On Telling Each Other “How to Fuck”
Posted by Mike E on April 23, 2008
by Mike Ely
A valuable thread has unfolded on the communist approach to sexuality.
In that thread, Ulises says:
“If I had to make a basic division in sexual matters, one that I think can be the basis for a more liberating sexuality, it would be between human kindness, love and intimacy, and a sexuality of domination, humiliation and cruelty.”
RedFlags writes:
“As a good friend of mine said, paraphrasing Wilhelm Reich, “if you can tell people how to fuck, you can make them do anything.” I think that pretty much sums up the RCP’s line on sex. It is something uncontrollable, and in the erotic is human force that can’t help breaking laws.”
Whether fairly or not, I have always seen these two views as different — and somewhat profoundly opposed — on matters of sexuality and intimacy. And by generalizing here, I hope I am not putting words into the mouths of either Ulises or RedFlags. And if so, we can correct that through commentary below.
* * * * *
One view (expressed by Ulises) sees that different forms and manifestations of intimacy are different in their social content and nature.
Now in reality, in the real spectrum of human relations, these differences don’t sort out neatly where “Some forms of sexuality are simply more progressive and the rest are simply reactionary.” In all intimate human relations there is struggle — and those of us who are revolutionary have (or should have) a sense of how complex it is to develop intimate relations that truly and consistently correspond to our larger social goals and values.
One way of looking at this is to say: our intimate relations need to be evaluated socially — and especially in terms of the emancipation of women.
This is a view that says: when we engage in intimacy (whether short term or long term) we are creating and reproducing social relations. And those social relations are not just something “for us,” — something to be simply measured by how they “work” for us (as individuals or even as a couple, or a cultural community)… but they have an objective relationship with a larger and sweeping attempt to overcome and overthrow all oppression.
And if you look at certain notorious forms of “intimacy” and sexual intercourse (arranged marriage, child abuse, male possessiveness backed by jealous violence, date rape, commodification of intimacy rooted in economic poverty and dependence) you can see more clearly that some relations reinforce oppression. and should be viewed in that right.
Now, just to be clear, it needs to be said that intimate and sexual relations are a particular KIND of social relations — in which the social is particular entwined with the intensely private. there are reasons why details of specific human intimacy are generally not “everyone’s business” — and why the state is a particularly ill-suited instrument for adjudicating and revolutionizing those relations (however revolutionary that state might be).
There are forms of intimate interaction (child abuse, rape, etc.) that should be criminalized… but saying that intimate relations are social relations does not mean that law and state intervention are necessary or tolerable as the main means of carrying through criticisms, affirmations and transformations.
* * * * * *
Another view (historically and in this thread) sees sexuality as something that oppressive societies inherently need to control, and liberating societies should mainly seek to unleash. It views the very idea of “criticizing” specific forms of intimacy as a form of “telling people how to fuck” — as something inherently oppressive (no matter who does the “telling” and no matter what social goals are supposedly being served by that “telling.”)
What was wrong with the RCP’s view of homosexuality (in this view) was not that gay people were falsely accused of being inherently reactionary — but that the very fact that sexual expressions were subjected to social scrutiny and judgment.
In some incarnations (like those associated with wilhelm Reich or Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization) the issue around sexuality is seen as sexual satisfaction (including the quality of orgasm), and the indictment of capitalism is its suppression (and sublimation) of our ability to have pleasure.
this is often (though perhaps not inherently) connected with a tendency to see intimacy mainly in terms of personal happiness and pleasure (Is this relationship, or this moment, working for me?), and in a more enlightened form, in terms of happiness and pleasure for “me and my partners.”
the old bob seger song “Night Moves” says: “I used her, she used me, and neither one cared, we were getting our share.”
There is a severing of sexual matters (and our political evaluation of sexual politics) from the issues specifically surrounding the larger emancipation of women (on a worldwide basis), and a focus on the smaller dynamics of pleasure and mutual satisfaction.
* * * * *
Perhaps it is obvious, from the way i have posed these differrences, that I agree with Ulises (and have difficulty seeing this as Red Flags does).
To put it in an admitedly crude way: One view sees the main problem around sexuality as the reproduction of patriarchy and oppression, the other sees the main problem as puritanical attempts to tame the wild erotic.
I think we need to advocate, create and support intimate relations based on progressive and revolutionary values — on love, equality, mutual respect, and a common commitment to honest struggle. And i tend to think that sexual relations based on indifference to one’s partner(s), anonymity, objectification of humans, economic dependence and inqueality, commodification of human sexuality, and a fetishized fascination with humiliation and play-acted rape — such things (I believe) tend to reproduce and reinforce oppressive ideas and relations.
Reality is (once again) not as simple as the statement above. I am aware that some “role playing” around power in sexuality has an ironic and “subversive” content (and i am aware how little I know and understand about such things.)
But I do believe, on a larger scale, that we should not simply proclaim every person’s personal right to “fuck anyway we want” (any more than we proclaim a shopkeeper’s “right” to refuse service to anyone they want). We should seek to develop a socially nuanced sense of sexual intimacies and relations that undermine the dominant patriarchy, and those that reinforce it.
When the early communist movement in the U.S. made an issue of arguing with men about the importance of foreplay and female satisfaction in sexual relations, was that a case of unfairly and oppressively “telling people how to fuck”?
when our communist movement asserts that husbands don’t simply “have a right to sex” from their wives…. is that a case of oppressively “telling people how to fuck”?
When a connection is made between “wham bam thank you mam” sexuality and the larger social inequality between men and women — and when criticisms are made of sexuality that manifests the idea that women are there as objects of male satisfaction — is that a case of oppressively “telling people how to fuck”?
I think our approach to different forms of sexuality CAN’T simply be liberal tolerance and laissez-faire. Relations of intimacy (including not only the creation of marriage relations and families — but the physical acts of sex interaction themselves) are social relations — they have social content and implications. They take forms that oppress women and children, or that contribute to the climate that encourages liberation (and, of course, in many cases, create a huge gray zone of contradiction and struggle).
Mike E said
Early in the development of the new Maoist communist movement, meaning in the late 60s, there was much more open and partisan association between our communist politics and a radical critique of the constraints and forms of existing sexuality.
In the late sixties, there was a (socially shocking) proclamation that female orgasms were not mainly (or solely) vaginal (as freudianism and much conventional wisdom said) — but that the clitoris was a center of female sexual pleasure. It is hard to imagine today (forty years later) how controversial that was, and how much that observation was unknown in society. The promotion of sexual foreplay, the observation that female satisfaction is not simply “handled” through male penetration, the very idea that women had sexual desires that needed satisfaction — these were very very controversial ideas in the U.S. emerging from the 195os.
On our radical literature tables, the pathbreaking pamphlet “Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” was on display, with the early (and quite radical/revolutionary) homemade versions of “Our bodies, Ourselves.” — right alongside the Black Panther Papers, and Red Papers 1, and the red book.
In much of the U.S. (into the late sixties) it was often difficult (and virtually illegal) for unmarried women to get birthcontrol (Conn. vs. griswald was decided in the early sixties). And so part of the early communist movment involved the circulation of birth control information, aiding young, poor women get illegal abortions, along with discussions of physical abuse and alternative/experimental forms of family.
I think it may be worth thinking about how we (as a reconceiving movement) should talk about the ‘hookup culture,’ the commodification of sexuality in the “sex industry.” I have often thought about how horrific it is that the rightwing has killed socially enlightened sex education in many public schools, while this society makes its pornography available to every 13 year old boy and girl — i.e. several generations now have learned much of their early knowledge about sexuality from filmed “money shots” and the bizarre fantasies sequences of commercial porn.
saoirse said
I think the challenge for me in this discussion Mike E. is that I dont disagree with you nor Ulsis, its primarily what are we going to do about exploitative sub-genres in mainstream porno. And here I am not speaking of the process of making porn but the finished product.
Porn in many ways mirrors all of the worst elements of our societies “taboos.” For example find me 10 non-racist porn films. I am sure they exist, I know of a few, but you need an team of smut-archologist to find ‘em.
But I like movies! There I said it. I like movies. Like some people like the pleasure of doing the NY Times crossword puzzle and playing scrabble. Some people seek out good theater or obsure radical hip hop. I like to watch happy queer people have sex on film. So I delve into the junk, the racist crap, the homophobic garbage, the boring stuff and seek out the best there is on the market. And you know what there is a gem in every genre.
The porn industry needs greater regulation as does the FDLS. And speaking of, I think looking at the states role ie Child Protective Services in Texas would be an interesting ave. for us to wander down as we look at what is and isnt a legitmate form of sexual relation.
But first going back to our original point of discussion when were talking about marginal oppressed sexual minorities such as lesbians and gay, these discussions exist in a context of violent societial homophobia. The reason that the left has so many problems with gay and lesbian people is primarily because most of the left has been historically homophobic. Is its roots machismo, a culture of ascetism, etc. I dunno. But I do know homophobia.
Going back to more mainstream porn though, I ask is it really the problem? Should we set our sites here when we have mainstream TV? I mean this sincerely, what about desperate housewives, Sex in the city, all soap operas and Dr. Phil. Never mind Britney, Hannah Montana and the garbage being feed to young girls these days.
Because porn seems more extreme (and sometimes is) form of sexual relations how can we overlook where the majority of our culture explores their fantasies. And if so, why?
Iris said
In terms of particular sexual fetishes of degradation and humiliation (of which there are many), I always thought of it in this way: these things occur in in a social context, and bear analysis–from the people involved in them too. And some of these fetishes seem to require adults seeking one another out, and may exemplify an unusually high level of consent, though I may be wrong.
I think there is scientific evidence that when the brain develops a hard-wire (or least a powerful expectation of reward–orgasm–for certain stimuli–violence? leather? frosting?) for something, you can’t really switch it off. Does a culture that eroticizes violence hardwire people for oppressive sexual relations? Probably–can they be turned off, or reasoned away in a person’s lifetime? Probably not. I think it is important not to transfer an aura of ’sinfulness’ & judgment to adult sexual behavior. I guess I have also always linked, in my studies of gender, the minimizing of gender (or promotion of androgyny) and liberation from oppressive sexual interactions.
The increasing liberation of women, the breakdown of human isolation and atomization, the separation of reproduction from sex, the de-emphasis of polarized genders and hetero-normativity, and the dismantling of commodification of the body–I sort of assume, maybe incorrectly, that as these things happen, what we find culturally arousing or pleasurable will change. So, as the above progressive turns occur, intimate sexual acts will reflect this progression…however: is it necessary to make intense forays into ‘the bedroom’ to make the above progress in the first place? And why is there ‘a bedroom’ that is so sanctified in our (Christian influenced) culture? Is our own cultural view of sex making it seem like an intensely off hands topic in ways it is not in other communities around the world? I ask these questions because I sometimes find myself questioning my own visceral reactions to supposed bedroom probes, analysis, etc, because of my own conceptions of privacy in regard to sex, particularly in relation to a certain cultural squeamishness, and also a fear of judgment–a lovely hand me down from Christianity.
And of course, I don’t think there should be bedroom police.
And also: mutual love should not be a prereq for ‘correct’ or ‘liberating’ sex. What does that even mean? What about just ‘affection’? Or lust–chemicals in our brain? And what about questions of monogamy, in terms of sexual relations? Of course, these things reflect patriarchy, like marriage and family and more conservative views on sex. But how does monogamy or polyamory enter into this discussion? Into considering ‘free agents’?
I may be lacing too many assumptions of progress and not enough of the difficulties of practice here…
Just thinking out loud…
Iris said
Damn! Again with the italics! I must have an italics fetish.
Chuck Morse said
An interesting post, Mike to be sure.
I think another issue is inherent in this discussion and that it would be useful to state it outright: is there any limit, in principle, to a communist party’s right to rule? Is there any terrain or sphere of human activity that is, in principle, off-limits to communists?
Neither Marx and Lenin accepted any limits to a communist party’s right to rule. Redflags suggested that the state should not be permitted to legislate upon people’s sexual practices. I agree with him, but fail to see why he believes that communists are entitled to legislate upon what people think or say or how they organize. Why accept some limits and not others?
Iris said
Can we analyze, and not legislate? Isn’t there any middle ground?
Mike E said
hmmmm. There is much here.
first, I think that part of the problem is the assumption of “normal behavior” and the critical focus on the less “normal” (i.e. fetishes etc.)
Most of the intimate relations that I think we need to critically examine are precisely the dominant ones (not mainly the subcultures, or marginal expressions of sexuality). the RCP’s earlier assumption that the minority and subcultural nature of lesbianism meant that it was reformist lifestylism — overlooks the fact that sexual relations and intimacies are connected to the lifestyles of all people (directly and universally).
