After reading Mackinnon’s essay on sexuality, I felt a lot of things. I was mostly angry and kind of frustrated. I primarily viewed this as a response less to the fact that I disagreed with her ideas and more to the fact that her ideas gave very little room to discuss sexuality and sexual desire as the painfully complex thing that it is. Perhaps to theorize something as complex as sexuality, one has to simplify it, but I don’t see this as a necessity. While the theory I’ve read is nowhere near exhaustive, I have read enough to know that there is plenty of thorough sexuality theory that manages to make concise and interesting points while still acknowledging the sweeping inconsistencies that the theory can have when attempting to apply it to living, breathing humans.
None of this is to say that I find all theory regarding sexuality useless because of the complexity of the subject matter because after all, theory is there to help us make sense of it. However, I find Mackinnon’s particular theoretical approach extremely problematic. The way she reduces physical (sexual) acts to certain personal and psychological dispositions doesn’t sit well with me.
I am conscious of the fact that there may be a disconnect here between my understanding of Mackinnon’s thoughts as reductive and any potential purpose that reductive nature might have in the context of theorizing. I do, however, have general confidence in my understanding of other theory related to gender and sexuality from outside this class by several of the same authors, such as Butler and Fausto-Sterling.
My general question, especially to our more philosophically inclined classmates, is how justified am I in being angry about the narrow scope of McKinnon’s logic? Second Wave theory on this matter is bound to be antiquated in certain aspects, but the fact that it is so widespread here is pretty astounding. I know that this was a frustrating read for many people, but I’m not sure if it was for the same reasons and I’m curious as to where other people who disagreed with her fell on this spectrum of content vs. theory.
Tallyn,
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure if I am even remotely qualified to try to respond to your concerns, but here goes:
In as much as the theory of sexuality posited by Mackinnon is reductive according to your reading, it is bound to be infuriating. Its a very hard thing to accomplish, to provide a reductive account that is satisfying and agreeable to most audiences. I think that the particular limitation of any reductive philosophy is that it feels as if it robs the concept of the humanity from which it was born, even if the reductive appeal is conducted via a cognitive-psychological lens.
That said, I was mostly upset with the content. I've read a bunch of reductive argumentation and, while it's generally infuriating, it's hard to dispel on its own grounds. So the trouble that I found was: sure, I can get behind a reductionist argument, as long as the premises upon which the argument is predicated seem to be accurate and true. My problem is, then, that I'm not entirely convinced that the material she utilizes in making her argumentative steps is representative of the phenomenon she is discussing. Which is pretty much what I think you're saying.
Sexuality, for me, is more than that suggested by Mackinnon. The difficulty for me is that I'm not quite sure I have the appropriate language or understanding of the concept to make a fair rebuttal, or even conceptualize what I think sexuality is well enough to put it into words. So I guess I have an adamantly intuitional rejection of her argument, which unfortunately isn't enough to derail or dismiss hers.
-E