The edit clarifies the subject, puts the literature in context, and raises the questions you want to think about, all successfully. It also helpfully allows us to see where the thinking should now go. As a work in the history of ideas, this essay says, essentially, "second wave US feminists had a controversy in which thinkers who were critical of heterosexual engagement as a voluntary submission to patriarchy disputed with women who believed that their political and social liberation could be achieved without discarding heterosexuality and even late-20th century forms of abjurable marriage. 'Despite bad press,' this dialogue did not end the intellectual ferment second wave feminism started, which has now moved largely in other directions." This proposition is undoubtedly true, but it does not exhaust, or even largely reach, the possible analytical gains to be made at this distance. One might have said that the dialogue concluded largely in a realistic vein: heterosexuality and even marriage persisted. Lesbian and other sexual alternative lives for women also persisted, as they always had, and the lifting of some degrees of active hostility against such people and their lives turned out to support marriage as an institution more seriously, even as they challenged it. As is often the case in the history of ideas, the ostensible subjects of dispute turned out to be less important to the subsequent pathways of thought than the underlying intellectual dispositions to which the act of dialogue gave rise. The space from MacKinnon to Wendy Brown or Dinnerstein to Judy Butler is as rich as any vein in the history of thought, but "sex wars" turns out—unsurprisingly—to have almost nothing to do with why,

Andrea, this is more than 2,500 words, that's 2.5 times the word limit. You need to make a revised draft of not more than 1,000 words to have met the requirement. I cannot comment on a draft that is flagrantly overlong.

A Brief History and Impact of the Feminist Sex Wars (Revised)

Another prominent topic during this era applies liberal and radical feminist theory to queer sex, specifically in lesbian relationships among the binary divide of femme and butch. A femme is a feminized lesbian who throughout history has only been visible next to a butch - a masculinized lesbian (Harris & Crocker, 2014). This monolithic binary, that understands femme and butch simply on the aesthetic level has contributed to the difficulty “butches and femmes [face] to make their voices heard in lesbian histories” (Harris & Crocker, 2). Joan Nestle, Madeline Davis, and Amber Hollibaugh write about the alienation of femmes and fetishization of butches, in which femmes were seen as aspiring to patriarchal expectations for women and butches as the supreme lesbians who rejected femininity and opted for masculinity (1992). Yet, the authors denounce sex-negative theorists who created a hierarchy of lesbianism while at the same time eliminating butch and femme voices from feminism for middle-class white women because of the gendered power relations in femme-butch sexuality (Nestle, Davis, & Hollibaugh, 1992). Nestle and Davis, both self-identified queer sex-radicals, defy the anti-porn camp due to their un-nuanced approach to lesbian sexuality that does not see or understand the negotiation of power and gender roles between femmes and butches, a contradiction to the “patriarchal aspirations” both are supposed to have (1992). Susie Bright and Shar Rednour further counter the unbalanced power argument in the sexual relationships between femmes and butches by reminding everyone the gender of femmes and butches: women (1994). Despite their differences in aesthetic presentation, which appear to adhere male dominated sexual politics, Bright and Rednour insist the power dynamics in lesbian relationships (regardless of similarity in aesthetic presentations to heterosexual relationships) are not based on men’s power and violence (1994). Although sex positive scholars interpreted radical feminists’ focus on sexuality as a one-dimensional and reductionist view that resulted in restrictionary behavior among feminists, it is important to remember that radical feminism is primarily concerned with sexual violence, not sex itself. Feminist legal theorist, Catherine MacKinnon, and feminist scholar, Andrea Dworkin, created the first feminist anti-pornography legislation in the United States, which was passed in 1983 throughout several cities but was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court (1985). As opposed to previous obscenity law that allowed for criminal charges and which was based on moral legal arguments, Mackinnon and Dworkin’ (1985) bill focused on seeking civil legal remedies for those who were impacted by the creation and distribution of pornography and categorized pornography as a women’s civil rights violation which allowed for the law to be used an action tool against the creation of pornography benefitting both participants and recipients. MacKinnon and Dworkin (1988) were successful by categorizing pornography as sex-based discrimination on the grounds that its disproportionately sought women to be victims of sexual violence, included trafficking or coercion as part of its recruiting process, and the link between on-screen pornographic violence and domestic violence. Feminist legal theorists, Mary Eberts and A.F. Bayesky (1984), also used legal approaches to secure sex-based equality rights under the Canadian Constitution Charter for Rights and Freedoms in which pornography was also interpreted as promoting sex-based discrimination and violence. Claiming pornography is a civil rights violation resulted in domestic and international policymaking for gender parity which extended beyond anti-porn legislation to domestic violence, human trafficking, and femicide.