Iris writes:
I won’t quibble over love versus “just affection.” My point is that I suspect that (generally, not universally) whenever people have sex anonymously there are some profoundly shitty social relations being created (exploitative, objectifying, and often degrading for people involved, especially women.)
I realize that people often develop love after intimacy, and that intimacy is often a pathway toward the deepening of affection into mutual love. And I don’t assume that sex between “just friends” is inherently “wrong” (i.e. inherently oppressive).
But I generally think it is hard to conduct enlightened and progressive intimate relations if you don’t genuinely like and respect the other people involved — which means that it is hard to struggle through the layers of patriarchy in social scenes characterized by a lot of brief relations and relative anonymity.
I also suspect that the difficulty of working through intimate human relations and the great potential for “fucking people over” — suggests a value for “serial monogamy” (where we “relate” to one person at a time, and where “playing the field” or “have many partners going at once” or “cheating on each other” is generally recognized as a backward thing to do).
How do you view that?
* * * * *
The idea that the prerequisite for sexual relations may perhaps just be “lust chemicals” is a view that sees sexuality mainly as a physical release (not as a social relationship).
It was debated for example in the early twentieth century revolutionary movement — where the developments in science and psychology led some people to argue that sex is simply a physical need (like drinking a “glass of water”) and that people should be “free” to scratch their itch (without thinking so much about the who and how of doing that). That “glass of water” theory (and Lenin’s famous rejection of that theory) is a background part of what we are discussing.
Lenin’s views here are marked by his times — but his point about “social interest” is still worth considering. imho.
Mike E said
Mike E: I accidentally deleted the following comment:
saoirse:
pardon, but didnt the anarchist shoot priest in Spain? And didnt Makno’s army look down (the barrel of a gun) at counter-revolutionaries in Russia?
My point being its not outside of the anarchist tradition to use coercive messures in the context of engaging in revolution.
Mike E said
Iris writes:
My deeply held view is that not all things that are “wrong” should be illegal. Not all things that are deemed “reactionary” should be simply forbidden. Not all things that “we” understand as backward should be simply forbidden to people who do not (yet) understand their nature (nor should “our” views be assumed to be correct).
but there is a matter of new “social norms” involved in creating a new revolutionary society — because if there are not new norms, there is not really liberation. If in the new society, women still see their bodies offered as marketing devices, and the whole society continues to casually objectify human beings as sex objects, and if they are still exposed to casual sexual taunts (or danger!) just walking down the street — then women will correctly feel there was no real liberation.
chuck writes:
I think your question, chuck, misreads my argument.
I think that the question is whether any social relationship is outside the right of the people to rule and transform society.
this is not a matter of COMMUNISTS forcing the transform of things — and having some “right” to order everyone around.
Do women have a right to challenge all kinds of social norms?
Does a revolutionary movement and millions of revolutoinary people have a right to establish new social norms (including norms around sexuality) in a new society? And if so, how do they decide on those norms, and how does the struggle of the people make those norms genuine.
To take one example: clearly revolutionary movements need to abolish arranged marriage. this is not a matter of “a communist party’s right to rule.” It is a matter of the right of young women not to be sold, and their right to rebel against this feudal abuse, and their right to love matches.
And yes, a revolutionary and communist party is often involved in leading the struggle around such things.
But I don’t think (ultimately) that the state (even a revolutionary state) can simply, by decree, remake how human beings relate to each other (or else the bourgeois criminalization of wife beating would have abolished that.) But laws DO express and popularize what the new norms are — and define a framework within which a new society operates. And then the question is how the norms are enforces or struggled through. You can abolish arranged marriage in law, but that doesn’t mean you must or will imprison everyone who violates the new norms.
These are issues of social transformation — not merely transformation of a society’s legal norms. And such transformation needs to happen at every level (at the level of ideas, at the level of accepted social norms, at the level of what relations people themselves produce and reproduce every day.)
That does not mean that all “spheres of human activity” should be dealt with using the same means And, as i said above, the state is a lousy crude instrument for seeking to transform intimate relations. a revolutionary society should not have sex police. And making all the details of private life subject to public debate and struggle is not a great approach either.
However: there is a close links (historically and in current practice) between the “right of privacy” and patriarchy. The anglo-saxon right of privacy arose directly as a manifestation of father right (i.e. a man has a right to rule his family without constant intervention by the state). That is why cops traditionally turn away from wife-beating saying “it is a domestic dispute” — because beating your wife is not considered a public offense (compared to beating your neighbor, or your neighbor’s wife.)
Great horrors happen “behind closed doors” — protected by this society’s notions (both legal and cultural) of “privacy.”
I think part of the revolutionary solution to that is to acknowledge that people’s lives need privacy — but that there should be a broad social discussion of general norms of acceptable relations. You don’t need to knock on every door to see if kids are being beaten — but you do need a general social discussion that says the traditional male/parental “right” to beat children is not acceptable in a revolutionary society (or a revolutionary movement).
to approach your question from another side, chuck: I believe there is no “terrain or sphere of human activity” that can, or should, be outside the reach of the revolutionary process. And no “terrain or sphere of human activity” should be outside the scope of critical analysis and discussion (including the analysis and discussion among communists). That is because there is a profound and defining mark of class society and capitalism on all relations, ideas and supposedly “personal choices” in this society.
And the analysis and discussion by communists (such as happens here on this site in an embryonic way) is part of the struggle to create a social approach to personal problems — and a resolution of social problems in a revolutionary way. It requires communist theory, materialist analysis, and rich debate.
Anon said
I’ve often wondered why marriage is so prevalent within the ICM.
Marriage seems like chattel, to me.
zerohour said
I’m impressed with the level of discussion on this topic, quantitatively and qualitatively. There’s a lot of work to do, but an important part of that is asking the right questions.
JJM+ said
I will also think out loud.
Sex is, according to what I see around me, a tool for self-satisfaction rather than to please their partner and maintain a happier, mutual, relationship (excuse my redundance, I know this has been said already).
At my school, I see a lot of people I interact with use really sexist language. Some guys will go around saying, “yeah, that’s my hoe right there, isnt she so bomb?” It’s so wrong and degrading how they objectify their ‘girlfriends’, yet I can’t find what to do or say. They grew up in that environment.
Other times, I’ll hear guys saying stuff like, “oh my god I just wanna fuck her”. I’m sure we’ve all heard it.
I think that as part of building a revolutionary movement, we need to combat this, and particularly amongst the youth (although not only them) because they grow up with such reactionary outlooks. I see and understand what goes on all around me, but I do not know what to do.
How can we combat this?
Anon said
JJM+
I’m fairly young so I’m around this type of stuff from time to time in the crowds I hang around. I think there are a variety of ways to confront these sort of sexist phases and sayings, but one way is to give a personal back-story to how stuff like that has hurt someone close to you or you yourself.
I’ve known this to actually make the person think about this stuff on more than just a “oh, well, THEY’RE around so I better not say bitch” sort of basis.
JJM+ said
Anon,
Thanks for the heads up, I think I will use that. Can you tell us more about what you’ve experienced?
redflags said
JJM+: What’s wrong with a guy saying he wants to fuck a girl to his friend? I don’t understand.
redflags said
The point of every action is not to revolutionize all social relations with a view towards our communist future. And if it was, what an awful mess of life we would surely create.
A woman who draws for the pleasure of it need not bear the weight of the world in every stroke of her pen. Every action is not a model for all others.
————-
Sex is a social relationship of particular type. Where I say “sex” – let us take that to mean consensual sex, freely agreed to by the participants and without mediation by the cash nexus. Not rape or abuse, not polygamy or pedophilia. Maybe love is involved, maybe not. Maybe it is kind and joyous, and again, maybe not. But consensual sex between willing participants. It’s the only kind I have known, so following Mao’s advice – with some investigation, I think I’ve got the right to speak on this one.
Like love, sex is an inherently social act, not an object. It is abusive (or exploitative) when there is only one subject, and one of the parties is objectified. This is why prostitution is inherently exploitative regardless of the contractual consent involved. It’s why pornography does manifest an ideology of male supremacy, whether they say “bitch” or not. It’s why marriage has its roots in slavery and grew to become a contract, a dismal bourgeois vision of romantic partnership if ever there was one.
Unlike work or housing or even food – sex is a renewable resource that is created by the participants, largely on terms of their own choosing. For this reason, sexuality is an ethical laboratory. We don’t have to wait for the next world to fight for egalitarian, mutualistic relationships here and now. I’ve seen them with many other people and experienced them more or less myself. They certainly happen and with an end to the imposition of marriage in the patriarchal sense as rule and literal law, things are queering out pretty damn quick.
After all, what could be more unnatural than sex with birth control? Sex without inevitable conception? Unimaginable to people until the last generation and the development of latex condoms for men and birth-control pills for women. But here we are. And women are in the workforce around the world, increasingly entering politics, middle class professions. That is “queer”. It is “unnatural”. And to some, that is to say the most retrograde and reactionary elements in the world – a horror.
I would turn it around and say that we are at the beginning of our history, that the ongoing, just beginning liberation of women has in only the last few decades begun the true history of humanity. We are just beginning.
—————–
Mike and I have indeed had discussions about this for years, and I think even by the way he puts the questions out there he still doesn’t quite get the terrain we’re discussing.
On one level, we’re just talking past each other and I agree with Mike and Ulysses that we should (I wish I could say “of course”) strive for loving relationships. We should bring out the best in each other, in everything we do. Yes. Of course. Agreed. In this, sex is no different from anything. No argument there.
We see in our pornographized culture the end of the sexual culture of scarcity, despite attempts to reimpose one with AIDS and before that herpes. Fear sex! And think about it all the time! Sexual desire is a powerful stimulant, done a lot less than talked about and gawked over.
We live in a world where the manufacture and regulation of sexual desire is fundamental to our cultural fabric in ways that have grown out of the old Puritan scarcity of sexuality to its near-forced profusion into just about every realm imaginable. It’s hard to piss in a bar in NYC without looking at a picture of a semi-naked women in an ad over the urinal. F’ing surreal.
So.
Should political groups have basic moral standards? Yes, I think so and for very concrete reasons. A liberation movement can’t shield exploiters, and creating spaces about the goals of the group are important for obvious reasons. We should in our common political activity be exemplars. We should not use or exploit people, or tolerate it. And people should be free to hook up or not as they so please. Like puppies tumbling around in a hamper.
But before we get off into the bleeding edge of sexual deviance, think about oral sex. In one breath, Mike sees the discussion of sexual alienation as mere libertarian/liberal discourse that in effect shields male right. behind the wall of privacy. In the next, he talks about the work of young communists promoting the science of female orgasm through underground publications in repressed America. And yet he sees no contradiction in his own argument. Here were young communists promoting orgasms as an essential part of liberation – and yes! I agree. Let’s open those doors to mutual pleasure. Let’s promote and lead by example in a loving culture of mutualism.
Can we call out men who refuse to go down as backwards? I think so. I’ve done it. I still do it and tease such fellows without mercy. But…
Should the state mandate that men engage in proper clitoral stimulation?
Good luck, and really that is beside the point. If women want to be free, they better stand up for themselves, get what they want or find a man who respects them enough to work for their pleasure.
On social questions, in the range of non-commercial social intercourse – people are just going to have to be grown-ups and make the love they want. There’s no other way to do it. Liberation is the act of the oppressed themselves, in whatever context of culture or time. In our liberal culture, with no-fault divorce, legally mandated child support and so on, this is just not the feudal dark ages… and where it is, people will have to overcome it through their own actions.
The state can legislate against abuse, but in terms of what people do consensually it really has nothing to say on the matter.
Who here wants to debate the legalization of sodomy with some one who hasn’t had sex in ten years yet sits in legal judgement of those who do?
Haven’t we had enough priests for the rest of time?
As a communist movement, our responsibility is not to make the right choices for people, but to facilitate the revolutionary process by which oppressed people become conscious subjects of their own liberation.
Here’s a negative example: Soviet advisors to the Cuban government insisted that grass-fed Cuban cows were inefficient. What the Cubans needed, according to their Russian “comrades” was to bring in advanced Soviet grain-fed cows which would yield greater quantities of meat. What impoverished people don’t want more protein? So they took the seeming gift of the Russian cows. And Cubans became a healthier, more athletic, taller and less malnourished people. So long as the Russians maintained the supply of grain that wasn’t indigenous to Cuba, which does happen to have extensive grasslands. When the Russians pulled out of Cuba after 1989, the cows had to be slaughtered because they couldn’t be maintained. And Cubans lost beef from their diet pretty much to this day.
