JEAN BETHKE ELSHTAIN
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Thurston hints. She writes, "To suggest that heterosexual bonding is in itself
inherently conservative and inimical to women, as some feminists have done,
is to both deny human needs and turn a blind eye to where grassroots social
change has and is taking place."
Similarly, and from a very different vantage point, the German Marx–
ist-feminist project outlined in
Female Sexualization
speaks to the politics of
everyday human life as reconstructed from personal memories of the social–
ization and "sexualization" of the female body: "Frauenformen," the writers
call it. Borrowing heavily if critically from the work of Foucault, Haus and
the other members of her "collective" aim to "denaturalize the body," to ex–
tricate the social and historical body from various "naturalistic and ahistorical
conceptions." They are tuned in to a politics of identity that is bodily-based.
Countering Epstein'S "raw physiology" reductionism, the participants in this
project understand that the body is a site in and through which complex for–
mations of identity occur and that human beings do not conform to social
norms concerning the body in ways that are uncomplicated. Although I grew
a bit weary of the lengthy, detailed reconstructions of memories concerning
body hair, legs, po tures, tummies, and all the rest, I was impressed by the
thoughtfulness brought to bear and the theoretical acumen that facilitated this
reflective effort.
The most interesting feature of the book is its coming to grips with the
thinking of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), specifically his lectures on the
"theology of the body" written before he became Pope. These socialist
feminists describe Wojtyla's procedure as "remarkably modern ... quite so–
phisticated." As they sum it up, Wojtyla privileges the dignity of the human
person who is never to be treated as a means to another's end, whether in
work or love. He rejects utilitarianism and egoism. He refutes the notion that
human beings are slaves to the sexual drive and repudiates the view that
this drive is evil. "Wojtyla does not consider desire to be morally wrong in
itself; what would be wrong would be the subordination of the will to desire."
Because, on Wojtyla's view, humans are social and sexual beings, the sex
drive must be integrated into morality - into personhood, self-determination,
free will, an inner life, and responsibility to others. This is a sexual ethic
based, in Wojtyla's words, on pleasure "without treating the person as an
object of pleasure," whose ultimate goal is "integrated love, which
incorporates all human impulses" and involves "full and deep appreciation of
the beauty of the [other] person."
The authors note that Wojtyla, with feminists, conceives of the domain
oflove and sexuality as a discursive and political battlefield over which each
seeks to impose a ethical order. They give Wojtyla credit for having "learnt
from Marxism," but finally his position must be struggled against, they con–
clude, because it is too normatively restrictive in opposing abortion and em–
bracing heterosexual or potentially generative intimate relationships. What is
