Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars

Abstract

Feminist Studies 41, no. 2. © 2015 by Feminist Studies, Inc. 437 Lynn Comella Revisiting the Feminist Sex Wars In 2012 British author E.L. James’s romantic trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey became an international best-seller, giving rise to the label “Mommy Porn” and providing endless fodder to mainstream media outlets , which jumped at the opportunity to discuss women’s relationship to erotica, pornography, and BDSM.1 While many people criticized Fifty Shades for its heavy-handed prose and lack of literary merit—its popularity confounding many reviewers—others focused on the sexual relationship between the trilogy’s two main characters: billionaire Christian Grey and his romantic interest, the young and sexually naive Anastasia Steele. As journalist Zoe Williams noted at the time, the sex scenes in Fifty Shades, far from being incidental, are the “meat of the plot, the crux of the conflict, the key to at least one and possibly both the central characters.”2 Fifty Shades “is not a book with sex in it,” Williams offered, “it is a sex book,” one written to titillate and arouse its ostensibly female readers through vivid descriptions of sexual domination and submission, complete with blindfolds, riding crops, and wrist restraints. 1. See E. L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey (New York: Vintage Books, 2012); E. L. James, Fifty Shades Darker (New York: Vintage Books, 2012); and E. L. James, Fifty Shades Freed (New York: Vintage Books, 2012). 2. Zoe Williams, “Why Women Love FiftyShadesofGrey,” Guardian, July 6, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jul/06/why-women-love-fiftyshades -grey. 438 Lynn Comella Books Discussed in This Essay Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976–1986. By Carolyn Bronstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism. By Julia Long. London: Zed Books, 2012. $pread: The Best of the Magazine That Illuminated the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution. Edited by Rachel Aimee, Eliyanna Kaiser, and Audacia Ray. New York: Feminist Press, 2015. Feminist writers and media critics were quick to jump into the cultural fray to offer their opinions on, and analyses of, the Fifty Shades phenomenon, often presenting an either/or scenario where the scales tilted toward one of two possible scenarios: sexual peril or sexual pleasure . Were the depictions of BDSM in Fifty Shades harmful to women or empowering? Were they examples of domestic abuse or consensual sexual activity? Why, moreover, were so many women devouring the books, one volume after the other? Some feminists argued that Fifty Shades was yet another example of the “pornification” of culture, where the versions of sex most frequently promoted by pornography become part of the cultural mainstream.3 Fifty Shades, according to them, normalized cruelty and violence toward women by turning a “sexual sociopath” who “delights in sexually torturing women” into a heartthrob.4 Anti-pornography advocate Gail Dines described Fifty Shades as a “romance novel for the porn age in which 3. For a discussion of the pornification of culture, see Julia Long, Anti-Porn: The Resurgence of Anti-Pornography Feminism (London: Zed Books, 2012). 4. Gail Dines, “Don’t Be Fooled By Fifty Shades of Grey— Christian Grey Is No Heartthrob,” Guardian, October 25, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com /commentisfree/2013/oct/25/fifty-shades-of-grey-christian-jamie-dornan-fall. Lynn Comella 439 overt sexual sadism masquerades as adoration and love.”5 Others, however , suggested that Fifty Shades’ popularity had given at least some women permission to read erotica and explore their kinkier sides, offering them a resource that could inspire their fantasies and reignite sexually anemic marriages.6 Media discussions and descriptions about the Fifty Shades books— and eventually the film—as either sexually dangerous or empowering reveal just how difficult it is to talk about women’s relationship to erotic literature, pornography, and BDSM without confronting the legacy of the feminist sex wars of the 1970s and 1980s, battles over pornography and sexual expression that caused deep and enduring rifts within the broader feminist movement that are still felt today.7 Competing feminist concerns regarding the politics of sexual fantasy, consent, violence, power, and pleasure, such as those highlighted by Fifty Shades, are not relics...