If you can’t feed yourself, it’s pretty hard to throw imperialism’s yoke off your people.
Instead of developing from the people and their land, a standard soviet–issue model developed in the most radically different place and time you could imagine was foisted on the Cuban people without their consent, understanding, agreement or concern. It seemed to work, but ended up producing the exact opposite effect of what everyone (Cuban commissar, Russian advisor, hungry Cuban worker) thought would happen.
Sexual regulation by the state or party structure has had and will have the same result. Teach kids abstinence and they get pregnant. Tell them virginity is the right moral and health choice, they turn around and normalize anal sex. Tell people it’s wrong to do something, and they turn around with something even wilder and more perverse before you can even figure it out. Fight against sexual domination and end up with a BDSM culture where the acts of domination and submission are returned in theatrical, negotiated form.
The so-called sexual liberation of the 1960s was a “perverse” reaction to the (genuinely perverse) 1950s. As Blake put it to dialectical poetry: “Prisons are built with bricks of law, brothels with bricks of religion.”
——————
Chuck Morse asks about the limits of power, in a question directed at self-identifed communists but which surely applies to anyone trying to overthrow the “4 alls”.
There are no limits in fact. All kinds of crazy shit is liable to happen, it certainly already had. We can learn from that past and see certain approaches as fundamentally at odds with their own aims.
State control of sex is fundamentally reactionary no matter what the language. It turns us into wards of the state, and the state into a ruling elite which sets the rules for the governed. At best it is a secular monarchy, with a Soviet-style priesthood translating the dance of the universe into… into bans on homosexuality, enforcement of the nuclear family and that turned Russian women into literal breeders through denying access to abortion under Stalin. It was the anti-sex campaigns of the GPCR and sexual conservatism (even hatred of sex) among groups like the RCP.
Remember, the Puritans were real revolutionaries – but they weren’t about liberation. Only new forms of domination.
I never argued, not for a day in my life, that sexual morality wasn’t up for criticism and self-criticism among friends and comrades – but I’ll be damned if I’ll give my life to fight for socialism only to police people for not doing it right. People need the freedom to have sex for its own sake, and not some Faustian switch between sex-for-babies to sex-as-exemplar-of-the-revolution. We’re not Shakers, and if we are we’ll end up just like them.
JJM+ said
RedFlags,
What I was referring to was how guys objectify women and see them as objects for their own personal pleasure, instead of equal people.
I don’t think either that it is wrong to say that one wants to do it with someone else, but it is the context in which one says it that is the determinant.
Nil said
Incidentally, Wilhelm Reich was of course all the time telling people how to fuck! He had very particular opinions/theories on healthy vs. unhealthy sexuality–and that healthy sexual behavior should be encouraged and unhealthy discouraged. So it’s odd to see him used as an examplar of a theory that critiquing sexual practices is inherently oppressive. The part of his career most concerned with sexuality was in fact built on a critique of sexuality that showed that the social, political, and psychological aspects of sex were holistically linked.
In general, it’s not entirely clear to me that these two opposing approaches are really neccesarily opposing. I think there is truth in both, which can be synthetically combined.
Iris said
JJM
Some of my guy friends say “Would you like if someone said that to your sister/mother/etc.? because that’s how men treat the women you care about.”
Poke a hole in that dehumanization process. I read a stat that said men who grew up with sisters were far, far less likely to sexually assault or rape a woman-because they are more likely to see them as human beings, with feelings.
Nil, I agree about the synthesizing comment…I don’t think Mike is calling for a heavy hand here (booklets describing how BDSM is anti-revolutionary or something) or for laws, which is what RedFlags seems to be polemicizing against, mainly. I don’t think anyone is suggesting that analysis means laws or codifying ‘correct’ sexual practices, or that every analysis made needs to be distributed as Official Dictates. Isn’t it a pretty organic process we’re talking about here?
Iris said
P.S.: I am so excited about the discussion here. The level of discourse and interest makes me feel like we are really on the right track!
Nil said
It also occurs to me that in fact _everyone_ in this conversation essentially may agree with BOTH those points, crudely summarized as:
1. YES, revolutionary ethics can and must be applied to sexual and intimate relationships, along with all other social relationships. Sexual relationships are not exempt from political critique.
2. But of course that doesn’t mean that revolutionary society should have ’sex police’.
The sticking point is what the nature of an ethical sexual relationship is, the details of intimate ethics. This is certainly an important topic. So let’s get to it, instead of talking about whether the very discussion is out of bounds, which I don’t think anyone thinks it is.
What some are scared of is that the idea will be promulgated that there is only ONE right way to have intimate relationships, and the Party knows what it is. I would suggest that there are as many ways to have ethical sexual relationships as there are to have unethical intimate relationships. (And yes, part of each of our own personal struggles to become revolutionary actors is about our intimate relationships–the nature of our sexual relationships does indeed have an effect on us as social beings. Revolutionary transformation of society is about revolutionary transformation of _people_, not just of who holds power. The Boggs’ had something to say about this, although I’m not sure about sexuality specifically, but it applies. )
Anyhow. I think Mike hits on a truth when he says “it is hard to conduct enlightened and progressive intimate relations if you don’t genuinely like and respect the other people involved”–and that working through our intimate relationships towards liberation and equality is a _struggle_. But he loses me when he suggests that serial monogomy is the only good way to do this. Not in my experience.
And while you can tell I am sympathetic to redflags general perspective, I’ve got to call him on one statement: “If women want to be free, they better stand up for themselves, get what they want or find a man who respects them enough to work for their pleasure.” Nope, absolutely not, this is men’s responsibilty as much as or more than women’s. And equating “being free” to “sexual pleasure” is pretty sketchy to begin with. (Surely intimate relations in general are _part_ of ‘being free’, but not the whole bag! And to reduce intimate relations to ’sexual pleasure’ is to miss even much of the significance of intimate relations! And to then suggest that that the responsibility for ‘being free’ in a patriarchal society is soley on women’s shoulders, and that this freedom can be obtained solely on an individual basis ! I doubt redflags actually believes these things, I think it was a mis-statement.) [But yes, of course legislation or state power is not the answer to revolutionizing intimate relations, as I think everyone here agrees. Myself, I don't think state power is the answer to nearly ANY aspect of revolutionizing human relations.]
JJM+ said
Nil,
Maybe I misunderstood your statement:
“Myself, I don’t think state power is the answer to nearly ANY aspect of revolutionizing human relations”.
Isn’t state power, in the hands of the proletariat and the revolutionary masses, isnt it its purpose to put an end to all forms of exploitation and oppression, including oppressive human relations? Is it not the job of the revolutionary society, led by the revolutionary people, to revolutionize?
I’m not understanding what is happening here. I am not calling for the state to tell people how to have sex, dont get me wrong. But I think the purpose of state power is to overcome the social conditions that lead to oppressive human relations, in particular sexual relations.
Mao said, “Without state power, all is an illusion.”
With state power, we can revolutionize.
gangbox said
I have to second RedFlags here – and to trancend him.
Communists are supposed to be all about emancipating humanity – and it’s not very emancipatory to have the state and/or the party and/or the people’s police dictating to you about how you should lead your sex life.
Of course, we should be against rape, and child molestation (not to mention the various and sundry other forms of child abuse/neglect), and domestic violence, and arrainged marriages and any and all other forms of coersive sex.
And for that matter, any and all types of sexual harassment – ranging from guys catcalling at women on the street to people in authority forcing their sexuality on subordinates down to and including men groping women on the subway at rush hour.
But as far as what folks do with each other sexually – as long as all concerned are consenting adults, and nobody is getting hurt, that’s their business, not the business of the state or the party or anybody else!!!
Sexuality is complex, it’s messy, it’s personal, and it’s pretty damned fundamental to the human psyche.
You can try and regulate it – we all know the Catholic Church has tried to for the last 2,000 years or so – but, like a blade of grass growing through a crack in the sidewalk, sexuality will find a way around any attemt to structure or confine it.
Of course, that way will often be twisted and distorted – that’s why we have so much sexual abuse, rape and all around pathology in sexual relations today.
Again, just look at the Catholic Church – 1,500 years of denying their clergy normal sex lives has led to several generations of serial child molesters in the parishes.
We should learn from that negative example.
Beyond that, this whole idea of fighting sexism by restricting male sexuality (which to me seems to be what the RCP approach boils down to) has serious problems.
For example JJM+ getting upset because they overheard a male aquaintance remarking to a friend that he wanted to have sex with a particular woman.
What the hell is so terrible about that?
I could see if he had made a sexual comment to the woman herself (and she happend to be a woman that the guy didn’t have that kind of relationship with) – but what’s wrong with telling a friend about one’s sexual desires?
Sounds pretty human to me.
Or (and I think even RedFlags is going to disagree with me here) what is so innately terrible about pornography?
Yes, in today’s sexist and racist society, most straight porn is sexist and a lot of US made porn is pretty racist as well.
But does it always have to be llike that?
In a society where there is an active struggle against racism and sexism, wouldn’t that kind of society create the basis for non sexist non racist pornography?
And, both in that society and in this one, isn’t there an objective social need that pornography fills (that is, as a masturbation aid for men who are either not in a sexual relationship or in a relationship that is not sexually satisfying)?
Why do you think porn is a US$ 10 billion a year industry in America (as big as the mainstream hollywood film industry)?
Beyond that, what about romance novels (which, basically, serve the same purpose for unpartnered/dissatisfied straight women that visual porn serves for men) – if we ban pornography, shouldn’t we ban the romance novels too?
And, if porn is so terrible and innately reactionary, and should be opposed by revolutionaries, what would you propose as a replacement?
Beyond that, we have to realize that, for many many many people in this society, the all this talk of egalitarian relationships is, quite frankly, pretty divorced from their living reality.
There is a rather ugly saying among male construction workers in New York City – “Every Guy Pays For It”.
And that reflects the reality of the kind of relationships a lot of these men are in – their wives and/or girlfriends are with them in large part because of their high union wages, and they are very conscious of that fact.
That’s the start point they’re coming from – and it’s a long way from there to egalitarianism. We should never forget that fact.
Of course, I’d love to see a world where all sexual relations are based on love and mutual respect.
I’m also very conscious of the fact that we DO NOT currently live in a world like that, and, very likely, we will not see that kind of world in our lifetimes (at least not here in the belly of the beast).
So, perhaps we should have a little more understanding and sympathy for actually existing consensual sexuality, and less of the puritanical lecturing and utopian calls for people to live their present day lives as if we’re already in that as yet nonexistant future world.
And even in that future world, I don’t think I would feel very comfortable with the type of drycleaned, respectable, politically correct, Party-approved “egalitarian sexuality” that some communists seem to desire to impose on the rest of humanity.
It just seems kind of bloodless, lifeless and, for want of a better word “emasculated”!
orinda said
We are living in a time of very wide divergences of sexual experience. In some places, women are so repressed they are not even aware of orgasms (unless they are among the fortunate few who can come just by tightening their thighs and thinking lustful thoughts.) Other women, including many I know, prefer very free uncommitted relationships. I too have to disagree with Mike’s idealization of sexual relationships. Just because it’s not based on love doesn’t make it repressive to the woman. Yes, there has to be some respect and wanting your partner to have a good time.
Our times are marked by a strange dichotomy. There’s a lot of awareness in the workplace of sexual harrassment but in high schools girls face harrassment way beyond anything I ever experienced in the 70’s. We never had guys calling us ho’s or grabbing our crotches. yet construction workers rarely whistle at women walking by anymore.
Since leaving the RCP, I find my beliefs in sexuality are very different. Sure, I would love a deep meaningful relationship but have enjoyed several that weren’t. I no longer think it’s bad for men to find women sexually attractive. I’m not sure porn is inherently bad (yes, some kinds are). And by the way, I am a woman.
Gangbox’s remark about how “every guy pays for it” reminds me of marx saying marriage is legalized prostitution. Not blaming the women. Why shouldn’t we have a society in which no woman marries or becomes involved with someone for health insurance of other benefits? if we all had these basic rights relationships would be chosen much more freely.
I’ve known some revolutionaries who equated sex with sexism. It was so sad because they’re cutting themselves off from truly happy relationships.
Anyways, many of us women have learned that we can enjoy relationships that are mainly sexual but that no man can convince us there’s something wrong with us if we don’t want to have sex with him. It doesn’t mean we have some “Puritanical hang-up”, we’re just not that in to you!
gangbox said
Orinda,
A couple of thoughts
1. “…yet construction workers rarely whistle at women walking by anymore.”
