Political is Personal: Scholarly Manifestations of the Feminist Sex Wars

Introduction

Feminist theorists have often reacted publicly to existing discussions of female sexuality. In response to the dominant paradigms that cast women as neurotic because of their sexual organs and hormones, and advocated for male dominance of female sexuality, feminist theorists of the 1970s began to radically challenge the notion that biology rendered men superior both culturally and sexually. This challenge to male authority, and the subsequent conversations it sparked within the feminist community, ultimately unearthed a point of contention among feminists discussing sexuality. Feminist discussions of sex work, s/m, [1] and women-centered sexualities uncovered a rift between feminists who believed firmly that women could claim sexual pleasure and agency within a patriarchal society, and women who believed that embracing radical sexualities constituted violence against women and submission to patriarchal ideals.

This conflict rose to the surface of feminist discussions partially as a result of a conference held at Barnard College in 1982, The Scholar and the Feminist IX. [2] As a result of the conversations that happened at this conference, a clash surfaced between women who embraced the pleasure of sexuality, and women who focused on the dangers inherent in sexual exploration. Women who embraced pleasure often acknowledged the dangers inherent in female sexuality, but chose to focus their analysis on the positive aspects of sexual interaction. On the other hand, women who centered their discussions of sexuality on danger acknowledged the possibility for pleasure in sexual acts, but believed that the inherent dangers (rape, sexual assault, domestic violence) overshadowed any pleasure that could be gained. While there were certainly feminist thinkers who fell somewhere in the middle, the broader feminist discussion became organized around this dichotomy.

Recognizing the Barnard conference as the center of these feminist debates around sexuality, and considering the fruitful contradictions that have come from this moment in feminism, this article is an analysis of the feminist sexuality debates as they played out in the academic press. The feminist academic press is an ideal archive for understanding the ways that the personal and the political became conflated within feminist discussions of sexuality. As this article demonstrates, the personal and the political are mutually reinforcing, a phenomenon which is most clearly seen in the ways this debate played out in scholarly publications. In this space, theory, politics, and practice wove together to present a highly complex picture of the feminist sexuality debates in the moment during which they became most public.

I will begin with a brief overview of the events leading up to and immediately surrounding The Scholar and the Feminist IX, as I believe that this chronology is important to understanding the subsequent backlash among feminist thinkers. Then, I will conduct a close reading of one of the scholarly journals most important to charting the progression of feminist thinking: Feminist Studies [3]. Within this publication, I will pay specific attention to published articles that contributed directly to the sexuality debates, as well as conversations occurring within published letters addressed to the editor of the journal. The scale of analysis shifts from the macro to the micro in order to illustrate the clear mapping between conversations happening more publicly, and conversations happening within the scholarly press. Through this juxtaposition, it becomes clear that the attempts to navigate binaries happened in parallel ways on both large and small scales. Ultimately, I conclude that the boundary between pleasure and danger mirrors a number of other binary tensions within feminist theory, a fact which must be central to future attempts to understand this moment in feminist history.

The Scholar and the Feminist IX in Theory and Practice

In the early 1980s, the members of the feminist community concerned with issues of sexual identity were engaged in a series of heated debates over the role of sexuality and sexual expression within feminist consciousness. These discussions rose to the center of feminist dialogues as a partly as a result of The Scholar and the Feminist IX. In order to gain a more complete understanding of the theoretical implications of the Barnard conference, and the role the conference played in catalyzing a broader feminist debate, it is first necessary to investigate the progression of events leading up to the conference. Considering this sequence of events provides an excellent framework for understanding how issues of identity politics and tensions between the personal and political affected feminist discussions of sexuality on a broader scale.

