have influenced the feminist dilemma depicted in the introduction. For surely a patterned opposition of some feminists to others did not have to develop and recur. For instance, feminists could have intensely disagreed, but stayed within their umbrella organization(s) or formed coalitions of diverse feminist groups (representing a broader range of colors and classes, and embracing liberal to radical to socialist to black feminist perspectives). Such an "agreement to disagree" has occurred in the past and is occurring in

important respects now.1 Nevertheless, building coalitions to maximize collective feminist political strength is extremely difficult indeed; it may be harder still to preserve healthy internal debate in an umbrella organization or maintain the autonomy of organizations within a coalition. Another possibility is that for each of the issues on which this volume focuses—pornography, beauty expectations, violence against women—four dominant feminist positions would recurrently emerge, or more likely three (as feminists attempt to synthesize apparently unbridgeable gaps separating the other two points of view).

So again, why split—and even more to the point, why split into two politically identifiable positions? For there seems to be little question that two-sided debates and the creation of feminist "others" have indeed dominated contemporary feminist politics. As Part Two's well-known case studies make clear, these debates have frequently been highly charged and in some instances highly polarizing. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin have referred to feminists who oppose pornography as "Uncle Toms" of the movement,2 refusing on many occasions to debate them and engage with their views. On that other "side," Nadine Strossen mockingly refers to the "MacDworkinites" as she defends pornography; the MacDworkinites provide both a real and a straw person argument against which Strossen can define her position.3 Similarly, philosopher Laurie Schrage has disdainfully referred to sex workers as "Uncle Toms" in collusion with patriarchy; on the other hand, sex workers themselves often conclude that many feminists pay little attention to their immediate interests and concerns as women.4 More generally, by referring to victim feminists versus power feminists in Fire with Fire (1993), Naomi Wolf conveys a decided sense of "them" versus "us" despite her intention to incorporate the strengths and discard the weaknesses of older perspectives.5

On issue after issue, we find a tendency toward dichotomies, a polarizing of feminist positions as sexism "versus" sex, structure "versus" agency. Though this phenomenon is partly explicable from within, as we will see in chapter z, we must also examine it from without. A host of cultural, historical, and social factors have affected the shape of U.S. feminism, adding to the distinctive problems of confronting gendered subordination itself. In this specific setting, there are at least four such outside factors that could easily affect the reactions of the feminist movement itself: the conservative antifeminist backlash; a factionalizing tendency common to numerous social movements in the United States; the cultural habit, deeply engrained even in feminists, of thinking

in "either/or" categories;6 and recent ways of thinking about social change, especially certain aspects of postmodernist theory.

Consider first the conservative antifeminist backlash. Reactions against 1960s social movements slowly but surely strengthened with rising conservatism, even before the Reagan-Bush era officially commenced in 1980. As Susan Faludi has reported in Backlash (1991) with encyclopedic thoroughness, antifeminist reactions took a striking array of forms, from the assertion of "family values" to the essentialist tendencies of Robert Bly's version of the "men's movement."7 The feminist movement was confronted by direct political antagonism in the shape of a highly organized and well-funded antiabortion campaign, including at its margins terrorist acts of violence aimed at closing abortion clinics. This necessitated that feminists devote huge amounts of time and energy to reacting to this reaction, in order to protect a right to choose that was supposed to have been won. Under such circumstances, a defensive posture would have been difficult to avoid indeed. Another, more indirect, manifestation of backlash is especially germane to the specific problem of splits within feminism: it is one of the effects of the news philosophy of U.S. media. Though it refers to tenets that characterize the media in general, not just its actions during the conservative social climate of the 1980s and 1990s, this philosophy may have interacted with backlash in a way which intensified the latter's effects.

For perhaps the feminist movement has not really been divided into dual positions, splitting sex from sexism. What we may be seeing instead is the tendency of American mass media to make it seem as though only two opposing sides of feminist debates about sexuality are worth bringing to public notice. Typical habits of journalists may have aggravated—or even created—a perception of discrete sides that takes its "truth" from media intervention. As Stuart Hall has observed of Britain, conventional beliefs in journalistic objectivity remain very much alive—and they produce conservative effects. Hall and his coauthors describe how British media characteristically oppose two positions and spokespersons, even if both "sides" share an interest in radically challenging society. And once contrary pairs are posited, their opposition works to neutralize the significance of each: Hall calls this a "central element in the repertoire of modern liberalism."8 There is no reason to expect anything different in the United States, where objectivity and the need to present "two sides to every story" are still commonly held ideas of editors and reporters in mainstream news organizations.9

Thus we might expect preferential treatment to be accorded those

feminist issues and spokespersons who best fit the media's either/or mold: they supply a ready-made, built-in hook. For example,...