I must confess myself totally gobsmacked by Jill Sparrow’s post at Leftwrites, sexual positions on the left (great title though…) and its comments thread. Writing, that is, as someone who’s spent a fair bit of effort deconstructing the tedious puritanism of elements of the feminist punditocracy [see these posts for starters, and this one on puritanism about pop culture]. It’s as if the debates in the 80s and 90s about sex-affirmative feminism entirely passed Sparrow by, aside from the most risible and attention seeking representative of the position, Camille Paglia. Sparrow takes as her text the silly polemic by Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs.
Sparrow writes, apparently trying to puzzle out whether she’s been affected by the “pornographisation of the mainstream”:
A month of [sic] so back, I watched families enjoy a fairly sexualised belly dance at 40th birthday party – which, OK, is pretty mild but something that people would have raised more than a few eyebrows at not that long ago.
Oh, really?
Sparrow is apparently of the view that burlesque is “sexist per say [sic]“ and that there is never a context for sexism, but an essence, or perhaps in view of the way she couches her post, a correct line:
Either something’s sexist or it’s not, surely?
She may be posing a rhetorical question, because apparently the dividing line isn’t that clear:
Looking at this example (and, of course, there are plenty more) reminded me that it seems increasingly difficult to come to grips with exactly what constitutes sexism in popular entertainment these days, of how to oppose sexism without opposing sex.
Indeed.
But things are somewhat clarified in comments. She writes:
This is not because we live in a world free of sexism – but that, as I’ve been trying to express in a fumbling way, that the absense of a clear political movement means that often there’s not a clear political side to take on these positions.
Take, for example, the following issues (I’ve been concentrate largely on issues relating to sexuality because that’s where I first started thinking about the question. But we could broaden it out). What do we say about them?
1. Strip shows.
As I said, once upon a time, anyone on the Left would have argued against people going to them. Is that still the case? What if women go? Or couples go together? What if it’s a male strip show?
2. Pornography.
Again, there used to be a pretty clear “anti-pornography but anti-censorship” position. But such a position would be impossible to maintain today where pornography is so mainstream and everyone engages with it in one form or another.
3. The burlesque performance.
What would people have done? I tend to think I would have supported people who were angry about it. I guess it was mildly sexist in that it was only women performing the dance. But if you think that, wouldn’t you also have to say it was equally sexist when women went to see the performance on Saturday nights? If it’s just a question of something being “inappropriate” in work hours, then that’s a pretty conservative position. You see what I mean – it’s hard to take unambiguous positions on these things.
4. Language.
When I started in my first job off campus, I was was at first taken aback by what I felt was sexist terminology only to discover that almost no-one understood what I was talking about when I complained about it. Women (even left-wing women) called each other “chicks”, and everyone called people they didn’t like “c*nts”. [Edited by me for NSFW reasons] Now I was politically brought up to think such things were sexist but I challenge anybody to actually win that argument these days. The women’s movement – which challenged these terms – no longer exists, and elements of the feminist and queer movements have muddied the water on language by “reclaiming” it. Today, it seems as if this is an argument that no longer has any context.
5. Sexualisation of children.
This is a slightly different question but if you read Levy’s books, some of her descriptions of 12-year-old girls competing about how many blow jobs they’ve given is quite disturbing, even if you don’t have children! There has been a lot of discussion in the media about the sexualisation of clothing for young children. I instinctively feel that all of this is a bad thing, that apart from the obvious commercialisation of it, there’s some psychological benefit in children having a period of their life before they start dealing with the complexities of sex. But perhaps this is just conservativism?
Well, maybe it is. I’m amazed at the degree that all this just repeats the sorts of stereotypes indulged in by the non-feminist and puritanical commentariat (but more of that later). Why, one wonders, would burlesque be less sexist if men “were performing the dance” too – which appears to be the only logical implication of her question? Well, hello, there are actually burlesque boys if that’s of any relevance. But I very much doubt that those feminists actually working in burlesque, like Lola the Vamp, who’ve taken the trouble to articulate a complex and well thought out position, would recognise these questions. It appears never to have occurred to Sparrow to listen to the women themselves.
But perhaps that’s not surprising. No doubt a lot of the difficulty I have with the post, aside from the confusion it engenders even as it tries to make sense of contemporary cultural and sociological phenomena, is the obsession with formulating a monolithic position. The examples given of the practice of the ISO and the assumption that is repeated over and over again that there is only one left position on any of these issues, and the trick is to find out what it is, are both exemplary and deeply depressing.
What I’m also curious is the lack of analysis by the Left on women, sexuality and sex today. I searched all the group magazines and websites and was unable to find anything useful at all – and what there is is quite dated. Which makes me think that the Left is lacking a framework in which to discuss issues of sexism and sexuality today.
Really?
“All the group magazines and websites” presumably means all of those authored or produced by socialist and Trotskyite groups. Sparrow gives the game away when she writes:
I think one problem is that the Left has always worked out responses to these questions by its interaction with political movements – the women’s moment and sexual liberation movement in the 1960s/70s, the feminist milieus of the 1980s. But in the absence of any political movement, it becomes hard to find a position that makes any sense.
It’s striking that she sees “the Left” as completely separate from feminism. But what’s even more striking is that apparently feminism has entirely disappeared from her ideological compass (sometime after the 1980s…) – I’m trying very hard at this point not to just start yelling, but did it ever occur to Sparrow and her comrades to go look at some contemporary feminist “magazines and websites”? Since apparently she is concerned about these issues – I hope in a more sincere way than just wanting to know what the “Left line” on them is.
Apparently:
The women’s movement – which challenged these terms – no longer exists, and elements of the feminist and queer movements have muddied the water on language by “reclaiming” it.
So us women in the feminist movement (the “women’s movement” having ceased to exist, whatever that means) apparently don’t exist because we’re too muddy. Or politically incorrect. Or something. Huh?
That’s why I’m gobsmacked.
Perhaps the most depressing part of the whole thread for me is that Sparrow and her comrades – to the degree that they manage to articulate any position at all – adopt one which resembles very closely Janet Albrechtsen’s:
This is not about Western-style feminism, where empowerment in the 21st century is baring one’s navel (and the rest), talking dirty and sliding up and down a pole, should that take your fancy.
wow, this is very frustrating. the reduction of not simply differences, but diferences across various registers under the master signififer of ‘left feminism’…
I challenge sparrow to recognise that lines of alterity are actually necessary for an encounter (of whatever duration) to be sexy. People are not necessarily sexy, they just share in something created between them that is, and not everyone participates the _same_ in such creations of sexy. (Have you seen my post on stripping?)
Anyway, that is a simple if not obvious example, the conflation of action (stripping/burlesque) into representations (pronography/sexualisation of children) into language is nonsense. These may all be _concerns_ for teh lefty feminists, but conflating the various events within which these heteroegenous elements exist is categorically wrong. That is, they may all be elements relation to the singular event of concern shared by teh lefty feminists, but they are all actually separate events within which lines of alterity (gendered, class-based, generational, ethnicity, etc.) must be investigated and staked out.
Is this what you are getting at Kim, when you highlight a discursive tension, which on one side are teh conservatives and on the other side are teh lefty feminists? and by reducing such heterogeneous events into a singular event of _concern_ then the teh (so called) left feminists are doing themselves an intellectual injustice?
That, and more, glen!
You’ve started doing it too, Kim? Linking to the Bizarro World that is Leftwrites for amusment and irritation? Jason’s been at it for a while over at our place. We get quite a few giggles out of it, I have to say.
That said, there are strands of feminism that share commonalities with various historically puritan, ‘anti-fun’ ideologies and policies. Prohibition is probably the most notorious example of the genre, but I’m sure there are plenty of others.
Wow… Glen, I think I might have understood what you wrote just then!
(and agreed, with you and Kim. It’s a common reflex when debating almost anything to reduce issues down to two positions and assign positions to Big Happy Generalisations like ‘conservatives’ or ‘the Left’ but such an approach is never more futile when it comes to hyper-individual issues like teh sex and pr0nograppy.)
glen, btw, I hope this is a joke!
Otherwise I shall have to rethink my position on this particular aspect of teh sex and pr0nograppy!
sl, Jill’s post frustrates the hell out of me, basically. But it is a great title
ahhhh kim, that is precisely the joke. it is not the clothes I need to work on, but the lack of them…
Hmm, the disappearing emo jockstrap!
Hyper-oxymoron or the stuff of (sexy) nightmares?
We ask. You decide
I only understood every second word you wrote, Glen, so forgive me if my response is off target.
I’m not so sure about that. There is a growing body of evidence, including some of my own yet unfinished research, which suggests thtat p*rn is merely an evolution of the sexualisation of children. By sexualisation, I’m refering to the most extreme example – molestation. The evidence suggests that an alarming majority of pron ’stars’ were victims of sexual molestation during their formative years. Viewed in this light, I see pron as a continuation of the abuse and find it abhorant.
Most of the mostly American Rad Fem sites I frequent, are violently opposed to pron and pr0stitution. They point to large bodies of research linking them to r@pe and other violence.
As for Lola the Vamp – Good for her. She’s an intelligent woman who clearly articulates her postion and rationale. But let’s not get too carried away – She makes her money by sexualising herself. There’s nothing even remotely complex about what she does.
Hi,
I got spaminated!! Again!
See Anna, I told you straight away.
What’s porn, though, Alex? Where do you draw the line? Jill Sparrow writes about “pornographisation [horrible word!] of the mainstreamâ€? but she intentionally or unintentionally conflates hard core exploitative porn with many aspects of popular culture. Sexualisation, and taking control of representations of one’s sexuality (or at least contesting control…), is a different thing from porn altogether.
And I don’t see why what Lola’s doing isn’t complex. It appeals on one level – desire, or perhaps titillation, but has a far more complex appeal as well.
To say “she makes her money by sexualising herself” is another simplistic statement. Maybe so. But how is it different from a female soap actress with a straightened nose and a brand new cosmetically surgified cleavage? Very different, I’d argue – in that Lola has thought through her practice.
Most of us women in the workplace make our money by sexualising ourselves in a sense – in the sense that we’re incited to wear “business attire” that’s often more revealing than casual clothes. Not many, I dare say, are unaware of the issue, and the compromises.
On the pop culture puritanism angle, see this too:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/10/17/the-veil-or-the-push-up-bra-its-a-false-nonchoice/
Is there any way a person can express dismay at burlesque and pornography without being dismissed as a puritan or a conservative?
