First, Dr. Marty Klein explores the lack of talk about sexuality at the Daily Kos conference:
Sexual Intellegence: No Sex, Please, We're -- Umm, Liberal Bloggers
Then, moi and Ernest Greene (kinkster and hubby of Nina Hartley) get into a friendly discussion over the Left's antipathy towards porn and sexual expression -- including some cleared up misunderstandings about this blog in particular:
The SmackDog Chronicles: Porn, The BPPA, and The Left: An Exchange with Ernest Greene
A sanctuary for supporters of sexual free expression and the adult sexual media.
That was an interesting exchange at Nina Hartley's Blog. (Direct link here.)
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure where Ernest wants the debate taken to. A blog for a one's POV is a small place to start, but it can have plenty of influence. A lot of people read Renegade Evolution. On the other side, a whole lot of people read I Blame the Patriarchy. Neither gets any mention in the regular press, but I don't think that means these blogs aren't influential.
I think a lot of important political thought is coming out of the blogosphere these days, and I think a lot of writing in the more mainstream press and activism in the real world will be shaped by it over the coming years.
As to what parts of the left or traditional liberalism are reachable – that's a good question. I tend to pretty dismissive of Z and Znet (and Adbusters, for that matter), but I'm not that kind of leftist anyway. They largely seem to be a mish-mash of hardline identity politics and too-late Leninism that's pretty dismissive of civil liberties, except insofar as it affects them directly. They seem to take a largely MacKinnonesque view that the speech of the powerful and the speech of the powerless can be neatly separated (not to mention, grossly exaggerating pornography as being the speech of the powerful), and that demanding state action against pornography and "hate speech" doesn't potentially involve a huge amount of blowback. (I think at least some of the writers at Counterpunch get that, but most of the folks at Z don't seem to.)
The Nation, I think, has a lot more potential, seeing as its always maintained an editorial policy encouraging dialog between liberals and radicals. The major feminist writers there, such as Ellen Willis and Katha Pollitt, have either been sex-positive or at least leaned that way. In general, there's a definitely left libertarian streak in The Nation, or at least openness to that perspective, that I don't see in Z.
Left Business Observer is another forum that's pretty open, and Doug Henwood's sympathies are also clearly more-or-less sex positive, from what I gather.
Mainstream liberals, and I'm thinking mainly of Kos and the like here, seem most concerned about getting a Democrat in the White House (which, I agree, is a priority these days), and really don't want embarrassing things like cultural politics getting in the way. They're way too intimidated by the right's ability to play the sex panic and "traditional family values" card, so they ignore these issues and hope they'll just go away.
One minor caveat, IACB.....that would be Nina's forum, not her blog. As far as I know, Nina doesn't have a blog, since her work and her forum take up much of her time.
ReplyDeleteI see your points about sex-positivism's reachability amongst the Left...though I would say that there is a much broader libertarian Left tradition out there that may be more open to pro-sex thought than the usual....particularly in the queer Left communities.
I personally think that Ernest's main point is that so many intellectuals and institutions of the Left tend to be duly influenced by antipornfeminist thought and theory about sexuality mostly through the tactics of intimidation and browbeating as done by the likes of MacKinnon and Craft and Fairley; and that more direct initiative by openly sex-positive leftists and progressives would be a start to counter the hegemony of the former. But, that would require far more Leftists to be willing to risk their privileges to speak openly about sexuality without triggering the usual attacks of being "obsessed" with sex at the expense of other, more pressing, issues..or simply favoring the "domination of men over women."
And it should also be noted that even "left anarchism" of the type that Chomsky and Michael Albert (who basically runs the Z-Net collective) can be highly sex-negative; using the excuse that porn and its alleged ethos of "male sexual domination of women" is an outgrowth of corporate power and male privilege; and that a ideal anarchic society would not need porn at all since people would have their sexual needs satisfied within more "healthy" intimate monogamous relationships. Not exactly respectful of free choices amongst women and men, I'd say.
Anthony
I have posted hundreds of comments on dailykos, myself, and as one of the few posting sex positive comments there, dozens of those have addressed sexual issues. And yeah, there is a focus there on getting elected even while criticising the DLC for exactly the same thing. And kos has come under attack recently (as it has gained more attention in the media) by Fox and the DLC based on trumped up charges like
ReplyDeleteantisemitism (because a very small minority of the 130,000 members there (9% jewish) post anti-semitic comments, some trolls, some may be COINTELPRO like trouble makers) so there can be fear of stuff being taken out of context, too. My experience there has been one more of disinterest than opposition to sexual issues.
I have one simple suggestion: write here, link there. No, don't just plaster a link in lieu of dialog but use links to this blog to support what you write there.
Here would be an appropriate place, for example, to debunk some of the statistics used by the enemies of sexual freedom.
Then when those statistics are used there, correct them there with a link to more detailed arguments here. Links here back up your argument there and can also encourage people to come here and read other postings.
"and that a ideal anarchic society would not need porn at all since people would have their sexual needs satisfied within more "healthy" intimate monogamous relationships."
