ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an alternative perspective that focuses on sexual actors’ places within their society as a whole rather than on their personal relationships. Sex is central to all our lives, and for many people it’s one of life’s most important pleasures. Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin view sex as helping prop up sexist social structures, which systematically reduce women to second-class status. Immanuel Kant’s specific idea about the nature of autonomy involves respecting people’s intentions and decisions, ruling out direct coercion and deception. The concept of social autonomy helps explain why women’s appearance in soft-core industry pornography aimed at men and their appearance at Pride parades seem different even though they may involve similar kinds of flaunting. In a society where women are often evaluated on the basis of their appearance, a woman might find that to be taken seriously in whatever she is doing she must also seem sexually attractive.
