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The Unspoken Racism of the Trans Inclusion Debate Faux ghetto? Hell yeah
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For what it’s worth, I don’t like Bitch Lab, I don’t read her, I don’t think she’s very bright, and I think the main thing she piggybacked on recently was a comment thread to a post she didn’t author. Nice appropriation, that.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
So: Don’t like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and don’t read her. Read the women she rips off instead. They’re better.
07-22-2006
Just go ahead and bitch
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Bitch | Lab said (or quoted or otherwise posted on her site) the following: As I understand a radfem analysis, patriarchy is like an engine powered by three fan belts: 1. rape - alternator belt 2. prostitution - timing belt 3. porn - water pump belt If…
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A really deep, insightful piece that was extremely eye-opening. I’ve linked your blog off mine because I really think your writing talent is worth people knowing about.
Sarah
http://ontheface.blogware.com/.....42505.html bigger than the cartoon row? girls kissing missiles that should stop similar but stupidly rinkydink ones keeping them in bombshelters even though they probably know (what with ordering pizza from the enemy and all) cause way way more damage and will fuel production.
Care to say anything about wise use of arms, make arms production humane and what not?
Once again, sex and violence depicted as inextricably related. Pulse of the planet, impulse of the plan it people and plant it people alike. The bomb has gender problems. Is it an it or a her and is there any middle ground lost from having it both or ways? The idea is right (making dust) but there’s too many nasty and spastic suprises in the picture.
You certainly can’t ignore the recurring association and recombo of ‘free(ing?) trade’ belying phalloballistication and sex on grounds that nobody does analyses for canalization of violence and sexual fluids (yes, that includes rain in the gutter and the fuel to truck you(r) stuff) intelligible enough (ernest young’s fat ‘love and war’ didn’t do it for me either) or bycause one doesn’t shoot piano players, question automation from the receiving end or tinker with drives out of reverence and admiration for the big designer protector avenger go father go figure. A gogo father figure on the other hand . . . . your lowgoer
brill, insightful piece.
B|L, reading this post, I hear echoes of Salma Yaqoob’s very perceptive comments on her experience as a muslim woman participating in the building of the anti-war movement in England with people with very varied worldviews : socialists, christians, etc. and how this process requires both a secureness in one’s identity and a readiness to change. I find it very moving :
“A sharing of experiences was under way. In Birmingham a local mosque invited socialists as well as Christian, Buddhist and Jewish faith representatives to speak to the congregation. A Sikh temple opened its doors for a 48-hour inter-faith prayer. Socialists, some of whom may have been initially uncomfortable with the idea of working alongside religious people, were able to view Muslims as people equally dedicated to opposing oppression. Christians and Muslims, some of whom may have been uncomfortable with working alongside ‘people of no faith’, were able to view socialists as people who also shared their notion of social justice, and would talk about the dangers of unfettered capitalism.
Solidarity became a reality, and new relationships were forged. The Fire Brigades Union, with the experience of fellow firefighters in New York in their minds, were among the staunchest supporters of the anti-war movement. The links created through the anti-war movement paid off during the firefighters’ strike, when the congregation at Birmingham Central Mosque raised £900 in a single collection, identifying with the slogan ‘This government is willing to spend money on taking lives but not on saving lives’.
Indeed, I believe it is this process of engaging with each other, communicating our stance to others, while being open to change ourselves, that has been the key to the success of the anti-war movement.
I place emphasis on ‘being open to change ourselves’. I would go as far as to suggest that for many people, including myself, it has been a transforming experience. While maintaining our distinct identities, we put aside our differences and worked with other groups to find points of commonality.
In our experience in Birmingham, however, I found that by working closely together in a very practical manner we actually influenced each other’s identities and views, resulting in the different groups relating to each other, and even themselves, in a different way than before. In effect a transformation in our identities had taken place–in which we were mutually enriched without compromising our principles.
A strong grounding in our own identity enables us to engage confidently with others, with a degree of openness. This has led to a deeper examination of our own identities, which have evolved in the light of interaction with each other.