That’s because, at least here in NYC, General Contractors (the companies that run the jobsite on behalf of the owner, and supervise the subcontractors who actually build the building) can be, and often are, sued by women who are harassed by the workers on the site.
If they get sued, they backcharge the cost of the settlement to the contractor or contractors who’s workers harassed the woman who sued.
And those workers get instantly laid off (yeah, they can do that on union jobsites – you can get laid off at any time, for any reason… and anything that costs the bosses money is typically something you get laid off for).
Therefore, the word on the jobsites, from both the bosses and the unions, is that, officially there is a “zero tolerance” policy for sexual harassment.
Unoficially, the word is to “keep the sexual harassment to a minimum” [I'm a union shop steward, and, word for word, that was what I was told by a higher ranking union official - strictly off the record, of course!]
In any case, the de facto rule is, you can sit outside the jobsite at lunchtime and stare at the women walking by – but don’t make any comments, or you will get laid off!!!
The same goes for the peeping toms with the binoculars who look through apartment windows in the early morning to watch women changing their clothes (yeah, there are quite a few guys who do that on hirise jobs here) – you can still do that, but be discreet, and make damned sure the woman does not see you staring at her – cause if she sees you and complains, or calls the cops and they come to the site looking for you, you WILL get laid off on the spot!
2. “I no longer think it’s bad for men to find women sexually attractive.”
It’s really sad that you ever thought like that!
A world where straight men didn’t find women sexually attractive would be a very boring – not to mention frustrated – place!!
I’m a communist, I believe in revolution and I belive in women’s rights – but I’m also sexually attracted to women, and I see no contradiction in that whatsoever.
It’s seriously messed up that some folks (and, more importantly, some organizations) who call themselves revolutionary communist would feel that a man has to,in effect, become a eunuch to be against sexism.
Sorry, but I simply cannot get behind that idea!!! And I’d hate to live in a world run by folks who think like that!!!
Carl Davidson said
Goodness, I thought my comments on elections might stir something up, but the hot debate is over here!
I’m with Wilhelm Reich and Waylon Jennings-’Whatever get you through the night’-and throw in that sex needs to be approached as fun, and with a sense of humor, especially at my age!
And unless it’s abusive of breaks assault laws, it’s really none of ‘the party’s’ or ‘the state’s’ business. Efforts along those lines invariably cause more trouble than they’re worth.
I remember a debate in the LRS central committee on the ‘gay question.’ After hearing all the usual pontificating about gay backwardness, I finally said, ‘Look. Drop all this ’scientific’ crap. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else, knows exactly why some people are gay and some aren’t, and have been from time immemorial, under all systems. That means acceptance, tolerance and fairness is required, not old prejudices in a left form.’ Then I added my little quote from Waylon, and when the vote came, I was a minority of one. What was more interesting, though, was right after the meeting, I’d say about a third of the CC members, pulled me aside and said they ’secretly agreed’ with me, and by now probably all do, even though the LRS is history. That’s Reich’s point. When you try to suppress something as dynamic as sexuality, you get all sorts of weirdness.
But people love to discuss it, because it’s one topic where everyone’s on the same level! LOL!
TellNoLies said
“Assault laws” sets the bar pretty fucking low. There are all sorts of oppressive fucked-up things that happen in relationships that fall short of legal assault but that society, and therefore the state and “the” party (if thats what its gonna be) have a responsibility to address. Consent is a much murkier thing than Carl seems willing to acknowledge here. Developing a genuinely liberatory sexual ethics is a complex process and I share the general skepticism here about resorting to coercion to impose it. At the same time I think Carl’s essentially laissez-faire approach leaves a lot of room for the continued reproduction of existing oppressive relations.
zerohour said
From Orinda: “we’re just not that in to you!”
From Gangbox: “but I’m also sexually attracted to women, and I see no contradiction in that whatsoever.”
I think these two points speak to something that was brought up earlier as a lack in communist thinking. We have no understanding of the formation of desire. That’s why our discussions tend towards the relatively easier debate about state regulation, or we have recourse to a mechanical external influence approach, ie, we are influenced by the media. But even though media heavily promotes a certain range of beauty standards and modes of desiring, it didn’t invent them. What makes you feel you are “into” someone?
I think for communists, we need to be more self-aware. We publicly disdain beauty standards as expressed in fashion magazines or popular media, but we ignore its powerful impact on us and how it DOES shape our sensibilities. There is nothing inherently wrong with finding someone physically attractive. There is something wrong when we deny it amongst ourselves and refuse to talk about it.
I think this is why people interpreted JJM+’s remarks as a critique of expression, when he was getting at something deeper: what makes you want to fuck someone you don’t even know? Or, that you know nothing of, other than their physical appearance? Without acknowledging the already-regulating role of ideology, I’m concerned that we are advocating a mystical “human nature” where we just have to shed some artificial repressiveness and become our “true” selves.
Desire should not be considered an inherent, self-evident virtue beyond critical interrogation.
I disagree with Carl’s suggestion that the social construction of sexualities and desire cannot be investigated or even understood, and that any investigation amounts to suppression.
Marx’s once said: “Nothing human is foreign to me” and I think this spirit of openness should guide our inquiries. Tolerance and respect are good things but to limit ourselves to that re-inscribes “intuition”as a political gesture. It puts all the burden upon the victims of discrimination.
BTW, as far as the role of the state, I haven’t been able to find it, but I remember the CPN[M] describing their multi-level approach to social contradiction, in which the state would have jurisdiction over some behaviors, like rape or murder, but other kinds of problems would rely on having the masses mobilize develop more appropriate forms of struggle: local committees, etc., It might be in an issue of The Worker, but if anyone can find it, it might shed some light on how a socialist state can relate to civil society without having to merge the two.
redflags said
Chuck’s question about what is the domain of social coercion seems pretty important in terms of how we fundamentally view what communists are doing in the world.
There is an incorrect view of the state as an essentially neutral leveling mechanism where it is able to enforce new rules over behavior from markets to aesthetics. This line of thinking does not problematize the state, its class nature or seem to have summed up the consistent construction of capitalist states on the bones of socialist revolution. Call it the “Good King” vision of socialism.
Is the issue just putting a pack of new, hardline anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-racist, anti-bad policies in place? Using repression against the backward “until they learn”? Or is the proletarian revolution something different, related to the means of production and reproduction and not primarily the ends?
Do we forbid all commerce and in effect create an omnipresent black market, or work to create model communities, provide broad welfare, leveling of pay scales, etc on the road to a new generation raised in a post-bourgeois society?
We don’t need a broad set of policy changes, we need a proletarian revolution in the forms of social and political governance. Women working with men to create egalitarian relations, hopefully, is different from state commandments, and clarifying where we stand on that has very real impact on how we proceed across the board. A mass line towards sexuality is the only way we can work for changes in what a current set up that is widely not functioning very well for women or men.
Otherwise we end up in a silly discussion of which acts are kosher and which are not, who is a “good and loving” person and who is not. And that’s not what a political project should mainly concern itself with.
People will be racists for quite some time, but will they have the social power to enforce their ideology? Put another way, I’ve been called a white cracker (or whatever) many times in my life, but I just didn’t care all that much. Why? Because it was just words in the mouth without the social power to impose domination over me because of my national origin. The issue isn’t simply or mainly the ideas in people’s heads, the words they use (think whatever word you think epitomizes reactionary attitutes) – and if we go that route, we’ll find ourselves in funny circumstances pretty damn quick!
We don’t need a big daddy “proletarian” state that literally seeks to proletarianize everyone. That is patriarchal to the core in its method and intent. That has been a previous vision of what a “proletarian” dictatorship is and it produced a material basis for the imposition of extreme capitalism while crushing ALL attempts to build social organization not under the “democratic centralist” control of a Communist Party. There could be only one party, all lower levels were to be subordinate to all higher levels without even a serious pretense at democratic oversight.
The proletariat became an increasing empty signifier, not actual people overcoming actual oppression – but a blugeon to enforce party-state discipline no matter the actual political line of that party-state. The one unifying “principle” was fidelity to this form of government – not the economic policy, forms of ownership and management.
If the work of liberation is not the work of the oppressed themselves, what is it? If a dictatorship of the proletariat is not what it says, then what is it?
So in the realm of sexuality we see real frustration with “gender polarization” and the banal abuse of romantic relationships… but are we trying to make contradiction go away? Wanting to dull out gender difference seems like a good example of trying to force “two into one” and make the problems go away? But why is that a way forward? Why should we want that?
TellNoLies is right that “assault laws” sets the bar pretty low, but the question is what is the range of state political responsibility for regulating consensual, non-commercial relations.
We can’t make people be free, or even want to be free. We can create a society where people are not compelled into exploitative relationships through material necessity. We can and should challenge backward ideas, but anyone who has seen the welfare state be deployed against proletarian women for how they raise their children knows the real-world manifestations of these issues are no simple thing – even with the best of intentions.
Much of these are things that are not the responsibility of political parties or governments. These are blunt instruments. And what we end up trying to do is make “the revolution” a panacea to all of life’s problems with a censurous urge to regulate and control what others do. It’s a judge’s view of socialism.
————-
Another contentious point: The culture of the revolutionary (and not-so-revolutionary) left has made men and women walk on eggshells about what should be no big deal. If men are forced to pretend they aren’t sexual beings and the only solution to the objectification of women we can come up with is de-sexualization – folks are just not going to stick around for that. Heterosexual men will continue to avoid the “PC” culture of the left even where they agree with the principles and objectives. If we create a movement that looks down the nose at sex, we’ll get a movement that just doesn’t move and that is, at base, resentful of people.
The culture of “calling people out” in semi-judicial settings, etc… it’s a big mess and is some of the most unprincipled shit I have ever seen, where all kinds of messy inter-personal stuff gets psuedo-politicized. Am I out on a limb here, or have others seen this?
It is endemic in anarchist communities where they are all about regulating each other’s diets, consumer habits and sexuality.
redflags said
Zerohour: the return to the state is not an attempt to make sticky issues simple, it’s setting up the terrain we’re discussing it on. This is hardly a settled question, as the example of the Mormon polygamists brings up today, or the anti-sex campaigns of the GPCR which exerted tremendous social pressure against sex and the erotic instead of providing universal free birth control for the youth.
Mobilization of “popular pressure” by a party-state is tricky. Are these opening up social agency or are they goon squads who follow orders and surpress whatever doesn’t fit in neat, state-sanctioned boxes?
Historical examples of both abound.
zerohour said
Redflags -
I didn’t mean to imply that the question of the state is settled or even easy in the sense of having sorted out the complexities, much less having workable solutions to problems. But it IS easy in the sense that we’re used to discussing things in those terms: state coercion vs. popular will, but our understanding of the dynamics of everyday life within the state is highly underdeveloped. I’m just wary of the traditional privileging of one over the other as the default communist position, leaving civil society the exclusive province cultural theorists.
“Mobilization of “popular pressure” by a party-state is tricky” Yes it is. That’s why I’m hoping someone can dig up the comments from the CPN[M] for an example of how they are handling it.
Nando said
the waylon ethic of “whatever gets you through the night” — takes the individual (their needs, satisfactions, desires and yearnings) as the central point.
Just think for a moment what the singer Waylon Jennings probably thinks are good ways of “making it through the night.” And think if you think such things should characterize our movement and our future.
And more broadly: What gets some people “through the night” is dehumanizing, devaluing, exploiting, objectifying and even brutalizing women.
And as Tellnolies says: condemning the physical brutality and threat of brutality is obviously important, but stopping there sets the bar far below liberation.
* * * * * *
On the relative nature of consent in a society of inequality and desperation:
The liberal gospel is “whatever two consenting adults do is nobody’s business.” And that seems like a simple functional (and currently popular definition). However… this is capitalism, and many human relations are soaked by the inequalities of class, gender and race.
When a group of wealthy white men and an impoverished black woman (with three kids) mutually “consent” to have the men use and abuse her for money — is that really a matter that is “no one’s business.” Or is this (as a social phenom widespread in this world, in every community, convention and campus) something that goes close to the heart of a revolutionary process and its purpose?
To step back a moment: one difference between capitalism and feudalism is that the exploitative moment (the extraction of wealth from the labor of producing classes) takes the form of exchange of equal value. “A fair days pay for a fair days work.” The worker consents to the arrangement — he/she even seeks out the job! They “need” the job. So the core exploitative relation under capitalism is precisely presented (at its surface) as an agreement between “two consenting adults” — to their mutual advantage. What makes it exploitative is the whole framework of society that makes people “consent” to exploitation (because they prefer this exploitative situation over other exploitative situations.)