In September of 1981, Carol Vance, a feminist sociologist, sent out a letter to a number of her colleagues, inviting them to participate in the planning process for the annual Barnard conference. Vance’s letter informed potential committee members that, “[o]ur purpose in this first and subsequential meetings is to explore ‘sexuality’ as this year’s theme, and, through discussion, to identify the most pressing concerns for feminism [...] we hope to put together a conference which will inform and advance the current debate” (Vance 1982: 1). From this call, it is clear that Vance was interested in engaging with the ideas forwarded by contemporary feminist thinkers, and her subsequent letter articulated more clearly an interest in acknowledging the work of diverse feminist thinkers. This letter provided a number of questions to frame the opening discussion:

• How do women get sexual pleasure in patriarchy?
• How do women of various ethnic, racial, and class groups strategize for pleasure?
• What are the points of similarity and difference between feminist analyses of pornography, incest, and male and female sexual ‘nature’ and those of the right wing?
• Dare we persist in questioning traditional sexuality and sexual arrangements in the current political climate? [4]
• What is the nature of the current conflict between the ‘social purity’ and ‘libertarian’ [5] factions in the feminist community?
• What can be learned from similar debates during the first wave of feminism in the 19^th century? (Vance 1982)

As these original exploratory questions demonstrate, Vance (and eventually the entire conference planning committee) were concerned with advancing new scholarship surrounding sexuality and sexual agency—not simply reproducing the adversarial dialogue between the radical and sex-radical feminists. According to Vance,

This illuminates one of the key conflicts between radical and sex-radical feminists: the latter were highly concerned that the former’s understanding of sexuality, particularly as it related to non-traditional sex practices, looked too much like the ‘Religious Right’s.’ Feminists in this moment struggled to navigate the question of how a feminist critique (of pornography or BDSM for example) would differ from a conservative Christian critique. An analysis of danger within sexuality lends itself to a discussion of issues that more conservative groups were also interested in. This led to a divide in the feminist community that became as much about how one understands patriarchal control (whether it be through actual sexual domination, or a dominance over the discourse of sex), as it was about the binary between pleasure and danger.

These exploratory questions also call to mind another binary that appeared within the feminist community: the split between a feminist politics of consensus and a feminist politics invested in debate. Feminism in the 1970s was largely (though not exclusively) invested in a politics of sisterhood and consensus, as exemplified through the process of consciousness-raising:

In many ways, the model of sisterhood underlying this principle of consciousness-raising was threatened by the type of questioning that surrounded the Barnard conference. This is not to say that sex-radical feminists were not interested in a politics of sisterhood, in fact, quite the opposite is true. However, at this moment in feminist history, it became increasingly difficult to employ a shared embodied experience as women to unify the feminist movement. On the contrary, sex-radical feminists involved in conversations around sexuality were challenging the notion that a shared female identity led to a shared experience with sexuality. While it is clear from Vance’s original questioning that this challenge was based on the assumption that debate and discussion would be healthy for the feminist movement, the subsequent reaction to this questioning, which I discuss in greater detail below, suggests that feelings of betrayal or anger provoked some of the radical feminist response.

As the planning process of the Barnard conference progressed, its scope expanded to include a wider exploration of lesbian sexualities, s/m sexualities, and the debate surrounding pornography. Planners also introduced the topic of psychoanalysis’ role within feminist discussions of sexuality, as well as childhood experiences with sexual subjectivity. [6] After three months of weekly discussions, the committee released the concept paper and call for submissions:

The concept paper remained faithful to Vance’s original framework, yet also represented the contributions of other members of the planning committee. It most notably differed from Vance’s original letter in that it more fully articulated the dichotomy between pleasure and danger—an articulation that would eventually become thematically central not only to the Barnard conference but to the dialogue within the feminist community as a whole. At the core of the divergence between radical and sex-radical feminists was the question of whether the tensions between pleasure and danger could lead to liberating sexual practices for women living in a patriarchal society. However, despite the complicated nature of this question, and the possibility for sweeping disagreement from both within and outside the feminist community, this opening paragraph (like Vance’s original letter) reflected a willingness to engage with both sides of the sexuality debates, not simply the perspectives of feminists who saw libratory potential in sexual acts.

