Abstract
It is striking how the first three accounts of sexuality that I dealt with treat women and female sexuality as obscure or dangerous subjects. In Christianity, in psychoanalysis, in Foucault’s work, women are either absent, or are treated as the mysterious and sinister Other. In Freudian language, women are the repressed; or to use Lacan’s formulation of this, ‘a woman is a symptom’.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Siân Morgan, ‘The dream of psychoanalysis: Irma s dream, some commentaries and a contemplation of its navel’, in British Journal of Psychotherapy 12: 2 (1995), pp. 160–9.
See Sue Wilkinson and Celia Kitzinger (eds), Heterosexuality: A ‘Feminism and Psychology’ Reader (London: Sage, 1993).
E. Grosz and E. Probyn (eds), Sexy Bodies: The Strange Carnalities of Feminism (London and New York: Routledge, 1995);
Pat Califa, Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex (Pittsburgh: Cleis, 1994); L. Segal and M. Mcintosh (eds), Sex Exposed;
P.C. Gibson and R. Gibson (eds), Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography, Power (London: BFI, 1993).
The two wings are illustrated by the anti-porn book, Catherine Itzin (ed.), Pornography: Women, Violence and Civil Liberties (Oxford: OUP, 1993); and the anti-anti-porn collection, L. Segal and M. Mcintosh (eds), Sex Exposed.
Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover: The Sexuality of Terrorism (London: Mandarin, 1990).
On the use of allegory, see Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form (London: Picador, 1987).
See Camille Paglia, ‘Madonna I: Animality and artifice’, and ‘Madonna II: Venus of the radio waves’, in Sex, Art and American Culture (London: Viking, 1992); for a more complex view, see M.J. Hardie, ‘“I embrace the difference”: Elizabeth Taylor and the closet’, in E. Grosz and E. Probyn (eds), Sexy Bodies, pp. 155–71.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 1997 Roger Horrocks
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Horrocks, R. (1997). Feminism and the Politics of Sexuality. In: Campling, J. (eds) An Introduction to the Study of Sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390140_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230390140_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-65139-1
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-39014-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)