Punishing and Prescribing Sexuality

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.