The irony is that the people who were so adamant in defending a ‘purist’ stance and vocal in expressing the dangers of eroding fundamental beliefs, and thereby in effect advocating an isolationist stance, were betraying a certain lack of confidence in their own beliefs. Their fear of the negative influence of others highlights a certain weakness in their convictions. Why would they fear the possibility of change in themselves or others, and assume it would lead to a loss of identity, as opposed to a further strengthening of it? Indeed, our beliefs and attitudes are really only tested when they are exposed to different and even conflicting ideas.
An isolationist approach is one of not being prepared to take any risks. But by not taking risks we lose the opportunity to both learn ourselves and influence others.”
RE: “Is every feminist approach just equal?”
Someone can be feminist and disagree with many of my principles, but not be one in my books if they try to shut me up. I tolerate different opinions and try to understand life from different perspectives, but I don’t tolerate huge leaps of logic or personal slams. The former I usually jump on. The latter I ignore and go elsewhere a while so as not to feed the fire of the slammer.
But I think I’m living this:
“For there is a danger of a fragmenting pluralism where the centrifugal forces become so strong that we are only able to communicate with the small group that already shares our own biases, and no longer even experience the need to talk with others outside of this circle.”
And that’s a problem.
Right.
What I think is this:
With certain people the best you can do is adopt a realpolitik attitude: you’re with us on reproductive rights? okeyfine. see you at the rally. against the war in Iraq? terrif. see you there. where we part ways–you know, let’s just let it the fuck go in this space, okay.
If certain *certain* people can’t even go that far, won’t share the stage with the pariahs, won’t even allow as to how yes goddamit we are *also* feminists, just not *your* kind of feminist, if you’re that my-way-or-the-highway–well, then, so long baybee, I’m takin’ the highway. eat my dust, I’m done.
>The irony is that the people who were so adamant in defending a ‘purist’ stance and vocal in expressing the dangers of eroding fundamental beliefs, and thereby in effect advocating an isolationist stance, were betraying a certain lack of confidence in their own beliefs. Their fear of the negative influence of others highlights a certain weakness in their convictions. Why would they fear the possibility of change in themselves or others, and assume it would lead to a loss of identity, as opposed to a further strengthening of it? >
EXACTLY.
Let’s never forget what the engine itself is…money. Money = class, privilege, power = patriarchy. An economic revolution that’s needed.
B | L, now I understand why your category is “FeminismS” in the plural. Great piece! Would that it should come to pass.
You know where I honestly think a good deal of ground could be made–and I know I’ve said this before–is if those of us who style ourselves sex positive were willing to really wade in there and take a good long hard look at abuse. Rape, domestic abuse, trafficking, all forms of sexual exploitation.
SOme people already do, of course; but someone, I think Elinor? on the Alas thread went, all right, is there *any* non anti porn/sex work feminist who addresses trafficking (and i think other abuses)? like, at all?
i’m afraid i snarked at her (”not that anyone should have to do your homework for you…”) but, you know, I really do think this is key. The perception–and let’s face it, not entirely without reason–that particularly the most visible sex-pos folks, at least right now, come off as sort of lalala good times for all!! without much attention to the darker side of what can be done, what IS done in the name of sex.
key to what?
Cheryl
Well, you and I can think that, a radical feminist will never think that. That’s just not where they are at. They were refugees from marxist social movements in the 60s, angry with the way men treated them. Steeped in marxist analysis, they simply decided that, instead of asserting profit was the engine , they completely disavowed that approach, and substituted, instead, control of women’s sex for control of the means of production.
IN order for capitalists to control things, they control the means of production in the form of capital, factories, machinery, office buildings, etc.
For a radfem, all this is tossed out the window — and for some this was a very hostile move to signal their complete renunciation of any leftist analysis whatsoever.
Catherine MacKinnon’s work is a very reductive tailoring of Marx’s framework to suit her analysis.
Andrea Dworkin spends more time rabbiting on about the evilness that are leftist men in our midst than she does rightwingers and, in one interview, tells us to work with rightwingers but be suspicious of leftwingers.
*rolls eyes*
ilestre
Thanks so much for that quote and the reference. That is an excellent concrete example of what I’m getting at.