There are no grounds for thinking that a soap actress hasn’t given consideration to what she’s doing.
Most of us women in the workplace make our money by sexualising ourselves in a sense – in the sense that we’re incited to wear “business attireâ€? that’s often more revealing than casual clothes.
Sorry, Kim, I think this is nonsense.
No doubt there is, but I wonder why the two are so easily conflated?
Perhaps that was a badly thought out example.
My point though is that in the world that Jill Sparrow conjures up, it appears that anyone who might be “sexualised” (including presumably the bellydancer at the party she went to) appears as someone without agency.
Perhaps I should clarify my position. I’m not saying that I am “pro-porn” or “pro-burlesque”, or that anyone who disagrees with me is “conservative” or “puritan”. What I am saying is that I am in favour of women who want to express their sexuality doing so on their own terms to the greatest degree possible, and by doing so, shifting representations away from ones which contribute to sexism.
I also don’t think that it makes any sense to talk about “pornography” as if it were a singular and undifferentiated category, and less sense to assert that the “culture” is being assimilated to porn.
And I’d be interested to hear someone articulate an anti-”burlesque” argument. I don’t accept that the onus for actually making an argument is always on those who want to celebrate, condone, tolerate or not condemn absolutely.
I thought you summed it up nicely over at LW, Kim:
The point to me is that this is a constantly evolving landscape and any attempt to develop a “position” seems almost prissy.
Where do we stand on the brazilian wax? What’s the position on G-string bikinis? Stilletos – how high is too high?
My one issue, though, is raunch culture and the sexualisation of children. As a parent it’s one thing I do have a problem with, but I suspect it has as much to do with the triumph of the airheads as anything else.
That wasn’t me actually, Christine. That was (another) Kim. I’m Kimberella the Pirate Queen over there.
However, I do agree.
Going back to glen’s point, I think the issue of the sexualisation of children warrants separate analysis and treatment. If your yardstick is agency/power, as mine is, clearly most of that is on the side of corporations and marketers in the case of kids’ fashion/culture.
One of the things I’m complaining about is far too many cultural trends being conflated just because they can be linked in with TEH SEX.
Agreed Kim. It’s Jon Benet territory.
And I think the debate over at LW is the problem with the site in general.
I only ever look at it for the entertainment value of staring at people who don’t seem to have realised that the world has changed over the past thirty years, and whose raison d’etre seems to be the relentless search for an even more meaningless cliche.
As a comrade of ‘Sparrow’ I find your objections rather strange. Being Left-wing means working out a political position so that you can actually have some idea of what you are going to do to change the world and make it a better place. That is a part (well, its why I am there) of what LW is trying to do. If you are scared of it being monolithic well then may I suggest it has more to do with you being unable to defend your politics than some kind of totalitarianism on the LW site.
Yes, by appreciating that it is shithouse or shit hot, or whatever. Again, with the universalising assumptions…! You are asking is there any way to express a refusal in such a way so it isn’t the same as another’s refusal? Well, by saying exactly what you don’t like about it. Have you never had a lover strip for you? So for me, in the particular case of stripping, it is not so much the action as such (if your lover is stripping for you, turning you on, getting you both excited…yumyum) of the actual stripping, but the institution, the exploitation, the reduction of the bodily form into the stupidities of the received dicursive reification of ’sexy’ that is associated with the institutional example of stripping. Yes?
Banal institutionalised women strippers for blokes is about men being exactly that, blokes. The female form is simply being used as a tool to reproduce masculine performances either amongst friends or purely for the sole viewer (in his own head). That is what men pay for, to be men, and to be recognised as such. There is a direct lineage here with the homoerotic dimension of sport. The specific desires are complex and are necessarily social. A single institution in a capitalist society can not be held accountable for necessarily inculcating the desiring machines. They are distributed across the social. Hence the reduction of various different problems into the singular feminist ‘concern’, and at least my probelm with it becuase such a reduction obscures what is going on in each specific example.
alex, I will give you not the benefit of the doubt, but an appreciation that this is written in a blog comment and is not a research paper. There is no way I can imagine agreeing with the assumptions and slippages across different registers of causality in your statement. I hope you have done some fieldwork and followed this line of causality from actual molestation, through to pronography as the structurated institutionalisation of a specific relation — open to the pron star of of an invasive molestation and open to the other side of the relation to the consumer as the invasive molester — mediated across the architecture of the pronography image which finally produces the indoctrination of (what?) ‘normal’ sexualised adults into ‘pronographified sexualised’ rapists.
There is not a normal person who at some point becomes abnormal (seriously, read some foucault!?!), the continually movement of a person as they live is captured at various moments in specific relations through through hugs and car crashes, through scholarly diplomas and fast food queues, through loose shoelaces and hot days. You are worried about one mediated relation amongst others. This relation may very well be important, but I hope for your sake you don’t only focus on one specific mediated relation at the expense of all others. Because to me this line of causality is complete bunk. Sorry, there are so many other things going on in an individual life let alone the machiniations of all these people living in a society that to draw such a red thread from molestation through pornogrpahy through to molestation (rape?) again without actually following the red thread is worse than problematic.
I’ll put it this way, mirroring your research logic: After you have finished with the pron molesting-machine, can you do some research on (maybe post-structuralist) humanities academics and follow the red thread that leads to the offenses of the existential desert we call contemporary culture which drove them all like kids in a fun park centrifuge to the edge of the social where they all end up mostly unable to function like normal people because of the complete and utter stupidity around them? Clearly, I was molested by the stupidity of the world, this has driven me to read texts that bring the stupidity of the world into much sharper relief, I am going to write texts that allow others to see the stupidity in the world and feel equally molested. Following your logic, I want you to please blame me and my work not only for for the stupidity of the world, but for making people feel like they are molested by it. Obviously this will be easy as you will get a research grant from some right-wing think tank.
What do I mean? There is an essay written by Agamben (on the cinema of Debord) where he talks about the parallels between pronography and advertising. I can barely remember it. He talks about how both produce an image of an infinite series. There is always another one. Another fridge, another come-fark-me smile. Why aren’t we talking about the reification and commodification of particular easily reifiable and commodifiable body parts as a product of capitalism and part of the architecture of the spectacle? Oh, because such questions wouldn’t impress right-wing op-ed stooges like a hard-hitting simile between pron and molestation? Why are people so comfortable wanking at home over pron? is it because they are molested or want to molest someone or thing, maybe a child, or because there is such an utter poverty of love and goodwill in the world that it is completely unnecessary to be in relationships that are more than booty calls with cuddles when you can easily access commodified love rendered as the monstorously baroque sexy of capitalism?
Yes, that’s weirding me out a bit, too. I haven’t seen so much fretting over what is and is not correct line since the early 1970s. I dunno about the leftwing cops in the head, so much; it’s the ones who think they’re policing the boundaries of righteousness who worry the bejaysus out of me.
Chav, I’m afraid I don’t understand. I’d assumed that plurality and intellectual diversity should be a mark of left wing thinking and action. Perhaps you could explain and defend your leftier-than-thou politics for me, please?
And what gives you the right to suggest that I don’t have “some idea of what [I am] doing to change the world and make it a better place”?
I’m sorry if that doesn’t include finding my inner lefty cop, after a blog thread has defined the “correct line” for me.
We agree, Christine. Welcome to TEH HIVEMIND
I look forward to Chav and her/his comrades lecturing us on why we’re not correctly left wing, since she/he apparently is in a position to do so.
Oh, and what Dr Cat said.
You’d never have thunk it:
http://www.leftwrites.net/?page_id=2
Yep, definitely getting into Jason mode on the Leftwrites front, Kim. I like to visit just for entertainment, and to remind myself of the difference between sane lefties and insane ones. I use the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler for similar purposes on the right (no, I won’t link to them).
I dunno about Jason mode so much, SL; it just looks like Kimberella mode to me. It’s not as if these arguments are new for her; she’s been quite consistent in her flexibility for a long time.
“Being Left-wing means working out a political position so that you can actually have some idea of what you are going to do to change the world and make it a better place.”
The left, or bits of it, just doesn’t want to learn from thirty years of failure. The world changes when it’s ready and is only ever as good a place as it wants to be. There’s nothing “you” can do about either.
Heh. Thanks, Dr Cat. I like to think of myself as consistently flexible. It’s much better than being flexibly consistent.
Kim started out much more nicely, PC, then got into snark [link], which is basically Jason’s M.O when it comes to Leftwrites. He’d never devote such a thoughtful, reasoned piece of analysis to the people of Bizarro World (unless he was writing about the real Bizarro World, in his capacity as DC comics connoisseur)
Hi Glen,
What a great response. (seriously)
My research, which is in it’s initial stages, follows the same principle as similar American research.
Woman working in the ’sex industry’ (Pron, and postitution) are surveyed about a number of issues, including attitudes towards ’sex’ and whether they have ever been victims of any sort of violence. Mirroring this group is an identical randomly chosen group of women given the same survey.
I haven’t gotten far yet:-( and am hoping for some help from academics.
Kim: “I’d assumed that plurality and intellectual diversity should be a mark of left wing thinking and action.”
Well and good, but wouldn’t it be better to conceive of these things as a mark of bona fide ‘thinking’ as such? And between you and me, I doubt they are a monopoly of the left; in fact, I don’t see them in full effect on the left nearly often enough.
This forming into ‘wings’ business is practical enough, I guess, from the political standpoint of our-gang-getting-things-done; but when it comes to actual thinking, well, it’s kinda for the birds.
“‘I limit myself, yes,’ said the dog, ‘but I’m happy.’”
–Jim Carroll & Bill Berkson
I’m with the Gnome.
I have to say I’m surprised at the kind of response to Leftwrites over here at LP. I thought that we had a relationship of mutual respect, even though politically there’s some distance between us. In the past, we’ve had a fair bit of cross posting and people who are regular participants on both sites.
But all the references to “hivemind”, “bizarro world”, and “linking for amusement” seem to indicate that this isn’t the case – that people on LP just want to engage in red-baiting. That’s really disappointing.
We’re happy to have healthy and vigorous debate with any of you. Come over to LW and tell us what you don’t agree with. I’ve been reading the comments on Kimberella’s post with some interest to see what it is you guys have to say on this topic that’s so much more informed than us. But, frankly, I found our own discussion more illuminating so far – and I’m waiting for someone to come over to LW and tell us what it is about LW or our discussion on sexuality that has infuriated you all so much.