True to the original call, the papers and workshops presented at the conference ended up being extremely diverse. Topics included: historical understandings of sexuality within the feminist community, the sexual socialization of children, popular culture perceptions of female sexuality and body image, sexual vocabulary, eroticism and taboo, butch/femme sexualities within the lesbian community, the role of the legal system in protecting and regulating sexualities, and erotic representations in art. [7] Presenters at the conference came from American Studies, Anthropology, Psychology, and English, Women’s Studies, Social Work, History, and Photography departments; there were also a number of independent scholars and grassroots activists. In fact, the body of work debuted at the Barnard conference was so diverse that there is simply no way to uniformly categorize the submissions in any manner other than as a selection of responses to the question of the role of women’s sexual experiences and agency under patriarchy.

As Carol Vance noted in the introduction to Pleasure and Danger: “[t]he conference attempted to explore the ambiguous and complex relationship between sexual pleasure and danger in women’s lives and in feminist theory. The intent of conference planners was not to weaken the critique of danger. Rather, we wished to expand the analysis of pleasure [...]” (Vance 1984a: 13). Ultimately, the goal of the Barnard conference was to increase dialogue around issues of sexuality that had previously been silenced within the feminist community. Given this attempt for inclusiveness within the conference framework, it is difficult to understand the political backlash that began as soon as the concept paper was released. The actual content of the conference became confused within the larger debate around how to discuss sexuality within a feminist context, thereby conflating the discussion regarding the intersections between pleasure, danger, and sexuality with concerns regarding the relationships between pleasure, danger, and specific sex acts. In particular, feminists opposed to modes of sexual expression such as s/m, pornography, and penetrative sex believed that the women participating in the Barnard conference were endorsing sexual practices that allowed continued patriarchal domination over female sexuality. The different understandings of danger’s location within sexuality prohibited radical and sex-radical feminists from having a productive conversation.

Backlash

The day before the conference was scheduled to begin, Barnard College officials—in response to phone calls from angry members of anti-pornography groups—confiscated 1500 copies of Diary of a Conference on Sexuality. The Diary, which was intended for distribution to conference participants, was a unique compilation of steering committee minutes, personal narratives, information about conference events, and work by feminist artists. It has been argued that “[t]he controversy surrounding the Barnard conference represents in microcosm some of the larger issues which the conference sought to address: the diversity of women’s sexual experiences; [...] the complex meaning of sexual images; the terror aroused by sexuality” (Vance 1984b: 341, see also Allison 1984). The conference brochures were eventually returned, but not until after all references to Barnard College and the Barnard College Women’s Center were removed from the publication.

The conference was protested in the weeks preceding and during the actual event. Accusations about the specific sexual practices of individual women involved in the conference were central to the outcry around the event. Members of anti-pornography groups such as Women Against Pornography (WAP) and Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) picketed outside the conference wearing t-shirts with the words ‘For a Feminist Sexuality’ on the front and ‘Against S/M’ on the back. This framing of a sex-radical perspective on sexuality pits an acceptable version of feminist sexuality against sex practices which challenge the narrative of patriarchal control over women’s bodies. For these protesters, sex practices such as s/m represented a betrayal of the concept of sisterhood so important to feminist debates in this moment. Because s/m became such a flash-point for feminist debate and dissent, practitioners within the feminist community were held up as visual markers that the politics of feminist consensus and sisterhood was in a space of transition.

