'Free Love,' Etc. (was Re: heterosexism vs homophobia)

Frances Bolton fbolton at chuma.cas.usf.edu
Thu Feb 11 14:27:22 PST 1999


Hey Charles--


>Charles: Indeed, the movement had strengths and weaknesses, and some of the
latter was >that it was a heavily petit bourgeois movement especially in its articulating members which is >a vulnerability to bourgeois corruption. Like (like they said in the 60's) the labor movement >has had strengths and weaknesses, the civil rights/Black power movement. You know the >rest. This movement has gone underground more than the others.

You're right, Charles, they all did/do have their weaknesses, but I don't any were as deeply flawed as the "free love" movment, and none of them have so well served their purpose in maintaining and strengthening a bourgeois, sexist, heterosexist power structure. Post free-love movement women are objectified and sexualized to a far greater extent than women before the movement were. Standards for sexual attractiveness in women are much more rigid and difficult to attain, and women are judged more harshly if they don't attain them. Eleven year old girls feel compelled to wear makeup and diet when they should still be out riding bikes and getting scabby knees.

Charles, I hear what you're saying about male supremacy being the biggest problem facing the "heterosexual liberation" movement, I'm just not convinced that the "free love" movement was separate from male supremacy. I think the f.l movement was part of that supremacy, in the same way that "ending preferential hiring practices" is a part of white supremacy that wasn't recognized as such.

frances



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