The Right to Sex

Our “sex”, which is supposedly a natural thing, is already laden with meaning from the moment we are born. At birth, bodies are sorted into two categories, male or female, and this division determines what social purpose a body will be assigned. Some of these bodies are for giving life, giving pleasure, and providing nourishment to other bodies, for making them feel good and whole and in control. So, sex is actually a cultural thing posing as a natural one. The word sex, in the second sense, is also said to be a natural thing, an act that we perform with our bodies. And even here, everything is predefined: some bodies must give pleasure, serve, and confirm the value of other bodies. This act is said to exist outside politics, but feminism believes that this is also fiction, one that serves particular interests.

Feminism, a political movement that aims to transform the world beyond recognition, exposes the inconsistencies and fictions that surround the way we view sex. Feminism begins with a woman’s recognition that she is a member of a sex class: that is, a member of a class of people assigned to an inferior social status based on something called “sex”, a thing that is said to be natural, pre-political, objective material ground on which the world of human culture is built. Therefore, it cannot be said that sex is disconnected from politics and that it is objective terrain, since it is already charged with meaning.