personhood, and its relationship to the body

 from tomorrow sex will be good again by katherine angel (verso)

"now the individual woman whom this risk discourse addresses is an idealized and vehemently confident sexual subject, one who knows herself, speaks directly and clearly, and refuses her own vulnerability. she manages risk through her self-expression. she uses her confident self-knowledge as armour for her own protection; she asserts her invulnerability as a way of keeping her vulnerability at bay. . . 

there is, of course, something satisfying about this rhetorical move; allying oneself to power, not weakness, is gratifying. but it also serves a protective function, one which comes with painful costs. . .  hardening oneself is often a necessary response to violence, or a necessary strategy in the face of it. perhaps the fear - the constant spectre - of rape does this to our thoughts, our ideas, too." (36)

"most men experience the inability to sustain an erection as distressing and humiliating, which is precisely the reason viagra was such a success for pfizer. the company also cannily sensed that the failure of desire in a man is oxymoronic; it is more humiliating, and perhaps more unthinkable, for a man to fail to experience subjective sexual desire than it is for a technical glitch to occur in the mechanics of arousal. what is a man, after all, without desire? masculinity is libido, appetite, excitement.

women - so writers, pick-up-artists, and christian grey tell us - are disconnected from, or dishonest about, the truth that their bodies 'scream' out. in the framing of viagra, in contrast, there was no possibility that a man's feelings are 'disconnected from' the truth his body tells us. on the contrary, his subjective sense of interest in sex, despite his impotence, is taken as the truth. it is he, not his body, that speaks the truth - and we believe him. personhood, and its relationship to the body, is different in men and women: men are authorities on themselves, while women are not." (84)

"sex can induce anxiety and defensiveness precisely because it is a realm in which we risk intense pleasure. relinquishing control can be so destabilizing that we want to short-circuit it, and defend, as berlant and edelman write, 'our putative sovereignty'. and here's the nub of things: sex, and desire, compromise our sense of sovereignty, of knowing ourselves, and of being in control." (102)