Just a Light Trim, Please
I’d never heard of Sheila Jeffreys before reading this article. Okay so I’m a dreary boring sexless humourless old-timey feminist, but I think she’s right. It depresses me to see the things women do to themselves and how it’s gotten not better but worse since second-wave feminism started.
I’ll tell you something else I hadn’t heard of, and that’s ‘trimmed labia.’ Trimmed what? Trimmed? Trimmed? You trim fingernails and hair, apples and carrots, not pieces of your body! Okay so I’m clueless, but I don’t spend a lot of time keeping up with the ‘sex industry,’ therefore I was unaware there was such a thing as ‘labiaplasty.’ What was that we were saying last year about female genital mutilation?
“Men’s desire for bigger and bigger breasts, and clothes commonly associated with prostitution, has resulted from the mass consumption of pornography.”
Ah – is that what causes it. Good to know. I’ve been wondering for years what the ‘get me, don’t I look exactly like a hooker’ fashion was all about.
She points to studies that have found significantly higher rates of suicide among women who have had breast implants. The latest, conducted in 2003 by the International Epidemiology Institute of Rockville and funded by Dow Corning Corp, a former maker of silicone gel breast implants, included a study of 2,166 women, some of whom received implants as long as 30 years ago. Dow Corning also funded an earlier Swedish study, which examined 3,521 women with implants, and found the suicide rate to be three times higher than normal.
The first thought that occurs to me is that it’s probably not that the implants make women suicidal, but that suicidal women get implants. It seems quite likely that women who think their appearance is the most important thing about them will tend to be depressive. That women who think it’s worth cutting their breasts open and having a foreign substance shoved inside just to make the breasts bigger do not have a particularly healthy or reasonable view of what they could be doing with their lives.
I can get very cross and depressed about this kind of thing. I’m glad Sheila Jeffreys has written this book, but I have absolutely no hope that it will make the smallest bit of difference.
“Men’s desire for bigger and bigger breasts (…) has resulted from the mass consumption of pornography.” sounds like absolute nonsense to me. Can’t comment about the clothes issue (I’m not sure what clothes are commonly associated with prostitution, actually, and whether or not they have been at any time uniquely associated with prostitution).
Merlijn de Smit
No, I disagree.
The central thesis of the article seems to be that sexual competition between women is caused by men’s domination of society. That women are dressing up, parading and stuffing their boobs with silicone merely for the enjoyment of men. A pleasing view, but is it accurate?
For there is sexual comitition between men too: if I were to say that Diego Maradonna’s drug problems are a direct result of having to display his physical prowess by kicking a ball around a field for the viewing pleasure of women, I don’t think the argument would stick.
Yes, there is sexual competition between members of the same sex, yes, it can be unhealthy, and yes, our view of it has been distorted by sexism, but I don’t think it needs to be eliminated in order to build an egalitarian society. Nor, for that matter, that it ever can be.
Ooops, crossposts passed out in the night. My disagreement is with Ophelia’s, not Melijn’s comment.
Some more reasons why I am less than impressed with the referenced article (haven’t read the book, nor am I likely to):
– On just the basis of the article, Jeffreys’ view on oppression and sexuality seems frighteningly all-encompassing to me. Note how transvestism among men is regarded as “men adopting the behaviours of a subordinate group in order to enjoy the sexual satisfaction of masochism”. The article refers to sado-masochism a few times; now, both in the BDSM scene and in BDSM pornography, femdom seems to be the normal case, male dominance the exception. I can see, however, how even this could be somehow regarded as oppression of women (submissive oppressive men forcing dominant oppressed women to spank them, or whatever). Thing is, if a theory allows you to make such leaps, perhaps it is best to scuttle it.
– I find the blurring of the line between Female Genital Mutilation and labiaplasty (and milder bodily modifications) alarming. Now, I am unenthusiastic about labiaplasty (which I reiterate I’ve never heard of until now), breast implants and the like; I am mortally opposed to Female Genital Mutilation. The difference between them being that one is imposed by force, the other is a matter of (in my opinion unwise) choice. Jeffreys says in the article: “but the liberal view of choice, which is that women can now ‘choose’ to engage in harmful, oppressive actions, does not make the practice of slicing up women’s genitals to please men any less vile” Hell yes, it _does_ make it less vile! Choice is the difference between rape and consensual sex, between physical assault and a boxing match, between being abducted and going on a holiday. It is not a trivial matter!