Furthermore, the protesters and their propaganda blurred the lines between theory and praxis—feminists who defended the right of others to speak freely were marginalized as practitioners of ‘deviant’ sexual acts. As one account notes:

In examining this argument, it is easy to see how the interpretation of the leaflets distributed could be swayed to fit the political views of those responding to direct criticism. However, an examination of the text of one of the leaflets in question clearly reinforces the account cited above:

Already, the conference’s critics have established a concern with the personal sexual practices of the women participating. The leaflet further goes on to claim: “[a]lso among the speakers and workshop leaders are several women who champion butch-femme sex roles, while denying that these roles have any relation to the male-female sex roles that are the psychological foundation of patriarchy” (ibid: 181). The language used in this leaflet, such as ‘tiny offshoot’ and ‘backlash’ indicates that the protesters outside of the Barnard conference had no knowledge of the diversity of views represented inside. The leaflet further diminished the views of the women participating in the Barnard conference by asserting that:

Aside from the fact that this passage makes sweeping generalizations about groups of women who don’t necessarily fit the model it lays out (No More Nice Girls, for example, was a reproductive rights group), the authors further diminished the opinions of the women participating in the Barnard conference by claiming that their sexual identities are a result of patriarchal conditioning, and not the result of an autonomous decision. This strategy of minimizing and homogenizing the view points present at the Barnard conference missed the intricacy of the identities of the women involved.

The multiplicity of views becomes immediately apparent when one inspects the makeup of the conference itself. For example, Carol Munter led a workshop session designed to address the hypocrisy of the feminist movement for their willingness to advocate for fat-positive rhetoric while (perhaps) unintentionally perpetuating cultural practices that marginalize fat women. Participants in Munter’s workshop were led through a variety of exploratory exercises designed to produce empathy for women marginalized because of their weight or other aspects of their physical appearance. Roberta Galler discussed the fact that women with ability restrictions are often denied any sort of sexuality and the medical implications that this reality can hold. These topics (along with many others) hardly fit into the model of the conference projected by its opposition. Rather, the understanding of the nuanced relationships between pleasure and danger was more fully articulated than the critique that the conference’s opposition presented.

Scholarly Manifestations of the Controversy

Having now reviewed some of the major controversy surrounding the Barnard conference, I will spend the remainder of this article engaged in a close reading of the feminist sexuality debates as they played out in the pages of Feminist Studies. Focusing first on the content of published articles, and then on the conversations happening in the “Notes and Letters” section of the publication, I will examine the ways in which the conversations happening within the pages of Feminist Studies both addressed and mirrored the controversy surrounding the Barnard conference. It is my hope that in doing so, further light can be shed on the intricacies of this moment of controversy within the feminist community.

In the introduction to the special edition issue “Towards a New Feminism for the Eighties,” Judith Stacey (1979) noted that the editors of Feminist Studies did not set out to do an issue looking forward to the eighties, but the articles submitted for review seemed to naturally coalesce into one. This prompted the question: “[w]hat has provoked such diverse feminist thinkers simultaneously to reexamine the meaning of personal politics and the lessons of both the disturbing and inspirational moments in the history of feminism in its immediate and more distant past” (Stacey 1979: v)? Stacey reflects on these questions, drawing attention to a number of issues that seem to have risen to the surface of feminist consciousness at the turn of the decade. In particular, questions around the politics of sexuality seemed to be of particular import: “the subject of heterosexual feminism resurfaces, one of the major ‘closet’ issues of our movement that was moth-balled prematurely by the well-intentioned discretion of those who survived lesbian/straight discord” (ibid: iii). In this introduction, Stacey highlighted one of the issues that Carol Vance later fleshed out in her planning efforts around the Barnard conference—clearly there was a split in the feminist community around how to discuss issues of sexuality. For Stacey, this split seemed to fall along lesbian/heterosexual lines. Vance didn’t identify the tension as such, but the politics of the Barnard conference lend credence to Stacey’s theory, an idea which I will return to in greater detail later in this article.