In many ways, I think the feminist blogosophere is already very good at that — for all the complaints about aggro.
And the other thing is, and I think you might agree, do you think it’s easier to do this if we have a specific thing we work on? Maybe not minutely specific, such as with fighting the war ….
I mean, with one civic democracy project, the point was a broad one, to engage people in a broad conversation, “What is the meaning of work?”
That sounds arm chair silly. I thought so when it was proposed. But people totally loved it — and I’m not talking people with college degrees or anything, or even people with a lot of time on their hands.
Just regular old people: butchers, factory workers, postal service workers, janitors, secretaries, school teachers, foremen, bank tellers, as well as folks from more managerial and professional occupations such as middle mgmt, dentists, physicians, social service workers, women’s health center directors, etc.
key to what’s really driving a lot of people, what the investment is. the need for a framework in which to make sense of abuse, esp. sexual abuse.
what’s driving what people?
me? i already have a framework for that and put my time in on a well-known project that b/c a model in the field for how to reduce abuse rates.
yeah, i’m so fucking unconcerned about this i should go flog myself.
no: i’m tired of the assholes
and the other thing, totally playing into the poltics of injury. FTN
and another thing, doing this so completely ignores what i wrote above. which is fine, so you disagree with it.
but to reiterate. the above is a call for them to understand us and for us to understand them.that shouldn’t mean that we should necessarily change anything we do to have a discussion.
this is asking people not to understanding the very different places from which we come. refusing to see that sexpos is an adjunct to a broader feminism most women hold and that sexpos is focused on a few things while their other feminism tends to address the broader questions of violence, abuses, etc.
it seems silly to me to decide, all of a sudden, that sexpos is a framework through which to analyse all issues or even the issue of which you speak. other frameworks do that already. why duplicate their work?
i don’t need a sexpos feminism to address abuse, coercion, etc. I have socialist feminists who do that work already, you have something else, Amber something else, anthony something else, etc.
—-
RM’s complaint is the tactic of poisoning the wells. I’m not going there b/c it indicates a fundamental disrespect to her interlocutors. She’s given me and others the choice of a longwinded discussion or allowing the lie to circulate.
THEY CAN LIE.
B|L
“And the other thing is, and I think you might agree, do you think it’s easier to do this if we have a specific thing we work on? Maybe not minutely specific, such as with fighting the war ….”
Well, yes absolutely, and even more so if it’s built around concrete demands, where the existence or not of the united front actually has an effect on the world. With something like the discussion you mentioned on the nature of work, it’s a slightly different thing, because there is no particular incentive to stick in there even with people you strongly disagree with - but I suppose there is something in common in that a specific issue can bring together people who are on different sides on more general topics, and that’s always good to explore.
You would think there would be no incentive, but didn’t turn out to be the case.
it “helps” that this community has been subjected to nothing but economic turmoil since the 1950s with plant closings mainly due to obsolesence of certain products, but also due to large global corporate mergers and purgings.
This was a serious issue for a factory that had been dying for years, finally died, and things were looking very bleak indeed.
The reasoning was that they might be in that state of crisis that marxists often look for - though those who conceived the idea weren’t marxist, just marxish enough. :)
I think there is a need for people to sometimes think about big ideas. In this case, funding for this sort of thing has very much dried up, so who’s to say. But, people need to learn that they are capable of thinking about big ideas and theoretical things, that they are philosophers.
there is a problem with activistism and the inability to actually understand how theory and praxis aren’t reducible to one another.
people just want to act, act, act, and do, do, do. And I think this may be peculiar to the US. The idea that people should have specific demands is great, but I think those demands have to be deliberated on.
Without that wider framework, understanding the nature of work and the meaning of work and how we see it, it just devolves.
In other words, in the context of a discussion of the nature and meaning of work and it’s important to people as something that gives meaning to their lives, there is a consciousness raised, not just about economic injustice but about how the meaning of work is completely trashed in a capitalist economy. it exists there, tacitly, and is never really brought to the surface.