The revolutionary solution is not to criminalize the moment of consent or exploitation. But to overthrow a system of such moments.
(To take the example of prostitution) a woman’s body is sold to a man or a frat party of men, or a photographer-pimp who publishes and profits from that moment of prostitution-as-graphic-entertainment. The point is not to criminalize the woman. But neither is it to respond to all sexual moments with mere “tolerance” and “laissez faire” — which amount to indifference to the continued forms through which women are oppressed.
Anyone with open eyes can see that “choices” (under capitalism, or any society) are shaped by the norms of those societies. And so the society is full of places where people make truly horrific “choices” with full knowledge and informed consent. The accused “agrees” to plead guilty to a crime he did not do. The prostitute “agrees” to perform degrading acts for the sexual pleasure of hooting and abusive men. The young girl “agrees” to stay silent after the family’s neighbor has touched her. The teenager “agrees” to marry her boyfriend (who she barely knows and who doesn’t love her) because she is pregnant and abortion is unthinkable. The woman “agrees” to stay married “for the children.” The wife “agrees” to “perform” sexually even though the love is gone.
It is endless. And so (for me) the word “consenting adults” is as loaded as the “right of privacy” was in post above.
In many ways, accepting the liberal standard (”anything two consenting adults do”) quickly becomes an acceptance of this society, and the privileges of those on top to extract “consent” from those they would hire (or fuck).
And — in answer to many statements above: I believe the constant reference to the revolutionary state (the revolutionary police, prisons, courts, etc) as an instrument in “proletarianizing” the population (and presumably their sexuality)…. I think that is a strawman, both because no one here advocates that, and because it overlooks the revolutionary impact that socialist states HAVE HAD in reinforcing revolutionary changes (like the abolition of female infanticide, or child marriage, or sale of women, or denial of women’s right to property, or the right of girls to go to school…) To act like the revolutionary states “intervention” in social norms and standards is SIMPLY a horror, slides far toward adopting the unjustified assumptions of anti-communism.
RedFlags writes: “The culture of ‘calling people out’ in semi-judicial settings, etc… it’s a big mess and is some of the most unprincipled shit I have ever seen, where all kinds of messy inter-personal stuff gets psuedo-politicized. Am I out on a limb here, or have others seen this?”
Clearly others have seen this. Read the Storm history — their whole organizaiton came to a freeze-frame to “deal with” an incident.
However…. what do we draw from this…. that people should never be “called out”?
One example: In china, when the liberation of villages happened, women (often led by revs) would organize themselves to deal with notorious wife beaters. One account describes how, after several warnings, they took a repeat offender, beat him, and tied him up helpless in the town square.
We don’t want to deal with all “domestic problems” that way. We don’t want to make every problem a public matter (literally in the public square). We don’t want to beat every man who still thinks the old way…. but does anyone want to argue that in that case, in that moment, this was wrong?
What is revolution if some forms of horrible treatment are not “called out” — and if people deeply associated with carrying out that horrible treatment (pimps, rapists, unrependtent wife beaters, traffickers in women, etc.) are no confronted with an escalating scale of social disapproval and consequences?
How else will we actually eliminate (eliminate!) the enveloping mist of misogny that surrounds women?
I agree with those who see sexual matters in the framework of women’s liberation — not mainly or solely in the framework of tolerance and personal satisfaction (however important both of those are).
* * * * *
some points: We need a movement where women do not feel permanently the target of sexual interest. Where they are listened to. Where they are trained for leadership. Where they are not judged by “who they are with.” Where they don’t need to constantly wonder how they look. where respect comes based on political understanding (not irrelevant standards of appearance and attractiveness). Where when new young women enter the movement they are not suddenly circled by the available men like “fresh meat.” Where the special burdens of working class women (like caring for small children) become, to the extent possible, a burden shared by the movement collectively. And so on.
If you have that, women will feel “oh, this IS different.” And they will be able to play the role they need to play. If you don’t have this, those women feel disappointed (”oh, more of the same.”) And they will OBJECTIVELY be shut out of the rev process (at its very core).
And the issue is not just sexuality (this is not really a matter of some heirarchy “telling people how and when to fuck”) — people should feel that they are in a place where people “have each other’s back,” where casual suspicion along lines of nationality and race are overcome, where people overcome the petty because of common dedication to a larger purpose….. etc.
If such a climate means that some men need to set aside their “sexual being” (or tamp it down, or adopt new restraints)…. so be it. If some men see this as if they are just being told “who and when and how to fuck” — well, i think they should raise their consciousness. There is a lot of “male right” involved in the sense of entitlement to think about and express your desire to fuck anyone you want.
Of course, we shouldn’t jump (self-righteously) all over people (from among the masses, especially the youth) who still think and act in “old ways.” We aren’t some new mini-cult with its own encapsulated ways — but we do need a creative, relaxed and generous way of teaching, modeling and promoting “new ways” (including now, before the rev itself). And we fucking better get good and consistent at it!
My main point:
We are, in fact, NOT about “whatever gets you through the night.”
That is a fundamental dividing line. (It is a question of line in precisely a CARDINAL sense).
We are about a different song “Break on through to the other side.”
We are not about “survival pending revolution” (i.e. treading water and accomodating to the world around us, while aimlessly waiting for something to break).
We are about very actively “preparing minds and accumulating forces for revolution.”
And that leads to a very different approach than the one advocated by, for example, Carl Davidson here. And it is an approach different in some ways from the focus on opposing new sexual norms in the name of fighting “puritanism.”
We can be pro-sex, anti-fundamentalist, anti-patriachal, communal, relaxed, fun-loving…. without forgetting for a second the central importance of promoting and representing the liberation of women.
I’ll say it again:
We need to be about the liberation of women. And we need to apprectiate deeply what that means, what deep transformations that demands, what new thoughts and practices we need to bring into being, and what that means for how we train each other and critically examine the whole society and the ways it has impressed upon us all.
Iris said
RedFlags, I don’t mean to say we should actively promote androgyny, in some forceful way. But the breaking down of segregation between genders–material (in certain spheres of work or military) and cultural–organically breaks down polarized differences between women and men, white people and black people, etc., etc. Difference and individuality should be celebrated, not erased, but polarization–meaning a dominant group defines itself by how it IS NOT the group it oppresses–reduces with contact and the development of mutual respect. Like I said above, men who grow up with sisters are many times less likely to sexually assault or rape women. The ‘otherness’ of the women they dominate in our patriarchal culture is broken down. Thats what I mean! Of course, ‘add women and stir’ is not what I am advocating here, but something more radical.
Saoirse said
I too had question about the use of androgyny. I tend to think gender is not the issue at all. Certainly not gender expressions nor identities where I think let a 1,000 blossom. The issue is patriarchy and male privilege.
In feminist circles the wholesale celebration of androgyny and re-enforced “revolutionary” gender roles did lead to such sad episodes as butch and femme dykes being thought of a reactionaries and pushed out of the lesbian community in the 70s.
More recent examples I think RF touches on when he speaks of the anarchist community where a whole range of behavior is critiqued and marginalized. I remember getting involved with an anarchist organization in NY in 1994 where I met many anarchist women who said argued that bisexuality did not exist!! That bisexuals were fence sitters and hadnt resolved there own internal homophobia. Needless to say these attitudes marginalized and alienated many women who found there attitudes intolerable.
Whether some men are macho or use “rough” langugage isnt the issue in and of itself its the social power accorded to men that makes such things problematic. Amongst many leftist these expressions become “high crimes” that must be publically struggled over. While these same men interrupt women, repeat the things they say and ignore that they’ve already been said before, fail to cite women when they say things or on the internet write the same things just with more theoritical jargon and get praise for their “original” ideas.
Iris said
I have heard some similar harsh ciriticisms of bisexuality from the gay community. Bisexuality seems sort of like a natural state to me–it makes some people who have ‘chosen’ a ‘camp’ angry.
Iris said
the whole idea of ‘choosing’ a side seems strange to me.
Chuck Morse said
Though I wouldn’t suggest that the state is the most important issue to address when considering sexual practices, it is the most important issue to address for anyone attempting to “reconceive” Marxist-Leninism.
If you accept, in principle, that communist state power not only is but ought to be limited by other social actors, then you are no longer a Marxist-Leninist. You are a liberal.
Does that make you a bad, evil, terrible person? No, just a liberal.
Nando said
i also think there is another problem to inject: there is a vibe that thinks internal process and culture is its own reward.
In other words: I think some people are fixated on making the MOVEMENT’s culture non-offensive and non-oppressive TO THEM (often using rather arbitrary and idiosyncratic standards). And who (in the process) drive their circles into endless (and suicidal) spirals of self-examination and mutual recrimination.
In fact we need a movement that CHANGES THE WORLD — and keeps its eyes on THAT. And a movement who builds an internal CULTURE that is not self-absorbed, or a constant focus of attention, and is not so weirdly rarified or so touchy that no one can enter or thrive there.
We need a culture where most working people would feel accepted and embraced — and yet which also (in creative ways) is reconstructed using our larger values — all with an eye on our goals (which is not mainly to prefect ourselves or our immediate circles, but to have the potential to change the world.)
RedFlags refers to the experiences of internal witchhunts (a kind of war on self) that (in a confused or destructive way) takes conflicts AMONG ourselves and treats them as conflicts “between ourself and the enemy.”
Nando said
Chuck writes:
“If you accept, in principle, that communist state power not only is but ought to be limited by other social actors, then you are no longer a Marxist-Leninist. You are a liberal. Does that make you a bad, evil, terrible person? No, just a liberal.”
This is a revealing assertion, chuck. And one that I find vastly at odds with what i would assume about communism and states.
First, do you genuinely think that communists don’t think that the state should ever be “limited by other social actors”? where do you draw THAT from?
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it seems to be an assumption that assumes “communism=totalitarianism” and therefore assumes that communists are consciously in favor of the conditions that are associated with (socalled) totalitarianism.
But the equation of communism with totalitarianism
a) is a lie about what communism has been and is
b) is based on a false (and clearly liberal) theory that equates communism with fascism
c) is based on the false idea that any state can “totalize” a society (i.e. that you can eliminate the struggle of ideas, classes, different poltical currents simply by ideological and repressive means).
In fact all societies are riddled with struggle (and by the interaction of many different “social actors).
communists don’t desire a world where they (and presumably “their” state) is the only “social actor.” (What a horror THAT would be!) Nor is it possible to achieve such a world (even if some psychopath somewhere wanted it).
I believe your remark, Chuck, rests on some odd assumptions of what communists believe, but also some wrong assumptions about what is socially possible.
Iris said
Saoirse:
Since gender is a social construct, the way it is expressed (and enforced0 reflects and serves patriarchal relations and the oppression of women. Doesn’t this make an analysis of gender essential to understanding the oppression of women?
Iris said
Please correct me if I am misunderstanding your post (I am ilicitly typing in the manager’s office at work!). And to clarify, I don’t advocate declaring ‘correct’ gender expressions, or the ‘abolishment’ of gender or whatever. It is just that sex becoming more and more seperated from reproduction (and division of labor transforming) changes the cultural justifications of strict gender roles, and this needs analysis. It is all really fascinating! And yes, as a poster mentioned above, we need self examination–and not self flagellation–about things like beauty standards, sexual attraction, etc. This ties into my troubles with eating disorders!
Iris said
And subversive, ironic gendered expression is a really interesting part of this whole puzzle.
Saoirse said
Iris-
I am not sure I agree that gender is purely a social construct nor do I believe sex is purely a biological one.
That said I do agree we need an analysis of gender. And in that regard I think great theortical and to some extent practical gains have been made.
Still I tend to view myself as “old school” feminist in the sense that I think academic feminism has largely, to put it politely, “moved on” from a discourse of patriarchy and male privilege to interest though what I might suggest are different discourse of gender identity and expression.
I think this new discourse has had largely positive impact in many sectors of our society and lead to concrete material gains within the LGBT rights movements. A movement I have spent half my life working in as an activist.
But again I think there was a break. Academically around the time of the rise of po-mo theory within feminist circles and politically with the inaction of the FACE law, the application of RICO stats to the religious right/anti-abortion movement and the election of Clinton.
Cumulatively these represented a break in analysis and strategy amongst the feminist movement that has led sadly to the lack of any national grassroots campaigns, the refiguring of organizations from NOW to GLAAD and NYLGTF whereby these organizations no longer engage in systematic campaigns and instead direct there work toward lobbying and working within the democractic party.
the cold lamper said
What’s wrong with asexuality?