Within this same issue of Feminist Studies, there are two articles that deal explicitly with the politics of sexuality. The first, by Barbara Haber (1979), addresses her concern that discussions of the family were being taken away from feminists and co-opted by other groups. According to Haber, heterosexual feminists must take responsibility for restoring this debate within the feminist community. As a follow up to this claim, she asserts:

In Haber’s formulation, feminism’s reconnection with issues of family must originate from heterosexual women, but must draw on the experiences of all women. What we see in this call to action is an early example of a practice that will become highly visible in the controversies surrounding the Barnard conference: the scapegoating of sexual minorities. To read Haber’s commentary, the fact that discussions of the family escaped from feminist theory was not the fault of the feminists living in normative families, but rather the fault of the feminists on the fringes, who made heterosexual feminists feel uncomfortable with their choices. Haber continues with more critical language, “[w]e must, as a movement, speak to the sufferings and fears of people in the sexual mainstream of American life, as well as to people whose life choices have pulled them outside of the mainstream” (ibid: 422). The tone of this claim is explicit. According to Haber, it is not enough to focus on the oppressions of those who are most frequently targets of oppressive social forces; we must also consider the needs and anxieties of those whose lives prescribe to social norms. It was an unwillingness to address these experiences that got feminist theory in its current position, and it’s only through a re-incorporation of heterosexual feminist concerns that feminist theory can return itself to a proper path.

In stark contrast to Haber’s work, Estelle Freedman’s (1979) “Separatism as Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930” is an attempt to think through the continuing merits of early separatist movements. According to Freedman, feminist scholarship in the ten years preceding her article was largely concerned with two questions: the origins of women’s oppression and the most effective strategies for combating patriarchal control. Separatism, according to Freedman, provided one way to begin theorizing answers to both of those questions:

Freedman’s stance on lesbian separatism stands in stark contrast to Haber’s reading of the relationship between heterosexual and lesbian feminists. While Haber ostensibly blames lesbian feminists for alienating heterosexual women, Freedman proposes that all women can learn from the women-centered model practiced by lesbian separatists. This divergence of viewpoints can be seen as representative of one of the larger tensions surrounding feminist discussions of sexuality at this time, namely, that the politics assigned to specific sexual identities are so highly subjective that they find themselves open to multiple, even opposite interpretations. It is this same duality that later prompted much of the anger directed at the participants of the Barnard conference, the inability to understand the variant interpretation of specific sexual acts. Further, it is this tension that led some women to label sexual practices the result of patriarchal control while other women labeled those same practices liberating.

This problematic propensity to overlook the multiple meanings that can be assigned to the same sexual practice is further worked out in Jessica Benjamin’s (1980) “The Bonds of Love: Rational Violence and Erotic Domination.” Using The Story of O as a case study, Benjamin’s piece thinks through the relationship between s/m sexuality, gender roles, and power dynamics. Her aim “is to suggest an explanation for the assignment and characterization of female and male roles in sadomasochistic fantasy, based on the differences in which boys and girls differentiate” (ibid: 146). Already, Benjamin’s work illustrates the duality of meaning possible when dealing with sexual encounters—she is assuming that dominant and submissive roles map clearly onto male and female gender roles, an assertion that many practitioners of s/m sexuality would find highly problematic. [8] This mapping becomes even more apparent as Benjamin fleshes out her analysis:

This marriage of violence, dominance, and rationality coupled with the marriage of emptiness, irrationality, and victimhood is largely in line with the feminist critiques that are later leveled against participants in the Barnard conference. In particular, it mirrors very closely the Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality’s assertion that members of the Lesbian Sex Mafia “champion butch-femme sex roles, while denying that these roles have any relation to the male-female sex roles that are the psychological foundation of patriarchy” (ibid). This unwillingness to mark multiple meanings, and the inclination to immediately associate sexual dominance with masculinity and social dominance was prevalent in much of the controversy surrounding the Barnard conference.

