Female Chauvinist Pigs

I’ve just finished re-reading Ariel Levy’s “Female Chauvinist Pigs” and a lot of it rang true with me. Since I decided I didn’t believe in God, I’ve gone a long way to where I am now. For a while the promiscuous, provocative, sexually alluring women that Levy describes, particularly in chapter 1, described me, I think, a few years ago. I, along with a lot of young women, thought that female sexuality as defined by the sex industry was what liberated women. I remember one night I went out, wearing clothes that definitely drew attention to my body. I was really nervous wearing this – I felt incredibly self-conscious about showing off my body. However, when I was walking past the queue to the event, and I felt everyone looking at me, suddenly I understood. By showing off my body, by allowing myself to be objectified, I was empowering myself.

For some time I defined my feminism as sex-positive. I argued with a number of feminist friends about this, I felt that they were limiting women’s choice by saying that the sex industry was harmful to women. The thing is, though, the sex industry is defined by what men want – that makes sense, they are the ones paying. But when women take strippers, porn-stars, prostitutes as their sexual role models, then individual women are defining their own sexuality by what men want.

I raised this with a male feminist friend some time ago, and said that since sex involves (at least) two people, it’s completely reasonable that female sexuality is influenced by what men want. However, it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. I am sure heterosexual women would love to see naked or semi-clad men, but we don’t, not in the same way. Of course, you can walk down the street and see men without shirts on, you can see topless men in clubs, which is part of it, however there is no equivalent of lads mags for women. In fact women’s magazines, Cosmo, more, 19, focus a great deal (although not exclusively) on pleasing men. Levy covered this amazingly in “Female Chauvinist Pigs.”

She also talks about women who are involved in the sex industry, producing and other things. And discusses how these women essentially reject their femininity and accept a more masculine identity in order to prove themselves in a man’s world. This is something that extends outside women who’s work is directly about objectifying other women.

A particular example I can think of is Margaret Thatcher. I don’t remember where I first heard this, but I did! Apparently Margaret Thatcher hired a voice coach to lower the pitch of her voice (see this article).

The following quote from the book particularly rang true with me:

There’s just one thing: Even if you are a woman who achieves the ultimate and becomes like a man, you will still always be like a woman. And as long as womanhood is thought of as something to escape from, something less than manhood, you will be thought less of, too.

This is something that I find pretty confusing – to what extent is a woman’s rejection of femininity a rejection of womanhood? I have heard a feminist comment that a lot of women seem to think that they shouldn’t have children if they want to consider themselves feminists. Through working out my identity I have at times strongly rejected any hint of femininity in myself (or at least tried to). I guess this is something that I need to think about.

Sam

PS. If you haven’t spotted it – this isn’t a full account of Female Chauvinist Pigs, or even a brief overview of it. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it!