>In any case, I'm also responding to the point made by Joanna. It's
>way too easy (at least today if not in the past) to defend Susie
>Bright, Pauline Reage, and the like. But if we are only talking
>about porn that clearly has political or aesthetic merits, we are
>evading the question that some feminists raise, so that's not a
>useful dialogue between feminists of different schools. Surely pro- porn
>feminists need to discuss disturbing uses of porn, too, rather
>than just meritorious or run-of-the-mill ones.
But, pro-porn and anti-idiot feminists [1] do discuss this. it's a caricature to think of them or represent them as if they don't.
As usual, the only point here is that there isn't only one side doing the caricaturing of what the other side thinks/does. I know that you aren't guilty of this most of the time. You have an archival record that proves otherwise. But this post?
Yikes!
[1] I don't know what else to call it. It's unfair and I don't give a crap at the moment. I highlight something here, the deployment of the phrase "pro-porn". Who uses that term? Hmmm.
Pro-choice, does not equal pro-abortion.
Sex-positive feminisms are not reducible to pro-porn feminism
Being pro=sex, doesn't make you pro-porn, lacking a critique of capitalism, lacking a critque of consumption, trying to defend your personal preferences, stupid, hypocritical, or whatever whatever whatever. We have good, reasonable arguments, but you wouldn't know it from the way the position is CONSTANTly mischaracterized on this list and elsewhere. From the way the other side REFUSES to hear what anyone has to say. Im' sorry, but Anthony's right. They curl their lips, sniff their snoot in the air, and think, "Oh, how trashy!" before they ever, ever open their earballs and listen.
I'm an SO fucking tired of the meritocratic nose hole thing. Not that you're doing this yoshie, but by calling it pro-porn feminism, it just sounds like you're buying into the kind of rhetoric that lets conservatives get away with pro-abortion, instead of pro-choice.
I'm sure that there are people out there who defend everything and anything and who make no criticisms whatoever. But, the bulk of sex positivist feminists do NOT engage in this type of analysis.
As I wrote at the blog, we share one thing: we don't believe objectification is, a priori, bad but a part of human life, in every sphere. And, further, most sex positive feminist work from a rejection of sexual essentialism: "the idea that sex is a natural force that exists prior to social life and shapes institutions". Rather, they see sexual orientation and gender as social constructs that are heavily influenced by society. (Rubin) (And for all the nimrods: see the word "heavily"? it's in there for a reason, jackasses.
It's precisely this naturalization of sex as a force that exists prior to the social that rears its head _whenever_ anyone wants to try to claim that sex is sacred and should be protected from markets. If not in an obvious way, then always in a lingering ghost-like fashion, haunting the discussion but without a language withint which to articulate because the speaker knows its not especially helpful to revert to ontological assumptions. Because, at that point? At the level of ontological assumptions, it's a form of religious belief and you're simply lording your belief over everyone else. If I don't buy your ontology, then we have nothing in common in the discussion. Just as, if I don't buy the premises that form the foundation of your argument, there's not much to discuss.
And what always always always pisses me off is that it often comes from an ignorance of the fact that were paying for it and trading it for money every godamned time, as Marx pointed out long ago. But, maybe you can only see that if you've truly been dependent on a male income. Or, rather, if you haven't lived among those where two incomes isn't a luxury, in order to buy a second car, but necessary in order to buy one. Or to buy groceries. poor and low income people, people living on the edge of being poor? they are frighteningly aware of how much they depend on hooking up with someone else to share the bills. (At my blog, I pointed people at a short story by Rachel* that hints around the edges of this, where the many realizes he needs to move in with her in order to buy his home. So, they flirt with the idea. Until, *phew* the real estate agent comes up with an alternative plan to finance his home.
Sex is sacred (in the sociological sense) but you don't need any bullshit about sexual desire existing prior to the social to be able to see it as sacred.
Unless, of course, you're committed to an ontological assumption about humanism more generally.
Finally, as I've said before, what truly pisses me off is that every single fucking time this topic comes up, the meritocratic nose hole thing again. The constant defining of this as "icky' and people doing it as somehow warped, twisted, sickos. It is just bullshit. A lot of stuff that goes on is warped, twisted, sicko.
I am hardly a connoisseur of any of it. I don't have the money or the leisure time, but I'll be damned if I have to sit by and watch people who I do care about and who like their kink, treated that way by people on the left.
"Scream-of-consciousness prose stylings, peppered with sociological observations, political ruminations, and in-yore-face colloquial assaults."
-- Dennis Perrin, redstateson.blogspot.com
Bitch | Lab http://blog.pulpculture.org