Notes & Letters

While published articles certainly provide a broad marker of where feminist thinking on sexuality lies, the most telling moments in this debate, at least as seen through Feminist Studies, are played out in the “Notes and Letters” section of the journal. The first instance of tensions around sexuality occurred in 1982, when the National Organization of Women (NOW) released a resolution detailing their stance on lesbian politics:

After the NOW resolution was publicized, a number of feminist groups spoke out publicly about its content. In particular, two groups of women wrote letters to the editor decrying NOW’s stance on lesbian sexuality. These two letters are notable not only for their willingness to speak out publicly in defense of lesbian sexuality, but also for the marked difference in tone between the two. The first letter framed NOW’s resolution in relation to feminist politics, arguing that it would be tactically inadvisable for the feminist movement to engage in the kind of scapegoating that the resolution seems to suggest: “[t]he resolution assumes that all feminists share an identical view of what constitutes ‘correct’ sexual behavior. This leads to a kind of ideological lockstep. It tells people how to think and feel and negates fundamental autonomy. This pressure towards homogenization within movements for social change should be forcefully and vigorously resisted” (Anderson et al 1982: 196). The second letter, instead of framing the resolution in terms of feminist politics, spoke out against the NOW resolution because of the discrimination it implicitly endorsed. In light of the political pressure placed on female sexuality, this letter advocated for a policy that didn’t participate in the same sort of regulation of sexuality frequently practiced by conservative activists. However, at the same time, this letter also included a caveat about pornography:

What these two letters illustrate is a continuing tension within the feminist community around how to discuss issues of sexuality. Neither letter came out and explicitly defended ‘perverted’ sexual practices. Instead both letters framed their critique in terms of other issues more relevant to the feminist community at large. Interestingly, the letter which framed the NOW resolution in terms of discrimination, the letter most likely to be read as endorsing specific sexual practices, included a disclaimer about the possible dangers of pornography. This shows us that there was a discomfort within the feminist community at large around the issue of pornography as a form of sexual expression, which can in part help explain the fallout that occurred as a result of the Barnard conference. In reading the controversy surrounding the Barnard conference in light of the public reception of NOW’s resolution, it becomes clear that the same social anxieties were being played out in both circumstances. In particular, social anxieties around sexual expression and the public reception of said expression played an intimate role in shaping the subsequent harsh reaction to the participants of the Barnard conference.

The backlash from the Barnard conference and the public outcry surrounding it left a lasting impression on many of the women who participated—as well as the feminist community as a whole. However, it is important to note that participants in the Barnard conference did not take their marginalization lightly. Many women resisted forcefully, and this resistance played out, in part, as a dialogue constructed through letters to the editor. Less than a year after the conference occurred, over three hundred individuals who took part in the Barnard conference drafted an open letter to the editors of Feminist Studies, which detailed the reactions to the conference that they considered most unjust. In particular, these individuals spoke out against the ways in which anti-pornography feminists misrepresented the political objectives of the conference, the fact that Barnard College pulled all of the copies of the central conference text the day before the conference, the leaflets distributed outside the conference which singled out and misrepresented a number of the women presenting papers or workshops, the fact that the Helena Rubenstein foundation pulled all of their funding from the Scholar and the Feminist series, and the impending threat that the women’s center at Barnard College would have its intellectual autonomy restricted in the future (Abelove et al 1983). By voicing these concerns in a public forum, the participants in the Barnard conference demonstrated to the feminist community at large that they were unwilling to back down, and submit to misrepresentation and marginalization.

This move was prompted, in part, by the fact that many women reported lasting feelings of alienation and marginalization within the feminist community in the aftermath of the conference. Dorothy Allison describes her experience as such:

This conflation of the personal and the political, and the confusion surrounding whether or not to assign meaning to specific sexual practices, is largely symptomatic of feminist discussions during this period. Just as Haber and Freedman struggled to assign unique meaning to lesbian separatism, the participants in the sexuality debates surrounding the Barnard conference struggled to decide whether the personal was political or the political was personal, and what that decision meant for them.

