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Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution

Sheila Jeffreys

4.22 · Rating details · 65 ratings · 5 reviews

The sexual revolution of the 1960's and 1970's is generally considered a time when the women's movement made great strides. In this provocative book, Sheila Jeffreys argues that this much heralded sexual freedom did not constitute any real gain for women but continued the tradition of their oppression. At the root of sexual liberation, Jeffreys finds an increasing eroticiz ...more

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Paperback, 360 pages

Published September 1st 1991 by New York University Press (first published 1990)

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Apr 07, 2018 Natalie rated it really liked it

Shelves: do-i-make-you-horny, female-pen, i-blame-the-patriarchy, read-in-2018

It’s criminal that Sheila Jeffreys isn’t as well known as other feminist writers of her era. She lays everything out so clearly and plainly that you’re honestly angry that no one else really considers these ideas or criticisms as valid. Anticlimax was published in 1990 and many of Jeffreys’ predictions for the future of feminism have borne poisonous fruit, likely well beyond her worst imaginings (and certainly mine): sexual liberation is viewed as the same thing as women’s liberation, promiscuit ...more

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Jun 09, 2014 Kathleen O'Neal rated it really liked it

Sheila Jeffreys is not as well known, at least in the United States, as other late second wave radical feminist theorists such as Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, and Catharine MacKinnon. However, Jeffreys is perhaps the best late second wave radical feminist writer to read if one wants a clear understanding of those features of the ideology which have rightly alienated subsequent feminist and LGBTQ positive thinkers as well as the important insights of late second wave radical feminism which third w Sheila Jeffreys is not as well known, at least in the United States, as other late second wave radical feminist theorists such as Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, and Catharine MacKinnon. However, Jeffreys is perhaps the best late second wave radical feminist writer to read if one wants a clear understanding of those features of the ideology which have rightly alienated subsequent feminist and LGBTQ positive thinkers as well as the important insights of late second wave radical feminism which third wave feminism is poorer for having lost. Jeffreys’s book “Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution” was originally published in 1990. In reading it, I have sought to understand it both as a historical document and as a work of theory which represents a viewpoint that is in many respects even more compelling than it was when the book was originally written. More than any other document I have read so far, “Anticlimax” provides for the contemporary reader a crystal clear view of both the embarrassing shortcomings and the valuable insights of late second wave radical feminist thinking.
By far the two weakest chapters in the book are the second chapter which is titled “Decensorship” and the fourth chapter which is titled “The Failure of Gay Liberation.” While the arguments presented in favor of Jeffreys’s positions are far from compelling in these chapters, they are nonetheless fascinating for their paradigmatic presentation of ideas which were in wide circulation in radical feminist and lesbian separatist circles at the time Jeffreys published this book. In “Decensorship,” Jeffreys makes the argument that the publication of novels with sexually explicit themes has been harmful for women. In particular, I focused on Jeffreys’s assessment of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” because it was the only book which Jeffreys writes about in this chapter that I have actually read (although I was previously aware of all of the books she mentioned). Jeffreys believes that “Lolita” is a book which glorifies the sexual abuse of women and celebrates pedophilia. Troublingly, Jeffreys seems to support this position not so much based upon her own reading of the book as it is based upon the assessment of the book put forth by other critics. Contrary to the understanding of these critics, “Lolita” is not a book which glorifies pedophilia and sexual assault. In truth, it is more of a cautionary tale about the harm that comes to all involved as a result of a man’s decision to exploit a young woman sexually. Perhaps these critics and Jeffreys were confused because of the fact that the pedophile is the story’s narrator, but it seems obvious to me that he is to be understood as an unreliable narrator whose actions ultimately cause both himself and Lolita a great deal of harm. But perhaps the most disturbing feature of this chapter is Jeffreys’s conviction that any work of art in which women or sexuality is depicted in a way which she deems politically incorrect ought to be banned. One frustrating aspect of reading Jeffreys is the realization that she so often seems oblivious to the reality that sometimes worthwhile values have to be balanced against one another. Like many activists/intellectuals with a clear and uncompromising vision of how the world should be, Jeffreys sometimes shows a disturbing degree of disregard for the value of the respect for individual autonomy and pluralism that is necessary to the maintenance of a free society.
