Introduction
How did sexual exploitation, abuse, and violence against women become gender-political issues? This book relates how feminist movements in Norway and France have politicized rape, pornography, and the sexual exploitation of women from the 1970s to the present. It is a compelling tale of sex and violence, brutal political disputes, hazardous actions, and blunt confrontations between feminist activists and their opponents. It is also a story about consciousness-raising, laborious political work, strategy development, and the formation of new alliances. The narrative is set in the recent past and describes how collective mobilization succeeded in bringing previously undiscussed matters into the public arena. Sexuality, gender, and power were now debated in a way that had been unthinkable, and to such an extent that legislative changes ultimately resulted.
The struggle against sexual exploitation and abuse of women that characterized the 1970s womenâs liberation movement was transnational. However, there were national variations as to how the womenâs liberation movements engaged politically: how they mobilized, what their main targets were, the types of action they carried out, the alliances they made, and the outcomes of their mobilizations. The focus of this book will be on the womenâs liberation movementsâ politicization of sexual exploitation, abuse, and violence against women in France and Norway. The rather different political, social, and cultural contexts of these countries had an impact on the character of the womenâs movements and on their political opportunities therein. Further, contact between the womenâs movements in France and Norway was, and still is, scarce. As a consequence, the politicizations of sexual exploitation and abuse of women were articulated differently. In France, fighting rape became one of the most important issues for the womenâs liberation movement after abortion on demand was sanctioned in 1974. In Norway, on the other hand, battling pornography became the top priority of the womenâs liberation movement in the late 1970s.
Despite their differences, the two movementsâthe mobilization against rape in France and against pornography in Norwayâhad much in common. On the one hand, they aimed to change structural gendered power relations; on the other, they sought to transform intimate relations, including individual menâs sexual and violent behaviors. In both countries, the politicization of sexual exploitation and abuse of women gave rise to increased feminist activity and mobilization in the second half of the 1970s, as well as the formation of new alliances, including with actors outside the radical womenâs movement. In both countries, womenâs liberation activists engaged in militant actions to draw attention to the sexual exploitation of women as a social problem in need of a political solution. These often controversial actions attracted media attention, and, as a result, politicians, intellectuals, and other groups outside the womenâs movement, such as labor unions, became engaged in the matter. As a response to the feminist mobilizations, legislative reforms were made in the 1980s. In France, a new law against rape was adopted in 1980; in Norway, legislation regarding pornography was updated in 1985. In the parliamentary debates in both France and Norway, the MPs referred specifically to the mobilization of the womenâs movements as instrumental in precipitating change, and argued that the sexual exploitation of women was inconsistent with the ideals of a gender-equal society.
Yet this account is not an unqualified success story. Rape is still a problem, and the pornography industry has expanded considerably since the 1980s. In the 2010s there remains no general consensus on where to set the boundaries between sexual liberty and abuse, or between freedom of expression and offensive actions. As in the 1970s, these continue to be contentious issues, even among feminists. Political efforts aimed at combatting pornography and rape continue to be interpreted as attacks on sexual freedom, expressions of prudishness or hatred of men, or a perception of women as passive victims. To understand the dilemmas and controversies surrounding the issue of sexual exploitation and violence against women as gender-political matters, one must revisit the 1960s and the sexual revolution.
Antiauthoritarian Revolt and the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s
The 1960s were characterized by economic growth and modernization as well as by political and cultural upheaval. Never before in history had so many young people possessed the economic means to seek higher education and to buy goods that were specifically targeted to them as a new group of consumers. The baby-boom generation used its newfound freedom to question and challenge the authority and morality of parents, teachers, governments, and other representatives of the established order. The 1960s were also characterized by the Cold War, anti-colonial liberation wars in the âThird World,â the civil rights movement and rise of the Black Panthers in the United States, and student protests all over the world. A âNew Leftâ radicalism arose, one that promoted participatory democracy and autonomy, freedom of speech and civil rights, while opposing capitalism, imperialism, and militarism, but distancing itself from Soviet-style communism .1 The radicalization of this âNew Leftâ was triggered by the U.S. war in Vietnam from 1964 onwardâa war broadcast on television in a detailed way never before seen, shocking the viewers. The student and workersâ revolts that erupted in many countries in 1968 led to further radicalization. In France, seven million people took part in the general strike of MayâJune 1968, the highest-ever turnout in France.
In the late 1960s, many young people in the West became fascinated by Chairman Mao and the Cultural Revolution he had initiated in China in 1966, which they interpreted as a revolt by youth against adult authority. At the same time, anarchist ideals gained popularity. Anti-conformist politics and lifestyles merged, and young people, as well as some adults, sought new and more âauthenticâ ways of being together, free of what they perceived to be oppressive power relations. The anti-conformist lifestyles were displayed through experimental rock music, long hair, psychedelic drugs, and sexual experimentation. The sexual revolution, which brought with it easier access to birth control such as âthe pill,â undermined conventional norms of sexual behavior. Marriage as the ânaturalâ institution for regulating heterosexual intercourse was no longer considered the prototype. On the contrary, sexual activity outside monogamy was part of the antiauthoritarian revolt.
The Womenâs Liberation Movement
Many women participated enthusiastically in the new social movements that emerged in the 1960s, including the student movement, the Vietnam War protests, and the civil rights movement. However, some female activists began to question womenâs positions in these antiauthoritarian movements. They pointed to the fact that men had all the leading roles in the movements, that men spoke the most at meetings, and that women generally had subordinate roles, being assigned to boring, menial tasks such as making coffee. In addition, they complained that women were expected to be sexually available to male activists so as not to be perceived as âprudes.â In response to what some women experienced as persistent male dominance in the movements of the New Left, a new sort of womenâs movement emerged in the United States in the late 1960s. Rude and provocative in style, these women fought for their own liberation.2 They believed that in order to liberate women from oppression, it was necessary for women to organize themselves into groups that offered no access to men. The idea was that women, like other oppressed groups, had to fight for their own liberation without interference from their oppressors.3 The separatist strategy could seem provocative both to men who felt excluded and to women who were used to seeing themselves âas activists like everyone else.â4 Nevertheless, the womenâs liberation movement spread rapidly from the United States to other countries. The number of women participating in this transnational movement is not known. Nonetheless, in a few frenetic years they succeeded in changing cultural ideas about what women should say and do, and in expanding the notion of what was considered political.
Breaking down the boundaries between what was considered private and public, and between the individual and the collective, was typical of the 1970s womenâs liberation movement. What had been considered personal problems in the individual womanâs everyday life were placed in a political and collective context, as formulated in the internationally famous feminist slogan âthe personal is political.â5 Unintended pregnancies, lack of career opportunities, low wages, burdensome housework chores, the threat of rape, invisibility, commodification of the female body, and sexist jokesâin short, all kinds of phenomena that women experienced as limiting their freedom to flourish as autonomous human beingsâwere politicized. The struggle for womenâs liberation took place in most areas, and by the 1970s there was h...
