Are we sexual citizens? (Reflections).

A Chilean physician and expert in gender issues, the author is Assistant Coordinator of the Latin American and Caribbean Women's Health Network. Dr. Matamala also teaches in the graduate studies program on population and sustainable development offered by the Department of Social Sciences at the Universidad de Chile and for the International Course "Enfoques de Genero en Salud" (Gender Focuses in Health) of the Itinerant University coordinated by LACWHN in countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

If our concept of the body goes beyond the merely biological to include bodies as spheres of power in which the decisions that involve the body imply affirmations and negations with individual and social implications, then we concur that these bodies are the first potential territory in which we exercise our citizenship. And within these bodies--within the sensations, emotions and thoughts that they house--exists sexuality in all of its erotic and reproductive dimensions.

For women to fully experience these aspects of sexuality, freely and physically--not with guilt, but with celebration, as Galeano puts it--they must first empower themselves and their sexuality and dispel the shadows of fear and oppression, eliminating any connotation of gravity. Within this autonomous, free and pleasurable exercise of sexuality, we can remove our clothes and join with another person, feel and experience this other and be felt and experienced in turn. This expression of sexuality is an end in itself and not a means; liberty and equality are embodied pleasurably through this sexuality. It is an experience of citizenship that traverses both the public and the private spheres.

Nonetheless, throughout history women have been cheated of the enjoyment of their bodies as well as their free choice as citizens over their own bodies through mechanisms of patriarchal control and domination. These mechanisms of power, according to Foucault (1980), have taken over the existence of human beings as living bodies. Some of these mechanisms are discourses about freedoms and rights, regulated by contracts, which make exposing their oppressive nature even more difficult. One of the most recent is already more than 200 years old.

The Sexual Contract of Modernity

The sexual contract of modernity refers to that time when the domestic world centered in women was officially segregated from the so-called public sphere and excluded from the emerging notion of citizenship in the context of a dichotomized society. Citizenship was meant to be experienced in the public sphere where men were trying to cast off the status of subjects in order to evolve into citizens. Like political differences, sexual differences were constructed in this public/private dichotomy with its "dividing line between freedom and subordination" (Agra Romero, M. X., 1995).

Born of the French Revolution, the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man was the founding document on the rights, liberty and equality of modern times. The "individuals" and "citizens" were men, and from that time forward, the predominant model of citizenship left out women.

According to Angela Groppi (1995), this marginalization of women fulfills the role of strengthening and giving credibility to the revolutionaries, the active citizens--men. The political and symbolic existence of a domestic sphere in the hands of women, the passive citizens, reflected and reinforced men's power by opposition. This sphere, in which the intimate aspects of sentiments, economy and politics are developed, was deprived by contract of any connotation of citizenship. Women's bodies, installed in this sphere, were stripped of the proclaimed liberties, equalities and rights. In this fashion, "a specifically modern method for creating local relationships of power in sexuality, marriage and employment" was incorporated into daily life (Pateman, 1995). As throughout history, the authority of the father--patriarchal authority--was reproduced.

The social contract, the seed of the modern political order, was also a sexual contract centered on heterosexual relationships and on women as sexed bodies. This sexual contract is not confined to the private sphere but permeates all of modern society, assuring men's free range of movement between the public and the private spheres and asserting the validity of male sexual rights in both these worlds.

In addition to establishing inequality based on sexual differences, the emerging norms legitimized this discrimination, arguing that it was the rule of nature: the natural freedom of men and the natural subjugation of women. Women's liberty, equality, rights and sexuality thus were regulated and repressed by these norms. The marriage contract made women the property of men, who owned their entire being. The owner-husband should then be guaranteed that "his" woman was sexually available and to him alone (Moreno, 1995).

Neither the iconoclastic efforts of Olympe de Gouges nor the valiant attempts of Mary Wollstonecraft made a substantial impact on the new symbolical standards and political norms. But their discourses and proposals challenged the modern order and contributed to the long-term, socio-cultural efforts for change.

Women's liberty, equality, citizenship and sexual rights were left as unfinished business for women of the modern western world, and many aspects have yet to be addressed. The social/ sexual contract continues to be the established norm. Over the years, the democratization of women's restricted sexual freedom had to be achieved through other means.

The erotic dimension of sexuality long has been hidden behind the issues of reproduction and childrearing in the context of the divided domestic sphere, which is perceived as politically passive. This invisibility also contributed to the creation of another norm: the discourse on romantic love, which for the past 200 years has organized socially-accepted heterosexual relationships. Generation after generation of women have lived waiting for this romantic love in which they would be recognized as unique and irreplaceable, crystallizing the illusion of being the end and not the means, leaving both pleasure and its implied submission in a state of limbo.

Until recently, women's sexual desire and reality was approached and analyzed with a focus on pathology and from the subjective perception of men, as represented by the science of psychoanalysis. There was no language constructed from women's reality, from a feminine subjectivity, for discussing women's "normal" everyday sexual experiences, if such a standard actually exists.

Even though the freedoms and rights demanded by women through feminist discourses at the beginning of the 20th century did refer to reproduction, their preferred focus was on access to the public space which had been decreed the exclusive world of citizenship. Thus, we not only acknowledged but legitimized the public/private dichotomy and the expropriation of citizenship by the public sphere to the detriment of the private world of sentiment, emotions, inequality, reproduction, intimacy and naked bodies. By not perceiving this reality, we have withheld citizenship from our bodies and our daily lives, and we have held back the democratization of sexual freedom.

Democratizing Women's Restricted Sexual Freedom

How did sexual freedom become a political issue in the second half of the 20th century? In truth, in the context of the predominate hetero/sexual contract, this "sexual freedom" was really that of women, because the sexual freedom of men was never questioned. When the heterosexual aspect of the contract is violated, the issue becomes complicated for both women and men.