I think that having that greater discussion was part of what meant that there emerged this spontaneous recogniztion one evening the was just beautiful if you have ever seen it happen.
we were discussing the plant closing. the factory was moving to mexico.
this guy got up and, trembling because he hadn’t yet ever spoken in a way that everyone was on him (and this was being televised and filmed to boot), he said that it used to upset him about jobs going to other countries but now he realized that it sucked, not becuase it took something away from him, but because it was that a factory was going to go fuck people over in mexico, too.
And there it was: we are like you. we are in this together. we aren’t so different. there is an alliance that can be forged.
what more could a commie like me want? :)
and it wasn’t just him, but it became this spontaneous erruption of the sentiment that resonated through the room that night. it was quite awesome.
i mean dude, it was almost as good as an orgasm. :o
BL: chill, please. I’m talking about the radfems who cling to Dworkin. they feel that stuff speaks to them in a way that other stuff doesn’t. for whatever reason. my thinking is that the reason is because she (and others like her) talk about rape and male-to-female violence, esp. sexual violence in a way that really resonates. that’s what they’ve found; that’s what works.
other people who also have abusive experiences but for whatever reason don’t fit the Dworkin paradigm (too queer multiple oppressions what have you) wander elsewhere after a while.
but it makes sense to me that people who *do* fit that paradigm would be more attracted to it than anything else.
certainly more so than say the columns of RKB and Tristan Taormino.
‘k?
…that is, I think Dworkin provides a sort of Grand Unifying Theory for abuse–personal *and* political–that some people find very gratifying. You may not see the need for a GUT; which is cool. but a lot of people seem to. for whatever reason. maybe they shouldn’t. but they do.
>people just want to act, act, act, and do, do, do. And I think this may be peculiar to the US.
I think there’s something to that, yes.
>it seems silly to me to decide, all of a sudden, that sexpos is a framework through which to analyse all issues or even the issue of which you speak.
It wouldn’t be duplicating. It would be synthesizing.
…anyway, “them” who, exactly?
I don’t know what the magic formula is for talking to the people who might still be potentially able to hear and dialogue; all’s I know is, it’s probably about time to try something new, since none of the old approaches seem to be working.
Mostly what I was trying to get at, I actually think RM (yes) just said in response to something I wanted her to clarify. I don’t know as I completely agree with this, but I do sense that wrt sex-pos/radfem in particular, this is what it comes down to:
>I think my point is that the right to say “no†underscores and is more fundamental to pro-sex feminism than public pride in female sexuality, homosexuality exists only so long as homosexuals are free to say “no, I don’t feel sexually attracted to people of the opposite genderâ€Â, bisexuals can say “no, I don’t feel attracted to just one gender†and trans can say “no, this is not my real gender, that one isâ€Â.
That of course, doesn’t mean that we should focus exclusively on the “no†issue, focusing on both would be preferrable (there’s no reason why that’s impossible or impractical, right?).>
It’s what I’ve been thinking of as the “tastes great! less filling!” aspect of the whole business. Some people put the emphasis on the right to say “yes.” Others are overwhelmingly about the right to say “no.” Obviously the problem is that one needs to be able to say both, and in a sexist/patriarchal/oppressive/what have you society, have been taught that you can’t say *either* and have it honored.
Obviously too this especially doesn’t address any of the other problems you and others have had with radfem–the ways in which race and class issues get shunted aside–but I do think it’s important in this one area, especially because it’s so very fraught.
It’s probably true that certain people will cling to the radfem Theory simply because it’s the Theory.
but i have been getting more and more the strong impression that what it’s about for the vast majority of women is that it makes for a sort of security, a right to say “no!” to being invaded (in a particular way, by particular people, particularly).
R Mildred’s right in this much, I think:
If people don’t feel safe, they’re not going to be open. Not to “yes” to any particular new sexual blahblah, and probably not to new ideas either.
So, assuming you find any grounds for dialogue with a given person at all, you find ways in which to talk that addresses that feeling of unsafeness.
That’s my working theory/approach, anyway.
Is that a quote from RM? if so: hee hee.
as for the rest: as I said, you are free to do this.
