From: mec6@quads.uchicago.edu (rini)
Subject: heterosexuality and feminism
Reply-To: mec6@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 20:26:29 GMT


Recently (this summer) Naomi Wolf wrote an article in Ms. entitled
"Radical Heterosexuality... or How To Love a Man and Save Your 
Feminist Soul."

It didn't strike me as particularly... oh... earth shaking or
anything, but when I got the most recent issue, it was filled with
letters about the article.  

So, for those of you who don't get Ms., let me take some excerpts.

From the article:


"All over the country, millions of feminists have a secret indulgence. 
By day they fight gender injustice; by night, they sleep with men.  Is
this a dual life?  A core contradiction?  Is sleeping with a man
'sleeping with the enemy'?  And is razor burn from kissing inherently
oppressive?

"It's time to say you *can* hate sexism and love men.  ....

"- Rules of The Relationship ....

"The radical heterosexual man must yield the automatic benefits
conferred by gender....

"Radical heterosexual women too must give up gender benefits...
I have watched myself stand complacently by while my partner 
wrestles with a stuck window, an intractable computer printer, 
maps or locks.  Sisters, I am not proud of this, and I'm
working on it....

"Radical heterosexuals must try to stay conscious -- at all times, I'm
afriad -- of their gender imporinting, and how it plays out in their
erotic melodramas... the antifemnist erotic template is *in* us.  We
would not be citizens of this culture is swooning damsels and
abandoned vixens had to been beamed at us from our first solid food to
our first vote.  We can't fight it until we admit to it....

"- In The Bedroom

"Those are the conditions for the radical heterosexual couple.  What
might this new creation look like in bed?  It will look like something
we have no words or images for -- the eroticization of consent, the
equal primacy of female and male desire.  ....

"- The Men We Love

"Men We Love understand that, no matter how similar our backgrounds, we
are engaged in a cross-cultural relationship.  ....

"Men We Love must make a leap of imagination to believe in the female
experience.  They do not call women nags or paranoid when we embark on
the arduous, often boring, nonnegotiable daily chore of drawing
attention to sexism....

"- A Place for Them

"When I was 16, my boyfriend came with me to hear Andrea Dworkin speak.
While hearing great feminist oratory in a sea of furious women changed
my life, it nearly ended my boyfriend's: he barely escaped being drawn
and quartered.  ....

"It's time to direct our anger more autely at the Men We Hate -- like
George Bush -- and give the Men We Love something useful to do.  ....

"Finally, the place to make room for radical feminist heterosexuality
is within our heads. ....  Is it the chromosomes of your lovers that 
establish you as a feminist?  Or is it the life you make out of the 
love you make."

========

Letters to the Editor:

"I hope it is not news when a feminist finds a great man to share her
life with.  If it is, I am extremely lucky and smart to be with an
equalitst husband."

"Right on, Sister! ... I have been living with an uneasy fear of not
being a 'Good Feminist'.  How can I be a Good Feminist if I cook my
partner's dinner or ask him to kill the ant on the kitchen counter?"

"From my own personal experience, I have learned that men will not be
sympathetic towards women's issues *until* they are enlightened by the
women they care about.  I believe that nearly ideal heterosexual
relationships can be created, but not simply found."

"Namoi Wolf attempts to sabotage the women's movement by advocating a
return to heterosexuality... This reactionary view comes at a time
when women are just beginning to uderstand the connection between
heterosexuality and our enslavement."

"We were appalled at Naomi Wolf's article.  It is clear that her
'radical' is at best conservative and at worst destructive. ... Her
analysis provides such a superficial solution to female/male
relationships: all men have to do is cuddle babies and all women have
to do is get out of bed and fix the TV aerial.  It is as depressing as
it is astonishing that someone apparaently familiar with the reality
of misogyny would prescribe such simplistic solutions."


rini
Newsgroups: alt.feminism