Sex Wars Essay/Midterm
Midterm Essay
Part A: The question here being addressed is “can women have sexual agency under patriarchy?” Yet to even begin answering this question, we need to understand just what this question is asking. First, what is sexual agency? Agency, in its simplest form, is the ability to act in a way that accomplishes your goals. To have agency in an area of your life is to have the capacity to act in a way that can produce the results you want. When discussing agency in the area of sex, it includes many things. The ability to define yourself sexually (heterosexuality/homosexuality spectrum, from asexual to highly interested in sex, etc.), the ability to choose whether or not you want to experience sexual activity (both in general and with a specific person at a specific time in a specific way), the ability to choose how you want to engage in sexual activity (including whether you want to practice safer sex), and the ability to stop engaging in a sexual act that is no longer wanted or to refuse an act that was never desired. In other words, if you have sexual agency, you know what you want sexually and what you don't want. In terms of patriarchy, it is defined as male dominance, social systems that values men over women, as well as an institution and social attitudes. What is at stake, in this question, is whether women can claim agency in a society where men are typically the ruling factor. There are many opinions when it comes to this questions, some saying yes that women can have sexual agency under patriarchy yet other would say no. To start off the author Carole Vance (Please and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality)would argue that a to focus only on women's pleasure and sexual agency ignores the patriarchal world we live in, but to focus only on the danger of possible sex situations ignores a woman's sexual agency and choices in the matter. So we are left in this kind of middle void. Vance plays in this middle area for most of her article, playing
Part A: The question here being addressed is “can women have sexual agency under patriarchy?” Yet to even begin answering this question, we need to understand just what this question is asking. First, what is sexual agency? Agency, in its simplest form, is the ability to act in a way that accomplishes your goals. To have agency in an area of your life is to have the capacity to act in a way that can produce the results you want. When discussing agency in the area of sex, it includes many things. The ability to define yourself sexually (heterosexuality/homosexuality spectrum, from asexual to highly interested in sex, etc.), the ability to choose whether or not you want to experience sexual activity (both in general and with a specific person at a specific time in a specific way), the ability to choose how you want to engage in sexual activity (including whether you want to practice safer sex), and the ability to stop engaging in a sexual act that is no longer wanted or to refuse an act that was never desired. In other words, if you have sexual agency, you know what you want sexually and what you don't want. In terms of patriarchy, it is defined as male dominance, social systems that values men over women, as well as an institution and social attitudes. What is at stake, in this question, is whether women can claim agency in a society where men are typically the ruling factor. There are many opinions when it comes to this questions, some saying yes that women can have sexual agency under patriarchy yet other would say no. To start off the author Carole Vance (Please and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality)would argue that a to focus only on women's pleasure and sexual agency ignores the patriarchal world we live in, but to focus only on the danger of possible sex situations ignores a woman's sexual agency and choices in the matter. So we are left in this kind of middle void. Vance plays in this middle area for most of her article, playing