Now, Jeffreys’ strangely totalitarian view in which issues of free will and choice are trivialized, and oppression is seen as omnipresent – even in the supposedly free choices of women – can come back to you in unforeseen ways (I am reminded of the uproar a recent article by one Max Ross at the troglodyte hideout of MensNewsDaily or some such caused, in which Ross, arguing from biology, also blurred the issue of free choice and succeeded trivializing the issue of rape).
I’ll handily admit I’m not much of a feminist – but it always seemed to me that “Empowerment” meant something else than a hopelessly totalitarian worldview in which “oppression” is internalized and manifests itself even in free choiced made by the oppressed (there’s more than a bit of a taste of Stalinism in here) and which in effect postpones the liberation of women until beyond Doomsday.
Well, fair points. Yes, there is a difference between FGM forced on children and ‘labiaplasty’ chosen by adults – but it’s still not a good thing that adults choose ‘labiaplasty’. I don’t think there is any Stalinism here, because (as far as I can tell from the article, at least) Jeffreys is simply criticising the practice, not rounding people up and shooting them in the basement of the Lubianka.
I am much of a feminist, and it always seemed to me that ‘Empowerment’ meant something a good deal more…empowering, and interesting, than women being the sexiest they can possibly be.
I agree about the men thing though. It’s women making free, stupid choices. Germaine Greer (yes, Germaine Greer) was grumbling about this on ‘Start the Week’ the other week, along with arguing with Hitchens about Iraq.
Ophelia – I didn’t mean to suggest with my Stalinism comment that Jeffreys intends to hand out free train tickets to the Kolyma (and want to dissociate myself strongly from the right-wing antifeminist whining about “Feminazis”). What I meant was that it seems to me that Jeffreys’ view, in which sexual oppression is so pervasive and omnipresent in that it manifests itself also in choices made by women out of their own free will is a bit reminiscent of the idea in the old-time Stalinist parties in which ideas are not merely bad but manifestations of nefarious petty-bourgeois class interests and the like. And you end up with a theory and methodology that it so powerful that it is virtually useless – which befitted Stalinism which basically, loosely paraphrasing the Old Man, comes down to subsituting the weirdest tactical political zigzags for any long-term strategy. (Unfortunately the Trots are also more than capable of that). And I think that’s where the resemblance is (as I do think that a Jeffreys-style totally hermetic feminism is simply incapable of getting anywhere, politically, unless we gene-modify sexuality out of existence as in that one Houillebecq book).
I don’t think that it’s a good thing either that adults choose ‘labiaplasty’. However, I would venture that the obsession about slimness, dieting and weight issues has caused probably far more suffering and health problems than breast implants and labiaplasty combined (it does not exclusively target women – men can suffer from anorexia, too, but it is one area in which prevailing ideals about beauty are rather unhealthy).
Hell yes, Merlijn, slimness-obsession dreadful too. I certainly didn’t intend to give that a free pass.
Yeah, I take your point about the infinite adaptability of the ‘false consciousness’ idea. And it’s not as if I actually think (when pressed) that there is such a thing as ‘authentic’ consciousness and then a lot of false kinds. But…all the same I think female appearance-obsession is a depressing phenomenon, with unfortunate implications for female equality. (The ‘postfeminist’ [whatever the hell that means] view is apparently that it makes no difference whatever. I think that’s absolute nonsense. Apart from anything else there’s a lot of research showing that appearance does make a huge difference in terms of hiring and promotion – so it’s one of those winner-take-all markets that keep ratcheting up the competition. But even without that, I can’t help thinking that the more hypersexualized women are, the less they are taken seriously. That’s one of those old boring supposedly superseded prepostfeminist ideas, but I think it’s true all the same. I don’t see how it can help it. Would you want a barbie doll as your neurosurgeon? I know I wouldn’t.)
“Apart from anything else there’s a lot of research showing that appearance does make a huge difference in terms of hiring and promotion “
Is this true everywhere or mostly in the US? Try imagining a genuinely ugly man anchoring the main evening news on a national TV channel, or becoming president in the US.
