There is something called 'political lesbianism'. Not all feminists believe in it. Not all Radical Feminists believe in it either. Some of the most influential Radical and Revolutionary Feminists do believe in it though, feminists like Julie Bindel and Finn Mackay.
They were influenced by Sheila Jeffreys. Further back the influence seems to be from Catharine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin.
I think that the real reason why some contemporary feminists want to try to ban prostitution is not because they believe that it is inherently exploitative but because they don't like the idea of women having sex with men. On this page I will set out to prove this.
First of all, I want to say that I don't have a prejudice against homosexuality. I'm not criticising lesbianism as such.
The definition of Political Lesbianism according to Wikipedia is below.
"Political lesbianism asserts that sexual orientation is a political and feminist choice, and advocates lesbianism as a positive alternative to heterosexuality for women as part of the struggle against sexism."
What it means in practice is that all women should be feminists and all feminists should not have sex with men. Whether they have sex with each other is not important, the important thing is that they definitely don't have sex with men. Often, perhaps usually, this will mean celibacy.
Considering this, they don't want men having sex with prostitutes. They won't say this though, they will say that prostitution is inherently exploitative, and seek any evidence however weak to back this up.
This is what Finn Mackay has to say about political lesbianism and celibacy. From page 67 of her book Radical Feminism.
"Contrary to much rumour since, the paper was not suggesting that women should simply pursue same-sex sexual activity. It was about the political choice to dedicate one's life to women. In fact, in the paper, the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group clearly reassured heterosexuals that the lesbian bit is not compulsory, and that celibacy is always an option."
Considering that most people are heterosexual, then most political lesbians would be celibate. The paper she mentions is the booklet Love Your Enemy, or LYE. This was written by a number of women but mainly by Sheila Jeffreys.
This is what Julie Bindel has to say in a Guardian newspaper article.
"In the late 70s a group of lesbians in Leeds, known as revolutionary feminists (RFs), made a controversial move that resonated loudly for me and many other women. They began calling for all feminists to embrace lesbianism. Appealing to their heterosexual sisters to get rid of men "from your beds and your heads", they started a debate, which reached its height in 1981 with the publication of an infamous booklet, Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism (LYE). In this, the RFs wrote that, "all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women.""
and this
"Come on sisters, you know it makes sense. Stop pretending you think lesbianism is an exclusive members' club, and join the ranks. I promise that you will not regret it."
Catharine A MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin developed the theory of objectification. This theory says that every woman is objectified if she has sex with a man.
This is what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has to say about it.
Kant thought that the solution to sexual objectification is marriage. This is because he conceived this relationship as one of perfect equality and reciprocity between the spouses. Each of them surrenders his or her person to the other and receives the person of the other in return. This way, Kant believed, neither of them is objectified by losing his or her person. (For a detailed discussion of Kantian marriage see Herman 1993 and Papadaki 2010b.) For Dworkin and MacKinnon, however, Kant’s suggested solution is inappropriate. Objectification, according to these feminists, is present within all heterosexual relationships in our society and harms women’s humanity. Marriage, or any other heterosexual relationship for that matter, is clearly not regarded as an exception by them.
Their main way of trying to combat objectification is by trying to ban pornography, or at least to try to limit its availability as much as is possible. That's why they cooperated with right-wing Christian figures such as William Herbert Hudnut III. However it can clearly be seen that women will be encouraged not to have sex with men.
I often wonder how Evangelical Christians feel about the Political Lesbians that they cooperate with. They are not going to like lesbianism or any form of homosexuality. Perhaps when they have it explained to them that most Political Lesbians will be celibates they feel a lot happier about it.
This is what Catharine A MacKinnon has written in her book Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State page 647.
"Perhaps the wrong of rape has proven so difficult to articulate because the unquestionable starting point has been that rape is definable as distinct from intercourse, when for women it is difficult to distinguish them under conditions of male dominance."
It's not surprising that some people think that men like me are rapists. However, if I am a rapist then all men who are not gay or celibate are rapists too. According to feminists of this particular type.
"Indeed, a strand of radical separatist lesbianism argued that all heterosexual sex was necessarily oppressive and that women should take the feminist and political choice of lesbianism as a positive alternative to heterosexuality in the struggle against sexism (Krebs, 1987: 17). There was no necessity to take physical pleasure from sex with women, as feminists could, and perhaps also should, be “political lesbians” (Bindel 2009). Many radical feminists, key figures such as Adrienne Rich and Kate Millett among them, embraced sexual pleasure in its woman-centric forms and argued for the necessity of developing an alternative erotic imaginary, and imagery, for challenging that which they saw as the sad and violent representational regime of heterosexual pornography. Second-wave feminism entailed a strong current of reclaiming female sexuality, from the 1970s manual Our Bodies, Ourselves celebrating women’s self-knowledge and sexual agency to Nancy Friday’s 1973 book, My Secret Garden detailing women’s sexual fantasies, or Erica Jong’s bestselling novel Fear of Flying of the same year chronicling female sexual self-discovery. Radical feminism is fundamentally based on politicizing the body and sexuality through critiques of reproductive labour and justice and through the institutions that govern female sexuality.Some radical feminists have, however, positioned sexual pleasure as a problem to be resisted, as “woman’s pleasure in sexual intercourse facilitated her subordination” (Jeffreys 1990, 12). Women should be focusing on “social change, not simply individual self-fulfilment” (Russo 1998, 34). These authors have critiqued “the obsession with masturbation and orgasm” (Jeffreys 1990, 237) in second wave feminism, noting that “what feels good is constructed by sexual oppression” (Cole 1992, 131) and asking “[i]s an orgasm worth all of this selfannihilation?” (Cole 1992, 130). Indeed, for Sheila Jeffreys (1990, 304), “[t]he absence of orgasm might more appropriately be seen as a form of resistance” against heterosexual patriarchy."
I don't like the way that Radical and Revolutionary feminists try to present themselves as the original feminists from whose ideas modern feminists have departed. I don't like the way that they try to present themselves as champions of free speech.
In the UK the final National Women’s Liberation Movement Conference was held in Birmingham in 1978. There was so much controversy about these issues and bad feeling that no more conferences could occur after that. In the US the Barnard College conference occurred in 1982. It too descended into chaos.
So the idea that there was one form of feminism from which modern feminists have departed is false. Also, Sheila Jeffreys and others of her ilk pioneered cancel culture, according to Professor Amia Srinivasan in her book The Right to Sex.
some links on the subject are below
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