Kim: “Most of us women in the workplace make our money by sexualising ourselves in a sense – in the sense that we’re incited to wear “business attireâ€? that’s often more revealing than casual clothes. Not many, I dare say, are unaware of the issue, and compromises.”
Isn’t this a needless surrender of the agency you profess women use or have today? Dressing sexily at work (in the usual meaning of the word) doesn’t now always or even usually mean an accompanying sexual objectification, in the way many women once thought of such things in the early years of women’s liberation.
In my experience, women who dress sexily, i.e. extra flesh, high heels, cleavage, tight fitting clothes, etc., can be either women with the least or the most power in any given workplace or industry. And their lack or surfeit of power is not influenced a jot by the way they choose to dress.
Though, it could be argued, the ability of women to dress at work in a way that others find attractive and which for most women involves some artifice and highlighing of sexuality, is often a source of extra power for women in that men give them more work-related attention and women tend to notice and admire them too, for the same reasons. I think Helen Garner argued the same thing in her book “The First Stone”, in relation to young women students and their older male teachers.
Looking good, and that can include sexy, is a source of self-esteem for women of all ages. Not all, of course. Some women seriously don’t care about their looks and make minimum effort and refuse to play the fashion and cosmetic game. And these women can be the sexiest of all.
Sexuality, sexual expression and sexual attractiveness for many if not all people have a lot more to do with factors other than mere fashionable clothing, artfully applied cosmetics or absence of pubic, underarm hair, etc.
Jill, my understanding is that the word ‘hivemind’ as used at LP is a running LP joke used ironically by the women here to refer to masculine scorn at the way that feminists tend to agree with each other on gender issues. (Well, der.) The ‘bizarro world’ and ‘linking for amusement’ references both come from scepticlawyer, whose links I suggest you follow to learn more; I’m a bit surprised that you don’t know she’s from Catallaxy, or who she is. (Or you do, and have nonetheless identified her views as somehow being typical of LP, which would be extremely disingenuous of you.)
As it happens I would stop well short, myself, of Kim’s position on these issues. Actually I’m probably closer to yours. What I can’t see at all is the need to work out what the group position is, so that everyone knows what to
thinkbelievesay, and then chuck everyone else out of the club.I feel no need to change either Kim’s views or my own (uh oh, hivemind in meltdown again), nor to tell her accusingly that she’s not really a feminist and not really on the left, both of which propositions are clearly laughable, and I have too much respect for her intellectual subtlely to want to argue the toss with her about it. She might win; how embarrassment. (Or perhaps not; there’s no shame in being beaten in an argument by Kim.)
The only thing about this discussion that has ‘infuriated’ me so far, having been a left-voting feminist in word and deed all my long adult life and sometimes at considerable personal cost, is seeing someone ten or twenty years younger than
meI (hello Julia, hello Christopher, hello Geoffrey K.) laying down the law about who is or is not to be allowed into the club. So I was actually a bit enraged by Chav’s comment, particularly this bit:While its naiveté is worrying and depressing, what is actually enraging is the ‘Being Left-wing means …’ bit (Chav, most people here have read quite a lot of great big books with hard covers on the subject, and watched the news a bit, too, over the years), and the ‘If you are scared of it being monolithic …’ bit.
Yes, I am scared of it being monolithic, all right; any retreat into mindless herd behaviour and (much worse) vicious exclusionism frightens me senseless, and I have seen a lot of both. I am scared of it being monolithic because I can defend my politics, not because I can’t. Strangely I don’t think this disqualifies me from either the ‘Left’ club or the ‘feminist’ club, but I bet Chav does. I would be very interested to know where she got her rules from.
Incidentally, Chav, you’ve indicated that you disapprove of Kim’s identification of Jill by her surname, by putting it in quotation marks in your own post. It has been standard feminist theory and practice for some decades to identify men and women alike by their surnames in public discourse, since identifying women by their Christian names has the effect of belittling and infantilising them in the context of the discussion, as with literary critics who refer to Dickinson and Woolf as Emily and Virginia. If you didn’t know that, maybe someone should chuck you out of the club.
Wrt the last para, Dr Cat is quite correct as to why I chose to write “Sparrow” rather than “Jill”.
Actually, what I was disturbed about was that no-one contradicted her.
Yes, well, this is what I don’t get. What is the point of political opinions if you’re so ambivalent about them as to not worry whether you convince someone of them or not? It’s not just some abstract intellectual debate for me – radical politics is about discussing how to change the world. Opinions matter. Learning from the debates matters (why would you and Kim bother discussing things if you think in advance that neither of you will change your minds?). And convincing other people of your political ideas matters, too.
I didn’t notice anyone getting chucked out of any club in the discussion. Nor are people on LW in any political group together. We’re a collection of people from a range of different political backgrounds on the Left. That’s the point of the blog – to have a forum where we can debate ideas on the Left. But to the extent that we can find common ground (a “monolithic position” if you must), well, most of us think that’s a good thing!
I find your horror of this – and even the concept of trying to politically convince people – quite bizarre!
But Dr Cat did.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/12/27/sexual-positioning-wherein-one-node-of-the-hivemind-disagrees-with-the-hard-left/#comment-265128
What’s wrong with being sexy?
But that’s my point, Clare. The context of my comment, as you’ll recall, was Alex’ claim that Lola the Vamp made money through “sexualisation”.
I get the impression that who I am somehow disqualifies me from comment, PC. Oh well, back to the herding cats that is libertarianism…
That’s not what Dr Cat is saying, sl, as I read her comment. She’s pointing out that contra Jill’s assumptions, your characterisation of my motives for the post doesn’t represent my actual motives for the post (which I thought I’d spelled out pretty clearly).
Oooh, Nigel, you are a one.
SL, ‘disqualifies’ — no, absolutely not. In some ways quite the reverse; my own view is that you have done it harder than most people in earning the right to say whatever you like. The point I was making was that Jill seemed to be representing your words as somehow ‘typical’ LP, and seemed not to be aware of wider bloggy contexts.
Jill:
Well, I did, as Kim points out. But maybe ‘contradicting’ is neither as interesting or as useful as simply putting one’s own, other, views. Which I also did.
Sorry, but I think that’s just bad logic. One can be very clear and unambiguous about one’s own political views without feeling the need either to have them conform to a group ethos or to bash other people self-righteously over the head with them. You might just as well say that if the regular Christian commenters here didn’t turn up constantly trying to convert everyone (and most of them don’t) (thank the Goddess), then it must mean they were ambivalent in their own faith.
But some do indeed believe precisely that, and to me this is quite a close analogy. In either case what we’re talking about is fairly simple-minded, fundamentalist evangelism and crusading, done in such a way as not only to get potential convertees offside but to push them, in resistance and defence, futher and further in the opposite direction from one’s own views. I’ve seen this happen in public life over and over again.
Nor for me either, thanks very much. But to me, living one’s beliefs does not mean conforming to some external belief system worked out by somebody else. And in the meantime I’ve spent my adult life learning, teaching and practising the art of reasoned persuasion.
I would have thought radical politics was about changing the world, not about talking about changing it. Also, we have some significant slippage here. For you, ‘left’ and ‘feminist’ may both include ‘radical’ but that’s a debatable point. From the actions of both the self-styled radical left and the self-styled radical feminists, over the decades, I have seen very little apart from destruction, sloppy thinking, and abnegation of personal responsibility for things said and damage done.
(a) FWIW I check in on LW regularly to see what’s happening there, and have modified a few views as a result.
(b) I am fairly sure that if Kim and I sat down and discussed the pron/sexualising/’sexist’ issue over a G&T we would probably both come away from the discussion having modified our views somewhat. To me the ultimate goal of debate is consensus, not victory.
Oooh I’m in moderation, how excitement. I wonder what word it was. Probably either ‘Goddess’ or ‘G&T’.
I think there is a (humanly) understandable, but nevertheless pretty unattractive resentment, even hostility, exemplified I think here at LP by Pavlov’s Cat in her sweepingly dismissive and just plain silly comments about the left, which are often typical of people who don’t normally feel that passionate about social injustices of one sort of another (or indeed, many of them all at once – very overwhelming at times for those who do feel strongly about such matters, constantly and, even, viscerally) and who have spent little of their lives doing anything about organising to combat them.
Just sayin’.
So the leftier than thou crowd resorts to the ad hominems. Note that Dr Cat identified herself as part of the left. As do I. But Clare has just read her out of the left (writes) club. And by implication, me, and everyone else here who’s a lefty, since Dr Cat “exemplifies” us. Evidently her point about exclusivism and the LW crew is proved.
It’s always very dangerous to cast stones about people’s political commitments and actions. If I were to go by the current LW debates and which issues they highlight, I’d assume the biggest political issues in Australia at the moment were David Hicks, salacious bellydancing and agonising over a correct line to adopt. This from self professed “class analysts”.
It’s even more dangerous to make presumptions about what people do and don’t feel – viscerally or otherwise. Is that meant to be some contrast between emotion and reason?
And I strongly suspect you know nothing at all about what Dr Cat and I have been doing with our lives.
It’s also interesting that her arguments (putatively “dismissive”) are dismissed as “comments” and then assimilated to a “typical” pattern rather than being attributed to her and argued on their merits.
My concern in this thread was not to enter some dumb-assed contest about who is or is not more lefty (that seems to be endemic in the “let’s formulate our common position and then we’ll know what to think” attitude – we can see here that it creates exclusions and a largely imaginary Other against whom you can feel leftier) but rather in good faith to indicate my exasperation about the reduction of complex issues of sexualisation and sexism to simplistic rules of thumb. And my exasperation about some particular narrative which sees feminism as “no longer a political movement” and to be discounted in favour of the superior wisdom of those who remember or imagine a 70s women’s movement which was essentially different in some way. And at the arrogance of determining a “position” based on some sectarian mindset which sees actually existing women and feminists as being entirely marginal to its formulation.
It would be nice if people could respond to the arguments.
Just sayin…
There you go Pavlov’s cat! You’ve just done it, reiterated a common position hammered out through debate and then put it into practice. Goodness me, and I thought liberals were incapable of learning anything new…I think you should consider coming over the Borg…
Keep your little labels to yourself, Chav, if you don’t mind. Especially as you only seem to have two or three of them, and they are looking very old and tatty.
