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Ariel Levy
Female Chauvinist Pigs : Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture
Freepress, New York, 2005, 240 pp. hc.
Originally reviewed by Prairie Fire in 2006, review revised April 2007
Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs documents the rise of what she calls "raunch culture" and the roles that women in the United States play in that culture. The book documents something very real. However, it is not just a sociological report. It is also a polemic of sorts against the now-popular camp of bourgeois feminists known as "sex-positive feminism." Levy shares more in common with the Catherine Mackinnon and Andrea Dworkin side of second wave bourgeois feminism. The book represents one kind of bourgeois feminism arguing against another. The book never overcomes the limits of bourgeois thought and bourgeois conceptions of gender. The book does not cover how its topic intersects with global class and nation. Instead of following the data on raunch culture to the correct conclusion that First World women are overall beneficiaries of global systems of power, including patriarchy, that First World women occupy oppressive-social roles in a way similar to their male counterparts, Levy dogmatically implies that First World women are all oppressed victims of patriarchy. She sees all women, in the First and Third Worlds, as part of a great sisterhood. Why do women in the United States partake in raunch? Levy's answer is that First World women suffer from a kind of false consciousness. Levy implies that the reason that there is no revolutionary-feminist movement in the United States is because women don't understand that they are oppressed. While it may be true First World women suffer from various forms of false consciousness, the reason that they do not pursue their gender interests by joining the revolutionary struggle is not due to lack of education. It is because their gender interests and other interests, in important ways, stand in opposition to the goals of real revolution. In other words, what Levy fails to fully understand is that women in the First World support the system because they benefit from it on the whole. Women in the First World do not seek to abolish gender oppression entirely because they have an interest in maintaining it.
Levy gives many examples of the pornified and mass-media-driven raunch culture. Examples range from Playboy, "Girls Gone Wild," the stripper and porn-star craze, Sex in the City, Britney Spears. Raunch culture is not limited to heterosexual males. Female Chauvinist Pigs is about the queer and heterosexual women who are increasingly a part of raunch culture. Levy sums up the female chauvinist pig:
"We decided long ago that the Male Chauvinist Pig was an unenlightened rube, but the Female Chauvinist Pig (FCP) has risen to a kind of exalted status. She is post-feminist. She is funny. She gets it. She doesn't mind the cartoonish stereotypes of female sexuality, and she doesn't mind a cartoonishly macho response to them. The FCP asks: Why throw your boyfriend's Playboy in a freedom trash can when you could be partying at the Mansion? Why worry about disgusting or degrading when you could be giving -- or getting -- a lap dance yourself? Why beat them when you can join them." (p. 93)
Many First World women go to great lengths to make themselves sexually appealing. They parade around in gogo boots. Some compete at clubs and parties to take off their tops or do sex acts for the camera. There are spokesmen for raunch who declare, like some "sex-positive" feminists, that these things are signs or even acts of liberation. In a culture where attractive "sexually open-minded" women are valued more than athletes and educators under most circumstances, as Levy observes, taking your top off can be an act of individual empowerment, albeit empowerment on the terms of patriarchy. Even though it is an act of empowerment, this is not empowerment as conceived by "sex-positive" feminists who Levy argues against.
Levy argues that the promotion of the raunch culture by women is an attempt to elevate themselves in a hierarchy of masculine sexuality while degrading their fellow sisters:
"So to really be like men, FCPs have to enjoy looking at those women, too. At the same time, they wouldn't mind being looked at a little bit themselves. The task here is to simultaneously show that you are not the same as the girly-girls in the videos and the Victoria's Secret cataloguers, but that you approve of men's appreciation of them, and the possibility you too have some of that same sexy energy and underwear underneath all your aggression and wit. A passion for raunch covers all the bases." (p. 99)
Women don't just partake of raunch. In ever greater numbers, they have a hand in producing raunch culture. There are different roles. Some women stand apart and above it; they engage in and consume raunch culture like men. There are different ways in which women in the United States engage with raunch. In a way, Howard Stern's world is a microcosm of this dynamic between different kinds of female chauvinist pigs. Howard Stern's female-sidekick Robin Quivers and her relation to the parade of bimbos on the show is a good example. Some of these savvy, powerful "female chauvinist pigs" include those who run parts of the sex industry. Others go to strip clubs to watch the girly girls alongside the boys. They too buy Playboy products. They become "one of the boys" at workplaces by adopting the male raunch culture directed toward bimbos. Levy compares these women to Uncle Toms. In some cases, they literally are the bosses in the sex industry like Christie Hefner, Hugh Hefner's daughter. However, , Levy implies, their price of admission is that they partake in the oppression of their fellow sisters who are lower in the First World gender hierarchy.
The Uncle Tom analogy doesn't fit exactly. Levy seems pretty clear that she thinks those at the bottom of the raunch culture hierarchy Ñ the Hooters waitresses of the world Ñ are oppressed and have some mistaken ideas about empowerment. Levy even mentions Gloria Steinem's exposŽ, "A Bunny's Tale," on the trials of Playboy Bunnies. However, Levy seems to think that those women at the top of the raunch culture hierarchy are also oppressed in some sense. That she compares those female chauvinist pigs at the top to Uncle Toms is revealing. Such a comparison doesn't fit. It isn't a case of the house slave being oppressed less than the field slave. Tom never owned the plantation, whereas Christie Hefner is running the Playboy empire. Hefner benefits in very real ways from patriarchy.