The chapter titled “The Failure of Gay Liberation” says surprisingly little about sexuality in the lesbian community. This is surprising because that is the community which Jeffreys herself identifies with. Sadomasochism among lesbians and the presence of butch/femme roleplaying among lesbians are mentioned briefly and while it is obvious that Jeffreys disapproves of these practices, she elaborates on their place in the lesbian community very little. Reading “Anticlimax” it is easy to appreciate the criticism that has so frequently been made of lesbian separatists – that in their rush to promote the politics of lesbianism they neuter it of its sexual power. The majority of the chapter is instead taken up with Jeffreys’s criticisms of gay men and transsexual people. The sensationalistic way in which Jeffreys discusses gay male promiscuity is particularly problematic. (Interestingly, while “Anticlimax” was published at a time when the HIV/AIDS crisis was in full swing, it is scarcely mentioned in Jeffreys’s discussions of gay male sexuality.) Another lowlight of this section of the book is Jeffreys’s brief invocation of Michel Foucault, a theorist whose work it is soon obvious she does not really understand.
Reading Jeffreys’s analysis of the psychology behind transsexuality, it becomes obvious why some many trans people continue to feel hurt and angry about how radical feminists and lesbian separatists have often treated them. Thankfully, as trans people have become more visible and politicized, feminist and queer people of my generation have become more accepting of them and sympathetic to their struggles. (It is worth noting that Jeffreys’s views on transsexuality have not changed much; this year she published a book on transsexuality which proceeds to argue that transsexual identity is simply one example among many of the ways in which the existence of gender as a social construct harms individuals and society at large.) In “Anticlimax” Jeffreys claims that transsexual identity is often motivated by a desire to avoid a homosexual identity. From where I stand, the late second wave radical feminist and lesbian separatist positions on transgender issues have discredited the movement and its philosophy more than any other single issue where feminists and queer people of my generation are concerned. Reading Jeffreys’s position on transsexuality in “Anticlimax” makes it abundantly clear that it was for the best that feminists and queer people have largely moved away from this way of thinking about and relating to trans people.
Despite Jeffreys’s misguided attitudes towards transgender people, certain aspects of gay male culture, and the censorship of literature which she views as sexist, “Anticlimax” also illustrates many of the ways in which the hegemony of sex positivity within third wave feminist thought makes it nearly impossible for feminists today to articulate a coherent critique of the sexist ways that sexuality often functions in our culture. This was the insight of much second wave radical feminism and its absence from more recent feminist theory and activism is detrimental to women as a class. While mainstream third wave feminists no doubt recognize some of the ways in which cultural ideas about sexuality do tangible harm to women (hence the high priority many third wavers assign to anti-rape activism and the significance of “rape culture” as a theoretical construct), their hesitancy to pass judgment on any practice which someone may claim gives them sexual satisfaction keeps third wave theorists of sexuality from going to the end of their thoughts about sexuality and gender. Consequently, a great deal of third wave feminist writing on sexuality and gender is incoherent and inchoate.
In “Anticlimax,” Jeffreys’s thesis is that contemporary Western culture constructs male and female gender roles in a way that is akin to the roles of participants in BDSM. In fact, for Jeffreys, heterosexual relations are the original BDSM. Men’s sexuality is constructed as active and dominant while women’s sexuality is constructed as passive and submissive. Men and women growing up in our society internalize these roles and this internalization effects how we respond sexually to others. For Jeffreys, the sexual revolution of the twentieth century has been problematic because it has not liberated women sexually; it has instead simply shored up male dominance by opening up new avenues for the sexual exploitation of women and demanding that women cooperate enthusiastically in sexual practices which are not in their best interests.
The most fascinating chapters in the book are the first chapter, “The 1950s” and the third chapter, “The Sexual Revolution.” Much as “Decensorship” and “The Failure of Gay Liberation” highlight the good reasons why the intellectual and activist tradition that Jeffreys represents has fallen increasingly out of fashion, “The 1950s” and “The Sexual Revolution” show the contemporary reader some of the valuable insights that contemporary feminist theory has lost as a result of this change in the zeitgeist of social justice politics.
