Charles: When you say "they didn't simply mean , etc.", do you mean they did mean this and the rest of what you say, or do you mean they didn't mean "women and men having sex with each other ..." at all. ?
Yoshie: As you recall, Woodhull was also a spiritualist. They did mean sex as well, but sex had to be solidly clothed by the language of spiritual unions. Free _Love_, not free sex. Not just for Woodhull, of course, but for all those Free Lovers, including Free Lovermen. (An aside to Paul: First-wave feminists' opposition to abortion was indeed based upon their [mistaken] perception that most abortions were forced upon women by men. However, those upper/middle-class feminists also had some other reason to oppose abortion. They publically extolled the virtue of motherhood, and often on the ground that women must become better mothers, they pushed for equal education for women and other causes. Motherhood was their rhetorical weapon for equality, so they could not afford to support what was perceived to be its opposite. Also, at that time, while working-class women had avenues for paid employment--though wages were extremely low--there were very few 'professional careers' open to upper/middle-class women who were accustomed to 'respectability' and material comfort. Their sexual politics was thus very circumscribed by the political economy of sex/gender as it was complicated by class. BTW, back then, even socialist feminists such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman contributed to the cult of motherhood. See, for instance, her feminist utopian novel _Herland_.)
Charles: Between this phase and the 60's there was a wave in John Reed's period in Greenwich Village as one focal point. This is portrayed in the movie Reds. In fact , the Movie Reds portrays the sexual feminism of Elizabeth Bryan (?) and Reed on the same level almost of the Communist Party /Russian Revolution story. Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman are also portrayed as leading feminist thinkers in the Village. This phase is more radical and Marxist than the Woodhull group. Of course, elsewhere Inessa Armand was critiquing Lenin's position on free love and living with him and Krupskaya ( I don't know whether it has been definitely established that it was a menage-a-trois).
Yoshie: Among them, only Red Emma could probably be called a direct foremother of today's sex-positive feminists. Sanger was not in favor of the right to abortion, I recall. (As we also should remember, both of them were influenced by a socialist version of social Darwinism [and I don't mean this too negatively] as well, as in 'working-class babies must become healthier,' which complicates their support for contraception.) The 20s did undergo a sex revolution of sorts, with Bohemianism you mention and the growth of mass entertainment, where young working-class men and women could mingle relatively freely. At that time, many working-class women's wages were so low, however, that to go out and enjoy movies or to frequent cafes, arcades, dancehalls, etc., they often had to rely on their male 'friends' for 'treats,' thus blurring the distinction between dating and casual prostitution. Also, check out the writings by Meridel Le Sueur or women like her. With the vogue of pop Freudianism in the Bohemian milieux, many young women intellectuals, according to their testimonies, had to suffer the indignity of their male counterparts smugly telling them, 'Oh baby, you are sexually repressed,' if they were to say, 'I'm not interested.' Older feminists who lived to witness the 20s sex revo were often disgusted by it. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a good example of such older feminists who saw mainly a new form of oppression and sexual exploitation in it. (Hey, this already foreshadowed what was to come during the 60s. You know, the kind of stuff Frances was telling you & Paul about. The problem was simply more intense during the 20s due to the restricted access to contraception and abortion.)
Charles: Yea, I didn't mean to say that those posts were comprehensive discussions. I was speaking more specifically of the 60's sex lib movement, and of the dimensions that don't seem to be discussed anymore. It's like they have been silenced or tabooed. People don't even talk about it. It is an amazing example of sexual repression and thorough counterrevolt.
Yoshie: I do agree that there has been a conservative reaction against sex lib. Have you seen _Boogie Nights_ (a movie about the porn industry during the 70s). What about _The Ice Storm_ by Ang Lee (a movie about suburban families at the tail end of sex lib)? Both are examples of the Cinema of Sexual Reaction that have us believe that all that swinging, swapping, experimenting, celebrating-sexual-expression stuff was only done by people who could not find Love at Home! Yikes! However, not all critical comments on what actually went on during the 60s come from the same political instinct. A simple fact is that having lots of sex (even far-out experimental stuff), if it's not good sex, was not and can never be liberating.
>Yoshie:
>(See _Intimate Matters: A History of
>Sexuality in America_ for more info on this. If you don't have enough time,
>read at least "Part III. Toward a New Sexual Order, 1880-1930.")
>
>Charles: Yes, I would like to try to get this reference.
Yoshie: Why don't you e-mail me your mailing address off-list? I'll give you a copy.
Charles: A lot of my data on the period is from direct "interviews", discussions, etc. with people who were actually doing it. I don't want to exactly say I wasn't doing it. But what I mean is I had lots of friends, .. you know how the grape vine works, the movement has its own spontaneous social science especially in the universities where it was really big. It was part of the whole hippie ethic: Peace and Love. I remember I had a button "Make love, not war". You know the whole flower children scene. The Beatles. Yoko and John in bed in front of television cameras. Aretha Franklin singing "Respect" and "Doctor Feelgood" when she came out of the church. Marvin Gaye and 'Sexual Healing". That whole trip.
Yoshie: My best informant on the whole 60s deal is Michael Hoover. And he says that what is memorable and memorably bad about the hippie scene is men calling their girlfriend 'my old lady.' More generally, men calling women 'chicks' and stuff like that. That said, I'll simply invite him to put in his two cents on Sex, Drugs, R&R....
Charles: Yes, I think these dimensions of sexual liberation are thoroughly discussed by contemporary commentators. However, I think what they leave out is the direct liberation of heterosexuals. I don't hear anybody talking about that, except me. Of course, a lot of people are just doing something about it and not talking about it. The objective movement is going on whether it has theoreticians or not. It's a real rank and file controlled movement.
Yoshie: Sure enough. For instance, all my male students just love being put down by me and/or female students in the classroom. It's a sign of some change in sex/gender/sexuality dynamics in public space. I think it's related to the desire for divestiture I can see in the Race Traitor thing with regard to whiteness. Similar changes must be happening in private as well.
Charles: Yea, romanticism is one of the banes of sexuality going way back to what, St. Valentine? Or at least how that myth has been appropriated by the dominant ideas.
Yoshie: On the other hand, stripped of its straight prescriptive power, courtliness may make a comeback. Nowadays, romanticism is pretty much dead in het love scenes in films. However, lots of people seemed to love it when it was staged between a racially ambiguous drag queen and a shaggy-dog ex-IRA man in _The Crying Game_. Or Rupert Everett dancing with Julia Roberts in _My Best Friend's Wedding_. Both movies are about making gayness safer for straight audiences, but those movies also signal a kind of nostalgia for courtliness.
>Charles: Be my Valentine. Just kidding !
send me some flowers,
Yoshie