On 12/21/05, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> Miles wrote:
>
> > Moreover, gender equality is more than creating markets with
> > proportionally representative consumer bases.
>
> Sure it is, but where there is no product in the market when there is
> a need for one, that is a problem. Katha Pollitt wrote at the now
> defunct M-Fem about the formerly existing socialist countries'
> neglect of women's needs and desires in production for daily
> consumption (which I cited in a message to PEN-l at <http://
> archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2000m12.1/msg00229.htm>:
> "Plenty of vodka, plenty of cigarettes and friendship pins and tee
> shirts and bouquets of flowers -- but when women got their periods,
> they used old rags like my grandma back in the shtetl in l914. (the
> Yugoslav writer Slavenka drakulic has puckishly suggested that the
> absence of tampax was what made communism fall -- such a clear proof
> of the indifference of the govt to the people's needs)."
>
> In my view, women's desire for porn that appeals to them, as well as
> men's desire for fashion that appeals to them, is a very valid
> desire. Almost every woman likes to masturbate at least occasionally
> inspired by attractive sexual images, and almost every man likes to
> dress cool and look good when he can. The fashion market has
> responded to men's desire much better than the straight porn market
> has to women's desire. Pointing out such a market failure may be
> thought of as a Marxist as well as feminist job.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
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