Jed shudders at the possibility that “the only solution to the objectification of women we can come up with is de-sexualization.” Well, why is this an issue? What does this tell us, if not that for billions of men living in patriarchal societies all around the world, those are already the only two choices (never mind whatever communists “come up with”)?
The superstructure of capitalist (and pre-capitalist) society conditions men to view their sexual pleasure as literally inseparable from the humiliation and degradation of women, in one form or another — be it rape (forced sexual activity in the most literal sense conceivable), or “consenting” to act out some humiliating scenario from the porno he jerked off to the previous night…or the night before…or some night a decade ago. That’s how hard it is to shake this shit off.
Imagine what it must feel like, for a woman dating a guy who seems to respect her, to hear him turn around one day after they’ve been together for two years and say, “You know, the sex isn’t really doing it for me. Do you mind if next time, we have a four-way with two of my buddies, with all of us cumming on your face at the end? I’ll try not to get it in your eyes…” Imagine what a betrayal that must be, to know that the dude could have been having these sick fantasies the whole goddamn time. That the guy is “politely” asking for permission isn’t entirely irrelevant, but that’s kind of damning with faint praise…
A man who has been conditioned in this fashion can become rationally aware of why this is all wrong, and struggle against it mercilessly, but so long as we still live under the rule of the exploiting classes, with their patriarchal agitprop bombarding us everywhere we turn, it will be an uphill battle. If he feels that the only way he can win this struggle is by temporarily suppressing his own sexuality, in whole or in part, then it is all the better for his potential victims, for him, and for the entire world revolution to do so — as Nando said earlier (#32).
That such an unusually large number of men in and around the RCP seem to have committed to this route suggests, to me, that within the RCP there is an unusually high awareness of the problem. For this they should be commended.
Saoirse said
The challenge is what is an ironic gender expression. And for who?
Again going back to the butch femme example. Les Feinberg’s seminal work Stone Butch Blues begins with a traditional middle class feminist remarking on how sad it is that butches must ape maleness. How trapped a butch is in the construct of traditional gender!
Another example drag can be a liberatory field of expression and play. Still within the gay male scene drag performers are both marginalized as people and celebrated as performers. I think it is a beautiful form of expression for many but materially what drag represents can’t be disintangled from how people’s lives are lived off stage.
Amongst straights. Just look at Eddie Murphy in drag. milton pearl. or flip wilson. there is a whole history of male hetero drag which is all very charming. Except its delink from any sort of understanding that for some people such as many gender queers, transgender people and transsexuals gender is no joke. Especially if your Deborah Forte, Brandon Tenna or Venus Xtravaganza. Then your gender expression linked to your gender identity gives mainstream straight people entitlement to (a) “know your secret” and (b) kill you either for having said secret or being out about it.
Nando said
i tend to lean toward the transforming of our sexuality (or the social constraint of its backward sides), not a wholesale suppression.
I think that a movement that sends the method that heterosexual men need to effectively self-neuter to belong….. well, that approach would be neither necessary nor politically productive.
I think we want to help nurture (through experiment, struggle etc.) enlightened relationships — not grimly freeze ourselves into an isolated tongue-tied celibacy. And I think the argument that people need to “suppress their sexuality” is tied to Cold Lamper’s other assertion, “That’s how hard it is to shake this shit off.”
Nah, I think we have reason to be more optimistic about the ability to transform, and about our ability to tolerate and love each other through the long complex processes through which we (but more importantly society itself) is transformed through rev.
jose the red fox said
Nando (#32):
“Clearly others have seen this. Read the Storm history — their whole organizaiton came to a freeze-frame to ‘deal with’ an incident.”
I’m not sure why this is here and how it relates to the discussion in this thread. We need to be careful with this.
gangbox said
Nando,
I’d like to thank you for giving a concentrated expression of the classic revolutionary communist position on sexuality.
To summarize (and forgive me – and feel free to correct me – if I oversimplify or vulgarize you) the position is:
Sexuality is not a personal matter, but has political consequences, in particular in terms of the struggle against sexism and women’s oppression.
Folks, in particular men, do not have anything resembling present day privacy rights in terms of relationships – pretty much everything you do sexually is subject to collective criticism and review.
In the present day, the priority for revolutionaries is to make women feel safe and comfortable being involved in the Party and other communist led institutions.
This can best be done by restricting the sexuality of male communists – and, to a lesser degree, non communist men in the political orbit of communist led institutions.
While this MAY make women (or at least a certain type of woman) feel comfortable in the left, it’s at the price of making straight men feel like we have to constantly “walk on eggshells” lest we offend the women with our degrading and debasing sexual feelings.
[You'd THINK that being gay would be a sexual escape hatch here for the fellas - but, oddly enough, this same paradagim is even more harshly opposed to man on man sexuality than it is to the man on woman variety, for reasons that I don't pretend to understand!!!]
Unfortunately, in the real world, this is a pretty harsh regime, and it’s pretty repellent for most straight men (I sure know it is for me!).
It takes a certain type of guy to willingly submit to becoming a virtual eunuch for the cause – and that’s basically what this line amounts to.
I’m genuinely curious – how did such a deeply anti human and sexophobic view become so dominant in this part of the far left???
Particularly odd is the fact that, in a movement that has been largely male-led, there is such an emphasis on the agressive supression of male sexuality, in all of it’s forms – why is that????
orinda said
Wow this has been a busy thread. I want to respond to Gangbox first (#25)
yes, I agree it was sad I thought it was wrong for men to ever show attraction to women. I wouldn’t blame the RCP in main for that. Mostly it was an ultra-feminist response to living in a very sexist society. I also used to glare at men who would open a door for me, now I no longer interpret it as treating me as if i was weak and helpless so I say thank you.
As for the construction workers, i wasn’t trying to imply I thought all these men had magically transformed. I’m quite aware of the rules against sexual harassment and I don’t think they are a bad thing. It used to being like running a gauntlet just to walk down the street, no matter what we were wearing.
To Zerohour and several others: sexual desire is a complicated thing. It’s partly formed by society and the media but it’s also very individual. Sometimes I find someone attractive right away but mostly men (and women) become more attractive as i get to know them, unless there’s nobody home upstairs. Stupidity is not sexy.
Women aren’t all alike any more than men are. Some of us want serial monogamy, others don’t. Some of us want casual sex at times. I see nothing wrong with that unless you have agreed to be in an exclusive relationship with someone else.
Rather than have the State step in directly to regulate all personal relationships I’d rather see education, support and openness. Instead of having shelters for battered women, remove the abuser from the home. Encourage women to share with other women (and sometimes men too) relationship issues. Several times I’ve left bad relationships because i could contrast them with good relationships and I realized I wanted and deserved better.
The example from China was a good one. I remember that story. The women in the village did a lot of struggle with the wife beater and gave him a chance to change. He would pretend to reform. Beating him and making a public example of him was almost the last resort.
State intervention is probably necessary in cases like the polygamists or even on a smaller scale, when a man does his best to isolate his wife or children form any outside influences. But it should be done carefully and the oppressors should continue to be struggled with.
gangbox said
The Cold Lamper,
What’s wrong with asexuality, you ask?
Well, some psychologists estimate that about 2% of the population are indeed asexual – that is, they have no interest in sexuality of any kind, hetero-, homo- or otherwise.
For those men and women, asexuality works out just fine.
For the rest of us… it’s pretty damned unhealthy to not be sexual (again, look at the Catholic clergy for a clear example of what forced repression of male sexuality leads to!!!)
Further, you seem to have this essentially Victorian view that men are dirty sex beasts, who impose our venal desires on the poor virginal women, who just want pure sex-free love!
Now, maybe your actual life experience has worked out like that – men as quasirapists, women as victims of predatory male sexuality.
But, in the rest of the world, belive it or not, incredible as it might seem, there are actually women who like and consent to sex (within the constraints of a sexist society that, among other things, tells women that being freely sexual is dirty and unladylike).
Yes, there are even women who actually look at porn of their own volition
There are even women who are directors and producers of those films – ever heard of Jenna Jameson? or Nina Hartley??? – (who is actually a socialist)
I’m sorry, but basing a line on sexuality around that kind of neo-Victorian sexophobia is a recipe for disaster (not to mention making our movement even more marginal than it already is!!!)
Yes, Cold Lamper, there are men in and around the RCP who have consented to supress their sexuality to fit into this procrustean asexual bed – denied a fundamental part of their personality just to protect the women from their predatory maleness.
And that’s one of the most profoundly unhealthy, sick and pathological phenomina around that organization!!!
redflags said
…the possibility that “the only solution to the objectification of women we can come up with is de-sexualization.” Well, why is this an issue? What does this tell us, if not that for billions of men living in patriarchal societies all around the world, those are already the only two choices (never mind whatever communists “come up with”)?
In all respect that’s just nonsense. There are not the only two choices for “billions” of men around the world. If that is your experience, it is very limited. Most married couples have gone through those two options… and a few more.
And I’ll take it further: people can play at objectification (dancing at a club, for one example) and still manage to care. It’s not that complicated after we get rid of shame as the foundation of our morality.
orinda said
I don’t think the point is to condemn the RCP for how some communist men clamp down on their sexuality. But it’s OK to be critical of it. These kinds of things need to be discussed and it’s not something the RCP is open to a lot of talk about. Agree with Cold Lamper, it’s fine to be asexual if that’s how you really are or if it’s something you chose not to overcome. But it is no fun for a woman trying to have a sexual relationship with a man who thinks it’s sexist to show any desire for her. If you’re asexual, it’s not fair to become involved with someone who thinks sex is very important and neither one of you will be happy anyway.
Did anyone see the Indian movie
“Fire”? One of the male characters was trying to become enlightened and decided to give up sex. His wife was very angry, partly because she didn’t want to give up sex and partly because it wasn’t a decision he made WITH her. Men should be careful about feeling self-righteous with how they relate to women without getting some serious feedback from women about what we actually want.
Saoirse said
ditto Redflags. i think work has already started on rethinking such concepts as objectification and the male gaze. This flows back into the discussion of the role of fantasy in peoples lives but also on a basic level that people have complex needs. People need to get off. people need to have fun. people want to be treated well, respected and people want to be sexy and sometimes as a sex object. i sure do.
Nando said
Gangbox’s response (including its misreadings) allows us to drill down a bit:
Gangbox writes:
I don’t believe in “classics” — and I don’t think there is a “classic position.” I don’t think my views on this are from some fixed past. And (any examination will show) that the views of Marx’s time, or Lenin’s time, or the thirties, or the 60s, or Peru, or China, or Nepal — all gave rise to different views (and to different views within a single movement).
Gangbox then characterizes my views in the following way:
Sexual relations are both private and a social relation. That is the contradiction. They are rather distinguished by their private nature (i.e. this has a huge impact on how we discuss, debate, struggle over and transform this social relationship). But they ARE social: i.e. sexual relations form part of a social relation. What you experience as a very personal thing is (objectively) part of a larger aggregate — it is part of how women are treated, it is part of how humans are reproduced, etc.
You can choose to see your personal intimate relations as “me and my girlfriend,” or “me and my dad,” or “me and my argument with my sister.”
But while all these individual relationships ARE personal, they are also part of social relations (they produce and reproduce larger dynamics — including, to varying degrees, patriarchy, or inequality, or isolation, or exploitative abusiveness, or relations of equality, or whatever).
Gangbox says:
This is an important distortion on many levels. And one that is important to get clear.
First in this society privacy is linked to patriarchy. So that the actions that protect male right are “private.” But many other things are not private: girls are order to describe their sexual relationships to their parents (and sometmes other authorities). People think that kids have no right to privacy. Some parents act as if they have a right to control the most minute sexual expressions of their children (masturbation, early experimentation etc.) and the law backs them up. Spouses often think that they have no privacy rights from each other. (Every time a husband says “where are you going dressed like that?” — it is a statement of the accepted limits of privacy in this society.)
Also boys and young men often think that they have no obligation to respect privacy around the relationships they are having with girls and young women (and vice versa) — so that it quickly “goes around school” what so-and-so did with so-and-so.
Often when privacy rights are invoked vis a vis the state — it is explicitly the defense of father right (a “man’s home is his castle”) — so that if there is a “domestic dispute” that is treated as “no one’s business” (unless the parent announces “i can’t control my kid anymore” and the state steps in to assert eroded social authority).
Further, Monica Lewinsky had no privacy rights — as the most intimate acts she performed with a man became the public fodder for political and media frenzies.
So I don’t agree when your remark seems to assume somethings about privacy rights in this society.