In the first sentence of “The 1950s” Jeffreys states “Marriage guidance and marital sex illustrate a central premise of ‘Anticlimax’: that the heterosexual couple embodies a relationship of power and control, rather than representing a consequence of nature, biology, or sexual preference.” In the first sentence of the second paragraph of the chapter she continues “Sex, in this scheme of things, was not a natural and spontaneous seeking after pleasure by men and women, but a regulatory mechanism designed and constructed to enforce male dominance and female submission.” The evidence which Jeffreys marshals in support of this claim is impressive. In particular, this structuralist analysis of heterosexuality goes a long way towards explaining the centrality of penis in vagina (PIV) intercourse in our culture’s hierarchy of sexual practices.
Recently I have been reading some of the critiques of PIV intercourse from contemporary radical feminists with blogs online. In particular I have enjoyed the blogger Fact Check Me’s blogs “Femonade” and “PIV on TV” which discuss this issue in some depth. Due to the structure of female anatomy, most women cannot orgasm consistently solely from PIV intercourse. There are many sexual practices which women generally tend to find more enjoyable and many which many men find at least as satisfying as well. Non-reproductively motivated PIV always carries some risk of unintended pregnancy and it also carries a much greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases than many other sexual activities, especially for women. PIV also puts women at risk for unpleasant side effects such as yeast infections and urinary tract infections. In order to prevent pregnancy while engaging in PIV intercourse, couples that are not infertile must rely on some form of contraception. This responsibility usually falls on the woman as do the side effects, safety risks, inconvenience, time commitment, and monetary cost of managing contraceptive use. Given the hassles and even serious potential harms associated with PIV intercourse compared to other sexual practices, it seems bizarre that this practice is the one which our culture has singled out as the most important sex act there is. However, if we adopt Jeffreys’s analysis which views heterosexuality and the practices associated with it as a way to shore up male power over women, we can see that the things which make PIV intercourse unattractive from the standpoint of sex as a pleasurable way to bring couples together make it an ideal tool of male supremacy.
On page 21 of her book, Jeffreys writes “In the 1890s feminist theorists stated that sexual intercourse should take place only for the purposes of reproduction. They considered that once every few years should suffice. They saw sexual intercourse as being contraindicated for women because it led to unwanted childbearing or the necessity for ‘artificial’ contraception which made them feel like machines. It led to various ailments and venereal diseases.” Nonetheless, as Jeffreys teaches us, making women enthusiastic about PIV intercourse has been one of the most important projects that sexologists have taken on since at least the nineteenth century. Even women who had developed satisfying alternatives to PIV for both themselves and their husbands were seen by the sexologists as in need of fixing. On page 38 of the book, Jeffreys recounts a fascinating but deeply disturbing episode in which a doctor performs a painful surgical procedure on a young woman engaged to be married so that her vagina will be more receptive to penetration by her husband’s penis. After relaying this anecdote Jeffreys observes “The preparation of this young woman for her role as an efficient hole for her husband seems to have taken place in direct opposition to her will.”
The most poignant observation that Jeffreys makes in “The Sexual Revolution” concerns the concept of “inhibitions.” Starting in the 1960s, sexologists began to speak about women’s hesitancy to engage in any given sexual practice as “inhibitions” which carried the connotation that these reservations were evidence of a wrong-headed, puritanical, backwards, and irrational attitude towards sexuality. Jeffreys, on the other hand, believes that these so-called inhibitions have actually often functioned for women in particular as a healthy instinct towards self-preservation. Jeffreys believes that for women, a lot of gaslighting takes place around issues of sexuality and the deployment of the notion of inhibitions is particularly representative of this phenomenon in a post-sexual revolution world.
The fifth chapter of “Anticlimax,” entitled “Feminism and Sexuality” synthesizes the key ideas discussed in the first four chapters of the book and provides commentary on issues of sexuality that were contemporary when the book was published. The sixth chapter, entitled “Creating the Sexual Future,” closes the book by laying out Jeffreys’s vision for what the ideal future of sexuality would be.
Compared to most of the third wave feminist discourses about sexuality that are currently in circulation, Jeffreys is refreshingly honest and logical in some ways about the state of sexual politics in our society and what that means for the status of women. The social construction of sexuality in the contemporary Western world, according to Jeffreys, is structured by gender roles which situate men as dominant and women as submissive. Gender is inherently bound up with notions of power, control, and oppression. Jeffreys emphasizes her belief that we live in a culture in which all women are taught to eroticize their own subordination, regardless of their politics or other values and as a result of this, Jeffreys problematizes the notion (which she associates with the sexual revolution and which is now associated with large swathes of third wave feminist and queer thought and activism) that anything which one finds sexually arousing is inherently good and beyond political critique. Instead, she argues that we need a new language of sexuality which would allow us to discuss those sexual turn ons which are nonetheless not positive for us and that are instead evidence of the ways in which we have come to experience our sexuality in ways which are bound up with sexism.