In the Politics of Killing Women, Radford and Russell (1992), discuss the globe wide practice of femicide defined by them as the killing of women by men “because they are women” which is theorized to be the result of the patriarchy, women’s low position on powered hierarchies, victim blaming, and residual violence from pornography (an impact that MacKinnon and Dworkin discuss in their works and try to counteract through the judicial system). Stanko and Radford (1991) continue to elaborate on the tie between violence against women and institutional responses concluding that current models of crime control are contradictory. The discourse on public safety, especially that of women staying aware of their surroundings, not trusting or engaging with strangers, not leaving the house after certain times, etc., does not address the root cause of violence - men - and it creates further isolation from the outside word making women vulnerable to the violence public crime control mechanisms so attempt to end (Stanko & Radford, 1991). But unlike ungendered forms of violence, sex-based violence does not usually fit the binary language of legal systems - good or bad, legal or illegal - partly because of the insistence to label violence on women as “domestic violence” which falls into the trap of dividing personal experiences into either the public and private sphere (Stanko & Radford, 1991).Within public and private sphere ideology exists the widespread practice of nuancing sexual violence beyond recognition of what it is, violence. This is done through victim blaming or excusing on behalf of women themselves, their abusers, and institutions who claim the abuse experience is simply too complicated to reach a verdict - a response that is often also heard in the discussion of what constitutes “real” rape (Stanko & Radford, 1991).

Where We Stand Now

Works Cited

Atcheson, M. Elizabeth, Mary A. Eberts, and Beth Symes. Women and legal action: precedents, resources and strategies for the future. Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, 1984.

Bright, Susie, and Shar Rednour. "The Joys of Butch." Dagger: On Butch Women. Ed. Lily Burana, Roxxie, and Linnea Due. San Francisco: Cleis P (1994): 134-48.

Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics [1989]." Feminist legal theory. Routledge, 2018. 57-80.

Davis, Madeline, Amber Hollibaugh, and Joan Nestle. "The femme tapes." The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader (1992): 254-267.

Douglas, Carol Anne. Love and politics: Radical feminist and lesbian theories. San Francisco: ism press, 1990.

Duncan, L. E. Women's relationship to feminism: Effects of generation and feminist self‐labeling. Psychology of Women Quarterly, (2010) 34(4), 498-507.

Dworkin, Andrea. Intercourse. Basic Books (AZ), 2006.

Dworkin, Andrea, and Catharine A. MacKinnon. The reasons why: Essays on the new civil rights law recognizing pornography as sex discrimination. Women Against Pornography, 1985.

Dworkin, Andrea, and Catharine A. MacKinnon. Pornography and civil rights: A new day for women's equality. Organizing Against Pornography, 1988.

Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Deirdre English. The manufacture of housework. na, 1975.

English, Deirdre, et al. “Talking Sex: A Conversation on Sexuality and Feminism.” Feminist Review, no. 11, 1982, pp. 40–52. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1394826.

Ferguson, Ann. "Sex war: The debate between radical and libertarian feminists." Signs: journal of women in culture and society 10.1 (1984): 106-112.

Finlayson, Lorna. “ Chapter 2 ‘Feminist Theory, Feminist Practice’. An introduction to feminism. Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Glick, Elisa. "Sex positive: Feminism, queer theory, and the politics of transgression." Feminist review 64.1 (2000): 19-45.

Harris, Laura, and Elizabeth Crocker. Femme: Feminists, lesbians and bad girls. Routledge, 2014.

Hollibaugh, Amber, and Cherrie Moraga. "What we’re rollin’around in bed with: Sexual silences in feminism." Desire: The Politics of Sexuality (1983): 404-414.