I have far better things to do with my time. a synthesizing grand theory is not my interest.
They are free to choose to circulate the lies, as RM is currently doing. IT’s nothing but logical fallacy and I’m not going to legtimate the discourse.
The fact is, articles in Radically Speaking denouce any approach to this issue that isn’t their’s.
They know they exist, that others work on them.
So look: if people who sit around and publish these thing say that, in 1995, I’m pretty sure that they aren’t going to care. It will be seen as a bullshit attempt on our part to patronize them. Or, they will be angry that we are stealing their thunder — which was what motivated a lot of Radically Speaking. They had something going and it died, and they attacked the pomos for it.
Yawn.
BL–oh, agh.
I was gonna say: you know, I’m on your side here, please don’t take my head off; but then I figured it was kind of redundant on account of we’re apparently mind-melded anyway.
not taking your head off. just hurried.
back to square one though:
the main point is, I have no truck with any of this. my personal activist history demonstrates this. Nina Hartley’s does ferchrisake.
So, as a response to RM? To take up the issue? LOL. supposedly based on the claim that someone wants to be safe so they can be open?
I’m laffing and laffing and laffing.
But, as I said to RM, I’ll read and listen and maybe think about it. But right now, we are far too apart on the basics to have a conversation and I dont’ really have time to write reams only to have it mocked and ridiculed.
so, much better to listen and learn from whatever theory she comes up with, since she seems ashamed of herself for never thinking and writing about the issues.
I’m not ashamed. And I’m not ashamed of the work sexpos have actually done on the issue which is on the ground activism to improve the lives of sexpos right here and now with education, unionization efforts, raising money to ehlp people leave the biz, a foundation dedicated to the issue, etc.
if this isn’t enough for these folks, there really isn’t that much more you can do.
The stuff between angle brackets is RM’s; the stuff about safety per se is my own riff.
And I’m not ashamed either.
What I am saying is: there is what seems to be a widespread perception among I think especially younger women (can’t really speak so much for the old-school second wavers) that Dworkin-style radfem is the only frame that really speaks to their experience (of sex being used as a weapon, of not having control of their own bodies and sexuality, of not having the right or the tools or the safety to say “no.”) That the most accessible face of sexpos culture feels like funfunfun yeeha blowjob lapdance what’s wrong are you a prude.
WHile I’m as impatient as you are with the hypocrisy of people who bitch and moan about being misrepresented (prude, yadda) and in the same breath completely cartoonize sex-pos or anything else;
at the same time i’ve been reading enough of the non-combative stuff from the anti’s that strongly suggests to me–hell, in one case, said so in pretty much so many words–that they feel pressured to have sex they don’t want, out of control, invaded.
It seems to me that this happens enough that, even though I personally don’t get it in quite the same way–my real problem has been getting to “yes,” “no” was always pretty much the default–that I could take a harder, longer look at *why* this might be the case. IF I don’t find the World According To Dworkin a sufficient explanation, then something else has to be.
I don’t know if I’m really talking new theory or better PR or better listening skills on my part.
I just know this shit isn’t working.
And yes, some people are still gonna be locked in, maybe even most of ‘em, and well, if that’s how it is then that’s how it is.
But behind the respective languages and frameworks there are *reasons* for the language and the frame.
anyway, I hear that you’re tired and frustrated, and I don’t blame you; and I am certainly not suggesting that you write reams more trying to get through to people who’re already driving you up the wall.
really wasn’t trying to tell you particularly that you needed to do or not do anything, for that matter.
I said “we” wrt sexpos in general; but really i can only speak for myself.
Belledame in 31:
makes much more sense. I didn’t have time to read the stuff on abuse that you posted at punkass marc’s thread, so i probably missed the background you assumed I had. apologies for not pointing out that out.
and you’re right, for different reasons, getting to ‘yes’ isn’t the problem, for me, it’s getting _men_ to yes free from madonna/whore complex. I’m usually the sexual agressor, I want to say yes. heh.
i thought you were condoning the approach taken at Punkass which i think is unwise. Other people are free to respond to the bait: not moi.