Clare, you are projecting (though I can’t imagine why). I’ve been responding to what Chav and Jill have said; I have been neither resentful nor hostile about ‘the left’ as such, which in fact I have hardly mentioned, with which I identify however much you might think I ought not to be allowed to play, and which I would never presume, unlike some, to reduce to a sloganised and exclusivist mindset.
Kim, re responding to the arguments, indeed:
Here we are agreed. I think where we may disagree is on the infinitely multiple and difficult meanings — transmitted and received — of gendered and/or sexualised styles of identity, behaviour and dress, and their relation to context.
I was (however youthfully) there, and it wasn’t. The claim that feminism is no longer a political movement probably turns on the definition of ‘political’, which I think is being used — like the term ‘the left’ — in a far more particular and specific sense than some of the rest of us might use it.
Excellent point. Real people are involved. Scary.
Hmmm… I love it! When Pavlov and Kim reach agreement it’s about “the ultimate goal of consensus” but when others agree at LW it must be because of the “need to conform to a group ethos”. That’s fantastic!
Ah yes, that would be the bad totalitarian Marxist common position again, as opposed to the good feminist inclusive one that Pavlov and Kim sometimes reach.
Well, in good faith I actually haven’t seen anybody doing this. In fact, you’re missing the whole point of the thread over at LW at least which was to discuss the ways in which issues of sexualisation and sexism present as more complex today then in the immediate aftermath of the women’s liberation movement. As we discussed, some of the changes represent real steps forward for women, some are a result of capitalism’s attempts to reincorporate feminism’s gains.
Wow! I’m really taken aback about the controversy sparked by stating that the women’s movement no longer exists in any definable form. Of course, there are individual feminists and a body of feminist knowledge but that doesn’t make a political movement, something capable of mass mobilisations. It’s not particularly a slur on feminism or women to say this – most of the political movements which were part of the upturn in struggle around the 1960s/70s have collapsed. I mean, we’re not still pretending that the anti-Vietnam movement or the civil rights movement exists, are we?
Despite our supposed sectarian mindsets over at LW, aint some of us existing women too? Who are you to say that women are entirely marginal to our formulations?
Anyway, gotta get back find to LW to find out what I should think next.
We may indeed.
I still think glen’s comment at the top of the thread was the best substantive one on the issues I’d hope we’d be discussing.
But it’s precisely through attention to context, culture and agency that judgements can be reached, not through developing a “position” on whether bellydancing or burlesque is sexist.
That’s why I gave Lola the Vamp as an example.
In fact if you see her perform, the audience reaction and indeed the atmosphere generally is very far from that of passive objectifying desire. Similarly with Tarnished who recently put on their burlesque circus show in Melbourne. Part of the complexity of sexism and sexualisation is in whether or not being sexy can be re-appropriated and performed differently (Goddess, now I sound like Judith Butler!).
One of the key insights, I think, of the women’s movement and the feminist movement (accepting those terms – which I think work as sort of historical descriptors but I’d want to contest their political investments as Jill and her comrades ascribe) is that culture is reproduced and lived through everyday experience. It’s whether or not one is aware of this that is key to taking agency – but agency is something that’s relational and admits of degrees and the interplays are with embedded structures as well as other actors. But social change is often best advanced through living otherwise and differently to the degree that you can. That’s where there’s tension in the LW position as well – a number of commenters there say things along the lines of:
That’s a deferral and an act of utopian faith. In fact, sexual economies and economic structures have a relative independence from each other, though they often operate as well analogically.
I remember when I was an undergrad at UQ seeing a poster from the ISO that said “after the revolution, there will be no rape”. Yet the gender and sexual politics within those Trotskyite groups were simply appalling. I’ll not forget in a hurry the cynicism of using women to destroy and belittle any attempt to organise women’s space and events with abusive and hectoring rants about class. The hierarchies they were in turn contained within in their own socialist groups were so patriarchal in practice as to be quite shocking in some instances.
Autonomy and sexuality often go together – the containment of sexual expression is linked into so many other aspects of the reproduction of a culture and cultures which do not benefit women. The key is to contest and fight it – if co-opting it is a move in that game and one which gives pleasure, then I’m all for it – I’d rather not wait for the revolution. As Emma Goldman said, “if I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution”.
But class trumps gender?
Yes, I’ll cop that sweet. Saw it coming, in fact, and it’s the weak point that I too would have gone for.
I should have made it much clearer that I was talking about openness to persuasion, and a willingness on both sides to try to move towards even just a small patch of common ground — as distinct from a position that says ‘I will make you abandon all of your beliefs and adopt all of mine, because I know I’m right.’
Of course! But I think this argument started because of a suggestion that we were doing the second thing over at LW. Actually I’m quite proud of the level and conduct of the debate we have on LW and the thread in question certainly doesn’t illustrate the dynamic that you’re talking about.
People here seemed to react badly to our stated aim in the thread on LW of trying to work through some questions related to sexuality and sexism to see if we could find a common Left position. Of course, we didn’t entirely but I thought we made some progress on discussing the issues – and this is a good thing. Kimberella starting the thread here by suggesting that we were ignorant on matters related to gender but, to be honest, I think we covered a lot more ground that I’ve seen raised on this thread so far. And – dare I say it – we had a greater diversity of opinion! Of course it’s not a competition – but I’m saying this because I think people are reacting on prejudice about the far Left rather than really engaging with the entirety of the discussion that we actually had.
Hardly projection Pavlov’s Cat, when you yourself wrote:
“For you, ‘left’ and ‘feminist’ may both include ‘radical’ but that’s a debatable point. From the actions of both the self-styled radical left and the self-styled radical feminists, over the decades, I have seen very little apart from destruction, sloppy thinking, and abnegation of personal responsibility for things said and damage done.”
Kim, I wouldn’t counterpose reason and emotion. As dear Blaise Pascal noted: “We arrive at truth, not by reason only, but also by the heart.” I think the two things are inextricably linked for us. We experience the world in an emotional way and emotion is often experienced as an external energy which enters into us in a purely cognitive way, when that is not solely the case.
As to why, to address the question I alluded to, some people of a similar age, social status, class, generation, country of birth, etc. choose to expend emotional energy and time on say getting a first rate degree, or building a career, as opposed to, say, voluntarily using free and forgone study or career building time, not to mention physic and emotional energy, on grassroots left political activity, who knows? Another mystery.
But people do make such choices, all the time, and the choices usually bear fruit in concerns, priorities, activities, preferred topics of discussion and positions held or not held, on blogs, for example. And the latter are plain for all to see: for those who observe and note such things, that is.
Kim: “Part of the complexity of sexism and sexualisation is in whether or not being sexy can be re-appropriated and performed differently.”
Now who is being voluntarist and utopian? The question remains, raised repeatedly I might add on the lw thread, and it is a crucial one. What does it say about our culture, our societies, that it is women who are the sexual performers, servicers, dressers, enticers, game players, etc, in the main that is, and don’t give us that marginal shite about male strippers. The concept or actuality of men dressing sexually, or sexily, in the workplace, as a matter of choice, is laughable, because it doesn’t happen. It is just not comparable. Why ever not?
I thought I could detect some whingy harking back to undergraduate days thing going on here and right on cue Kim gives us her account (as an outsider one presumes) of the horrific internal culture of left organisations as she observed them at UQ. Kim, what ever makes you think such orgs, any orgs, in a sexist society, could be immune from sexism? And who ever apart from you and others with the same apolitical, ahistorical rebuff said they were? Who is the utopian here?
I was in the ISO when I was at uni and this simply not true of their internal gender politics – which were probably the best of any group I’ve ever been in. As a young woman I was encouraged to become more confident and to argue my points of view within the organisation, any sexist incidents were taken up swiftly, and at least half of the most leading people in the organisation were always women. I’m not going to defend everything the group did then or now but I think your accusations about patriarchal practices (which are naturally somewhat vague) are way off.
I suspect what you really didn’t like about the ISO was that they didn’t agree with your politics. I don’t either – but that don’t make me or them sexist.
Since a few people seem to be picking on PC (including me, after I got the wrong end of the stick), can I just compliment her on some really thoughtful comments, especially in response to the silliness of trying to define a position with perfect and immovable clarity. Sorry PC from me.
A lot of this stuff is way outside of my bailiwick, so I’ll steer clear of the theory and just note that – AFAICT – most women in a free society make their own choices about what they want to do, and why. That doesn’t mean those choices are informed, reasonable or whatever. They are, however, choices. If someone wants to run a burlesque show for fun and profit, good on her. If she’s thought it through, even better. That doesn’t mean, say, if the burlesque show was presented at my workplace (I seem to recall an LP thread on this issue – correct me if I’m wrong), that I have to stay & enjoy it. If I find it OTT, I can leave. If I find it funny and/or sexy, I can stay.
It’s just not possible to mandate what’s sexy or not. This may be a libertarian truism, but it does take all kinds. Ultimately, all we can do is allow women the maximum freedom to make their own calls. And instead of worrying about what is right or wrong in terms of an ‘appropriate’ response, we should be thinking about ‘harm’, ‘damage’ or ‘crime’. What’s the old Reclaim the Night chant? Yes means yes, and no means no, whatever we wear, wherever we go.
Oh please. What a fart in the bath.
Most blokes love looking at tits and pussy. Some women (and yes, many are skanks) enjoy airing it out and fund they can earn more money for less hours than checking account balances for Westpac customers.
Some blokes (and yes many are raincoat-wearing tragedies) choose to spend some of their money earnt at said Westpac account-balance checking gig perving on said airing it out.
Happiness abounds and the market rocks.
Capiche??
John, I’d think you’re missing the point, if I knew what the point was – good for you.
Wow, internicine disputes can be pretty ugly, can’t they! It’s worse than the NSW Right.
Tony
I get the point absolutely. The point is that many men like ogling tits and pussy and many women are willing to air them out for a fee. Everything else is really none of fag-end of feminism’s business.
It ain’t rocket science, multivariate calculus or the answer to ‘how many angels dance on the head of a pin.’
Well since this is such a pointless debate, John, I gather you’ll leave us to it and not comment further.
Anna
No debate is “pointless.” And I am enjoying all the epistemological circumlocutions. I would never in a million years dismiss the input of anybody here. Equally, I hope you consider my own cave-man simplicity as a worthy ingredient to the mix.
No, not really.
