Most of the article, I can understand and get behind.
But the middle part (about sex) just completely loses me.
What didn’t you understand?
The only problem I have with Angel’s Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again is its title, which seems to imply that sex was once good (not-antagonistic) and will be that again.
Here he’s saying that sex was never non-antagonistic, right? What does this mean?
“Women are in a bind. In the name of consent and empowerment, they must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently. Yet sex researchers suggest that women’s desire is often slow to emerge. And men are keen to insist that they know what women—and their bodies—want. Meanwhile, sexual violence abounds. How can women, in this environment, possibly know what they want? And why do we expect them to? Katherine Angel challenges our assumptions about women’s desire. Why, she asks, should they be expected to know their desires? And how do we take sexual violence seriously, when not knowing what we want is key to both eroticism and personhood?
I’m just confused by this. What does he mean by “women know/don’t know what they want”? Is this related to consent, in that, women don’t know if they want to consent? They don’t know if they want sexual interaction?
Any feminist theory should take into account not-knowing as a key feature of sexuality and ground its opposition to violence in sexual relationship not in the usual terms of ‘yes means yes’, but by evoking this not-knowing. This is why the motto that women “must proclaim their desires clearly and confidently” is not just a violent imposition on sexuality but literally de-sexualizing, a promotion of ‘sex without sex’. This is why feminism, in some instances, enforces precisely the same ‘shaming and silencing’ of women’s sexuality that it seeks to oppose. What lies under the direct physical (or psychological) violence of unwanted male sexual advances is the patronizing assumption he knows what the ‘confused’ woman doesn’t know (and is thereby legitimized to act upon this knowledge). It could thus be argued that a man is violent even if he treats a woman respectfully – as long as it’s done under this presumption of knowing more about her desires than she does herself.
Is he saying that women don’t know if they want to consent or not but after having sex they like it and thus consent retroactively?
It may happen that I not only desire something but want to get it without explicitly asking for it, pretending that it was imposed on me – demanding it directly would ruin the satisfaction of getting it. And inversely, I may want something, dream about it, but I don’t desire to get it – my entire subjective consistency depends on this not-getting-it: Directly getting it would lead to a collapse of my subjectivity. We should always bear in mind that one of the most brutal forms of violence occurs when something that we secretly desire or fantasize about (but are not ready to do in real life) is imposed on us from outside.
Umm, so…sometimes women play hard to get and men should force themselves on them? This just reads like he’s taking one particular kink that should be reserved between consenting adults and generalizing them to all relationships. A lot of people have rape fantasies but they’re fantasies for a reason, right? Like, what am I not getting?
The only form of sex that fully fits the politically correct criteria is a sado-masochist contract.
How???
Here he’s saying that sex was never non-antagonistic, right? What does this mean?
That it was always antagonistic.
I’m just confused by this. What does he mean by “women know/don’t know what they want”? Is this related to consent, in that, women don’t know if they want to consent? They don’t know if they want sexual interaction?
He means that women don’t just look at a random guy and think oh, I want him because of this and this and this and by extension I will reliably want any man in any circumstance who is like this and this and this. When they want it, it’s highly circumstantial and hard to translate into epistemic language.
Is he saying that women don’t know if they want to consent or not but after having sex they like it and thus consent retroactively?
He’s saying that the ambiguity is a big part of the mystique of sex particularly for women. He thinks that women having to state that they explicitly want X Y and Z kills it for them.
Umm, so…sometimes women play hard to get and men should force themselves on them?
He’s saying that just because someone “officially” wants something doesn’t mean they really want it. I.e. women who “want” to get raped don’t really want to get raped, they just want to fantasize about getting raped.
The only form of sex that fully fits the politically correct criteria is a sado-masochist contract. How???
Because it’s the only way you can fulfill the idea of epistemic consent while at the same time having an element of thrill and unpredictability. Basically, you’re epistemically consenting to have things done to you that you don’t have to epistemically consent to.
Because it’s the only way you can fulfill the idea of epistemic consent while at the same time having an element of thrill and unpredictability. Basically, you’re epistemically consenting to have things done to you that you don’t have to epistemically consent to.
I haven’t thought about this sort of thing at all, philosophy is usually pretty confusing to me, but this is an interesting line of thought. Idk what to do with it but it’s interesting.
It’s complex and confusing enough that I don’t know if there’s just one way of interpreting what he’s saying. I think he means something like: saying sexual harassment is wrong because women don’t want to be sexually harassed is problematic because some women do have sexual fantasies about being harassed. So, we should not understand sexual harassments wrongness in those terms. He doesn’t say in what terms we ought to define harassment though, so that’s probably where the confusion lies. He’s only criticizing not offering an alternative.
Nah, he’s saying that modern progressive women are expected to “know what they want” the same way men do and that conflicts with how women generally experience sexuality.
Okay, that makes a kind of sense. But like, just because some women sometimes have fantasies about sexual harassment doesn’t mean we diminish them or their seriousness for everyone else? Like, isn’t part of the appeal of such kinks is their taboo nature, meaning we already agree that they are, in a sense, wrong? I just don’t know what Zizek wants to say here…
I dont think he’s talking about sexual harassment, I think the subject is about courtship where a man is pursuing a woman. He’s saying the liberal feminist emphasis on consent as either a yes or no places places pressure on women to make a decision when often the real answer is ‘I dont know.’
This is to the advantage of men with bad intentions imo. not neccesarily violent intentions, but in a context where women are told they must be clear about yes/no after a few dates, it’s fairly easy for a man to put on an act where he pretends to have the same life goals and values as the woman he’s pursuing only to show her his real personality 3 months into a relationship.
You’re lucky if you can understand half of a Zizek article.
Seems to me like he goes off on a tangent because so much of his identity is wrapped up in being a public intellectual who has one foot in psychoanalysis.
