Human Female Sexuality - Feminist Concepts

Feminist Concepts

The feminist movement, and the increasing social status of women in modern society, have led to women's sexuality being reassessed as a subject in its own right. During the 1970s and 1980s, in the wake of the sexual revolution, numerous feminist writers started to address the question of female sexuality from their own female perspective, rather than allowing female sexuality to be defined in terms of largely male studies. The first such popular non-fiction book was Nancy Friday's My Secret Garden. Other writers such as Germaine Greer, Simone de Beauvoir and Camille Paglia were particularly influential in this, although their views were not universally or placidly accepted. Toward the end of the twentieth century the most significant European contributions to understanding female sexuality came from psychoanalytical French feminism, with the work of Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.

Lesbianism and female bisexuality also emerged as topics that could be talked about in public. A short-lived movement towards political lesbianism within the feminist movement led to temporary schisms within the feminist movement between heterosexual and lesbian women, then rapidly floundered in the face of the acceptance that most women's sexuality was not defined by politics, but by their own sexual preferences. Most modern feminist movements now accept all forms of female sexuality as equally viable.

Feminist attitudes to female sexuality have taken a few different directions. In particular, matters such as the sex industry, sexual representation in the media, and issues regarding consent to sex under conditions of male dominance have been particular controversial among feminists. This debate has culminated in the late 1970s and the 1980s, in what came to be known as the Feminist Sex Wars, which pitted anti-pornography feminism against sex-positive feminism, and parts of the feminist movement were deeply divided by these debates.