sex and the left

Anthony Kennerson maroondog244 at lycos.com
Wed Oct 23 09:40:25 PDT 2002


This list is so fascinating!!! All I wanted to do was to make a simple point about leftists taking sexuality and sexual repression more seriously.....and now I'm getting lectures on Freud, highbrow analysis of Islamic fundamentalism, and quotes from culture theorists!!! It's so amazing what a humble cashier can do on a leftist mailing list!!! LOL

However....all this "show and blow" simply distracts from the point that I have been trying to make all along: that some leftists have appropriated in some part the dominant Puritan belief that sex should only be legitimized in the most narrow of circumstances; and that sexual desire should be subsumed to whatever political agenda is present at the moment.

I think that the response to my views have proven my point quite well.

With that, I humbly yield the floor.


:-)

Anthony --

On Wed, 23 Oct 2002 09:19:27

Chuck Grimes wrote:
>
>``...And you cannot deny the basic fundamental fact that most
>right-wing opposition to abortion and contraceptives are rooted in the
>same foundation as their opposition to "deviant" sexual
>material/behavior: a grotesque fear of their own repressed sexuality.
>I'm for diversity of sexuality and sexual expression, NOT diversity of
>ideology...'' Anthony Kennerson
>
>--------
>
>Well, I can deny it. You need to take this idea a lot further along
>and see that sexuality and deviance are not really the foundation
>either. You had it closer when you talked about the body. Or at least
>that's my view.
>
>It is the body, its entire organic existence filtered through some
>religious and moral lens that generates their rejection, loathing and
>fear. The concordance the political right feels toward the austere,
>grim, phobias of various fundamentalist Christian and Jewish religious
>traditions isn't accidental.
>
>They find in those wretched systems of thought and practice all sorts
>of confirmations of their own loathing for the life of the body. Their
>obsessed with it. For each of the quasi-erotic or merely enjoyable
>functions, practices, or thoughts that depend on some aspect of the
>body and its grounding in living processes (including its relational
>dependence on society and the natural world), they see some form of
>corruption, filth, or disease, some threat, violation or untruth. They
>are attempting to completely re-animated some ancient or medieval
>conceptual frame of society and the world, and these phobias toward
>the body and life are merely one aspect of their strangely deformed
>and demented world view. They are an anathema.
>
>So, in my view chasing around various liberalizing ideas about
>sexuality is something like putting the cart before the horse. For
>example my disgust for Islamic fundamentalism isn't restricted to its
>apparent abuse of women.
>
>These fundamentalisms are mirrors of one another and the destructions
>and social chaos they are perpetrating on their respective societies
>are reciprocal deformations. That's why I referred to the rightwing
>Talibanization of the US---an idea suggested by Tariq Ali's book cover
>that shows Bush done up as Muslim cleric and bin Laden in a suit
>behind the presidential podium.
>
>Chuck Grimes
>

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