MacKinnon, Catherine A. “Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: ‘Pleasure under Patriarchy.” Ethics, vol. 99, no. 2, 1989, pp. 314–346. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2381437.

Nestle, Joan. "My mother liked to fuck." Powers of desire: The politics of sexuality (1983): 468-70.

Ortner, S. B. Too soon for post-feminism: The ongoing life of patriarchy in neoliberal America. History and Anthropology, (2014) 25(4), 530-549.

Queen, Carol. "Sex radical politics, sex-positive feminist thought, and whore stigma." Identity politics in the women’s movement (2001): 92-102.

Radford, Jill, and Elizabeth Stanko. "Violence against women and children: The contradictions of crime control under patriarchy." The politics of crime control (1991): 186-202.

Radford, Jill, and Diana EH Russell. Femicide: The politics of woman killing. Twayne Pub, 1992.

Rendall, Jane. The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States, 1780-1860. Macmillan International Higher Education, 1985.

Rubin, Gayle, and Judith Butler. "Sexual traffic." A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 6.2 (1994).

Russo, N. F., & Pirlott, A. Gender‐based violence. Annals of the new york academy of sciences, (2006) 1087(1), 178-205

Willis, Ellen. "Feminism, moralism, and pornography." NYL Sch. L. Rev. 38 (1993): 351.

Willis, Ellen. "Lust Horizons: Is the women’s movement pro-sex." Village Voice 26 (1981): 36-37.

Introduction

What is "Feminism?"

The Sex Wars

The Impact on the Present

This draft does the crucial job of a first draft well: it tells us what we are thinking about and puts questions that we can build on.

It seems to me that the best route to improvement, certainly the most accessible to someone like you who has read the literature, is to put the essay in touch with the literature. It's a little odd to read the history of thought without the thinkers. Not to discuss any particular writing is a drawback you can easily remedy. I know the books and essays you are talking about, but a reader who wasn't there can't readily locate herself. By viewing the conversation largely through the lenses of non-intellectuals not involved, whose approach—as you say—was largely reductive, you make it harder rather than easier for a contemporary reader to understand.

I should think we would want to consider, before we come to the pro- or the anti-, the immense and largely ignored significance of Shere Hite, who asked what sex women actually had and how they experienced it—earning ridiculous dismissal from the very observers you are treating as unnamed sources—in the process. Surely we can do better by Catherine MacKinnon, or even less subtle philosophers like Germaine Greer, than to trap them within an "anti-sex" label? Susan Brownmiller and Kate Millett deserve at least a couple of sentences about their actual ideas, don't they? Second-wave theorists like Dorothy Dinnerstein, Evelyn Keller, or (forgive my bias) my mother, for whom the "sex wars" were not the primary theoretical issue were not therefore not feminist thinkers, surely? Given that not all sex is heterosexual, and that the issues for lesbian theorists like Esther Newton were therefore of a different sort, some accounting for their pioneering might also help contemporary feminists see the historical background better.

The writing you are doing here is valuable. But so was theirs, and you gain value from being in true contact with one another, rather than leaving once- or still-living women, courageous, thoughtful intellectuals to be buried, unnamed, beneath the wreckage of a controversy than which they were immensely larger. You've read all these works and can inhabit them. I look forward to reading the next draft.

A Brief History and Impact of the Feminist Sex Wars

-- By AndreaRuedas - 23 Feb 2024

Introduction

Social movements in the United States during the latter half of the 20th century were based in a struggle for liberation, civil rights, and human rights. Anti-war and anti-imperialism organizing, as well as racial organizing for civil rights, dominated the Left’s image and politics which positioned feminism in the shadows of its male dominated counterparts. During this time period, feminism shifted from its suffrage based political platform to become a movement based in the dismantling of the patriarchy and socio-political equality of the genders. In the 1960s, sex and violence emerged as popular subjects among feminist activists and scholars that turned into a decades long debate between theorists. This debate became known as the feminist sex wars in which participating parties were simplified into two sides: anti-porn theorists and sex positive theorists. The sex wars became known for asking the question: is sex liberating or perpetuating oppression?

