Elisabeth Badinter distorts feminism the better to fight it
What Audet says about Badinter's large audience in France is, unfortunately, quite true, and many "neo-feminists" (naturally "sex-positive") emulate her stance.
I recommend the whole article.
Quote of note:
On the issue of prostitution, E. Badinter blames the abolitionists, whom she calls "prohibitionists", for conflating prostitution with rape and thus making prostituted women into "absolute victims" by refusing to hear their voices. Is it ignorance or dishonesty which brings her to discard the numerous testimonies of prostitutes and "survivors" published in the media, books or on-line, speaking of the hell these women have gone through and their desire to emerge from it (4) ? Badinter proves dishonest when she labels the struggle against this modern global-scale slavery, a "war against prostitutes". She deliberately misstates the struggle against a system of oppression, patriarchal or prostitutional, by calling it a struggle against individuals. She acknowledges no distinction between a minority individual’s choices and collective choices and stakes that have consequences on all of society. It is pure dishonesty to assimilate, as she does, denunciation of the violence against women to these women’s victimization.
All this rhetoric put out by Badinter serves one purpose : to disappear the fact that the perpetrators of conjugal violence or rapes are, for the great majority, not "maniacs, wretched, perverts" who roam the streets after nightfall in search of a prey, as she claims, but instead men well-known to the assaulted women. According to her, the issue is merely about some deranged folks who sometimes lose control. Building on such unsupported opinion, she claims that feminist analysis of sexual relations of domination amounts to an "unconditional denunciation of men".
We are then entitled to another fable from the author, when she asserts that "both sexes claim to be victims one of the other, except that women speak loud and clear while men murmur".
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To buttress her attacks against what she calls the taming of sexuality by the "new feminist moral order" of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine A. MacKinnon, Badinter borrows from notorious American antifeminists, such as anthropologist Gayle Rubin, front-runner and theorist since the 80s of the sadomasochistic lesbian and queer current (6).
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Quoting current queer ideologues, E. Badinter similarly asserts that prostitution, pornography, sadomasochism, and pedophilia are only different forms of sexualities, which the Judeo - Christian Puritanism and what she calls "the new moral feminism" refuse to acknowledge. Yet, in the history of feminism, there was a moment when women constructed an ethics that rejected the socio-cultural construction of sexuality along with the sexual division of roles and the relations of power that it engendered. What was reprehensible in proposing such an ethics? Contrary to Badinter’s attempt at persuasion, the issue at stake in the prostitution debate is not the recognition of an alternative individual choice to live fully one’s sexuality, but the right for the pimps to freely put women’s bodies on the market.
According to Badinter, the kind of feminism that criticizes the consumption and the marketing of sex is to be held responsible for the revival of sexual stereotypes, which were about to disappear! She makes the struggle to legalize pornography and prostitution into a priority stake in the redefinition of the relations between men and women and their mutual liberties. She incidentally quotes Catherine Millet’s autobiography of sexual exploits, as an example of a new sexuality, freed from any censorship, and swiftly concludes that there is no such thing as normality in the field of sexuality.(...)
One precision: when talking about domestic violence, Audet mentions the murder of French actress Marie Trintignant. It is relevant to add that the murderer was Bertrand Cantat (currently in jail, he admitted to beating her that night), an "alternative rock" star (leader of the band Noir Désir) praised by the Left for his "courageous" "progressive" positions. Other artists still defend him and collaborate with the remaining members of Noir Désir; some "radical" websites even sport a "Free Cantat" logo. "After all, she's dead, right? Why don't you just turn the page?"