Indeed, Anna, we can do without Mr Greenfield’s contribution to this thread. Evidently it’s not too hard sometimes to draw a line in the sand about what’s sexist.
Kim
In that case, perhaps a brief explanation of this alleged “sexism.” This clarification might also help Jill Sparrow understand your point. I am curious as to how you decide which input “we” “need” and which we do not?
Please explain. Not only to me, but also to all those people who actually are involved in the production and consumption of pornography/stripping/naughty stuff.
I’ll ignore most of Clare’s leftier than thou rant (at least for the moment), but I’d point out in passing that she has no idea whatsoever whether or not Pavlov’s Cat or I might have chosen to devote sufficient time and energy to political activity to meet her visceral standards. Nor is doing so necessarily incompatible with getting degrees.
Though I will also observe that the equation of sex(y) and sexuality is at work again – in the comments about men – it’s pretty clear, I’d have thought, that sex and power and masculinity are all threads that are very closely interwoven. To suggest otherwise is to fall into the trap of perceiving women as primarily sexual whose sexuality must either be constrained or be transgressive. In short, a classic gender dichotomy. Nothing to do with male strippers, liebchen.
I want to try and engage with what Jill wrote. Let me just say that I don’t want to make this about the ISO and my experiences in uni politics (though why this should be devalued by Clare as “whining” I’m unsure – do these experiences not matter?) except to say that I had friends who were in the ISO and I’m not talking out of my hat here – I don’t want to go into specifics at all because I don’t want to talk about individuals and their experiences for obvious reasons – but anyone who doubts what I’m saying might wish to make certain enquiries about the Comrade who headed up the outfit in Brisbane from the late 80s through early 90s.
I’ll take Jill’s word for the fact that things were different in Melbourne.
I do think it’s relevant that women from both the ISO and the DSP argued forcibly (and IMHO violently) within women’s groups that we should not organise autonomously and we were guilty of some sin by talking about gender when it was class, stupid. I do also know that this experience, and attitude, wasn’t confined to Brisbane.
So do please forgive me if I hear an echo in the claims that feminism is not a political movement.
And please try to understand that I might be pissed off that something that I’ve devoted over a decade and a half to is devalued in this way.
All I’d say to that is that Dr Cat is obviously right that “political” is being used in some sense that I’d not normally use it in. Some clues to what it might mean are given in Jill’s comment about “mass mobilisations”.
I don’t know how many of the groups some LW contributors are associated with are capable of organising “mass mobilisations”, but that’s somewhat by the by as the concept really just reinscribes a discredited view of politics as about revolutionary combat or street protest. If you want evidence that feminism continues to exist and thrive as a political movement, I’d suggest you cast your eye over the internets. It’s depressing to me to think that some women who are interested in (even “viscerally”) in gender issues apparently adopt a view that is different only in its starting point from a hundred “post feminist” pop sociology bestsellers and Cleo quizzes.
This view of politics is actually antithetical to the key insight of feminism (and if you like, the women’s movement) though it’s revelatory of the contradictions reinscribed in LW discourse between Marxist feminists and the rest of us. Either left politics is about securing social and economic change through a fundamental change of the systems and structures (ie revolutionary socialism) or it’s about something else. I’ve never had any desire to overthrow capitalism, nor to form part of some vanguardist group that would erase my individuality and autonomy in the pursuit of an illusory utopia. People who were or are can make that choice (heh!), but they’re in no particular position by virtue of having done so to adopt a self-righteous exclusionism.
I always thought that feminism’s great contribution was to re-imbricate the personal and the political. And many drew from this the motto that social change was about contesting attitudes and changing behaviours and cultures in the everyday realm, not erecting purist barriers around one’s politics, and retreating to left ghettos.
I don’t resile from my characterisation of the LW post. It’s patently clear, on my reading, that starting off with a claim that formerly everything was clear but now:
and calling for the reformulation of a “common Left position” is to suggest that there ought only to be one. It’s astonishing to me as well that we (that’s if I’m one of the addressees – perhaps “left positions” are only for “leftwriters”) are cautioned against discussing things in terms of “the private sphere” – as if the public/private opposition and its social, political and cultural consequences were not precisely what’s at issue.
The contrast between this type of position forming and what Dr Cat and I (in my opinion) are trying to do is that I, at least, am not interested in formulating some doctrinal yardstick which would then be badged “the left position” but rather participating in persuasion, argument and conversation with a view to inclusive action.
To damn this thread for not engaging with the issues is ironic. There’ve been several attempts to steer discussion back to those issues (including by me) but we’ve got bogged down in this stuff. Perhaps that’s constructive – if it’s not, perhaps I should have written my post differently. But I’d be overjoyed if we could actually discuss the stuff that prompted all this.
You’re reducing women to “tits” and “pussy” which I’d have thought was exactly why people would think pornography was sexist.
It’s not a fine epistemological point.
Kim
I suspect you know full-well that you are being disingenuous there. I am using the vernacular that goes with the territory. It chimes with both how male (and increasingly female) consumers of this stuff think (and SPEAK) of the transaction. Ditto for female.
We are not discussing the virgin birth here. It is a gross misunderstanding of the topic to sully it in the patois of Judith Butler!
I am now even more curious about your positions on these issues. I am starting to read a thick strain of 1970s boiler-suit and Janis Ian trying to merge with 1990s Presbytereanism here.
Read my previous posts.
I don’t know who Janis Ian is, I was born in 1973 and certainly never wore a boilersuit in the 70s or subsequently and I’ve never been within cooee of the inside of a Presbyterian Church.
Heh, Primary Kim.
You’re talking to an old guy there in John G. No wonder you didn’t catch his references.
I don’t even get them. What is a boiler suit? Is he senile?
I’m not sure, Another Kim. Some sort of stirring Rosie the Riveter outfit from the 40s?
Boiler suits were shorthand for lesbian separatists in the 70s and 80s.
Count one more for sex safe and sex positive feminists.
I watch, listen to and do anything I want. I take care of my own safety and defend it.
That is feminism today.
Clearly you are not at all interested, John, since if you’d read any of Kim’s posts on this topic you’d know already.
Thanks, Rob.
Erm, that ain’t my style.
I told you he was an old guy.
A troll, I think. They’re old, aren’t they?
Old like the brothers Grimm.
Another Kim: “I watch, listen to and do anything I want. I take care of my own safety and defend it.
That is feminism today.”
The do-nothing parasitical inheritors of second-wave feminist struggle laid bare. Of course they puzzle over why feminists would worry about David Hicks.
Shouldn’t be too harsh on them I guess.They will reap what they sow. Yup, weeds.
Nope..sunny.
Fourth wave. And David can take care of himself.
You have found your rightful home here AK. Enjoy.
My opinions are my own and not shared by the majority here on most subjects, you idealogue.
You may join The Hivemind if you want, Another Kim.
Great faux biblical references, btw, sunny.
Is that an official invitation, Anna?
I’m not very hivelike. Just a feminist, who doesn’t take directions well. If at all.
May I be a rogue bee?
What, you done a quick poll AK? Or is it the hivemind (read thoughtless, smoke and mirrors feminist-less tripe of a coupla xmas tree decorator aficianados) speaking?
See you later, Sunshine.
The LP hivemind has a comments policy which stipulates that pointless abuse of other commenters gets you banned.
I’ve had arguments with Anna longer than you’ve been online,baby.
“Sunshine Suzy” was here before, under another moniker, abusing Nabs a while back. Never ceases to amaze me that some people get their rocks off just slinging it out. But there’s no reason for us to provide a forum for them.
Guess being the perv feminist that I am, I’ll have to finish this sweet Pinot Noir, have a smoke and have some fun sex.
::cough::
I try my hardest. My apologies from the rest of self-identified bloke-gendered men if you work with boring men!! wow, maybe you should hang out with some cultural studies postgrads?
But clothes do not maketh the man, no, no, no. They contribute to the event of which the man is part. I wear clothes that involve the smallest of variations, a slightly turned up sleeve, a skinny tie, a studded belt, etc. Everything is off-the-rack but slightly modified. Variation. Are you worried about clothes that reproduce the stupidity of a reified ’sexy’ or clothes that are just plain stupid? Where is the mystery in stupid ’sexy’ clothes? Aren’t they the opposite of actually being sexy with someone in a sensual asymmetrical romantic way (tango) rather than a harsh bare-all sort of way (sexy like a nuclear reactor core, yar! heavy metal!)? The uniforms of complicit stupidity (australia sporting tops, brilliant example) are the greatest contemporary social ill. Just look at that seat-dancing asshat of an accountant John Howard when a Big Game is on. Forget strippers, mass produced sporting tops should be banned. Real fans should make their own. 
::BERMPT::
[incorrect sound from game show]
if you read some Deleuze and Guattari you would know that your deployment of a refrain inculcated in the vernacular does not _go with_ the territory, it _produces_ the territory. It is territorialising. Your slightly cheeky and a little stupid use of “tits” etc is not a true or accurate representation of a particular milieu, it is the production of a new milieu that repeats the power structures that belong to the one which you are (not) speaking from. This is what it means to be attentive to the force of language, and not simply use language as a blunt instrument of force. However, I am glad you recognise it (the ‘transaction’) as a commodified form of sexuality or whatever, premised on a capitalist libidinal economy.
oh, one other thing I thought regarding conventions of naming using first or last names, online I think it is appropriate to use whatever moniker the commenter has chosen.
As far as I’m concerned, unless John Greenfield is prepared to offer a better argument than ‘dudes like looking at the tits and pussies that women (mostly skanks) choose to air out – deal with it’, then anything he has to say is a bag of dicks.
Further, i’ve found this thread very enlightening. While I don’t agree at all with Kim’s dismissal of Female Chauvinist Pigs as a ’silly polemic’ – frankly, I think it should be required reading in schools – I also think that the arguments offered by Clare and Chav are typical of most isolationist points of view of the far left (and I’m assuming these women identify as socialists – forgive me if I’m way off the marx). To suggest that those who don’t share your particular brand of left thinking are somehow less left and therefore uninformed than yourselves is as intolerant as most of the systems you claim to be bucking against.
As for my opinion on burlesque and stripping, Kim and Dr. Cat, you may be interested in this post I wrote a while back when the Suicide Girls were performing.
