Jump to ContentJump to Main Navigation
No More Nice GirlsCountercultural Essays$
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content.
No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays

Ellen Willis

Print publication date: 2012

Print ISBN-13: 9780816680795

Published to Minnesota Scholarship Online: August 2015

DOI: 10.5749/minnesota/9780816680795.001.0001

Show Summary Details
Page of

PRINTED FROM MINNESOTA SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.minnesota.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright University of Minnesota Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MNSO for personal use.date: 17 February 2020

Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex?

Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex?

Chapter:
(p.3) Lust Horizons: Is the Women’s Movement Pro-Sex?
Source:
No More Nice Girls
Author(s):

Ellen Willis

Publisher:
University of Minnesota Press
DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816680795.003.0001

This chapter examines whether the women’s movement is pro-sex. To those who believe that an understanding of sexuality is crucial to a feminist analysis, what is especially disconcerting is that feminists are as confused, divided, and dogmatic about sex as everyone else. If feminist theory is to be truly based in the reality of women’s lives, feminists must examine their professed beliefs and feelings with as much skepticism as they apply to male pronouncements. Otherwise they risk simply replacing male prejudices and rationalizations with their own. In one form or another, sexual conservatism still permeates the feminist movement. Ethel Spector Person, a psychoanalyst, argues that sexual activity and orgasm are indispensable to men’s mental health, but not to women’s; specifically, men need sex to feel like men, while in women “gender identity and self-worth can be consolidated by other means.” This chapter considers the issue of sexuality within the context of feminism by focusing on two anthologies: Women—Sex and Sexuality and Heresies.

Keywords:   women’s movement, sexuality, sex, women, sexual conservatism, Ethel Spector Person, orgasm, feminism, Women—Sex and Sexuality, Heresies

Minnesota Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.

Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.

To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.