The second part of your assertion is simply wrong: “pretty much everything you do sexually is subject to collective criticism and review.”
No. I have said several times (and others have said) that there needs to be privacy around personal sexual matters. And human beings would find it intolerable to live in a society (or a movement) that denied that. Not only should there not be a sex police — but there should not be routine non-police intrusion into privacy.
There are exceptions: if a husband rapes his wife — such extreme acts should be subject to collective criticism and review. If an adult sexually abuses children (who are not capable of informed consent) that too should be subject to collective criticism and review. People who perform serial sexual harassment in the work place should also face collective review (especially after repeated private attempts to discuss it have failed.)
However, generally I suggest a different layered model:
I think we can have a general, detailed discussion of sexuality and behaviors and views WITHOUT putting “everyone’s business on front street.”
So, for example, we can have a social discussion about how wife-beating is wrong and unacceptable — and draw out the experiences of women…. without the details of every family being public.
this is done for example now around child abuse: where powerful exposures about child abuse become part of the culture, and therefore empower kids to see that (a ) this is wrong, and (b ) if it happens to them there are allies to be found, and (c ) they have a right to make it stop… etc.
In other words, the SOCIAL discussion of private relations needs to happen. The doors need to be oppened. The taboos need to be further broken down.
And I believe this can happen (must happen) WITHOUT each person being forced to explain the details every week what they did with person X or person Y behind closed doors.
Is that difference clear?
The experience of women’s consciousness raising groups in the 60s was instructive… because women created a new institution, where they talked of intimate matters (in a voluntary atmosphere of mutual trust) and DISCOVERED what was “happening to other people” — which helped women identify the COMMONALITY of mistreatment and abuse and frustration that MANY of them were experiences, and allowed them also to identify when they were experiences things that were outside the range of what other people considered tolerable.
I don’t think that the abuse of women and children can be broken down without such carefully restrained but real openings in the walls of silence and “privacy.”
Gangbox says:
I think this is not right. Life in a revolutionary movement is not “safe and comfortable.” What people should expect is struggle and sacrifice and challenges and transformation. Revs cannot be thin-skinned or posture as fragile. (The Identity Politics talk about “I was offended and just shut down” — well, revs won’t get far with that sensibility.)
But it is a priority that a rev movement express its values and goals — including (to the primitive extent possible) in the social relations that its members create around them. We can’t create a mini-socialist “community” within capitalism — that isn’t our goal. But you can’t be a working pimp and a rev com. It is hard to trust a rev movement that lets a prominent male beat his spouse without collective censor. Rev leaders who use their position and influence to make “sexual conquests” among the ranks should be criticized. and so on.
Gangbox says:
I think that we all should be open to transformation and mutual criticism. I think that backward forms of sexuality should be restricted, don’t you? And there should be a lively and open struggle over “what is backward? and what isn’t?” — because it isn’t obvious (including to me).
Will that make some men (including you) feel like they are constantly “walking on eggshells”? Well, yeah. Especially if they are backward on this. And they should learn to walk with a little circumspection.
Your complaint sounds so similar to white racists who complain about “political correctness” — when they really mean that they can’t tell their ugly racist jokes and stories without being ostracized.
Obviously, there are times and places in the past when all this has been taken to extremes (especially under the influence of “identity politics”) — and where simply beeing male or heterosexual has been equated with being an “oppressor.” And where a climate was created where people couldn’t really speak, or act, without being bombarded. And all that is bullshit.
But yes, I think you should take care not to constantly offend and degrade women (if that is a problem that keeps coming up). And it is fair to ask (in a comradely and collective way) why you keep doing all this, and why you seem so reluctant to raise your consciousness.
Gangbox says:
Nah. It should be a liberating regime for us (if done correctly, and if you actually support the goal of liberating women from all the oppression). And we can work out ways of making it work.
And if it is true that “most straight men” (in any particular place and time) find a progressive movement and a revolutionary outlook “repellent” — well that may not be so suprising. Don’t many of those men also (currently, for the moment) also find many other progressive views “repellent”?
Gangbox says:
No, it isn’t what this line amounts to. And the “either or” assumption really assumes that there is no possibility of developing non-exploitative human relations — including now in some beginning ways.
Gangbox says:
I don’t htink that the maoist movement has been so “largely male-led.” In many ways and places, women are rather highly represented in leadership at all levels. I know that was true for the peruvian party (shining path) and it has also apparently been true for the RCP. I am not as familiar with the experiences in Asia.
Saoirse said
“There are exceptions: if a husband rapes his wife — such extreme acts should be subject to collective criticism and review.”
Uhm. ah. collective criticism and review. FOR RAPE. I don’t mean to change the tone of this debate but….
I vote prison time.
Nando said
sure, saoirse, “prison time” is one result that can emerge from collective criticism and review.
So is the beaten asshole tied to the chair in the chinese village.
Saoirse said
thanks for the clarification Nando. I agree both are open to discussion.
Nando said
Nando wrote (#32):
“Clearly others have seen this. Read the Storm history — their whole organizaiton came to a freeze-frame to ‘deal with’ an incident.”
jose the red fox Says:
“I’m not sure why this is here and how it relates to the discussion in this thread. We need to be careful with this.”
Nando says:
Jose, I’m not sure why you are urging caution here. There is a history of Storm (published online somewhere) that describes their endgame. If I remember correctly, there was some internal storm over mutual criticisms (involving these matters) and the organization (formally) decided to focus on this (to the detriment of other matters and other work).
Is it wrong to refer to that?
Iris said
Just for the purposes of the discussion, could we stop creating this false dichotomy between “the State policing all personal relationships” and “an open, sympathetic approach with deep analysis” or whatever? I don’t think anyone has advocated police state controls on personal relationships, and there are nuances in the views of how the state would deal with these things and this needs to be discussed with more accuracy and detail.
Also, did I miss something or has asexuality been conflated with androgyny? Androgyny is having gender ambiguity, or, more interestingly, both ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ characteristics. I find androgyny to be sort of a progressive and a positive thing. Asexuality is being free from or unaffected by sexuality.
Gangbox: asexuality or enforced asexuality is a response to violence against women and the very tricky fact that men’s sexual (and non-sexual) interactions with women often maintain reflections of the patriarchy, even while striving to correct or recognize this. Of course asexuality is incredibly unhealthy. We’ve all been trained to find ‘masculine’ traits valuable and desirable, and ‘feminine’ traits undesirable (and vice-versa). This is really hard to combat for everyone in every gender, and since men (like white people) are in the dominant group and have benefited from this domination, they sometimes have to walk on eggshells, as you put it, if they are serious about combating this shit. Sometimes men don’t like it when women approach sex entirely on their own terms (in a world rife with sexual violence, assault and degradation) as a corrective to a fucked up situation–they find it threatening or ‘emasculating’. As a woman whose voice has been laughed off by men in Left movements, including among union organizers, I feel like saying: Sorry, too bad! I find that the biggest opponents of androgyny tend to be men, as they would lose some advantage in power relations. Where for a woman, her appearance and ability to be sexually appealing to men is so tied to her self worth and survival, androgyny would be a fucking weight off the ol’ shoulders.
Gangbox, of course there are women who watch porn and seek out consensual sex. It would be idiotic to say this is a rarity of some kind. But I think you are forcing what ColdLamper said into a crude and incorrect approximation of puritan asexuality. This asexuality is a response to the truth about the dangers of sex for women out there in the world! In the feminist movement, the assertion that ‘men rape women’ is important (rather than ‘women are raped’). Rape is a political issue, and it is important to realize it isn’t just crazy ultra-macho dudes who do this to women, it is legions of ‘normal’ guys–because sexual violence is normalized in our society. Sexual relations are rife with the greater social problem of men assaulting women–read the stats on this in the U.S (let alone in places like Nicaragua, where over 75% of women are raped).
Oh, and that bit about ‘every guy pays for it”? Do you consider that the women who are married to these guys who ‘pay for it’ feel like fucking prostitutes, and that this is the most degrading position that a human could ever be in, short of actual slavery? I’m sure these union fellas you speak of don’t even think of it this way, those ladies are just gettin’ a free ride right? Like when they get to hang out and have fun with the kids all day when they’re housewives? Damn!
Of course men are alienated by the patriarchy, as any dominant group. This is wrong, it stunts emotions, makes men feel like they are only worth the content of their wallets, promotes fear and violence and ruthlessness among men–in other words, patriarchy destroys or stunts all humans’ potential.
redflags said
Iris, are we creating that false dichotemy… or coming out of it?
Jaroslav said
First, this thread is growing at an extremely fast rate (no complaints here), but let me give a disclaimer that I’ve not read every word of this, so sorry for any repeats of stuff other people may have said.
I completely agree with Cold Lamper in comment 44, except I wouldn’t call this ‘asexuality’ at all. I call it having some motherfucking self-control. We are talking about communism here, & must I remind you all that communism is not about relying on spontaneity or ‘letting nature take its course’. There is a qualitative difference under socialism between the state, & the party, & the masses with general communist consciousness. But none of these 3 are about passively giving in to whatever random shit they inherited from thousands of years of class society! Is there any sphere of human activity off-limits to communists? Hell no. Is there any sphere off-limits to a state run by communists? Hell yes. We are talking about changing all of society, all of the world. We will not get to a stateless community of freely associating people unless those people take matters into their own hands. This will not & can not be a passive thing, or a purely ‘private’ thing. Folks here been saying how communists are sexual beings too, yes this is 100% correct! This is because people can be communists with ideals & goals & actions & interactions regardless of if they hold a government post.
JJM+, thank you for sharing your experiences. The word ‘fuck’ comes from the Dutch word for ‘to breed’ & is inherently, because of its modern English usage as well as this origin, qualitatively different from ‘make love’ or whatever. If somebody would say to a person they genuinely respect & love ‘hey let’s fuck’, there is something wrong there. And there’s also something wrong with this huge preoccupation in this society with sex. How bout you want to get to know the girl better, how bout you wanna hang out with her, how bout you think she’s attractive & hope she feels the same way; ‘i wanna fuck her’ means you’d like to shove her into the nearest empty room & have your way with her. And y’know what, fuck that whole viewpoint.
Well that’s my two cents (sorry for the capitalist expression), but I late & gotta go now…
Iris said
Redflags: I dunno, I just keep seeing these posts end with: I don’t advocate a police state crackdown on gender relations (including my own!) and realized that no one is really saying that they do, or are in fact saying the opposite, and that maybe every single post doesn’t require this apologetic qualifier! At least, not if it doesn’t come attached to a more substantive opinion on the matter–I guess this is what I meant. Not that we shouldn’t polemicize against old tendencies.
As for saying “I wanna fuck her.” Yeah, that means so’n’so may be attractive. It also means you want to do something TO someone. Not with. And it is also used as a threat among men in group–it is certainly a threat to women. Of course some dude standing around doesn’t think all that consciously–but we should, we’re communists.
Iris said
Gangbox said: “In the present day, the priority for revolutionaries is to make women feel safe and comfortable being involved in the Party and other communist led institutions.”
Woah, for someone who eschews Victorian ideals of womanhood, you seem to be holding a pretty shallow view of freeing women from the imposed role of ‘frail female’.
The priority for revolutionaries–who ARE women leaders also, not just men who are ‘creating’ conditions for women in some social laboratory–is to fight violence against women and make men and women (and genderqueer/androgynous/intersex) people feel equal, to loosen and destroy those constraints of gender, to help girls become leaders and boys to feel less like emotionless robots, to transform human relationships and combat rape, exploitation, commodification and promote respect, agency and progressive outlooks on sex–militantly and in a lively way, IN THE PRESENT DAY, these are a few of our duties.
JJM+ said
Thanks to Zerohour and Jaroslav for attempting to understanding my comments.
Good discussion, btw.
teh clod lmaper said
Jaroslav: you’re not the only one overwhelmed by the speed of the discussion. It seems like every time I think I’m finished with a post, I hit the reload button and find two or three more people have posted before me, and they have something to say that I was going to say, or something I feel like I have to squeeze a response to into the body of my (previously complete) post. I end up writing in a rush to try to avoid this; I wrote #44 in such a state, and in the process I probably “bent the stick” too far.
So just to clarify: I think “self-neutering,” as Nando characterized it (#46), is an option that should be considered in special circumstances, not something that should be generalized in the fashion the RCP has done (I “commended” them in the last paragraph because I wanted to praise their “unusually high awareness of the problem,” not advocate their apparent policy as the solution). Elsewhere in that post I tried to emphasize the particular and temporal nature of this solution (in the second paragraph I referred to that quote from Jed as a “possibility,” i.e. not a certainty; in the fifth paragraph I tried to frame the issue as being about “a man,” not men as a category, etc.)
the cold lamper said
Iris: I think that was part of Gangbox’s characterization of Nando’s position, not his own.