Jeffreys is correct to assert that the violence, degradation, objectification, and misogyny so widespread in pornography tell us something deeply disturbing about how men in our society experience their sexuality and think about women. Especially poignant is Jeffreys’s insight as to why pornographic materials aimed at women who are sexually attracted to men have never quite caught on – in our society, Jeffreys explains, women experience men sexually as dominant, powerful, and in control while men experience women sexually as submissive, passive pleasure objects. When one looks critically at the gendered structure of heterosexual sexuality, it becomes clear that male pin ups directed at women are not sexually intelligible.
Another insight of Jeffreys’s which flies in the face of a great deal of feminist thought is that heterosexual and bisexual women’s complete sexual liberation is not possible as long as heterosexual and bisexual male sexuality remains unaltered. Heterosexual female sexuality is complicated by the fact that it is all about members of an oppressed sex class directing their desire towards men, who are members of the reigning sexual class. The threat of sexual assault also structures women’s sexuality in a way that has no counterpart for men. The increasingly conventional wisdom that heterosexual and bisexual women can become sexually liberated by becoming more sexually aggressive towards men also misses an important point, which is that a woman who does these things and therefore sees herself as sexually liberated will continue to be seen by many men as inappropriately sexually aggressive. Women cannot adopt men’s attitudes towards sexuality with the expectation that they will have similar outcomes because of differences in how the two groups are socially situated. This is the primary message of “Feminism and Sexuality.”
In “Creating the Sexual Future” we finally get a glimpse of the ideal with which Jeffreys would like to replace the current sexual status quo. Jeffreys states that she sees “heterosexual” as defined not by sexuality directed at a person with a different anatomy than oneself but as the sexualizing of difference, particularly differences in power. For this reason, Jeffreys believes that relationships between two men or two women can be heterosexual relationships insofar as difference is eroticized by the partners in such a relationship. For Jeffreys, homosexual desire is the more positive alternative and it is denoted by the sexualization of mutuality and equality. While Jeffreys states that she believes that a “homosexual relationship” in this sense of the term is currently not possible between a woman and a man, she explicitly states that reconstructing male and female sexuality such that equality was sexualized in the way that power differences now are could in time lead to a situation in which men and women could have healthy and equal sexual relationships with each other which revolve around mutuality.
Reading and subsequently thinking about this book has been rewarding and challenging for me. While Jeffreys’s unfortunate apologism for censorship, negativity towards transgender people, and sensationalism of gay male sexuality offended and frustrated me, her central insight – that women will never be truly free as long as male sexuality is constructed as it currently is – is a powerful one and one that I believe is largely correct. I would have also liked to have seen Jeffreys put forth a more forceful critique of PIV intercourse. I wish the book had contained more discussion of the politics surrounding abortion and contraception as harm reduction strategies which women employ to exercise some control over their bodies and lives in reference to PIV-centric male sexuality. Despite this shortcoming, as a woman I found Jeffreys’s understanding of sexual politics to be largely affirming. For a long time now, women have been expected to be sexual on men’s terms. Jeffreys’s message is that it shouldn’t have to be this way. Instead we need to start asking men to move towards us when it comes to sexuality. I do have some reservations about Jeffreys’s position that sexual turn ons which revolve around emotionally difficult issues are inherently bad – sometimes they can be a way for people to work through these issues in a relatively healthy way. However, I agree with Jeffreys that the way in which women have been trained by our culture to eroticize their own subordination is ultimately self-defeating and that the way in which men in our society have learned to eroticize their power over women is harmful to women as well. The most important message in "Anticlimax" is that what is defined as “sexy” in our society is all too often that which works against the interests of women. We must recognize this fact and begin to work to overcome it by building new models of sexuality. ...more

