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On Wed, 23 Oct 2002 10:01:58
joanna bujes wrote:
>At 12:17 AM 10/23/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>>Ahhh, yes...."commodify and alienate our sexual selves"!!! That's
>>precisely the moralism that I have been critisizing!!! I guess that in
>>your perfect world, Joanna, there would be no need for prostitution or any
>>type of "alienated", "commodified" sexuality because everyone would be
>>trained in the art of politically correct, totally "egalitarian" sex
>>stripped of all of that bad, evil (why not add "degrading" and make it the
>>perfect trifecta??) The very fact that real people tend not to follow
>>simplistic political agendas in their true sexual desires and beings seems
>>to be irrelevant to you; everything must be reduced to the political sphere.
>
>First of all, you're the one who said that given that everything is
>commodified why shouldn't sex also be commodified. Second, I never uttered
>a word about political correctness or political spheres. Nor did I ever say
>anything about people being "trained" in any kind of pc sex. In fact,
>everything I said argued for the importance of freedom...for both
>sides...in sexual relations. I tried to draw attention to the ways in which
>porn and prostitution constrained sexual relations -- though I know you see
>them as examples of some kind of freedom.
There you go again, Ms. Bujes!!! I did not say that sex should be "commodified"; I said that sex LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS CAPITALIST SOCIETY is commodified. In case you didn't read my initial post, I happen to support DE-COMMODIFYING sex, just as I as a socialist call for decommodifying everything else under a socialist society.
As to your statement of speaking for freedom "for both sides": I can only assume that you mean between men and women here. What does that mean other than the typical anti-porn feminist belief that porn and prostitution -- indeed, any type of sex involved for sheer physical pleasure and not redeemed by "higher" moral grounds such as intimacy -- are somehow anathema to real freedom. Besides, you were the one who brought in the "aliented sexuality" card to this debate. Real freedom, Joanna, is when ALL people of whatever sexual persuasion -- or whatever race, or class, or any other characteristic -- have the means and resources to make informed decisions about themselves with the mutual consent and respect of others.
>> >
>> >As for "sex work is for most people the only means to satisfy their
>> >legitimate sexual urges"....most people? really?
>>
>>Yes, Joanna, really....sometimes men and women get horny, and they can't
>>rely on their significant mates to relieve their desires. Would you
>>prefer that they repress these desires just for the sake of
>>"anti-commodification"??
>
>Acting out or repression? Are those the only two choices in your universe?
So what other choices do you give, Joanna???
>
>> >
>> >Do I believe that sexual urges are legitimate? That's not the issue. They
>> >exist: people get horny. But there's no direct link between sexual urges
>> >and visiting a prostitute that I can think of.
>> >
>> >Joanna
>> >
>>Ask any horny man or woman who's been rejected by his/her partner and he
>>or she will beg to differ with that.
>>
>>Anthony
>>(A dildo is an object; a prostitute (or a sex worker) and her clients are
>>real human beings. Why can't some people accept that basic fact???)
>
>In your ideal world, where sex workers are essentially therapists who
>freely choose to do this kind of work, a sex worker would be a real human
>being. In this world where prostitution skyrockets as immiseration grows or
>where a young woman "chooses" to be a prostitute over an 12-hour shift in a
>factory or starvation, they are still human beings, they're just not
>treated as such.
>
>Joanna
Which is the very reason that I happen to be a socialist as well as a sex radical; to do away with starvation and immiseration so that they could be better able to choose their destiny for themselves as real human beings.
But I guess, all standards change when sex becomes involved.
Anthony
>
>
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