Sex was never boring

Among the several theories that may seem easy but is complicated to understand is on the whole notion of sexuality and the politics of gender as for many years, there have been debates on the domination of the female gender or the male gender in various fields. Such was formed out of the female’s desire to gain equal treatment as compared to the male gender; hence the birth of Feminism.
However, the whole notion of Feminism is widely debated, with different beliefs and notion of what is the source of the problem that the phallic remains superior. Feminism is divided into four groups, that is liberal feminism, socialist feminism, radical feminism, and postmodern feminism. All four have clear points, but however, all four of them have loopholes, thus, making their beliefs problematic.
First, let us discuss liberal feminism. In this type of feminism, the main objective it wants is for women to be given rights and ultimately, to work like men. It is good in the sense that it addresses the problem of the legal system being too much in favor of men, but it is still considered to be problematic in the sense that it does not totally address the equality issue properly as their argument would end up with women being identified as men and not as women, which was addressed with the postmodern feminism.
As for socialist feminism, the problem with the economy is addressed through the payment of the wife, who would stay at home to take care of the child, for her duties in forming and rearing the child so that it grows up to be of good use in society. The problem here is that there is no basis on how the wife should be paid, and that it makes love and commitment a commodity, of which cannot happen. In the end, what social feminists are doing to women is that women are treated as a “necessity” for men and society, hence further stripping women of their rights, which liberal feminists were able to address.
Radical feminism takes steps a bit “beyond borders” as it sources the problem at the physical characteristics of the woman. As a resolution, radical feminism aims to create a woman dominating structure through going beyond the body of the woman and creating a reversion of the roles of the male and the female, which is problematic because first it creates a overly dominating woman sphere, and second, their beliefs are just as problematic as that of liberal feminism as the reversal of identity is the same as distorting the identity of the woman into that of a man, which for me is the primary reason why radical feminism is the most problematic of the four types of feminism discussed.
As for postmodern feminism, in my opinion this has to be the least problematic and easiest to understand form of feminism as it properly addresses the identity of women properly through the reformation of women’s way of writing as stories with broken narratives and illogical sequences rather than writing in a phallocentric manner like how men would write, having stories following a single climactic scene. It is similar with radical feminism but it addresses the identity of women in a more rational way.
In light of the issue of sexuality, Michel Foucault, in his book The History of Sexuality, further goes in depth about sexuality, giving the notion of understanding sex as the master explainer behind everything. In his book, he made a clear, elaborated point that even if the Victorian era made an emphasis that sex was considered a taboo and must not be talked about in public, while at the same time people are the more tempted to talk about sex in private, a result of the repressive hypothesis, Foucualt said that sex was never repressed in the first place. The repression issue was just an illusion for people to comply.
In addition, Foucault wants us to understand that such is being done in order to make sex of something useful and productive in society, just in the same light of the birth of the prison as a form of punishment in his other book, Discipline and Punish. Through the use of power, the state has found a way in making the use of sex as “productive” through various sources of power such as the Christian pastoral, the field of medicine, and the like. For the former, as pastors act as shepherds, their role is to be a consultant to the confessor at the confession box, resulting with the confession box as a box wherein the individual asks help in order to improve his/ her sex life, thus giving the pastor the power to “discipline” the sexual desires of the individual.
The rationale behind the “trimming” of sexual practices is in order for the state to first manage the population well and second, in order to prevent individuals from the state to practice unorthodox sex, such as necrophilia, pedophilia, bestiality, and the like. Hence, the objective of repressing sex is to trim the extreme aspects of sex, as there is a multiple center of production, of which Foucualt points out as the general problem of Feminism, as feminism tends to concentrate on one aspect wherein the role of gender involves multiple sources, hence the role and power of gender involving pluralistic sources of power.

Does the subaltern have rights?

As Gayatri Chakavorty Spivak imposed the question on whether the subaltern have the right to speak, I believe that the subaltern have the right to speak; they are able to air out their complaints through the higher classes. For me, the question should be rephrased with “Are the subaltern represented” to dwell deeper into the argument.
Starting off, we should understand that the subaltern Spivak is talking about here refers to not just the oppressed or the proletariat class, but instead she refers to everything in general that has limited or no access to cultural imperialism, which is not being part of a majority culture.
But to understand Spivak’s subaltern definition would need to be carefully dissected and analyzed as the subaltern is often being misused or misdefined by many people. In the context of what Spivak wants to point out about the subaltern, we will focus on the subaltern as not being addressed within the space of difference.
To start things off, let us analyze cases of subalternity that is happening within the world. First case in point: Orientalism. Edward Said explained in his book Orientalism that the rise of Orientalism is an effect of the heavy criticism of the west, or the Occidental, of the works made by the east, or known as the Oriental. In his argument, he explains that it is not because the works of the oriental is classified to be weaker and inferior to that of the Occident that would mean the Occident is considered to be superior over the Orient. Instead, Said elaborates that this is how the Orient is represented in the perspective of the Orient. Although the scope of Said’s study covers mostly the Arab countries, his conclusion on the Orient being inferior to the Occident. In understanding Orientalism, Said then pointed out that what is needed is a proper representation of the Orient countries from the perspective of the West, giving them an opportunity to air out their voices towards the West, and for the West to respond to them. To make things clear, the problem with Orientalism, as Said further explained, is not because of sheer discrimination, but it is more of a lack of representation that gives us our present notion on anything that is made within the Orient sphere. In fact, I would say that there are indeed works from the Orient that are much better than the Occident, such as the fact that the people who founded algebra was not from the West (the Occident), but the Orient (the east), and that person who founded it comes from the middle east.
Second case in point: colonized countries. One of the very observable things and characteristics on colonized countries is that through the domination of their colonizer to them, the colonized loses their representation as an independent state. Instead of being able to be heard and represented, what happens is that their representation becomes dependent to that of its colonizer.Hence, the colonized, through being controlled by its colonizer, loses its right to be heard by the public. Culture-wise, the domination of the colonizer, in one way or another, distorts the culture of the colonized as it infuses its values into the values of the colonized, of which the Philippines is a good example of it. After the Spaniards and Americans have colonized us, we have been greatly influenced by their values such that because of the effects of colonialism to our country, we tend to forget our original Filipino values and instead dwell more on the Western culture, such as TV shows like Gossip Girl, fashion, and music. As these continue to affect the colonized, the eventual outcome will be the loss of the identity of the colonized as it makes its identity related to that of the colonizer.
Third case in point: gender indifference. Feminism has pointed out the problem with society between the two genders, wherein it has been observed that the female gender has often been repressed by its limitation to contribute to society, such as in being leaders, in voting for elections, in educational attainment, and the like. In addition, a result of this is the lack of representation of the women from performing significant roles in society, and it is through Feminist theories that they were able to address the importance of the female gender in society, giving them the opportunity to speak, be heard, and represent along with the male gender. Although women representation is not fulfilled in all parts of the world, just as Spivak describes the Bengali woman in her work “Can the Subaltern speak?”.
Giving in consideration of these three related cases, I would say that the Subaltern should be given rights to be heard and represented, even if Spivak concluded that the subaltern cannot speak at all. Just like every human person, I believe that every person, even the poorest and the most oppressed, should have a voice and be represented into society. That way, they also get to establish their identity in society as they make themselves represented and heard by others.