Skip to content

Janet Halley, Take a Break from Feminism?, in Gender and Human Rights 57 (Karen Knop ed., 2004).


Abstract: As a result of the challenge posed by Gayle Rubin based on the assumption of how feminism should be perceived as a privileged site in terms of sexuality, members of feminist and leftist groups in the United States debated on whether they should come up with practices and theories that deal with such issues as gender, sexuality, and erotic life, issues that are evidently and not entirely feminist. Gay identity politics, transsexual and transgendered identity, and postmodern versions of these issues are among the several other concepts that are concerned with Rubin's notion of ‘the politics of erotic desire’. At least for now, we realize that the assertion of how the left sexual politics can provide such analyses without feminist undertones is not without validity. This chapter looks into several aspects of left sexual politics, specifically liberal feminism.