In defense of the individuals who drafted the above letter to the editor, Feminist Studies reproduced the text of the leaflet next to the letter, with the intent of highlighting exactly how unjustly these women were represented. This decision, though obviously well-intentioned, was met with a swift outcry from sex-radical feminists:

Along with printing a formal apology for the leaflet’s inclusion, the editors of Feminist Studies included fourteen pages of letters from the individuals who were personally attacked in the leaflet, giving them the opportunity to defend themselves against the charges. All of the included letters echoed the same theme, that the leaflet included gross misrepresentations of their sexual practices and affiliations with feminist politics. Gayle Rubin summed up the sentiment among the collection of letters:

Brett Harvey also addressed the question of the leaflet’s legitimacy, “[s]preading misinformation has been a systematic, consistent tactic of the anti-pornography movement in its ongoing attempt to discredit its political opponents” (Harvey 1983: 592). Overall, the tone of the letters sent to the editor reflected an attitude of disgust and disbelief with the actions of the Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality. Not only did the individuals named in the leaflet believe that their politics and sexuality were misrepresented, but they also believed that the tactics used in disseminating the information within the leaflet were highly reminiscent of McCarthy-era homosexual baiting. The authors of the letters to the editor included in this issue of Feminist Studies all felt very strongly that this sort of underhanded political tactic was not appropriate within the feminist movement, and would only lead to further alienation and isolation of potential political allies.

These same feelings of isolation or alienation were also felt by radical feminists who opposed the sex-radical feminist position. The narratives of radical feminist women describing their experiences with this controversy focused widely on the question of who has the right to speak. Because the sex-radical feminists positioned themselves as both oppressed and more politically progressive than their counterparts, dissent was often met with aloof indifference, or accusations of discrimination. Kirsten Anderberg (2004) writes:

This passage indicates quite clearly that it was not just sex-radical feminists who were being marginalized, but rather that women on both sides of the debate were thinking and speaking in ways that prevented them from effectively communicating with each other. Adriene Sere (2001) furthers the criticism, “[t]he problem is that [the sex-radical feminist] arguments are put forth in an ongoing monologue that not only suppresses dissent, but contemptuously dismisses those who would object” (270). Testimonials from both sides of this debate clearly illustrate that the question of how to negotiate pleasure, danger, and sexuality within the feminist community is not one that can be easily answered.

In light of these feelings of ill-will, the members of the Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality sent a letter in response to the series of letters sent in to Feminist Studies. [9] Their letter mounted a number of defenses of their actions, including the fact that all of the individuals named in the leaflet had spoken publicly or published on their sexual identities, an act which brings them out of the private sphere and into the public eye. In closing, the authors of the letter reinforced their right to speak out publicly against the participants in the Barnard conference:

What is most notable about this accusation is that several of the participants of the Barnard conference have spoken very publicly about their experiences with rape, domestic violence, prostitution, and incest. [10] Clearly, the authors of the letter were at least loosely familiar with the written work of the individuals they spotlighted—that was their defense for using individual names in the first place. However, this familiarity stopped abruptly when it came to experiences that could directly challenge the underpinnings of their argument.

As this collection of letters to the editor illustrates, the debates happening around female sexuality in this period of feminist history are personal and painful, as well as public and political. I believe that this tension between these binary categories of political activism further increased the tensions between radical and sex-radical feminists, causing the controversy to escalate to the level that it did. This series of letters brings us back to the tension that Haber and Freedman were trying to work through: what do we make of identity categories that can hold multiple meanings for multiple people?

Conclusions: Pleasure is Personal, Danger is Political?

Despite the backlash that occurred after the conference, several major theoretical breakthroughs were made in relation to the feminist understanding of sexuality. The notion that sexuality is an issue central to the feminist dialogue and not simply a peripheral issue to be addressed when all other crises are resolved was propelled to a much broader scale of attention within feminist communities by the Barnard conference. The debate surrounding pornography and s/m sexualities raging through the feminist community was also pushed to the forefront as a result of the scandal surrounding the conference. The troubling relationships between pleasure, danger, eroticism, and agency were added into the already existing discussions around female sexuality.

