Sheila Jeffreys

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Sheila Jeffreys (born 1948) is a radical lesbian feminist scholar and political activist, known for her analysis of the history and politics of sexuality in Britain. She is Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Before moving to Australia in the early 1990s, she lived most of her life in the United Kingdom.

Jeffreys was one of several contributors to The sexual dynamics of history: men's power, women's resistance, an anthology of feminist writings about gender relations published in 1983 under the name 'London Feminist History Group.'

In her best known historical work, The Spinster and Her Enemies: Feminism and Sexuality 1880-1930 (1985), she challenges the conventional view that the sexual puritanism of Victorian England was displaced by the more scientifically enlightened ideas of the self-styled "sexologists" such as Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis. In her examination of late 19th and early 20th century feminist campaigns against child abuse and prostitution, Jeffreys identifies successive male backlash strategies popularized as the conservative "social purity" movement and the "New Woman" vision espoused by spokesmen for sexology. She argues that these concepts were authoritarian and interpreted women's sexuality to conform to men's preferences.

Jeffreys traced later adaptations of these core concepts made to fit changing social conditions, modifying the New Woman to accommodate wartime pro-natalist imperatives, and inventing the sexually hedonistic Flapper Girl to move women out of traditional male roles assumed by default during the World War I period that had allowed women greater independence in paid work at home and at the front. In a 1990 work, Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective on the Sexual Revolution, Jeffreys criticises popular prescriptions for women's sexuality from the 1950s on in key texts including pornography, sex manuals and surveys, and best-selling novels. Jeffreys has a forthcoming book The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade: The Industrial Vagina, to be released in February 2009.

Jeffreys is well-known for her controversial opinions regarding transgender people. Many identify her as an anti-transgender feminist, whose views are similar to the work of Janice Raymond and Mary Daly. Jeffreys argues that transsexuals reproduce oppressive gender roles and mutilate their bodies through sex reassignment surgery.

Jeffreys's argument that the "sexual revolution" on men's terms contributed less to women's freedom than to their continued oppression has both commanded respect and attracted intense criticism by several writers, for example by Rene Denfeld in her book The New Victorians. Some of Jeffrey's more controversial positions include:

• the transsexual/transgender rights movement is a reactionary movement serving patriarchy and homophobia
• lesbian culture has been negatively impacted by emulating the sexist influence of the gay male subculture of dominant/submissive sexuality
• women suffering pain in pursuit of beauty is a form of submission to patriarchal sadism

Jeffreys coined the term political lesbian to describe a woman who identifies as lesbian, but for whom the most important part of being lesbian is the refusal to sleep with men, who are seen as oppressors of women. Whereas most definitions of lesbian involve the sexual desire for other women, for the proponents of the notion of political lesbian these aspects are not essential; the essential component is the refusal to sleep with men. The notion of a political lesbian presumes a radical feminist and even separatist understanding of gender relations.

A definition of political lesbian is given by Jeffreys:

We do think... that all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women.^[1]

[edit] References

1. ^ Radical feminist Sheila Jeffreys talks to Julie Bindel | By genre | Guardian Unlimited Books

[edit] External links

• Jeffreys's official Melbourne University home page
• Interview with The Guardian
• Critical review of Jeffeys's book The Lesbian Heresy
• "Body modification as self-mutilation by proxy" - Article by Jeffreys
• "Allowing Alex's sex change shows up a gender-biased Family Court" - Article by Jeffreys
• Critical review of Jeffreys's book Anticlimax
• "How Orgasm Politics has hijacked the women's movement" - Essay by Jeffreys
• "Trafficking in Women vs. Prostitution: A False Distinction" - Keynote address at Townsville International Women's Conference

[edit] Books

• Jeffreys, Sheila. Beauty and Misogyny : Harmful Cultural Practices in the West. East Sussex: Psychology Press, 2005. ISBN 0-415-35182-0
• Jeffreys, Sheila. The lesbian heresy : a feminist perspective on the lesbian sexual revolution.. North Melbourne : Spinifex, 1993. ISBN 1-875559-17-5
• Jeffreys, Sheila. Anticlimax : a feminist perspective on the sexual revolution. Washington Square, N.Y. : New York University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8147-4179-7 (cloth). ISBN 0-8147-4180-0 (pbk.)
• Jeffreys, Sheila Beauty and misogyny : harmful cultural practices in the West London : Routledge, c2005. ISBN 0-415-35183-9 (hbk.). ISBN 0-415-35182-0 (pbk.)
• Jeffreys, Sheila. The spinster and her enemies : feminism and sexuality, 1880-1930. [New ed.] North Melbourne : Spinifex Press, 1997. ISBN 1-875559-63-9
• Jeffreys, Sheila. Unpacking queer politics : a lesbian feminist perspective. Cambridge : Polity ; Oxford : Blackwell, 2003. ISBN 0-7456-2837-0 (hbk.), ISBN 0-7456-2838-9 (pbk.)