REFRAMING HONOUR IN HETEROSEXUAL IMAGINARIES

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between honour and recognition in the context of normative heterosexuality, and the implications of this relationship for sustaining and transforming problematic sexual norms. Building on recent attempts to move beyond a narrow and restrictive focus on consent as a means of thinking through the ethics of heterosexual sex, we reflect critically on the concept of honour in this domain. Honour, in our approach, is a cluster concept that houses a number of related normative values and affective attitudes, including respect, self-respect, pride, dignity, esteem, integrity, trust, and honesty. We examine how honour is distributed by heterosexual imaginaries in ways that privilege men in the sexual encounter, and argue that part of cultivating ethical heterosexual relations is to imagine a sexual honour code where both men and women see themselves, and are seen by their counterpart, as entitled to sexual respect. To conclude, the paper examines and defends the cultivation of ethical, just, and honourable heterosexual relations as a necessarily embodied, intersubjective, and imaginative endeavour that involves challenges to, and shifts within, multiple imaginaries and (in)sensibilities that cluster to support damaging norms of sexual conduct.

Keywords:

• sexual ethics
• honour
• consent
• heterosexual imaginaries

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

Earlier versions of this paper were given at the “Constructing Social Hierarchy” workshop, University of Melbourne, 2018, at Macquarie University’s “Work in Progress Seminar Series,” 2018, and the 2018 annual conference of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy (ASCP). We would like to acknowledge the very helpful comments we received from audiences on these occasions. Anna Hush, Danielle Celermajer, and an anonymous referee offered excellent criticisms that we have done our best to accommodate.

1 We recognize that not all heterosexual encounters fail to respect women’s agency. It is an open question whether the insights raised in this paper might apply to other kinds of sexual encounters, including same-sex relations.

2 See, for example, the “Consent Matters” online modules that have been implemented recently by a number of tertiary institutions in Australia, including the University of Sydney (sydney.edu.au/students/sexual-health-consent.html) and the University of Technology Sydney (www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/social-justice-uts/equity-and-diversity-uts/training-and/consent).

3 The effectivity of sex education programs that target the importance of consent is variable. Moira Carmody and Bob Pease, for example, have developed workshops that address issues of sexual consent against the broader backdrop of sexual ethics. These workshops involve regular and sustained face-to-face discussions with and between workshop participants that go beyond didactic modes of communication, and which embrace role-playing and empathic perspective-taking as mechanisms for galvanizing reflective self-critique and driving behavioural change (see Carmody; Pease). We do not deny the importance and value of this type of approach.

4 One might be tempted to think that instances of sexual assault and the “gray area” cases described by Gavey can be more adequately assessed and addressed by appealing to an “enthusiastic yes” model of consent. As Tanya Serisier explains, “Essentially, this model, put forward as a form of ethical sexuality asks for all participants to ask for a ‘yes’ before engaging in any sexual activity through questions such as: ‘Can I kiss you?’” The problem with this model is that “it continues to reproduce the liberal fallacy around the freedom of contractual relations. It presumes that a verbal contract between sexual partners guarantees a free exchange, without considering gendered power relations or interpersonal dynamics” (Serisier). Similar critiques have been made by Carole Pateman, Catharine MacKinnon, and Rae Langton. In their view, the political, social, and economic conditions under which we live compromise women’s ability to genuinely consent to sexual intercourse.

5 As Joseph A. Vandello and Vanessa Hettinger note, “sexuality can be one of the few resources women have available to negotiate other material and social resources.” Women are thus often compelled to compromise and repress aspects of their sexuality in order to accrue and maintain social and material advantages (225).

6 See Natalie Purcell for detailed examples of popular forms of violent pornography that characteristically position females in a passive and degraded relation to their male co-stars (especially 126–36).

7 The Lazarus case reveals just how far apart the sexual imaginaries of men and women can be. This divergence is captured in a text message that Lazarus sent to a friend, in which he wrote:

Lazarus: I honestly have zero recollection of calling you, was a sick night. Took a chick’s virginity, lol.

Friend: Bahahaha nice popping does [those] cherries. Tight?

Lazarus: So tight. It’s a pretty gross story tell ya later. (Qtd in “I am that girl,” Four Corners)

The victim’s report of her fear – freezing and acquiescing to an act she clearly did not want and which inflicted actual bodily harm – is half the story. The other half of the story is a “sick [read: fun] night” of “popping cherries” and bragging to a mate.