"Tomming, then, is conforming to someone else's -- someone more powerful's -- distorted notion of what you represent. In so doing, you may be getting ahead in some way -- getting paid to dance in blackface in a Tom show, or gaining favor with Mas'r as Stowe's hero did in literature -- but you are simultaneously reifying the system that traps you." (p. 106)
This passage says a lot about Levy's view. Despite all the evidence she herself presents, Levy simply assumes that women in the First World do represent something else deep down and are being deceived. First World women are deceived in some ways, particularly when it comes to their relatively less-powerful positions compared with their male counterparts. However, women in the First World are not being deceived about the fact that they benefit from the system. They benefit and many know it at some level.
Levy's conclusions are not entirely clear. She feels that raunch culture is ultimately not empowering for the individuals involved. She argues against "sex-positive" feminists that raunch is not a way to fight patriarchy. She is correct that it is no way to fight patriarchy. However, to claim that it isn't empowering is not altogether true. In some cases it clearly is empowering, especially for those women who own or make huge profits off the raunch and sex industry. And we should not forget that the raunch in First World is only made possible by the super-exploitation of the Third World. Raunch culture is a sign of the gender privilege for First World women and men. However, for Third World women, raunch culture is part of a whole industry that turns them into sex slaves. It undermines replaces indigenous culture with a pornified Western one. It commodifies them in a way that strips them of their power and humanity. It undermines the struggle against imperialism.
Levy describes looking at porno magazines:
"[T]hey gave me a big stack of magazines to flip through and the only variety I saw was the kind of variety you get when you look at a wall of Barbie Dolls. Some have darker hair (but most are blond), some have an ethnic- or professional themed costume, but they all look very distinctly poured from the same mold." (p. 43)
Even First World women who adopt the bimbo role are empowered by raunch in various ways. This is because, through raunch culture, First World women are granted a near (not total Ñ Asian fetishes and others do exist) monopoly on what society considers to be desirable. Raunch culture is setting the standards for desirability globally. However, it is mainly First World women that have the wealth and ability to meet these standards while still retaining any leisure time and control over their lives. In contrast, a Third World woman is typically less desirable by the standards of raunch, except when she conforms to a narrow set of fetishes or is a slave in the sex industry. Also, lighter-skinned women benefit more from raunch as it now exists than darker-skinned women because raunch culture has contributed to making the European features the pinnacle of physical attraction. Therefore, lighter-skinned women have access to more and a higher quality of leisure time than darker-skinned women who are considered generally less desirable by raunch. This translates into less dating and life opportunities for darker-skinned women. This further increases the national oppression and White supremacy. Issues such as these, related to nation and class, are absent from Levy's work.
Levy is clearly in the bourgeois-feminist camp. Levy thinks all the women who actively participate in raunch culture are suffering from a false consciousness regarding their own oppression. She is holding out for a First World liberation from patriarchy while not overthrowing imperialism. So, she is confused when First World women take empowerment the same way men do, on patriarchy's terms. Like men in the First World, women in the First World are gender oppressors in an overall sense. Although First World women generally have less power than their male counterparts. It is no surprise that many take on the sexual psychology and raunch culture of men.
This passage sums up Levy's perspective:
"Even if you are a woman who achieves the ultimate and becomes like a man, you will still always be a woman. And as long as womanhood is thought of as something to escape from, something less than manhood, you will be thought less of, too." (p. 112)
For Levy, oppression is a thought. At bottom, Levy advocates the bourgeois position that gender interest must be tied to biological sex. Although making some worthy observations, Levy avoids the conclusion that most First World peoples are gender oppressors, be they male or female. Most adults in the First World share the same sexual and leisure culture, the same psychology and outlook. They all accrue benefits from gender oppression in the Third World. After all, expanded life options in the First World are almost always connected to the restriction of life options in the Third World. Gender oppression in the Third World is part of the system of control that guarantees the smooth transfer of wealth from the Third World to the First. The liberalism of the First World is propped up by terrible gender oppression Ñ be it in its raunchy liberal or semi-feudal variety Ñ in the Third World. Levy sees women globally in terms of some kind of sisterhood. She sees all women as, more or less, the same in terms of gender interests. Except, Levy thinks, that some women are unenlightened. For Levy, they do not realize that and suffer from false consciousness. Hence, they participate in raunch. Levy implies that a female chauvinist pig is similar to an Uncle Tom because she is a person "who deliberately upholds the stereotypes assigned to his or her marginalized group in the interest of getting ahead with the dominant group." (p. 105) Levy type of feminism just assumes that these gender aristocrats in the First World are oppressed by patriarchy in a way that allows them to be potentially mobilized against it en masse. Levy writes, "FCPs have relinquished any sense of themselves as a collective group with a linked fate" (p. 101), as though female chauvinist pigs do have a collective fate with all females globally. Levy simply assumes there is a collective fate to be lost. In reality, the fate of female chauvinist pigs is not linked with the majority of the world's women the Third World. First World peoples, both men and women, are more similarly situated in terms of the global patriarchy.