Michelene Wandor is a key figure in feminist aesthetics in Britain, “articulating…the interaction of feminism...socialism and gay liberation in Britain” in her plays, prose and poetry, as well as explicating and supporting their connections with theatre in her work as theatre critic and editor. Whores D’Oeuvres, first produced in 1978 in Nottingham, serves as a nexus for many of these ideas.

First and foremost, as Wandor explains in her book on feminist theatre published in the 1980s, the play is an “exploration of the images, the violence and the ideas which are attached to the notion of prostitution.” Images of exploitation and violence are easy to spot in the play, and the socialist critique (which has always found more favor in Britain than in the US) can be seen in the class issues and the desire to “organize.”

Prostitution was a “hot button” topic for second wave feminists in the US as well. In 1971, a large group of key feminists held a conference on prostitution. Kate Millet, in the preface to her groundbreaking Prostitution Papers, described the fractious nature of the event. Accusations flew as the few prostitutes who attended were angered by the judgmental stance of many of the feminists and the feminists were frustrated by the apolitical stance of the prostitutes. The issue of prostitution was also linked to issues of contraception and the fight to award women power over their own bodies, particularly meaning when—and under what circumstances—to have children. The fact that one of the Whores in the play has a child hints at the complexity of these issues, even for feminists themselves. Prostitution is a place where theory and real life collide in unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable ways.

Prostitution was also an entry point for another potent topic in second wave feminism: sexual difference and gender politics. The feminist critique of sex and gender posits an axis of subtle nuances in sexuality which are reductively constrained by structures of opposition imposed on them by the “definitive” gender system (i.e. “masculine vs. feminine” behaviors). Many lesbians who rejected heterosexuality as a political act saw lesbianism as the only viable alternative to prostitution in a society wherein women’s economic status was determined by their ability to perform in prescriptively gendered ways.

Whores D’Oeuvres presents the complexity of these issues in its exploration of Tina and Pat’s relationship and their sexual self-identities. Even the binary opposition of passivity vs. activity gets examined in the sadomasochistic sequences. Issues that informed women’s politics or touched their lives in varying degrees--like socialism, prostitution, and lesbianism—served as opportunities for radical reexaminations of society in the 1970s, as well as for divisions among women. Responses to these issues provided the second wave of feminism with some of its highest and lowest moments. They continue to provide similar opportunities for us. How much better equipped we are in our present struggles if we have gained wisdom and inspiration from that which came before.

This essay was informed by Michelene Wandor’s Carry On, Understudies (especially pg. 185-190); Elin Diamond’s essay on “Brechtian Theory/Feminist Theory” in Carol Martin’s Sourcebook of Feminist Theatre and Performance (especially pg. 124-5); and Kate Millet’s The Prostitution Papers.

[April 2004]

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