In class Tuesday, there was much debate over feminism and a woman's control of her sexual being. MacKinnon argued that women do not control their sexuality because it is dominated by men. I think that this thought may have some truth to it...but only in certain situations. These situations would include when a woman is raped or when one is in a relationship where she is often convinced to have sex when she doesn't want to. However, I feel that women do have control over their own sexuality, and many abuse it more than MacKinnon thinks men do. I do not mean women raping men, although that does happen, but I am talking about gold-diggers. Gold-diggers are, more or less, glorified prostitutes, as they have sex with a man that not many would like to touch simply because he has money and spends it on her. The gold-digger would most likely feel empowered because she is getting a lot of glamorous things and living the good life for the low cost of her dignity, which probably isn't worth much, and having sex with someone who probably won't be alive for very long if it is a case like Anna Nicole Smith or something. But would MacKinnon cheer on gold-diggers because they are women that are taking control of their sexuality? Or would she make some claim about men trying to control all women with their bank accounts and keep them from working so men can dominate the working fields?
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First, I think that MacKinnon would ask whether the gold-digger is really all that common or simply trotted out and overemphasized as a counterexample in order to deny a much more pervasive phenomenon involving legal and social conditions that disproportionately favor men. For example, women still earn 20 cents less for every dollar earned by men when differences for occupation, marital status, work patterns and other factors are taken into account. With this pervasive inequality between the earnings of men and women is the relatively infrequent example of the gold-digger even relevant?
ReplyDeleteSecond, I think MacKinnon might wonder whether the motive for bringing up the gold-digger example was related to “men’s pervasive belief that women fabricate rape charges after consenting to sex” (653) as it draws on the pervasive mythology of female duplicity and male lack of culpability.
Finally, I think that MacKinnon would point out the way that even the gold-digger must work within unequal gender relations that represent desirability rather than initiative as women’s proper form of power. See MacKinnon’s remarks on 655 for more on this.