Word: sexuality
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Feminist Therapist is largely a complication of the case histories of her psychoanalytic patients--cases-in-point in which women had to grapple with such things as competing professionally with a spouse, having children out of wedlock, adopting children into a lesbian household, or relying on masochistic fantasies for sexual arousal. Each example provides a pivot for her own condemnation of the tyranny of stereotypical yet pervasive forms of morality and feminine role-playing...
SOME kind of intimacy with another person seems essential to everyone's happiness. This doesn't necessarily include sexual intimacy, just the chance to share thoughts and acts privately that you're not comfortable about bringing out in front of everybody. It's often nice to be intimate with more than one person, in succession or at the same time-- where sex is involved, variety is a tricky thing...
...still particularly inappropriate for women to chase after sexual experience A woman is supposed to let sex sort of happen to her. Traditionally, she's not supposed to want to make sex; nor, as a wife, is the woman traditionally allowed to make money. In her domestic role she is supposed to provide sexual services, among others. Chesler and Goodman note the stigma that results when the married woman's usual duties are connected with money--both the prostitue and the maid are commonly labeled low-class creatures. In a pretty devious way, a predominant feminine image turns...
...women do learn to use their bodies and their sexuality. Sometimes it seems hard to get men to listen to a woman unless she humbles herself a little--there are too many jokes about the shrewish type. When a woman says no, her body tends to find ways to soften or deny her words; Chesler and Goodman call it using her body "deferentially." She adopts certain mannerisms as a way for daring to threaten, rather than to put men at their ease. It is more acceptable for women than men to behave childishly, thereby rendering themselves less imposing as sexual...
According to Chesler and Goodman, "Touching' is one way of signifying power: economic power in general and sexual power, the droit du seigneur." While this may sound overly ominous, men, whether they like the role of aggressor or not, seem to touch more readily. The boss can wrap a paternal arm around a female's shoulder without seeming too forward. If she returned the gesture, the scene would become an embarrassment or a joke; only by this reversal would its essential presumptuousness or plain silliness come out. A woman who acts this way might be tagged a flirt--a demeaning...