Asia and hormones

Dennis R Redmond dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU
Sat Jun 20 16:23:37 PDT 1998


On Fri, 19 Jun 1998, Doug Henwood wrote:


> I just got nonmember submission bounce from one PF, who said that instead
> of discussing the "major crisis taking place in Asia" we are hearing
> instead "endless drivel about prostitution and identity politics." This
> should appeal to no one else but "captive undergraduates whose hormones
> undoubtedly predispose them to reading whatever is most titillating."

*Yawn*. Obviously someone who's never heard of the hundreds of thousands of Thai sex workers forced, even at the height of the Asian boom, to sell their labor-power for cash. And why don't so many Asian countries have powerful Left parties? Might this just have something to do with a certain identity politics -- silicon Confucianism or market Maoism, take your pick -- where a largely male and ethnically homogenous workforce has been convinced to work long hours for local businesses for the sake of national development strategies in Singapore and elsewhere, whilst women are consigned to the duties of telephone-answering services and baby-raising?

No, that can't be it: it's all the fault of those damn tree-hugging eros-spouting university hippies. If only they'd sublimate those, er, unproductive expenditures into productive labor, everything would be fine!

-- Dennis



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