Everything Is About Sex Except Sex Itself——It Is About Power
By KANG Tingyu
The stories of sex seem to be a double-edged sword—especially regarding women’s sex. It can be about a woman’s pleasure and desires, but often about violence and domination against women. Discussions in social movements and academic works about women’s sex frequently reflect different developments of the two perspectives. On one side, sex-positive feminism focuses on the pleasure and agency women gain from sex. On the other side, radical feminism often emphasizes the domination and violence women experience through sex.
These two narratives are likely never mutually exclusive or entirely separate. They often intertwine within the same life script, co-constructing women’s experiences. Sometimes, they might even be two sides of the same coin, interacting dialectically.
The “Not a Pretty Picture” program includes seven titles presenting the dual and complex role of sex and desire in women’s lives—sex brings oppression, pleasure, power, and alliance.
Skin in Spring is set in Medellín, Colombia, depicting a single mother working as a security guard in a shopping mall. She explores her desires and body in her everyday urban life, developing a sexual and intimate relationship with a bus driver. The director challenges the stereotypical representation of the female body as sexual objects through subtle visual language in sensual scenes. We see how a woman’s body can embrace desire and sex without entirely catering to the dominant male gaze. Meanwhile, this story doesn’t fully romanticize the autonomy of women’s sexual adventures, as potential losses and oppression are also woven into daily lives.
Excursion sharply depicts the double-edged nature of women actively exploring their desires. The scene shifts focus to a generation of teenage girls in Bosnia. The protagonist, Iman, enjoys an intimate encounter with a boy she likes, which triggers rumors throughout the school about her sexual life and pregnancy. This film vividly portrays how sex can be enjoyable, pleasurable, and consensual for women, while societal constraints on female sexuality can be destructive at the same time. Particularly in the Balkans, a region undergoing gradual Westernization, a group of women believing in equality and sexual autonomy is emerging, while conservative values cloaked in religious terms still hold significant influence.
Desert of Namibia is set in urban Japan. From a sexual perspective, the story of the protagonist Kana showcases a woman diverging from the conventional feminine path prescribed by Japanese society. Her sexual and bodily practices transcend the norms of middle-class women—embracing two lovers, hiring male escorts, retaliating against harassers, smoking, getting piercings, vomiting on the street, and using physical violence against her boyfriend. However, following the story, one might wonder, if a woman defies social norms on sex and the body, what then? Does her life become free, happy, or meaningful?
Indeed, sometimes sex brings harm to women. Yet, in the pursuit of sexual justice, the alliances formed through female friendship can often be a source of healing and warmth. The documentaries An Army of Women and Tack both document women’s pursuit of justice after experiencing sexual violence.
An Army of Women takes place in Austin, Texas. Despite being one of Texas’s most progressive cities, a group of women in Austin sought justice from law enforcement after experiencing sexual violence, only to receive non-prosecution decisions. They decided to file a class-action lawsuit against the police and prosecutors. Tack documents the beginning of the Greek #MeToo movement. Olympic gold medalist sailor Sofia BEKATOROU accused a senior member of the Hellenic Sailing Federation of sexual assault, inspiring another athlete, Amalia PROVELENGIOU, to accuse her coach of sexual assault during her youth. Both documentaries reveal the myths encountered during the pursuit of justice and judicial decisions in sexual violence cases, which often obstruct judicial decisions. They also portray how, despite the arduous path, women collaborate, support each other, and develop warm friendships.
These two documentaries seem to illustrate that on the journey to seek justice for sexual violence incidents, women can form alliances. However, can they always do so? What other roles might women’s camaraderie play in the fight for justice against sexual violence?
In contrast with the female solidarity depicted in An Army of Women and Tack, the female friendship in Sisterhood emphasizes the impact of intersectionality of social identity in sexual violence cases. With different ethnicity and class, women make different decisions due to the resources not quite equally available to them. And it sometimes leads to contradictions. In Sisterhood, three teenage girls, though from different immigrant, racial, and class backgrounds, have been close friends since childhood. When one girl experiences sexual harassment, her friend tries to expose the perpetrator on social media. The different perspectives and decisions of each girl on this event, however, shatter their friendship. After experiencing internal divisions, is it still possible for female friendships to reconcile and become a source of warmth for each other once again in a world of male violence?
Excursion, Tack, and Sisterhood focus on young women, vividly portraying the sexual culture in the digital media era. Women today navigate interactions with desired partners, parental and peer regulations of sexual behavior, and the pursuit of justice after sexual violence—all occurring within digital media. These three films precisely capture contemporary phenomena encountered in the digital landscape, such as post-truth and sexual double standards.
Compared to these films that depict recent digital media culture, Not a Pretty Picture, Martha COOLIDGE’s debut feature, first released in 1976, is quite different. Like many’s first works would engage in dialogue with personal traumas, Not a Pretty Picture portrays the COOLIDGE’s experience of sexual assault. With its meta-narrative, it combines documentary and fictional elements. Actors re-enact COOLIDGE’s life experience while the camera keeps rolling to document the whole filming process and actors’ reflections behind the scenes. This experimental metacinema allows the audience to see actors rethinking motivations for sexual assault and myths about the distribution of power and responsibility in date rapes.
Overall, in these seven films, we see the representation of women’s sex, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter, sometimes empowering, and sometimes oppressive.
The 31st edition of Women Make Waves IFF, we talk about “Spacing.” In the seven titles in the “Not a Pretty Picture” program, sex repeatedly pulls women between multiple pleasures and pains. Through these films, we hope to create a space where the key terms of sex-positive feminism—“autonomous pleasure”—and those of radical feminism—“oppression and harm”—can engage in dialogue and resonate.
(translated by Catherine CHANG)
