Sexuality and American Culture

Carroll Smith-Rosenberg's essay in Chapter 6, "The Female World of Love and Ritual," describes an entirely female Victorian world "in which hostility [toward] and criticism of other women" was not only uncommon, but considered unnatural and practically regarded as taboo. Women were not supposed to quarrel with or make more difficult for each other life in their already troubled domestic world; rather, they were supposed to treat one another with kindness, love, and respect because, as women, with "little status or power in the larger world of male concerns, [they] possessed status and power [only] in the lives and worlds of other women." 

My initial reaction to reading about this surprisingly catfight-free world was, "Wow! Things certainly have changed." Today, hostility among women is not only accepted, but actively promoted, as women are encouraged to compete with one another for the attention and affection of men. Such antagonisms can be seen on probably the majority of television shows today, particularly those geared toward teenage girls, and are played upon by advertisers eager to sell products that presume to make women both more attractive to men and more worthy of their attraction. This would have been unheard of in Victorian times when women often "joked among themselves about the conceit, poor looks or affections of suitors." Attention from men did not divide women, but, instead, united them.

So, the question is, what changed? From a Foucauldian perspective, my answer to that would have to be the relations of sexual power between women and men. 

In Victorian times, women were considered to be entirely moral, as opposed to sexual, beings. (It always seems to be one or another, doesn't it?) They were asexual, meaning they had no sexuality. If they had no sexuality, then it would follow that they had no sexual power which they, themselves, could consciously wield over men. Thus, they would have had no need to "compete" sexually with other women for men. Without wasting time on such nonsense, they could focus on developing strong friendships and bonds of their own. Yet more than that, they were simply separated from men throughout most of the day, if they belonged to the white middle-class, and would not have had much of a chance to "compete" even if they had been granted the sexuality to do so.

I read a blog several years ago written by a Wellesley student who had just spent a semester abroad. One of the most common fears about attending a women's college, she said, besides the lack of a potential heterosexual dating scene, is that the girls will all be "bitchy" and fight with one another all the time. Yet this student said that in all of her three prior years at Wellesley, she had never witnessed or experienced anything of the kind. It wasn't until studying abroad and living in a co-ed dorm that she encountered the mythical "bitchy-ness" that is so often feared. It wasn't until placed into a direct, co-ed context with men, for whom they now had to "compete," that the straight female students displayed any open expressions of hostility toward one another.

Yet it is not simply the closer proximity in day-to-day contemporary life between women and men that has resulted in this new aggression between girls. The way men view them has also changed.

Society eventually progressed from the realm of "passionlesness," which was, itself, originally a progression from the days in which women were considered so sexual that they existed for no reason other than sexually satisfying men. But as we have come to realize that "passionlessness" is no longer an accurate nor favorable view of women, it seems that we are back to treating them like sexual slaves. Once we gave them back their sexuality, it seems that the notion that women exist only for men's pleasure has also returned. Women now have a kind of sexual power not granted to them in Victorian times, but it is still a power that is ultimately out of their own hands. They are given power only because they are sexual; without sexuality, they are nothing. Therefore, they must actively compete for and win over men in order to validate their entire existence.