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Jul 22, 2019 Marie rated it it was ok

Shelves: gender-ideology, psychology, sexuality, feminism

Jeffreys was my introduction to radical feminism. Turns out that she can become a bit repetitive. Most of the works I liked had that reference to early sexologists, the failures and lies of Freudian psychology, the differences between gay and lesbian culture, the castrating ability of transgenderism, etc. The problem is that her solution to this is 'become one of us'. This shows the obliviousness present in the radical feminists for whom every woman aiming to marry and have a family while repudi ...more

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Oct 02, 2019 Andreea Dogaru rated it really liked it

This is definitely a book aimed at those open minded women. It delves into the inherent sexuality of our society, which hasn't been too positive towards women, seen as submissive beings whose main role is to please men. This book goes to describe why some 'works of great literature' are actually fiction disguises for graphic abuse and violence to women e.g. Lolita. Transgenderism, trans sexuality, sadomasochism, pornography, rape and pedophilia are also discussed in depth.

All in all, ...more

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Oct 16, 2014 Doreen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-and-reviewed, nonfic

What and whose sexual revolution? Sheila Jeffreys writes with stunning insight about this anticlimactic revolution which supports male supremacy and does nothing to liberate women's sexuality. First wave feminists called this male dominated approach to "free love" the "omni-sexual virus". Any one, any time, any where is fair game. Why resist male dominant vs. female submissive sexuality being repackaged as revolutionary? Read this book and find out why.

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About Sheila Jeffreys

Sheila Jeffreys

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Sheila Jeffreys writes and teaches in the areas of sexual politics, international gender politics, and lesbian and gay politics. She has written six books on the history and politics of sexuality. Originally from the UK, Sheila moved to Melbourne in 1991 to take up a position at the University of Melbourne. She has been actively involved in feminist and lesbian feminist politics, particularly arou ...more

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“The main problem for women trying to emulate male sexuality is that as a ruling-class sexuality, it is constructed around the fact that they have a subordinate class on whom to act sexually. Women are that subordinate class. The elements that constitute male sexuality depend upon the possession of ruling-class status such as objectification, aggression, and the separation of sex from loving emotion. Women are bound to be unsuccessful in seeking to acquire a form of sexuality which depends upon the possession of ruling-class power. It might be possible for some lesbians to seek a close emulation of ruling-class sexuality because they are able to practise on other women. Heterosexual women cannot practise ruling-class sexuality on men because they are not the ruling class. All that heterosexual women are in a position to do is to accommodate male sexual interests... In male supremacy men's sexual access to women gives them power and status. It does not make much difference who initiates the act, the men still gain the advantage.” — 3 likes

“Pornography is not egalitarian and gender-free. It is predicated upon the inequality of women and is the propaganda that makes that inequality sexy. For women to find passive, objectified men sexy in large enough numbers to make a pornography industry based upon such images viable, would require the reconstruction of women's sexuality into a ruling-class sexuality. In an egalitarian society objectification would not exist and therefore the particular buzz provided by pornography, the excitement of eroticised dominance for the ruling class, would be unimaginable.” — 3 likes

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