Only in the second half of the past century did the Pill--or rather, safe and effective modern contraceptives--enable large numbers of western women to be able to enjoy a reality that they had never before experienced: the pleasures of the erotic dimension of sexuality, free from the issue of reproduction. For the first time, women were free to play without worrying about fertility, just as men had always been able to do. Male pleasure without complications had always been a certain possibility since they had no uterus to get in the way.

First, the assertion of reproductive rights and then of sexual rights marked the history of feminism in the 20th century. The generational leap from grandmothers to granddaughters was tremendous. The possibility of access to pleasure with greater freedom could not but dramatically change women's lives, despite the sexual contract. The subsequent processes evolved unevenly, both in rich countries as well as in our poorer countries in which the diverse realities of Chiapas, the Amazon and the Atlantic coast of Central America, have little in common with Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo or Mexico City. Access to the "miracles" of science and technology has not been equitable. There are still millions of heterosexual women who lack even the minimum sexual freedom granted by the adequate use of modern contraceptives. They do not enjoy even the discourses--and much less the experiences--of democracy and sexual citizenship. They are still waiting for the arrival of the 21st century.

History is unpredictable, however, and for many women the possibility liberty also brought with it a number of contradictions. The fear of freedom presented itself in many guises.

If the "quickie" discussed by authors such as Moreno (1995) is now a real possibility, how do we prevent the development of a society led yet again by the impulses of male sexual behavior? What new meaning does the so-called domestic sphere assume? How do we generate everyday relationships--whether social or sexual--that are different, erotic, fraternal, playful and democratic? Once again, the dominant sexual contract straightjackets our ability to achieve progressive change. But the personal and collective quests continue.

At the same time, there also arose the possibility of misunderstanding liberty as the license to explore beyond the limits of joyful pleasure, moving into the realms of violence.

Certain sectors seek to experience the eroticism of sexual domination and submission through sadomasochistic violence, which establishes an unreconcilable division between equality, fraternity and sexual democracy, on one hand, and a fascist metamorphosis--discrimination, oppression and sexual domination based on hurt, pain and fear--on the other (Jeffreys, 1996).

A New Contract or No Contract?

The path that we must climb in search of sexual citizenship--the exercise of our rights from a position of autonomy and pleasure--is a rocky one. But if we do not create this citizenship, how can we put an end to the powerful industries of the sex trade and pornography, especially of that "most lucrative" dimension, child prostitution? Without a doubt, women--particularly those within the feminist movement--will keep climbing this path. But perhaps, like Jonasdottir, we should ask ourselves: in our societies ruled by the public/private dichotomy, does democracy really care about sexuality?

This is both a question and a challenge. I believe that one way to resolve this issue would be uniting these public and private worlds into a single sphere of citizenship, in which both women and men of all ages and sexual orientations are protagonists. In this world, citizenship would be exercised with the same meaning and value in every dimension of social life, including our sex lives. Transforming this ideal into a reality implies subverting the social/ sexual contract in all areas of life--social, cultural and political--because such a profound transformation of social relationships between the sexes must apply not only to the normative reality, but also to our social practices and representations (Bozon, 1995).

Such a radical change implies moving men from the outside in, establishing fraternal relations with the other sex, going beyond those pacts based on gender that men have developed in these centuries of modernity. Thanks to these brothers on the inside, women will no longer be the sole protagonists of the unpaid economic sector responsible for the daily care of the family and society. Sharing the burden of work both outside and within the home will facilitate the sharing of pleasure, emotions, policy/ program decisions and dreams. Is it possible that the disappearance of the public/private dichotomy could erase the frontier that delimits inequality?

Perhaps these changes can take place in a chain reaction or perhaps not. In the best of all possible worlds, these changes would eliminate the idea of ownership that today still sets the tone for sexual and romantic relationships. The extent to which sexuality and love are spheres of interaction between people would be the real indicators of the extent and magnitude of the eclipse of the modern sexual contract. In reality, despite the fact that women's increased autonomy has generated changes in their private lives, the essential determinants of oppression remain unchanged, and the symbolic still metes out responsibilities, violence, fears and guilt from a position of inequality.

Perhaps it is necessary for us to define--beyond the typical liberal discourse--what we mean by freedom, equality, democracy, citizenship and sexual rights as human rights. We must also specify our understanding of "human" in relation to sexuality and work to transform these definitions into reality to the greatest extent humanly possible.

We have yet to build the ethical basis that ensures the end of the modern sexual contract in our everyday realities.

Bibliography

Agra Romero, Maria-Xose (1995). "Introduccion." In El Contrato Sexual Pateman, C., ed., Barcelona: Antrophos.

Bozon, Michel (1995). "Amor, sexualidade e relacoes sociais de sexo na Franca contemporanea." In Estudos Feministas (Rio de Janeiro), vol. 3, no. 1/95, pp. 122-135.

Foucault, M. (1980). The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books, Vol. 1, p. 85.

Groppi, Angela (1995). "As raizes de um problema." In O dilema da cidadania: direitos e deveres das mulheres. Bonacchi, Gabriella and Angela Groppi, eds., Lorencini, Alvaro, trans., Sao Paulo: Ed. Universidad Estadual Paulista, UNESP.

Jeffreys, Sheila (1996). La herejia lesbiana. Una perspectiva feminista de la revolucion sexual lesbiana. Serie Feminismos, Madrid: Ed. Catedra, pp. 298-300.

Moreno, Hortensia (1995). "Relaciones sexuales." In Debate Feminista (Mexico) 6, vol. 11, Abril, pp. 5-16.

Pateman, Carole (1995). El contrato sexual Barcelona: Ed. Antrophos.