Radical Attachments: Feminist Theory, Psychoanalysis and Heterosexual Practice

Radical feminists have been writing about the social conditions under which the institution of heterosexuality is practiced and reproduced since the late 1960s. In addition to fighting for reproductive rights and against patriarchal marriage, radical feminists have focused on examinations of intercourse, sexual assault, pornography and sex-work as explicit expressions of the gendered political and economic inequalities produced through and productive of heterosexual practice. Post-structural feminists have criticized radical feminism's use of gender essentialism and universal narrative while sex-positive feminists are often concerned with radical feminism's tendency to efface women's agency and pleasure through an overemphasis on sexual danger. These counter-positions marked the near unanimous defeat of radical feminism and its relegation to little more than a flawed moment in feminist history.;This dissertation revisits these debates as they emerged in the 1980s and 90s, often termed the 'feminist sex wars,' to both disrupt sex-positive feminism's legacy in consolidating radical feminism's demise and to problematize the common perception that radical feminist theoretical and political practice has no current day relevance. My strategy oscillates between demonstrating points of confluence among radical and post-structural feminism and using post-structural feminism to explore inconsistencies in sex-positive feminism while attempting to retain its useful contributions. Psychoanalytic theory also figures strongly in this work, often as a means of working through irreconcilable differences between radical, post-structural and sex-positive feminisms. As a meta-theoretical lens, along side post-structural theory, psychoanalysis further illuminates how feminist theories of heterosexual practices are themselves produced through and productive of passionate attachments. Here, I am able to argue that while intercourse, sexual assault, pornography and sex-work have no inherent meaning, they continue to maintain unfavorable gender relations and complex psycho-social identifications.