I wish her well on the Project but it was clear that I wasn’t invited, nor was anyone else.
{{{and you’re right, for different reasons, getting to ‘yes’ isn’t the problem, for me, it’s getting _men_ to yes free from madonna/whore complex. I’m usually the sexual agressor, I want to say yes. heh.}}}
and you know what else? I’m tired of women telling me that I’m causing them the problem because I raise the bar too high. HA!
definitely not condoning the Punkass whatever-all-that-was in particular, no. hell i could barely get through a quarter of all that. i don’t even understand what the Project is, I don’t think. so far. maybe later i can focus again now that my! power!! is!! back!!! on!!!!
(knock wood it STAYS on)
mostly i saw some people who seem (so far, i thought) otherwise capable of being human acting kind of jerky to greater or lesser extents. a lot of buttons pushed (some as part of a much longer chain of buttons pushed apparently), some buttons either deliberately pushed and/or (as I saw it) kind of a part-lame backpedalling, part-still more button-pushing, and part-sort of owning up to the jerkiness and trying to do the flame version of kumbaya.
not saying i wouldn’t still be pissed, also, but. maybe just sort of take a breather from that one, you know. the content, anyway. i don’t think it’s gonna make much sense for a few days at least, if ever.
I’m late in returning but just want to say I can not understand how people can hold that it’s possible to separate economic oppression from every other form of oppression. If there was economic parity between whatever oppressed group and the dominant culture, cultural acceptance would cease to be of any importance. Economic freedom gives one the power to not give a shit what the dominant culture thinks. Seems to me that creating economic equality would go a long way toward eliminating all manner of oppressions that follows in the wake of power = money + privilege.
Belledame
the project: she seems to want to incite folks into providing an address to the coercion and abuse issues in porn and prostitution.
as she said, we failed to talk about it. well, there are a lot of reasons for that, including the reason that the wider society thinks feminists are hairy legged dykes who are unhappy and humorless.
beause no one pays attention to the shit we do to address the issue. the media will play up someone licking a pole at a stripclub and claiming that she’s liberated doing so.
there are a slew of other reasons:
1. people talk about the things they disagree on, but tehy have a shared substrate of agreement that they don’t bother to question. Surprise: since sexpos feminists are often from the industry itself, they don’t deny coercion exists. but, rabbiting on about coercion isn’t going to get them anywhere in this society. the kind of activism they do WILL bring them immediate relief or something that is going to come a lot sooner than the revo.
… Note, now I’m just ranting in general, not at you, so don’t take this personally or that i’m saying this as if you don’t know these thing.s working things out for myself.
2. as mentioned elsewhere, big problem when sexpos is an adjunct to a more fundamental fem orientation. as consequence: look at this alliance of people with widely disparate politics and some folks with very little politics, but a life in the industry and a desire to make it better in the here and now.
3. some of us identify be/c we’re sex’l minorities. others as sex dissidents. others b/c we’re socialists/marxists. others because we’re lesbians sick of the stereotypes. others because we’re in the industry. others because we have kinks that give us approximating experiences that help us identify with the downtrodden in this world. others, libertarians. others just interested in protecting freedom of expression. others just horndogs. ha.
so many different reasons for being here. how can you put much on that in terms of a definition?
the demand for a univocality from that radical difference is a big expectation.
most folks seem to get their information from the popular media.
IBTP just posted a screed from someone blaming the Spice Girls for this mess. She blamed feminists who engaged in Spice Girls studies — such as my friend, Catherine Driscoll
You now: fuck the author of that article.
ranting here. ranting.
it just killed me. This author went on and on about the market, as if Catherine Driscoll didn’t have klew, let alone other feminists - and this would include Annalee Newitz as I recall.
I mean, seriously. Blaming what is a teensy minority of folk for all that?
