That brings us to patriarchy, radical feminism, a radical feminist critique of the sexual-exploitation industries in patriarchy, and why all of this is important, not only for women but for men. Ideas about what male and female mean-what meaning we attach to those differences in our bodies-vary from culture to culture and change over time. But femininity and masculinity are not stable social categories. Reproduction and sexuality involve our bodies.įemale and male are stable biological categories. If we take evolutionary biology seriously, we should recognize the centrality of reproduction to all living things and the importance of sexuality to a species that reproduces sexually, such as Homo sapiens.

That may seem self-evident, but some postmodern-inflected theories that float through some academic spaces, intellectual salons, and political movements these days seem to have detached from that reality. I emphasize these elementary facts not to reduce the rich complexity of human interaction to a story about nothing but bodies, but if we are to understand sex/gender politics, we can’t ignore our bodies. Although it also can be accomplished with technology, in the vast majority of cases the fertilization of an egg by a sperm happens through the act of sexual intercourse, which in addition to its role in reproduction is potentially pleasurable. The kind of animal that we are reproduces sexually, the interaction of bodies that are either male or female (with a very small percentage of people born intersex, who have anomalies that may complicate reproductive status).Įvery one of us-and every human who has ever lived-is the product of the union of an egg produced by a female human and a sperm produced by a male human. Whatever one thinks about the concepts of soul and mind-and I assume that in any diverse group there will be widely varying ideas-we are animals, which means we are bodies. We are organic entities, carbon-based creatures of flesh and blood.

A coherent feminist analysis of the ideology and practice of patriarchy starts with human bodies. In an analysis of pornography and prostitution in a patriarchal society, it’s crucial not to lose sight of basic biology.

Getting Off by Robert Jensen