The sex wars, in which feminist scholars debated the origin and implications of sex (primarily heterosexual sex), marked an important moment in feminist social movements. From that point forward, articulations for the equality of women and the end of patriarchal structures were embedded with theory based on either sex positivity or sex negativity - especially in cases that involved gender-based violence or sex trafficking.

What is “Feminism?”

The origins of feminism continue to be contested, partially because of academic insistence to focus exclusively on movements using the word “feminist” without regard for prior organizing with similar goals and different language usage, but it is undeniable that throughout time women have collectively organized for their rights. In the United States, modern feminism is said to have begun with abolitionists calling for the end of chattel slavery (along with its highly gendered violence) and with suffragists demanding women’s right to vote during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With the attainment of the legal right to vote for white women in 1920, second-wave feminism at the beginning of 1960s focused on the slogan “The personal is political” to attract attention to issues of the private domain like reproductive healthcare, economic dependence, and gendered violence. Radical second wave feminists brought forth claims of sex work, pornography, and sexuality being mediums for violence on women’s bodies and psyches. Liberal feminists countered with the liberation found in sexual agency from virginity myths, coerced sex, and repression of women’s sexuality. The term, sex positivity, was created in response.

In the mid 1990s, third-wave feminism moved away from the heated sexuality arguments among feminists and demanded an intersectional feminism - one that recognized the impact of multiple axes of oppression on women, especially women of color who faced racism, poverty, and misogyny. Although women of color had been writing on topics of feminism for years before, mainstream feminism attempted to re-do theory and practice so as to intentionally consider, include, and highlight the narratives of women who were not white, cis, heterosexual, middle class, and able-bodied.

Today, we are living in the fourth wave which has been labeled as a “post-feminist” movement that consists of non-organized micro-movements that depend on digital platforms to serve as mediums (and replacements) for organizing, consciousness raising groups, and academia. While increased access to the internet and social media platforms has encouraged visibility of feminist concerns and actions, it has also allowed for the spread of anti-feminist stereotypes that has contributed to women disassociating themselves from the label “feminist.” However research points suggests that even when women do not self-label as feminists, women continue to support and engage with ideology and action that support women’s socio-political equality.

The Sex Wars

The binary division in the theoretical backgrounds of radical and liberal feminism led to that sex negative or sex positive interpretations of sexuality that permeated the sex wars. Radical feminist theory, a feminism whose focus is to dismantle all patriarchal institutions and systems as well as gender roles, argued that sex as it existed in this society could not be liberating. Porn, sex work, and individual heteronormative intercourse only existed through the male gaze, in which the pleasure of women was not and had never been the focus. Hence, neither could contribute to the sexual or whole liberation of women. Some theorists declared porn and rape as equivalent because actresses did not hold any agency during the filming, scenes were considered violent, and women were objectified and commodified.

Liberal feminists on the other hand, were preoccupied with the liberation of women through legal and social systems in which women would be able to make truly autonomous decisions. As such, women’s sexuality was not seen as a hindrance to the movement but as an asset because it symbolized the destruction of patriarchal sexual socialization that was based on slut shaming and misogyny. Sex workers and porn artists emerged to counter the claims made by radical feminists. They argued that through sex work and porn, women were able to appreciate their bodies, their pleasure in sex, and learned to balance power dynamics with their partners.

The Impact on the Present

Popular academia and the media portrayed the feminist sex wars as a dichotomous debate and omitted its many nuances. The sensationalism created the stereotype of the “man-hating, angry feminist” and overshadowed feminism’s multiple triumphs for women’s socio-political authority. As a result, feminism lost political strength and social support as many would-be feminists distanced and disidentified from the movement.

Despite the bad press, the sex wars should be recognized for their catalytic contribution to the birth and boom of the many feminist fields that exist today. Whereas the history of feminism began with suffrage and abolition, modern feminism considers everything from intersectionality to environmentalism. This expansion happened when second-wave feminists were pushed to critically consider and include not only their own experiences in relation to sex but also the lives of women across the globe who are impacted daily by politics affecting their agency, mobility, and security.