The Pleasures of Gender and the Joys of Sex

• In Event: 456 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Paper Session. The Joys of Sex: Pleasure and Desire in Sexuality Studies

Abstract

Because feminist sociologists theorize gender inequality as a byproduct of interpersonal interactions and institutional arrangements that ossify cultural notions of sexual difference we often believe them to be thoroughly naturalized, taken-for-granted and thus nearly impossible to reconfigure, part of the social fabric of everyday life. Because the “stalled revolution” seems so intractable, it appears that the only possible curative for persisting gender inequality is the wholesale “undoing” and dismantling of gender as we know it. We are part of a new movement of theorists who wish to recuperate gender theory in the service of understanding individual and collective investment in gender, not merely to understand why certain forms of gendered inequalities persist, but also to forge explanations of why certain forms of inequality remain meaningful to those—namely heterosexual women--we might think would resist them. In this paper, we expand our social theory of pleasure, and gender pleasure, in particular, by examining the inextricable link between collective experiences of gender and sexuality. We argue that sexual pleasure underwrites much of what we collectively understand to be the impulse to invest in cultural gender schemas. Following Judith Butler, we wish to argue that the “heterosexual matrix” that sets the preconditions for gender behavior is itself a source of collective pleasure and investment. Sexuality, in its most social forms, is currency in an “affective economy” regulated by social ideas of gender difference. In our focus on the ills of inequality, and there are many, we overlook important features of gender’s social life.

Authors

• Tey Meadow, Harvard University

• Kristen Schilt, University of Chicago