Radical Feminist or Closet Conservative: A Selection from Laura Kipnis’s Unwanted Advances (2017)
“In a sexual culture that emphasizes female violation and endangerment . . . men’s power is taken as a given instead of interrogated: Men need to be policed; women need to be protected. If rape is the norm, then male sexuality is by definition predatory; women are, by definition, prey. Regulators thus rush in like rescuing heroes, doing what it takes to fend off the villains — whatever it takes . . . .
And here’s where I say, as a feminist: This is terrible for women. We all, men and women both, want the law to protect us from unequal strength and exercises of violence: The brute can’t be allowed to rule because he’s larger or stronger. But why treat sexual assault as the paradigmatic female experience when there are plenty of other female experiences in which women’s embodied, physiological differences from men materially impede gender equity? As a feminist, I want to see the government step in to remedy those too. I don’t mean just pay equity, the conventional demand. I mean making child care and maternity costs free, which would obviously be the fastest path to real equity for the greatest number of women. This is an issue you hear pretty much zero about on American campuses lately, by the way. Instead, all historical inequities between the genders have been relocated to the sexual sphere and displaced onto sexual danger. . . .
It’s long been true of mainstream American feminism that the most supposedly radical factions have been closet conservatives, dedicated to recycling the most conventional versions of feminine virtue and delicacy. There have always been puritanical versions of feminism competing with more emancipatory versions. The so-called radical feminists of the second wave — the designation was always a misnomer — were short-sighted puritans, even aligning themselves with Christian conservatives to fight the demon pornography (just as some first-wave feminists joined with Prohibitionists to fight the demon rum). . . .
How is it that the most reactionary versions of feminism are the ones enjoying the greatest success on campuses? For one thing, those are the versions reaping the institutional support, not least in Washington. And no doubt there’s something reassuringly familiar — at least timeless — about these tales of female peril, even amidst the supposed sexual free-for-all of hookup culture.”—Laura Kipnis, Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus (2017)