*rolls eyes*
and folks will go on about the media and the production of truth and controversy. They’ll recognize how the media is playing us for all we’re worth. This issue comes up and no one notices: they are fucking with us, the same way they fuck with people on everything else. Anything for a controversy. And all the “public figures” who will stpe up to the plate for the five minutes fame.
we’ll put that analysis on almost anything else, about the blantant attempt by the media to purposefully distort things to advance an ideological agenda, conscious to them or not.
but on this topic? whatever the media tells us is the dog’s honest truth. no need to question it.
sex fucking panic man.
belledame:
“take a good long hard look at abuse”
————–
This one definitely qualifies:
http://www.essayvtm.netfirms.com/Domestication%20of%20women.htm#Domest ication of women
part of:
http://www.essayvtm.netfirms.com/index.htm#toc
An Essay on Violence, Tradition and Modernity
Rafael Leyre
Second Edition - November 2004 —- Introduction
The seeds of famine The human animal Evolution and innovations The human flood The origin of female gods The origin of male gods Civilizations Ideology Domestication of women Domestication of children Slavery Cultural violence War Progress Modernity India Egypt Babylon Greece Judaism Christianity Islam Europe The Atlantic civilization Conclusion Author and text Glossary
Literature
this index page has registered nearly 5000 visitors (right under his only banner, the iraqi body counts one with the develish droppings frozen in mid air and newsticker scrolling upwards)
or how-bou-dis .. . .
Are you gyrls aware of Karin van Paassen and her aids prevention card came (based on ‘memory’) spread throughout asia and africa?
http://www.lovecheck.org/english/home.html
she was on llink (hippy legacy radio) last night and got 81 responses so far.
http://www.llink.nl/Aflevering.....136dbdf9fb
Um, thanks…piet.
My own agenda I guess is somewhat different in that I’m not so much specifically interested in focusing on abuse w/in the sex industry (as you note, people who actually work in it are doing a fine, if generally unnoted job, mostly because very few people are listening to teh actual sex workers (except the people who once did, had terrible experiences and now are converted to the industry’s demise).
I’m more interested I guess in finding a common root for abuse that isn’t as simplistic as “men oppress women” or “any other group oppresses any other group.” Those are symptoms; not the cause.
Finding it and finding a way to apply it sociopolitically, I mean.
my own thing wrt poli-psych; but you knew that.
On a much smaller scale, I can understand the wish for people like, not so much the sex worker activists who want to form unions and so forth, but popular sex columnists and personalities, to maybe address the murkier side more often.
*not* obviously because no one else is doing this–hell, you can find dire warnings and handwringing about the dangers and disgust factor from just about every faction in this culture, that’s what sex-negative *is*–but for a perspective that yes, abuse exists, no one’s minimizing it, there is a sociopolitical dimension to it…and it *still* doesn’t have to mean you shut down or self-police or freeze or explode or censure or censor.
The closest example I can think of to what I’m talking about is the work of Staci Haines.
http://www.healingsexthemovie.com/media.html
http://www.cleispress.com/book_page.php?book_id=86
…and of course it’s the “sex-positive” folks who’ve sponsored her. dirty lezzie pornographers produced & distributed her movie; the book is published by Cleis Press; the movie made its debut at Toys in Babeland.
unfortunately, very few people have heard of her in comparison to Dworkin *or Tristan Taormino/RKB/Dan Savage. blame who you will, but that’s how it is right now.
and honestly I think this sort of work would be so terrific for so many people who just don’t seem to know that such a thing might even exist.
Belledame
Not sure what you mean by “those are symptoms; not the cause.”
…I mean, and I’m posting this all indirectly and PA because I don’t really want to tell people what to write or not write; but if Susie Bright, say, were to cover this woman, or (my own bias, but) the work of Body Electric, it’d make me very happy.
I’m sure it still wouldn’t be enough to convert the hardline Dworkinites, of course.
but people who sit on the fence, who have confusing and unhappy experiences with sexuality, who are both scared of and attracted to some of the stuff the sex-pos folks talk about blithely and happily while also very drawn to the fire and passion of Dworkin (because she speaks to their own experiences)–I think this sort of information could be quite the eye-opener, and maybe even lead to a new and healing path.
I mean, unless one is an essentialist, it’s pretty obvious that institutionalized “isms” are not in existence because of the inherent badness of (name yer oppressive group).
So the question is: why *are* they, then?
