Re: Feminism for Men

From: Jack Sargeant (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2007 - 15:12:46 PST


sorry, my point was that this theory uses psychoanalysis, which
posits presence of the phallus / vagina as castration and active /
passive as real internal constructs (not social), i don't believe in
psychoanalysis (although i enjoy reading Freud). when mulvey talks
about men watching films she talks about castration and sadism and
vouyerism and so on, not about the kind of political situation where
men have more access to political power (which, i agree they do and
yes i think that's wrong).

mulvey - to my knowledge - wasn't writing about the social-political
culture that i think you are (below), rather i think she was writing
about watching movies (i don't mean that to sound sarcastic, i mean,
literally i don't think she thought beyond that into say abortion
rights or whatever which i remember being a big deal in 70s UK
socialist feminism). now, to my way of thinking, contra mulvey, women
may also have visual pleasure, men may not all share a similar gaze.
moreover, why was she so against pleasure?

jack

>
> In the 70's, much more than now, men really were the aggressors and
> the lawmakers. It wasn't women feeling sorry for themselves or
> trying to create a false duality of active/ passive in their own
> minds or fantasies, it was a reality. It was such a time of women
> as playthings, and this really depressed some women. Nowadays there
> isn't this pressure on women to be sex objects, partly because of
> the work done by the 70's feminists. So I've noticed that young
> girls today are very fully sexualized for themselves, they flirt
> and feel sexy and are outrageous, and they don't feel threatened or
> subordinated by it but empowered. If anything it intimidates the
> men! But it was not like that at all in the 70's, and many women
> felt like they were drowning, drowning, and they wanted to scream
> and flail and accuse and be aggressive themselves to show how ugly
> it was. And I do think it worked.
>

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.