In view of the interesting debate about class-based vs gender-based politics and feminism, I’d recommend Phillip Adams’ recent (re)broadcast of his interview with British feminist Beatrix Campbell in which she recounts her experiences on these very points.
http://www.abc.net.au/cgi-bin/common/player_launch.pl?s=rn/latenightlive&d=rn/latenightlive/audio&r=lnl_15122006_2856.ram&w=lnl_15122006_28M.asx&t=15 December 2006&p=1
I might also say, Pirate Queen Kim, that the ISO’s claim that it will abolish rape after the revolution gave me much mirth.
Thanks for the link, audrey.
Yeah, the SG tour was major shite. Sadly.
I’d recommend taking in some of our local burlesque acts for something of what you were actually hoping to see. Check out some of Lola’s links:
http://www.lolathevamp.net/links.htm
I really don’t get this. If i think I am right and you are wrong then yes I will attempt to convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong and that you should adopt my political ideas. That’s why I have them. I mean, why would I consciously entertain political ideas that I know are wrong? I have my political beliefs because I think they are right.
People do this all the time. Political parties do this all the time. The ALP tries to convince people that the Liberals are wrong, and that they should take action based on this, i.e. vote Labor not Liberal.
Similarily I think Marxism has the answer to ending sexism and I think feminism does not. So yeah, I will argue that with feminists, try to convince them of Marxists politics so that they will adopt these ideas and attempt to organise a socialist movement that will overthrow capitalism and class society. Which I understand to be the only way of eradicating sexism.
“
”
That just doesn’t make sense. Yes I do think those who don’t share my particular brand of politics are less left-wing than me (or at least, less correct in their analysis of the world). Its not intolerant at all. I can’t make you agree with my politics, but the entire reason for having them at all is so that I will convince you of them and based on that we can act to bring about a better world.
Let’s leave aside the fact that being a feminist isn’t a partisan affiliation like being a Labor supporter (feminism being an inclusive movement which tries to convince and persuade rather than divide in order to win elections), but let’s hear some convincin, please, Chav:
Why?
Argue away.
Actually, it makes perfect sense. I have faith in my politics and my convictions but I certainly don’t pretend that I have all the answers. If I’m open to others changing my point of view (as surely all people truly interested in ideas must be) then I also have to be tolerant of the views of other people and accept that just because we don’t agree on all issues makes neither of us more right than the other. The problem with people who think, as you have claimed to, that people who think differently to you are ‘less correct in their analysis of the world’ is that they will never truly learn anything new because they tend to surround themselves with people who agree with all of their politics. And yes, I would say that that is intolerant.
Sorry, audrey, not sure why your comment was caught up in moderation.
The “less correct in their analysis of the world” thing is I suppose a reflection of Marxian “scientism”. This of course led to reformism in the practice of the German SDP in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (by far the largest and most powerful Marxist party that competed under conditions of universal competitive suffrage). Marx himself had little to say about politics – rather than the state (though there’s not much well theorised there) – and the programme of the Communist Manifesto is actually liberal. So Lenin came along and invented vanguardist parties and violent revolution and imagined himself as a modern Robespierre.
The problem for the small number of people who think of themselves as Marxists politically (who should be distinguished from those who make strategic and occasional use of Marxian social science) is this. There is no working class in the Marxist sense now, and what remains of the labour movement is totally uninterested in Marxism, let alone revolution. Unless it’s all utopian sectarianism, then some effort must be made to convince and persuade. But this goes against both the Leninist/Trotskyist culture of Marxist parties and sects and the logic of viewing Marx as social scientist par excellence. The result is a turn to a politics that seems more interested in marking out boundaries than anything else, because it has nowhere else to go.
Marx also had little or nothing to say about gender relations. Perhaps Chav could explain this, but unless she’s relying entirely on Engels’ work (which I beg to doubt), inevitably what she means by her assertion is that she believes in some form of Marxist feminist analysis. Which negates the false dichotomy betweem “socialism” and “feminism” of course – though within feminist thought, socialist feminism has pretty much run its course, which might be the point Jill was making – if only what is designated socialist (“mass mobilisation”) counts as political in her book.
Kim,
being a feminist is to hold a political position, like someone in the ALP. I disagree that the ALP seeks to divide I’d say they try to convince and persuade as many people as possible to vote for them.
As for why I think Marxism holds the key to ending women’s oppression, its because the roots of that oppression are bound up with the emergence of class society some 6000 years ago. Marxism seeks to transcend capitalism, the latest stage of class society, and in doing so will undercut the material basis for the oppression of women.
Audrey, would you respect the view of someone who said the world was flat? Would they be right or wrong?
I think maybe the difference between us is that as a Marxist I see my political ideas as a guide to action so its important that my ideas correspond to the actual reality of what’s happening in society. I’m not just interested in ideas for the sake of them.
Lenin’s conception of a vanguardist party was based on his realisation that the working class had different layers of political consciousness, some more class conscious than others. The vanguard party was his attempt to organise those layers. Doesn’t sound very sinistar to me…
As for the violent revolution, very few people were killed in the October revolution of 1917.
Aside from the tens of thousands who have attended the series of rallies against Howard’s IR laws, you obviously haven’t made use of Marx’s conception of class. Class for Marx was a relation to the means of production. For the most part, if you have to sell your labour to survive you are a part of the working class. If you work in a bank, a call centre, a supermarket, you are part of the working class. The idea that the working class is composed of burly male blue collar workers is a fairly usless sociological concept.
I must remember that next time I’m out at a street stall attempting to convince people of my political ideas, or to go to an anti-war rally or to etc etc…
No, I don’t. I think that Marxism is the best tool for understanding the causes of women’s oppression and for eradicating it.
Kim/Anna
I have read and re-read Kim’s posts and they are even more confusing and contradictory the second time around. Your positions wreak of being raped by Foucault. In fact stripped of the bizarre idea that Karl Marx has anything to teach the world about sex that propels the 1970s set over at Leftwrites, you sound identical to Jill Sparrow. Too much “power” and “conflating” and not enough sex!
Early on you, quite rightly, take issue with the boiler suit meets Presbyterianism of Jill on Language, but then you bring down the Stalinist jackboot on MY most appropriate use of language and show yourself to be
You dismiss Camille Paglia as
Yet if you had ever read Paglia, you would know how butt-clenching ironic your statement is! Have you actually read “Sexual Personnae? It does not seems so.
In fact I am curious that you are so condescending towards Jill’s clear inertia and 1970s bubble. Now, if you look at Leftwrites, you will see that Jill is also ignorant of Paglia. To dismiss Paglia as merely “risible” and “attention-seeking” is classic Presbyterian white bread feminism: uptight and always with a box of tissues nearby. You really do need to read “The Joy of Presbyterian Sex” in Paglia’s “Sex, Art, and American Culture.” Paglia was a prophet writing these essays in 1990, when Australian feminists were still in their Sparrow-stage.
Sparrow bemoans that the younger generation are quite comfortable with transcending the taboos of her own generation. In fact, we all say “cunt” all the time. Even my lesbian friends and I say “cunt” to each other. I am surprised you say are 33 and yet jackboot my use of common playground words “tits” and “pussy” as “sexist.”
Kim, if you are being serious on this issue, you really need to get out more. Two Sundays before Christmas I went to “Fag Tag.” “Fag Tag” happens one Sunday per month and invloves tout le monde of inner-Sydney gaydom “taking-over” a straight bar. We started at Hugo’s Lounge at the Cross and later went downstairs to a strip club.
I was with my favourite lesbian couple whom, because they are my favourite, I call “THE Lesbians;” an appellation used not only said lesbians, but by our extended circle encompassing men (straight, gay, bi) and women (straight, gay, bi). If you heard the language used not only by THE Lesbians but by everyvody else out taht night, you would have been very hoars be the end of your dressings-down for being “sexist.”
Kim. I beg you to put Anne Summers and Eva Cox down! Live In the Now!
I wrote a comment on LW about Kim’s comments there but didn’t want to join the debate on LP precisely because it seemed to me that the tone of Kim’s original post almost guaranteed that what followed would generate more heat than light (and so it came to pass). Nor do I particularly want to get into a long argument about the merits or otherwise of Marxism. But I do think it’s worth pointing out that Mark’s comments are neither fair nor accurate.
The idea of some arguments being ‘more or less correct in their analysis of the world’ only relates to ’scientism’ in the general sense that any social theory of value (and certainly any progressive theory) seeks to test itself in practice and can therefore (like a scientific hypothesis) be falsified. If that weren’t the case, it would be a religion. I don’t understand why such a basic point should be controversial here, since it’s generally accepted throughout the political world. Even the Labor Party — not exactly a bastion of high theory — tests various analyses of the electorate at the polls and discards those which don’t hold up. Why wouldn’t it?
If one doesn’t accept that some arguments provide a more accurate view of the world than others, one lapses into the crassest kind of relativism in which all political theories are equally valid and there is therefore nothing to debate (and no way of debating it).
I don’t know why Mark thinks that ’scientism’ led the SPD to reformism, unless he’s referring to the crude determinism of its theoreticians. The SDP was, in fact, very theoretically eclectic and contained both an orthodox Marxist wing alongside people who were overt social democrats in the way we understand that term today. But, in terms of its political trajectory, most historians focus more on the SPD’s integration into the massive German trade union bureaucracy, and the growth of its own electoralist infrastructure (for example, 90 daily newspapers!), which pushed it towards a conventional reformism.
Which is all very interesting but has nothing to do with politics today, and so I won’t bang on about it.
Mark argues that Marx has little to say about politics rather than the state. I don’t mean to be rude but that’s such an extraordinary claim that I kinda wonder whether Mark has actually read any Marx, who was, after all, a man who spent his life writing about politics, from the events in the Paris Commune to the American Civil War.
What does Mark think the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon is about? Or even the Communist Manifesto, with its critiques of other socialisms? Mightn’t that have just a teeny bit to do with politics?
Funnily enough, Marx’s relative disinterest in the nature of the state, the topic that Mark suggests he concentrated on, was (famously) one of the problems inherited by the next generation of Marxists.
OK, I accept that not many people are interested in Marxism (though I will say that I think Marx is one of the best prose writers of the 19th Century and so even if you’re not interested in his theories, it’s worth reading him just for his style, as Humphrey Mcqueen argues here). But it does seem to me that having some familiarity with Marx’s work should be a prerequisite for judging its merits or otherwise.