In a graduate class quite recently, I was arguing with a man who teaches female undergrad business majors that they should dress “business-like” yet “feminine” for interviews. Through discussion, “feminine” turned out to mean “sexy.” When I objected to this, he relpied, “Ugly people don’t get hired. You may not like that, but it’s true.” My answer, and I think Jeffrey’s: Shouldn’t we try tot change that?
Merlijn objects to “… Jeffreys’ view, in which sexual oppression is so pervasive and omnipresent in that it manifests itself also in choices made by women out of their own free will…” But isn’t re-shaping psyches so that the oppressed do what the oppressors want EXACTLY what the tools of social control do? The view that there can’t be any oppression where there’s choice is insidious. Overwhelmingly, in cultures where it is performed, female genital mutilation is enforced, passed on, and performed BY MOTHERS: They “freely” choose to do this to their own daughters.
Sexual oppression happens everywhere and starts the moment a child is born: It shapes the women that girls become in countless ways. The fact that some women recognize, defy and (partially) escape such bonds – through a combination of fortune and fortitude – does not retroactively free the rest, and certainly does not mean that their continued oppression is something they choose. This is exactly the same reasoning that declares because *some* individuals successively lift themselves out of poverty that *all* poor people could do so – if only they weren’t so darned lazy, stupid and shiftless, if only they didn’t undermine themselves. But of course they don’t undermine themselves, they are undermined by the economic, social and political structures that make such success stories so rare in the first place. In either context, this is simply a form of blaming the victim: Using those who escape or transcend the assault on their very identity as examples to bludgeon the rest (those who don’t quite manage to do as well) is among the most popular and appalling tools of oppression.
Of course, those who do manage to transcend oppression are likely to contribute to this strategy themselves, to return to the oppressed and tell them how wrong they are for knuckling under and how they can and should transcend their upbringing, their culture, their malformed identities. Jeffreys, like many radical feminists, does this to some extent. But by consistently producing evidence that the oppression is systematic and showing how that system works, she avoids blaming the victim. Instead, she tries to get the targets of oppression to see that they are indeed being targeted. The rest is up to them.
Paul, I think it’s true in places other than the US – and I’m pretty sure the research is not all US-based.
Amy – interesting that that guy thinks there is nothing between “‘feminine’ i.e. sexy” and “ugly”. That moronic equation does a lot all by itself to explain the hypersexualization Jeffreys is talking about. No doubt most women get the message – as they are meant to – ‘either I dress and make up like a hooker or I am ugly.’
Yeah, damn right we should try to change that.
“But isn’t re-shaping psyches so that the oppressed do what the oppressors want EXACTLY what the tools of social control do?”
Well, yes! As Mill pointed out long before Jeffreys. There’s a whole great passage on that in Subjection of Women…It’s public domain, maybe I’ll find it and stick it in here.
This became the occassion for a whole blog posting of my own about “free choice.” If anyone’s interested:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/thinkmonkey/9713.html
And once again, I am reminded that I really ought to read Mill’s Subjection of Women. I’ve read On Liberty several times, but Subjection is always on my “I should get around to that soon” list…
Ah – Subjection is really really good, G. I was in that position too until I finally got out of it by reading it, and the whole time I was thinking damn this is so good what a fool I am not to have read it before. Now I re-read it periodically – just re-read bits of it a couple of hours ago. He was such a readable bastard! As well as ahead of his time, to put it mildly. Ahead of our time in a lot of ways.
It’s not online, dammit; I thought it was. I’ll have to type a quotation in by hand. How tarsome.
Merlijn wrote:
“What I meant was that it seems to me that Jeffreys’ view, in which sexual oppression is so pervasive and omnipresent in that it manifests itself also in choices made by women out of their own free will is a bit reminiscent of the idea in the old-time Stalinist parties in which ideas are not merely bad but manifestations of nefarious petty-bourgeois class interests and the like.”
Why Stalinist? The notion that ideas are not merely bad but manifestations of nefarious petty-bourgeois class interests sounds like good old Marxism-Leninism. Stalin just parroted the same dogma as his predecessors.