8 As Appiah notes rightly, “honor takes integrity public” (179). See also Sharon Krause, who argues that

unlike conscience or integrity, to which it bears a family resemblance, honor retains a distinctly public persona: it is guided by public codes of conduct (not merely internal standards of right), seeks public recognition, and is especially oriented to public action. (30)

9 For a conceptual analysis of honour in relation to other closely related concepts, including virtue, dignity, self-interest, and altruism, see Krause (especially 1–20, 29–31). Krause notes rightly that honour “cannot replace motivations such as self-interest, civic virtue, solidarity, faith, friendship, love, or any of the many other sources of human agency [ … ] but it can add to them” (31).

10 Considerations of race will especially weigh upon any proposal to reimagine gendered honour codes. We acknowledge that damaging imaginaries are operative in the context of sexual encounters between differently raced bodies. Here one might consider the particular power dynamics and imaginaries that are at play in the fetishization of Asian women by white men (see Zheng 404–12). Attempts to assert the sexual honour of one group of women (e.g., white middle-class women) through challenges to particular imaginaries cannot afford to overlook the way in which such challenges may fail to be equally empowering for other groups of women (e.g., women of colour, working-class women), and may even risk reinforcing their subjugation (see Bottici 195).

11 Linda M. Alcoff, for example, notes that honour has an “anti-individualist aspect”; that is, “honor is collective: one shares in the honor, or dishonor, of one’s group” (168–69). It is this aspect of honour that, in her view, “helps to explain why the acts of individuals in our group – such as our nation, religious group, ethnicity, even gender – sometimes incur a sense of group shame or group pride” (ibid.).

12 As Dan Demetriou and Laurie M. Johnson point out, “never was there ‘masculine justice’ or ‘feminine justice’ as there was (and still is) masculine and feminine honor.” Feminine honour, they note, is characteristically tied to “fecundity and chastity,” whilst masculine honour is typically associated with male “virility,” “martial valor,” “violence,” and “revenge” (“Introduction” 3–4).

13 Consider, for example, “purity balls” in the United States that encourage sexual abstinence among females until marriage. Fathers and their daughters attend a formal ceremony in which daughters make a vow to refrain from sex outside of marriage, and in which fathers pledge to do their utmost to protect their daughter’s “purity.” Importantly, the valorization of purity norms is not confined to conservative religious movements; this trend permeates liberal democratic contexts. As Vandello and Hettinger note in their studies of American college students, female students who are perceived as sexually promiscuous on the basis of their behaviour, appearance, or dress routinely elicit harsh judgements from their peers and educators (228–30).

14 See <www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2vrUUOQyt0> for a televised sample of Argento’s speech.

15 See <www.netflix.com/title/80233611> for the Netflix screening of Gadsby’s Nanette.

16 We are aware that Argento is a controversial figure to draw upon in this context. She was alleged to have sexually assaulted an underage male actor in 2013. Such allegations are deeply troubling. However, we do not think that they undermine our argument for why Argento’s Cannes speech marked a particularly powerful intervention into dominant heterosexual imaginaries and the institutional conventions that shield them from challenge.

17 In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Gadsby explains that she “broke the contract and that’s what made this work [ … ] I betrayed people’s trust, and I did that really seriously, not just for effect” (qtd in Valentish). We read this as saying that she dishonoured a destructive code of conduct as a first step to reimagining a new code that honours women and the LGBTQI community.

18 More broadly, we are not suggesting that individual interventions of this kind reflect radically autonomous and creative efforts of resistance; rather, with Medina, we acknowledge “the interrelations between individual insurrectionary acts and ongoing social practices that make those acts possible or at least leave room for them” (237). In other words, the initiatives taken by Gadsby and Argento were preceded and enabled by emerging social movements and shifts in dominant imaginaries that allowed their efforts to be perceived as legitimate and persuasive, and to be widely reverberated, rather than as something to be dismissed as wholly inappropriate and nonsensical.

19 Appiah echoes this sentiment when he observes that honour “bind[s] the private and the public together,” and helps to ensure that “individual moral convictions” lead to “the creation of associations, and the planning of meetings, petitions, and public campaigns” (178).