So too for Lenin. Yes, this notion that Lenin invented the idea of vanguard parties is a staple of Marxological literature but it rather suffers from the problem of being completely historically wrong. Actually, Lenin took his theory of the party and its role largely from the KPD, and his major innovation was to give Kautsky’s ideas a libertarian twist, as Lars Lih convincingly shows.
As for the idea that Lenin invented ‘violent revolution’, well, again, it’s just not true. Once more, it might be an idea to actually read some Marx before holding forth on Lenin’s deviations from the Marxist tradition, in the same way that, if I were to expound on what social democrats do or don’t say, you might expect me to have actually consulted some of their works.
Mark says that the working class ‘in the Marxist sense’ no longer exists. Actually, the working class, defined in ‘the Marxist sense’ of those who sell their labour power is far bigger today than it was in the Russia of 1917 (about 7 per cent of the population) or the Europe of Marx’s day. The vast majority of Australians belong to the working class ‘in a Marxist sense’. White collar employees might not be seen as workers by conventional sociologists — but that’s quite a different matter.
Mark says that what remains of the labour movement is quite disinterested in Marxism and revolution, and therefore ’some effort must be made to convince and persuade’.
I quite agree, though I would also add that much of the labour movement is also quite disinterested in other progressive theories, too, and so in that sense we’re all in the same boat. Yes, we need to ‘convince and persuade’, and, yes, we need to update and rethink some of our ideas. That’s the common situation of the Left today. That’s why we do things like write for blogs. That’s why we try to argue for ideas that we think are right, in the hope that the debate will help clarify matters.
Mark suggests that socialists ‘more interested in marking out boundaries than anything else’. Now this argument particularly sticks in my craw, because it’s so thoroughly unfair. How did this particular thread originate? Did it begin with someone from from LW pointing out the errors of LP? No, it did not. Has, in fact, anyone on LW ever written a substantive post about LP, in which they marked out the boundaries that distinguish socialists from others? No, they haven’t.
In fact, it was Kim who wrote a quite angry and, to me, unfair polemic about LW (we’re the hivemind, don’t you know). And then Mark followed up with a series of pronouncements about what Marxism does and does not mean, a topic which he doesn’t seem to know terribly much about. So who is marking territory here?
Anyway, enough already. I said I didn’t want to get into a debate about Marxism and now I have. So I will stop.
I think LP and LW probably interest different readerships, though I’d like to think there’s some overlap. Surely, though, the Australian blogosphere is big enough for the both of us, and there’s no reason for us to be tearing at each other’s throats. I mean, I don’t want to sound like a bleeding heart but, as Rodney King said, ‘Can’t we all just get along?’
Jeff
Audrey, would you respect the view of someone who said that Marxists know more about what women want and need than feminists?
For fuck’s…
The oppression of women is not just about capitalism; if that were the case, women would be more oppressed now than they were 100 years ago. Do you really think all those women who’ve fought for the right to have a career are also victims of false consciousness?
That’s correct, its about class society, of which capitalism is the latest manifestation.
Not at all. But if they see that as the be all and end all and think that therefore women are no longer oppressed then I think they do have a degree of false consciousness. Having said that, most people, men and women, in capitalist society do have a degree of false consciousness.
I wonder if our Madames Mao from Leftwrites would like to change places with women in NON capitalist societies? You know like China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Russia…;)
Um, which of these countries are non-capitalist?
I mean, i thought the West had won the Cold War and the previously oppressed masses of the Soviet Union had been liberated and ushered into a new dawn of deomcracy and capitalist prosperity?
In regards to China, I’d argue that it is a capitalist society, one where the state acts as the ruling class and workers and peasants are exploited and oppressed. A state capitalist society, if you will.
Audrey, would you respect the view of someone who thinks that a material fact like ‘The world is not flat’ is of the same order of truthiness as ‘Everything Marx and Engels said is literally true, as far as I can tell from the translation into English, and all can be explained thereby’?
(I feel bad about using you as a rhetorical device, Audrey, but I’m hoping you won’t mind being momentarily conscripted.)
I wrote a substantive reply to Mark’s comments above but it seems to have disappeared into moderation or a spam filter. Oh, well. It’s perhaps for the best. I suspect this thread will do less to change minds than it will to produce hostility.
Yikes. That damn gravatar follows me everywhere now.
Pardon me if I bridle at Chav’s apparently unironic use of the term “false consciousness,” which to me sounds authoritarian, doctrinaire, and dismissive. So those who disagree with a class analysis are delusional?
I’d have to agree with Mark on this one, and I think that’s the basic flaw in Chav’s argument.
John, Kim has other posts here at LP. She’s been around a while. If you can’t be arsed reading them, then you don’t deserve the courtesy of being responded to. It’s clear you have not read them from your interpretation of her views here.
Jeff, I’m also not interested in a debate about Marxism, but again, we LPers are “The Hivemind”, not you guys. It’s beginning to seem like you’ve all read every third word of Kim’s posts and formed your response from that.
Anna,
You’re right. I misread the bit about the ‘hive mind’. My bad. And no, I haven’t been following this thread very carefully. I was skimming thru it when I read Mark’s comments and I responded to those.
But I still think the general argument holds.
Jeff, well, perhaps my comment was a bit schematic. Blog comments tend to be like that.
Obviously there are some analyses I’d argue are more correct than others. But Marxism is not akin to the Labor Party doing polling research. It’s a paradigm, a worldview, and it claims to provide the key to the interpretation of history. I doubt Labor Party pollsters would make the same claim.
Where “scientism” comes in is two-fold.
First, the assertion that Marxism has discovered inexorable laws. Yes, the theoretical perspective of the pre-war SPD in Germany was largely “orthodox Marxist” (a creature Marx himself would not necessarily have recognised” but whether or not Bernstein managed to get his positions approved by part authorities made no difference to the party’s practice. The belief was that as the working class approached a majority of the electorate, power would naturally fall to socialists (in fact this only occurred in two European countries – Belgium and the UK – but that’s another story).
When I say that there are no classes in the Marxian sense, I’m of course well aware of the distinction between classes in themselves and of themselves.
If you want to talk class analysis, in a strict sense there are. From a Marxian point of view. But – and you brought up Marx’ political journalism where he complicated his own theory – Marxism is not the only form of class analysis. Weberian class analysis rightly emphasises the ideational element of class formation and reproduction, which is only approached in Marxism through the consciousness thing.
Christine is absolutely right – this whole concept implies a contempt for what people actually think they want – hey, wait, the vanguardist party will tell us. They’ve analysed things according to a scientific theory of history! Whatever.
We could go on and look at different forms of the ownership of capital and the shift in the structure and nature of work, but let’s not bother. Very clearly there isn’t an insurgent working class focussed on “economism” and “trade union demands” waiting to be led by a vanguardist party.
Therefore you’re stuck with an aim – the overthrow of capitalism – for which there is no realistic goal or strategy to achieve it.
Hence sectarianism. And the annoying divinisation of Marx. Which is the second aspect of scientism.
No doubt we could have a jolly discussion about Marxist theory of the state – Althusser vs. Poulantzas or whatever. It might be of academic interest but it would have bugger all to do with politics as actually practiced.
Yes, I’ve read Capital volume I and bits of II and III and lots of his other stuff. No, I don’t treat them as a guide to political practice, or as a name to be invoked to close down arguments.
For instance, the risible claim that the November revolution killed few people. If true, it’s a debating point rather than a serious attempt to assess the historical consequences and nature of Leninism. Chav might like to read some of the charming missives Lenin wrote about exterminating people just because it would reinforce discipline, or because of their class origin. And any realistic appraisal of the chain of causation would ascribe a large measure of responsibility for massive deaths from famine, again to name just one instance.
The second bizarre claim is that if “class society” disappeared so would sexism? or patriarchy? (not the same thing, since we’re insisting on analytical distinctions here). Why is that the case?
No argument is offered, but an act of faith is made, and an assertion.
If we’re going to play Clare’s game and talk about “visceral” politics, I’ve worked on changes to Queensland state legislation which enabled more fair pay cases to be brought – and thus participated in something which materially improved the wages and conditions of low paid female workers in this state. Should I have stood outside the cannery and tried to sell these workers Green Left Weekly instead? How could I explain to them that they should just put their trust in Marx? The movement which brought people legislation which seeks to make the concept of equal pay a reality is the feminist movement – years and years of work, analysis and lobbying lies behind it. And – even in 2000 – a large part of the problem was male trade union bosses who had no interest in the issue and failed to represent their female members in any meaningful way. Should we have been trying to involve these women in a “mass mobilisation” instead?
I’ll back feminism over the revolution any day of the week.
Not at all Dr. Cat! I was just about to address the same point myself…
As the Dr. has pointed out already, this is completely irrelevant to my original point. The the earth is round is a quantifiable, proven point – to suggest otherwise IS scientifically incorrect. This is entirely different to disagreeing with the political and social views of another person while recognizing that to blanketly assume that I am right and they are wrong is nothing more than arrogance. Of course, I refer to rational differences now – please don’t throw back the kind of example that asks me to respect the views of someone who thinks that all Muslims should be eradicated or something. I thought it was obvious that I was referring to rational, though differing points of view that could be intelligently argued.
I think maybe the difference between us is that, as a Marxist, you assume that everyone who doesn’t subscribe to your particular view of the world is somehow being wilfully ignorant. To be honest, I’ve yet to meet a Marxist who wasn’t a terminal bore, mainly because they all seem to have the exact same arrogance as you. You have made blatant assumptions about more than one person on this thread about the lack of their political convictions and actions simply because they don’t follow your political line of thinking. If the Marxists were meant to change the world Chav, the ‘revolution’ would have been and gone by now. I think that indicates something about the rest of society’s willingness to live under a Marxist doctrine…
I never said I’d respect the views of everyone – I said I wouldn’t assume they had nothing to teach me
Mark,
You posted a description of a Marxism so caricatured that anyone who espoused it would have to be a complete moron. Not being a complete moron, I tried to show that your description wasn’t accurate.
Now you say that such debates aren’t worth bothering about. Fair enough. Let’s not have them, then.
But you might remember that you were the one who started expounding on what Marxism was and wasn’t, so it’s a bit rich to get all huffy about receiving a reply on precisely that topic.
To be honest, I’m mystified at the level of hostility here. I’m a sectarian? Say what? I’m making Marx into a divinity? Where? How? I’m using Marx to close arguments? Where? How?
I have no idea about the contours of your political career, nor did I suggest anything to the contrary.