ReplyDeleteOh my dear Goddess... so even the anarchists sekritly love the status quo?
Fuck that noise.
I don't mind if they have a kink for it -- people do love the forbidden :)
but wow, whoa, back da truck up.
When I was into Anarchism back in the 1980s, there was a big divide between "left anarchists" (aka "social anarchists"), which is one of roots of the Z crowd, and what came to be called "post-left anarchists", like Bob Black, Hakim Bey, and the like. (In many ways, this divide hearkened back to the much older polarity between communist anarchists and individualist anarchists.) The post-left anarchists, to which I was strongly aligned, tended to be far more sex-positive and were big fans of sex-positive feminism. Left anarchists sometimes were sex-positive as well, but in many cases, tended pretty strongly toward a radical feminist line in gender politics, including a small but vocal contingent of anarcha-radfems.
ReplyDeleteThere were a couple of incidents around porn back in the 1980s that really brought out a lot of conflicts in the anarchist milieu at the time. The first was the 1983 firebombings of three locations of Red Hot Video, a porn outlet, across Canada by a group calling itself the "Wimmens Fire Brigade", actually an anarchist "direct action" group that later came to be known as the "Vancouver Five". This action was very popular with Canadian feminist groups of the time (a number signed a letter of support regarding the action), and energized the movement to the point where they were able to press the Canadian state to institute far more stringent anti-porn laws and enforcement.
When the Vancouver Five were eventually caught and put on trial, they became a cause celebre in anarchist and punk circles. This aroused a huge debate in anarchist circles about porn, whether anarchists should be OK with porn, and even if they opposed it, how much support should be given to feminist anti-porn campaigns that were clearly calling for state intervention against pornography. The anarcha-radfem contingent took basically the line we're all too familiar with today – radical feminism is anti-authoritarian by default, so none of their actions can rightly be called statist or authoritarian. (Which is not to say the Vancouver Five were universally loved in the anarchist scene, either – a lot of people condemned not only their puritanical anti-porn position, but their direct action adventurism, the criticism of which was be summed up in the slogan "You can't blow up a social relationship".)
The other incident I remember took place around 1986 at the San Francisco anarchist bookshop Bound Together Books. Bound Together was carrying On Our Backs, which at the time was highly controversial in feminist circles, with many women's bookstores refusing to carry it. One young woman who was loosely associated with the collective was so incensed they were carrying a porn magazine (even one as tame and more-or-less feminist as OOB), that she vandalized a bunch of copies with an xacto-knife (an action modeled against similar actions by Nikki Craft against Penthouse). That action I remember as being pretty much universally condemned in the San Francisco anarchist milieu.
I began losing touch with the anarchist scene through the 1990s, but I know a strong version of "left" anarchism has become more popular since that time, in large part because this position was more engaged with POC and other "real world" issues than earlier anarchism had been. At the same time, this kind of anarchism also buries a lot of anti-authoritarian issues that might conflict with other leftist groups – in other words, they tend to be extremely "politically correct", and this plays out in positions such as a relatively uncritical stance toward things like Cuban socialism or feminist anti-porn ideology. Its pretty much where I would put Z at, insofar as they're specifically anarchist at all.
"When the Vancouver Five were eventually caught and put on trial, they became a cause celebre in anarchist and punk circles. This aroused a huge debate in anarchist circles about porn, whether anarchists should be OK with porn, and even if they opposed it, how much support should be given to feminist anti-porn campaigns that were clearly calling for state intervention against pornography."
ReplyDeleteHow can *anarchists* be so... fucking bureaucratic?
Oh well, I never claimed I understood anarchism.
Wow.
"How can *anarchists* be so... fucking bureaucratic?"
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, what anarchism implies is that the functions of the State and the Market be totally devolved into Civil Society. That implies a great deal of participation and organization to maintain the functions of many social institutions we simply take for granted. This is especially true if you're talking about an anarchism that maintains anything close to a modern level of technology, which requires a very complex society.
Unless you're an anarcho-primitivist and reject technology too, in which case you have to deal with the question of what happens to the surplus billions of people who exist beyond the carrying capacity of a technologically simple society.
All of which boils down to why I'm a left libertarian rather than an anarchist. I want individuals to the greatest extent possible to have real power over their lives and real participatory power in society, yet I think the State and the Market both play important roles that can't entirely be replaced.
ReplyDeleteUnless you're an anarcho-primitivist and reject technology too,
*points* *laughs* I LOVE them! especially when they're ranting from their Internets sites! it's like the Amish Channel! only with more incoherent pretentiousness and testosterone!
"All of which boils down to why I'm a left libertarian rather than an anarchist. I want individuals to the greatest extent possible to have real power over their lives and real participatory power in society, yet I think the State and the Market both play important roles that can't entirely be replaced."
ReplyDeleteThat makes sense to me.
I just find it rather weird that every time I observe anarchists, they seem to be nitpicking and niggling and making overarching statements about what's good for people -- which I would think would be what they were critiquing the government for doing, at least in part.