I don’t think this gets talked about enough, lately.
and as much as I’m with you in that one should not dismiss “identity politics,” the fragment of validity I see in such criticisms is that there’s increasing fragmentation because we (the loosely defined left) don’t seem to share a common frame; or many of us at least would be hard-put to articulate what it is.
and with that I realize I might be butting up against one of the cornerstones of postmodern thought (i.e. in that I do see a need for such); but, well, yeah.
Just a few thoughts, b/c busy day. I think what you’re getting at is really important and it made me synthesize a few things so just a ramble ahead:
1. pomo — really broad group of thinkers so can’t really say that pomo does this or that, but my reading gives me the sense that it’s not necessarily that we don’t want a grand theory, but that we have to remember that there are no foundations. there’s nothing once and for all about it.
butler called it “contigent foundations”
maybe it’s just: keeping feet to fire.
2. I think people resist ‘grand theory’ in the US because they resist any way of thinking about anything beyond the individual level. it’s built into our culture and it’s a culture narrative that we celebrate in the smallest to largest of ways.
in other words, even if we want to build a grand theory to understand this — why these things exist — it doesn’t follow that anyone will be especially interested in it.
i’m not saying we shouldn’t but there’s resistance to it.
and I think as you’ve said, you’re pretty suspicious too. or maybe ai misunderstood.
one of the things you said reminded me that the appeal of things like radfem and the kind of movements alon’s suspicious of is that they are soooo superstructuralist in their account that structure actually disappears and it becomes about individuals anyway.
individuals become bearers of the patriarchy or the oppression :: there is no separation in radfem theory.
this is one of the reasons why i can’t really have a discussion about oppression with marc and mildred. not that i don’t want ot, but things are soooooooo far appart on how we understand it, that it would be so much work. and, in the end, i’m not interested in imposing mine so much that i’m going to engage in endles back and forths, talking past one another.
but back to superstructuralism: anarchists often talk the same way when they start talking the politics of personal consumption and personal habits.
ward churchill took on the same theoretical frme when he told everyone that they were responsible for 911, as was he, and all of them and he deserved to be attacked.
structure recedes, individuals end up becoming paramont.
And this is actually all connected to all the crap I’ve written on why certain approaches to social change have an inadequate theory of social change: they don’t account for the individual as one operative level that operates differently from but not independent of social structure, which has its own dynamics that operate differently but not independently.
one problem with finding out “why” is that we can maybe go back in history and discer “why” but that doesn’t mean the whys for why patriarchy emerged then continue to exist today.
i mean, if it was about controlling property then, it isn’t about that now. that is, if it was about individuals controlling property through women then, it’s not now.
anyway, just a huge rambling mess.
One of my main influences in all this is actually Tony Kushner.
“Have you, my young serpents, a new skin?”
–from “Slavs!”, which is basically a collection of outtakes from “Angels in America: Perestroika”. what the guy (the world’s oldest living Bolshevik) is getting at is that okay, g’bye to Communism; but now what?
That’s the real superstructure, I think, for the left at least. that door closed (for most people anyway); not clear where the next door is opening.
But what I think he’s also getting at in Angels although he doesn’t say it in so many words, I think (he’s deeply agnostic) is a real spiritual crisis across the boards, in America; or a crisis of faith if you’d rather.
He doesn’t offer solutions except “more life;” but I think the questions he poses are really valuable.
>And this is actually all connected to all the crap I’ve written on why certain approaches to social change have an inadequate theory of social change: they don’t account for the individual as one operative level that operates differently from but not independent of social structure, which has its own dynamics that operate differently but not independently.>
Yes. Thank you. Exactly.
This is where poli-psych comes in, for me.
The trick is to be able to think in terms of totality, without being reductivist. I think the concept of “differentiated totality” may help, but the main thing is, resist the temptation to be reductivist.
The (not) Big Three…
Bitch | Lab said (or quoted or otherwise posted on her site) the following: As I understand a radfem analysis, patriarchy is like an engine powered by three fan belts: 1. rape - alternator belt 2. prostitution - timing belt 3. porn - water pump belt If…
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