Feminists involved in the scandal surrounding the Barnard conference developed a more nuanced way of approaching the binary oppositions that earlier second-wave feminists struggled with. For these women, the binary between pleasure and danger became inextricably linked with the binary between the personal and political. For feminists directly involved with the Barnard conference, their relationship to pleasure was a highly personal one, while feminists in opposition to the conference’s project saw the need to address danger as a highly political reality.

The conference and its subsequent debates spurred extensive conversations about how and under what circumstances sexuality is an appropriate tool for negotiating and challenging the structures of patriarchal control. However, this debate failed to spur conversations around ways to challenge or dismantle the systems of patriarchal control that feminists were trying to dismantle. Like feminist thinkers earlier in the second wave, the participants in the Barnard conference were generally not interested in challenging the culturally constructed nature of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ as static identity categories. While many women expressed concern over specific gendered roles or expectations ascribed to men and women, nobody challenged the basic premise of distinguishing individuals based on the gender assigned to their biological sense. Rather, the site of struggle became how to address the power imbalances inherent in the opposition between men and women.

Ultimately, this moment in feminist history is marked by binary oppositions. Whether the tension is between pleasure and danger, men and women, radical and sex-radical feminists, violence and victimhood, consensus and debate, or dominance and submission; the feminists of this historical moment were bound up in binary constructions of their daily life and identity formation. While the attempts to negotiate the boundaries caused a significant amount of strife among and between feminist thinkers and activists, the work that these women did to flesh out the tensions around social dichotomies has paved the way for the type of theorizing around sexuality that contemporary theorists are able to engage in.

Works Cited

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Sere, Adriene (2001). “Sex and Feminism: Who is Being Silenced?” in Christine Stark and Rebecca Whisnant eds. (2004), Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography, North Melbourne: Spinifex Press:269-274.

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Vance, Carol (1982). Diary of a Conference on Sexuality, New York: Barnard College Women’s Center.

——- (1983). “Letter to the Editor,” in “Notes and Letters,” Feminist Studies 9(3): 589-591.

——- ed. (1984). Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

——- (1984a). “Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality,” in Carol Vance ed. (1984), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1-28.

——- (1984b). “Epilogue,” in Carol Vance ed. (1984), Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, Boston: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 431-440.

1. S/m is used here as shorthand for a group of practices often referred to as BDSM: bondage, domination(discipline), sadism, and masochism.

2. Referred to elsewhere in this article simply as “the Barnard conference.”

3. Initially, I reviewed the published content of three prominent feminist journals (Feminist Review, Feminist Studies, and Signs) between the years 1979 and 1983. I ultimately chose to focus my analysis specifically on the content of Feminist Studies because it presented the most coherent narrative of the shape this debate within feminism took within the early 1980s.

4. The political climate of the early 1980s included Ronald Reagan’s presidency, vicious attacks on abortion and reproductive rights, a backlash against feminist activism, and increased economic instability. For an excellent discussion of these social circumstances, see Eisenstein (1981)

5. In this context, Vance is using ‘social purity’ and ‘libertarian’ to refer to the same groups of women that I will differentiate as ‘radical feminists’ and ‘sex-radical feminists.’ While this distinction is not perfect, as many of the women I label ‘sex radical feminists’ would also identify themselves with radical feminism as a whole, I have chosen to use this language because I find it slightly less weighted than Vance’s original distinction.

6. For a complete compilation of minutes from the planning committee see Vance 1982

7. For a complete list of papers and workshops presented at the conference see Vance 1984

8. For an overview of the feminist critique of this formulation, see Allison 1984.

9. A note about placement: it is the tradition in the “Notes and Letters” section of Feminist Studies that letters to the editor are placed first, and then all remaining business and announcements follow. The only exception to this rule with the four year span I reviewed is this letter to the editor from Leidholdt et al. The editors of Feminist Studies silently endorsed the sex-radical feminist position by placing this letter at the end of the “Notes and Letters” section.

10. For a representative example of this honesty, see Hollibaugh 2000.