Pleasures of having (a) sex and the sex wars

This article is a reconsideration of the object of the so-called feminist "sex wars", past and present. Building on the transfeminist effort to broaden our understanding of "sex" beyond a limiting sex-as-biology and gender-as-culture framework, this article seeks to show the importance of the pleasures of having a sex - a sexed body and role - to the sex wars. In order to do so, it reads two pieces of sex wars era polemical feminist literature in parallel, arguing that while the two texts represent radically different outlooks on ethics and possibility of enjoying having a sex and being sexed, they both show the importance of this question to the sex wars. Finally, the article argues that this broadened perspective on the sex wars can help us make sense of the contemporary feminist conflicts over sex, both as a desire, and as an embodiment - especially trans embodiment.