If you recall, my post closed by suggesting the world was big enough for Marxists and non-Marxists to get along. If that’s something with which you disagree, well, I don’t see how it turns me into the sectarian.
Oh, sure – quite happy to get along, Jeff. But I’m not sure I was being huffy. If you want to debate aspects of Marxism that are relevant to this thread, I have absolutely no problem with it.
It might help if you read more of the thread – a lot of what I wrote in my second comment relates to Chav and Clare’s comments.
Oh, and sorry if I sounded grumpy, but this sort of comment from someone who’s identifying herself as one of your LW comrades isn’t calculated to promote calm and civil discussion:
Plus Clare’s earlier attempt at slagging everyone here off, because she just knows that she’s more “viscerally” passionate about political issues than us.
Again, Mark, this kind of stuff is not helpful. As you know, LW is a group blog, on which all kinds of people post — much like LP, I guess. The idea that we all hold to the same ideas is weird and insulting.
)? Or for Kim’s original post? And that’s without going into the more exotic characters who seem to congregate here — people like John Greenfield and Scepticlawyer.
Why should I have to take responsibility for ‘a LW comrade’ any more than you should take responsibility for the comments on LP? Do I hold you accountable for Audrey’s suggestion that every Marxist is a terminal bore (I’m really not
I have no idea who Clare is, but I don’t see what her comments (whatever they were) have got to do with me.
Anyway, it sounds like we both agree that this exchange has run its course. In any case, I seem to be getting weird wordpress errors now. It’s probably the computer telling me that I really must do some work.
Nothing, Jeff, except that she’s identifying herself (as is Chav) as people arguing on “your side” – unfortunately these exchanges do tend to polarise. It’s wise to try to avoid that, but we’re all human and I’m admitting to being pissed off by their interventions, the point of that being that if it’s made me more grumpy than I should have been in responding to the points you made, I apologise. Please do take into account the fact that I wasn’t just replying to you, though – I’m trying to provide some context to illuminate what I’m saying.
Gotta dash now.
Sorry, comments crossed, Jeff.
I will note that it’s a pity that this thread has been characterised by missed encounters. Many of the substantive issues are well worth debating. Perhaps we’ll try again some time without the polemics.
Is there a problem with the software here? It seems another post of mine has vanished into the ether.
I didn’t say you all were, I said I had yet to meet one who wasn’t
“The concept or actuality of men dressing sexually, or sexily, in the workplace, as a matter of choice, is laughable, because it doesn’t happen. It is just not comparable. Why ever not?â€?
I’ll tell all those cowboys and firefighters that they just aren’t dressing sexily enough in the workplace — although I also know a handful of sexy nurses who might disagree. Strangely, most of the women I work with like it a whole lot better to see me in a nice sharp suit and tie; that time I came to the office in my high heels and thong underwear, it was, well, a disaster. And Tom of Finland Day was even worse. Why oh why can’t men and women be more identical, and have identical tastes, and identical ideas about what is sexy? And while I’m at it, why is that *bees* always wind up having to make the honey? Why can’t crocodiles make some for a change?
Come on, men! Let’s inaugurate Come to Work Dressed as the Village People Day! Let’s count how many seconds it takes before the women of the world beg us to stop — feminists included!
“My post closed by suggesting the world was big enough for Marxists and non-Marxists to get along…”
Well, the Marxoids would say that *now*, wouldn’t they. I seem to recall that they sang and danced rather differently only a few short decades ago, back when they had some actual power to speak of…
I did not interpret Female Chauvinist Pigs as puritanical. I thought Levy’s book was arguing that some of the ways in which it is becoming popular to perform sexuality – for example stripping and pole dancing – were forms which had a history of catering to male tastes and fantasies. This is not to say that women can’t enjoy this kind of performance or feel empowered by it but that does not mean that we shouldn’t consider why performance modes with that kind of history have such a dominant expression at the moment. I also thought she was trying to distinguish between performing sex (publicly or privately) and feeling genuinely sexual. I think that is a distinction many women struggle with.
Foolish terrans, splitting hairs over natural juicy juicy sexuality. So nautural and juicy it must be conducted in mass public formation in massive englobaled stadiums under direct control for the greater glory of Boskone.
Strength through joy! Strength through joy! Strength through joy!
Now I need to recline for a few galactic units with a damp towel draped upon my massive throbbing cranium.
Just don’t lose any precious bodily fluids in the process, Zwilnik.
I’m waiting for someone to make an argument ad feminam.
Just sayin…
Exactly Sophie. I interpreted Levy as demonstrating that performed sexuality these days is presented as being empowering but is in actual fact just the same old performance. She was questioning how an unchanged forum suddenly attracted a large number of women as its audience. I thought FCP was a remarkably well written, accessible thesis on the current nature of female sexual performance within society – it addressed at its core some of the more frustrating issues of why younger women these days don’t identify with feminism, while demonstrating that the need for it is as great as ever.
In saying this, I’m not suggesting that women aren’t in control of their sexuality now, or that it necessarily follows that women who choose to, say, strip on whim in a bar are acting in response to a patriarchal system rather than their own autonomy. However, I believe Levy highlighted the fact we seem to have come full circle in terms of female sexual exploitation – the difference being that now women themselves are complicit in it rather than simply just subject to it. For example, you have to question why it is that suddenly it’s become okay to, by proxy, validate the act of women, as John Greenfield so despicably puts it, ‘airing their tits and pussies’ for the pleasure of their (mostly male) audience. I think Levy questioned quite succinctly the motivation of women wanting to make a social outing of watching women with vacant expressions dance naked on a stage.
To me, it has an unpleasant trace of the philosophy that there can only be room for one woman at the top – so you damn well better make sure it’s you.
I don’t think that agreeing with Levy’s book makes one puritanical or even strict in their interpretation of sexual morality – I think it highlights a very clear trend in our society and laments the fact that we didn’t see it coming before it became too ingrained to change.
Sophie and Audrey,
Thanks for your posts. I have read through from the LW blog to this and found most of it really disappointing in terms of the way people are discussing or not discussing whether women showing more flesh more publicly more often is necessarily a sign of empowerment, which I think is a small part of what Jill asked in her original LW post. Though I think Kim has been asking people to get back on track.
I have just finished reading an interesting piece about the obsession with the hijab, both within Muslim and Western discourse, as part of Waleed Aly’s “People Like Us”. I’ve always had an uncomfortable feeling that many commentators obsession with the hijab goes along with a bizarre analysis of womens liberation that equates it with the amount of flesh shown and nothing else. Hence the article in US magazine GQ with a picture of Bin Laden’s cousin naked in a bubblebath on the front cover – apparently the ultimate affront to everything AlQaeda stand for. The public discussion seems now very polarised as a clash of civilisations framed around the burqa vs stilettos.
I haven’t read Levy’s book – my comments and questions are based on reviews that I’ve read in the local press in Melbourne but also on the broader questions raised in these posts. The problem that I see with the discussion is that it seems to be all about the hemline, not the question of control, or agency, and there seems to be a willingness to accept that Dangerfield stocking faux school girl dresses with outlines on the back of a woman on all fours is a reflection that school girls are any more sexually empowered or actually liberated today than they 20 or 30 years ago.
There was one post on LW that I did find useful, that asked questions about rates of STDs, safe sex education, etc. I think the question of women’s empowerment, agency, power would bear some relationship to these, but also statistics on rape and domestic violence – I don’t see these taking a nosedive, and this is why I’m suspicious of the idea that the dress code of younger women is necessarily a reflection of their own choices, as opposed to the social pressures typically felt so deeply by adolescent girls.
There was a comment on the LW list quoting Paris Hilton, something to the effect that “I don’t enjoy actual sex all that much”. To me, that is really the central question. Going back to what I understand as the main thrust of the “raunch culture” thesis: Are these girls/young women engaging in more public and overt displays of sexuality, and having more sex (if indeed they are, but this is what the public discussion asserts) because they are comfortable and confident about their bodies, or for the exact opposite reasons, or a struggle between both? I don’t think girls/young women are hopeless victims on which social norms are inscribed – but I think statistics of increasing anorexia/bulimia amongst the most socially mobile of girls (the richer their families are, the more likely they are to develop these illnesses) suggest that what some are framing as an example of empowerment is really not so enjoyable for many of these women/girls.
Also – an aside on bellydancing: I was kind of annoyed by this bit of Jill’s post. I went to an event at a Victorian Immigrant Women’s gathering (can’t remember the exact name of the organisation) at which a belly dancer performed. She talked about the ancient art of belly dancing as originally a kind of birthing ritual which was female only, and expressed her disappointment that at many gigs that she does, women attack her for belly-dancing near their husbands/boyfriends (she performs in restaurants). She talked about how nervous she was performing at this women’s only gathering because of how she’s been treated by women, but also about how exciting it was for her to finally perform the dance as it was intended. Then the other night I caught a glimpse of a TV show that I think was some kind of “American Idol Erotic Porn Star”. I don’t remember what it was called, but it was apparently teaching a bunch of young women how to be effective porn stars. They were taught pole dancing, but also bellydancing. The woman who taught the belly dancing explained the origins of the dance as did the women at the VIW gathering. But I don’t think that the point of the show was for these women to dance for other women, if you know what I mean. It did seem to be focussed around male desire.
And I suppose for me the question of industrial rights for those in the sex industry comes back to the fore again. I think talking about whether or not going to a strip club is good politics in the absence of a discussion of the working conditions of those in it is skewed in some ways. Sex workers have traditionally not been offered that much solidarity and support from many feminists or unionists or Marxists in their bid to clean up their industry. Regulation often ends up in criminalisation of the workers themselves, and occupational health and safety is a huge problem. The left has traditionally seen this as a marginal debate I think – its really good to see organisations in China and across Asia thinking about the industrial rights of sex workers in interesting ways. For more on this check out http://www.amrc.org.hk.
If you go to the arhives you can scroll down to an edition of Asian Labour Update on this question. So much more interesting than the alliances between women’s organisations and the US state department to enforce border controls through a feigned concern for “trafficked women”.
As for burlesque: for me, its not the band I hate, its their fans. I don’t go to the shows cos of unpleasant experiences and assumptions made by male audience members, not cos there’s anything inherently reactionary about burlesque. I wish the performers a better class of audience!
Sorry this is so long… and that this thread seems to have been over a while ago. Been thinking about this for a while I suppose. Thanks!