Cynthia Peters
It’s
practically cliché to say that the marketplace uses sex to sell. Not only do
the commercials feature attractive female hands caressing gear shifts, but the
shows themselves feature instant sexual gratification, without so much as a nod
toward responsibility. In the old days, the Brady Bunch mom and dad kept their
pajamas on and sedately read in bed. But these days, the stars of our situation
comedies are going at it like bunnies on prime time TV.
While
advertisers put sex in service of the marketplace, the corporate media create TV
shows (as well as other forms of media) that will service the advertisers. That
is, the media create content that reinforces the idea that gratification (sexual
and otherwise) is a simple purchasable commodity.
But
something funny is going on here. While the sex-fest happens on TV (see my
previous commentary, “Sex in Service of the Marketplace”), policymakers are
coming up with laws that punish women’s sexuality, and minutely prescribe the
parameters of when, where and how it can be expressed.
Riding
on the “success” of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Act (which already enforces marriage by only requiring single mothers to work),
conservatives and liberals are hoping to renew the law with an additional focus
on marriage. According to the Boston Globe (February, 12, 2000), there is
bi-partisan support for requiring states to spend part of their welfare money on
pro-marriage activities, encouraging caseworkers to talk to pregnant women about
marrying the baby’s father, judging state success based on reductions in
out-of-wedlock births, and teaching about the value of marriage in high school.
Oklahoma has designated May 5th as “Save Your Marriage” day; earmarked $10
million in welfare funds for marriage counseling; and hired two “marriage
ambassadors” to appear on talk shows and at schools.
In
addition to encouraging marriage, the 1996 welfare law allocated $250 million to
promote sexual abstinence among the young – an amount that far surpasses
spending on sex education (Christian Science Monitor, January 10, 2001). The
chastity movement tells (mostly) girls that their “virginity” is a gift they
should save for their future husbands. Their sexuality is not something they can
control in an affirmative way. In other words, we don’t help kids understand
the variety of ways they might experience sexuality, use precautions, be
generally self-determining about sexual expression. Instead, abstinence pledges
equate sex with intercourse and then forbid it.
The
Bush administration is further prescribing and punishing different kinds of
sexuality. In January, Bush signed an executive order ending federal aid to
overseas groups that provide abortion services, and conservatives are urging him
to deny funds to domestic groups such as Planned Parenthood that deliver
contraceptive counseling to poor women under Title X of the US Public Health
Service Act. Even the Pentagon’s “overly generous pregnancy policies” are
coming under conservative scrutiny (Boston Globe, February 11, 2001).
Policy
makers set out to control how poor women should be allowed to experience
intimate relationships – using welfare laws to reward and punish sexual
behavior and family choices in ways that enforce dependence on men, encourage
abstinence, punish single motherhood, and reward marriage. Progressives should
use the debate around welfare reform not only to fight for a stronger safety net
for poor people, but also to guarantee that all people (of whatever class,
gender and/or race) should be free to make choices about sexuality, reproduction
and intimate relationships. Making choices about how to be sexual and how to be
in a family are rights not privileges.
Pro-choice
activists should be careful never to fall back into defending access to abortion
for only the extreme reasons. Even when we are at our most defensive, we support
choice not just for women whose health might be compromised by childbirth, or
for women who are victims of rape or incest. We also support choice because
being a heterosexually active woman means you run the risk of getting pregnant.
When we defend access to abortion, we should say loudly and clearly that we are
defending women’s right to be sexual and make choices about the consequences
of that.
Another
way for progressives to enter the debate around how public policy regulates
intimacy and rewards certain kinds of sexuality is to address the question of
marriage and domestic partnership. To the mainstream gay and lesbian movement,
which wants to participate in the institution of marriage, I say, “Be careful
what you wish for.” While marriage has, at times, offered some economic
protections to women and children, especially when divorce occurs or in ensuring
access to the husband’s pension or other assets, it has also served as a way
for the state to determine who is deserving. We need to radically
reconceptualize the idea that benefits should be doled out according to how
people choose to be in intimate relationships. Liberal domestic partnership
benefits only extend benefits to people who show they live together in a
committed relationship.
The
marriage/domestic partnership debate is an arena that progressives could use to
pose an alternative vision of society – one that takes care of all its
members, whether they are heterosexual, monogamous, domestically inclined, or
not. In this society, we would ensure that everyone has health coverage, old age
pensions, and an adequate safety net – and we wouldn’t use public policy to
pinpoint the exact sexual behaviors that are deserving while we punish the
hordes of “others.” As one progressive gay and lesbian organization has
said, “Instead of a seat at the table as it is presently set, we will work
with others to transform the way the table is built, let alone who sits at
it.”
Perhaps
the commercial sex-fest and the punitive public policies that regulate and
prescribe sexuality are not so contradictory after all. Both negate human
sexuality, and remove it from its complex intersection in pleasure and
responsibility. Both use sex for other ends – the marketplace for upping sales
and reinforcing consumption, and public policy for creating classes of deserving
and undeserving. Both provide progressives with plenty of opportunities to
affirm alternative understandings of sexuality, and to contest its appropriation
by institutions that use it to reinforce elite privilege.