Iris said
I thought a lot of his post were his reactions to Nando?
Mike E said
nah, iris…. I believe Gangbox was characterizing what he saw as Nando’s view — which he also sees as the “classic” communist practice and theory.
Here is how Gangbox opened his long commentary:
Gangbox strongly disagrees with the views that follow in his post.
Nando then responded to Gangbox’s characterization point by point
redflags said
Mike said something I wanted to bring back into the discussion. I don’t see anything to argue with here. It’s not that some ways of being aren’t better, healthier and others are worse, sicker. It’s where the issue of a love ethic comes in. We have political fights and cultural struggles. SNCC carried a humility before the people while challenging them. It was a striking combination. It was lovely.
Many people experience predation. Sexual exploitation and abuse is common, in some ways pervasive. Even normalized. We should talk about that. We should also be in loving ways with other people, with each other. Like giving heads-up nods walking down the street to other folks is the opposite of road rage or a leer. I like Mike’s basic take:
“But I generally think it is hard to conduct enlightened and progressive intimate relations if you don’t genuinely like and respect the other people involved — which means that it is hard to struggle through the layers of patriarchy in social scenes characterized by a lot of brief relations and relative anonymity.
“I also suspect that the difficulty of working through intimate human relations and the great potential for “fucking people over” — suggests a value for “serial monogamy” (where we “relate” to one person at a time, and where “playing the field” or “have many partners going at once” or “cheating on each other” is generally recognized as a backward thing to do).”
Politics and culture are our two arenas of struggle. Base and superstructure. They are both real. Revolution is not possible in one alone. The communist political and social revolutions cannot be separated, or turned on each other.
Iris said
Oh snap, my bad. I have to fight for objectivity on some subjects.
M.Treloar said
Hello.
Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to actually quote someone to get clarity on an on-going discussion. Try this one.
“Herr Proudhon does not know that all history is but the continuous transformation of human nature.”
The German Ideology
I used that snippet to lead into a much longer discussion of human sexuality in an article called “In Partial Payment: Class Struggle, Sexuality and Gay Liberation”, written in 1981. Part of that article – a minor part – poked fun at the RCP for its stupidity about queer folks. You’re welcome to read the whole article at the Sojourner Truth Organization website (www.sojournertruthorganization.net).
Fortunately, there is very little in Marx or Lenin to quote about the subject of ‘homosexuality’. If Mao had anything to say, well, we can blithely ignore it.
Which means that we’ll have to think this through ourselves. Karl and V.I. will forgive us if we borrow their methods of thought.
And the simple conclusion we should come to is that (hetero)sexuality is socially constructed. And, to the extent that it is oppressive, we should be about destroying it.
This doesn’t mean that women and men won’t fuck each other. Any more than people will stop eating food in future societies, even those where exploitation does not exist.
It does mean that everything about the way in which humans approach each other, whether on a shop floor or a street or a schoolroom or a bedroom will have been utterly changed.
Refer back to that quote now. I agree with it. And anyone who knows anything about the nature of social and sexual relationships within the U.S. will agree that there has been a continual transformation of ‘human nature’ within the last fifty years.
I’m not going to attempt to make lengthy responses to the many points raised in what is now a long thread. My apologies to those who have made some interesting and salient points and raised good questions. Some of the posters are just mixing confusion with bad analysis or refusal to do analysis, however. Carl Davidson’s point, while he was defending gay rights, is just absurd. Of course we can figure out why individuals and large masses of people do certain things – that’s what revolutionaries do. We think about society, right? And then change it.
Now for a little Lenin.
“Concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”
In one context, the statement “I want to fuck you” could be viewed as a lovely invitation from one human to another. Someone said it to me two weeks ago and I was happy to comply.
But suppose it is a male prison guard talking to a male/female/trans prisoner after they’ve just pepper-sprayed them.
Analyse the reality of the social relation, not the words.
Good luck with this on-going discussion. I apologize for not being able to devote the time to contribute more.
M.Treloar
JJM+ said
Redflags:
“Many people experience predation. Sexual exploitation and abuse is common, in some ways pervasive. Even normalized. We should talk about that. We should also be in loving ways with other people, with each other. Like giving heads-up nods walking down the street to other folks is the opposite of road rage or a leer. I like Mike’s basic take:”
I want to relate to what RedFlags says here. Where I live, and at my high school, there is what seems like a lot of pride, although I could be interpreting it wrong. I see many guys that walk past each other and try to stare each other down. The vast majority of the time, they don’t even know each other, what they believe, who they are, etc. Yes, it is sad, and it is confusing. Rarely would you see the same two guys giving each other a “heads up” salute, just out of respect.
Carl Davidson said
If one’s sexuality is not personal, what is? Medieval society said the ‘personal is the political,’ where the politial was Mother Church, and you were an organic part of it, at your peril.
The distinction between personal and political, the creation of a private sphere and dimension to the self, was an achievement of the Enlightenment, and of human civilization. The personal and and political are connected, but they are not the same, and one is not subordinate to the other–unless you want to argue for theocracy.
The political power of the proletarian state certainly is restricted. Sovereignty resides in the people themselves, not, borrowing from Rousseau, in the imperfect instruments they organize for government or parties. People also have rights as part of what it means to be human, and all human enterprises are subordinate to an ecosystem.
If that makes me a liberal, I’m proud of it, and will continue, like Marx and others, to affirm the acheivements of human civilization over the last 100,000 years, including those won by the borgeoiosie, together with the masses, against the feudal order. You need to think these things through a little. Take it from someone who has a defense of Pol Pot in his resume.
the cold lamper said
ROFL, most unintentionally funny moment in this conversation. I wouldn’t add that to my resume if I were you, Carl…
Anyhow…in my first post in this thread I referred to a post by Nando which I thought said more or less what I was trying to say. In light of Nando’s subsequent critique of my post and my own attempt to clarify some bad formulations in that post, I just wanted to hone in on the specific passage I read as supporting my view:
“And the issue is not just sexuality (this is not really a matter of some heirarchy “telling people how and when to fuck” ;) — people should feel that they are in a place where people “have each other’s back,” where casual suspicion along lines of nationality and race are overcome, where people overcome the petty because of common dedication to a larger purpose….. etc.
“If such a climate means that some men need to set aside their “sexual being” (or tamp it down, or adopt new restraints)…. so be it. If some men see this as if they are just being told “who and when and how to fuck” — well, i think they should raise their consciousness. There is a lot of “male right” involved in the sense of entitlement to think about and express your desire to fuck anyone you want.”(my emphasis)
By the way, that was post #32. (I hope my ingenious idea to refer to posts I’m responding to by their numbers is helping other readers know what I’m talking about better…because I’m starting to find it damn tedious.)
JJM+ said
I wonder what there is to defend about Pol Pot.
Cold Lamper: that ‘male right’ was precisely what I was referring to in past comments on this thread. It is not uncommon for a man to have not acquaintance with a woman at all and see her as an object of sexual satisfaction…for himself. Males under capitalist society see themselves as having a ‘right’ to fuck a woman, many times whether she wants to or not.
I am not arguing that it is a bad thing for men to express sexual desires towards a woman, I do it sometimes, but I do not do it in a way that degrades the woman, and, in fact, I keep it to myself most of the time. I understand that it is only natural for both sexes to feel such desires towards others.
gangbox said
I never thought I’d agree with Carl Davidson (if there was a hell, Satan would be breaking the icecicles off his pitchfork right about now), but I have to second his comments here (# 73).
I always thought that the goal of our movement was “emancipating humanity”.
And, like I said in a much earlier post, telling people how to live their personal lives (and having some kind of legal sanction/Salem-witch-hunt-style social shunning if they don’t toe the line) seems pretty damned nonemancipatory to me!!!
At the risk of sounding Hannah Arentish here, that sounds pretty damned totalitarian!
It also sounds pretty damned Catholic – all the sexual repression and self hatred, but even worse, cause at least they get a shot at redemption in their mythical next life, where all we’d have here is the command for men to self-eunichfy in this one!
Frankly, I really wouldn’t want to live in a world where “…some men need to set aside their “sexual being” (or tamp it down, or adopt new restraints)…”
And the androgyny piece?
Even at it’s best (think David Bowie in his New York Dolls period) I wouldn’t sign up for that program.
And, at it’s worst (think Red Guards circa 1968 – everybody wears the same ill fitting baggy PLA garrison uniform and sex is considered politically wrong) – well, I definitely wouldn’t want any part of that either!!!
I don’t think there’s any contradiction between being masculine in the conventional sense and being a passionate opponent of sexism, sexual abuse, violence against women, homophobia ect.
I still have to ask (cause nobody answered it so far) where did the revolutionary communist movement get these stultifying, anti human, and quite frankly really deeply psychologically unhealthy ideas about sexuality?
I do see a bit of a pattern here – some of the comments touched on the idea of how being a communist is basically supposed to be uncomfortable, with little to any accomidation to people’s feelings and emotional needs.
That souds a whole LOT like the self flagilation customs of some Catholic monks, and the literal self flagilation (as in they actually beat themselves with whips) practiced by some Shi’ite Muslims during one of their religious festivals and the idea that many Protestants have that the pleasures of the flesh are sinful.
Yeah, I went there.
This whole anti sex thing sounds a whole lot like religious ascetisism – and as we all know, there ain’t a damned thing liberatory about that.
Beyond that, how do you think this whole anti sex, compulsory male asexuality/androgyny deal would sound to the folks we’re supposed to be emancipating (that is, our friends the proletariat)????
Would they want any part of that?
Or would they be disgusted?
Beyond their subjective feelings, objectively, is there anything good about folks who claim to want to free the human species calling for the supression of one of the most basic human drives???
Jimmy Higgins said
Just a side note to Carl. The song Jennings did was actually written by Bob Dill (who also wrote “Amanda” inter alia). Credit where credit is due. Not to be mistaken for “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night” by John Lennon. Lennon took the line from a Reverend Ike sermon he saw on teevee.
redflags said
I think I have a copy of Davidson’s piece on Pol Pot, who on worst case scenarios is probably responsible for as many deaths as Bill Clinton, and unlike Clinton – Pol Pot never had his Secretary of State casually defend the intentional killing of 500,000 children through starvation, as Madeline Albrite did. Davidson’s resume is nothing if not consistent in its strange calculus of position. Vote for War, end the war!
Nando said
carl writes: “If one’s sexuality is not personal, what is?…
The distinction between personal and political, the creation of a private sphere and dimension to the self, was an achievement of the Enlightenment, and of human civilization. The personal and and political are connected, but they are not the same, and one is not subordinate to the other–unless you want to argue for theocracy.”
I am really not sure what you are arguing…
You don’t pose it in terms of “a contradiction between social and private” — but as a matter of “personal and political.” What is the significance of that?
Do you not see “personal” relations as also social relations — and therefore also part of what needs to be revolutionized in society?
Is transforming the norms of “personal” spheres part of our “political” goals, or not? (Because then the question becomes not “whether” but “how.”)
Also, I’m not clear what the meaning of “personal” is to you. First, there are things that are (literally) personal: for example my unexpressed thoughts (memories, insights, irrational feelings, desires, stray musings etc). They have social content (obviously), but until I express them they are personal. And I own things that are personal (the famous example of toothbrush, but also clothes, books, particular food items…) And they are personal in the sense that: I can dispose of them any way I want, and don’t need to account for it with others. And they really are not for others to take without permission. Ok, so much for personal.
but are our “intimate relations” personal in that extreme sense? No. They are social, because they involve other people, and they mean that we have entered into the domain of the social. And the individual relationships we form are a part of a larger aggregated matrix of relationships that define major parts of our society (including the reproduction of children and daily life).
I think you are right that the idea of “personal” developed within feudalism and became part of the challenge to the feudal abolutist state. In one vision of feudal monarchy, the king (tsar) was the father of all, and this patriarchal absolutism allowed little. “rights” for subordinate levels (including the boyers, and broader nobility). In the British model (i.e. magna carta) the rights of the king (i.e. the central state) was restricted by law — and society exists as a shell of domains, each with its own “right.”
Now, in once sense, this has meant that the domain of family was “personal” in the sense that it was ruled by father right.
To give one clear example: the supreme court decision (1980s) overruled state laws against sodomy on the basis that they violated “privacy.” Chief Justice Burger wrote a fascinating dissent, saying that there was no “privacy” involved when to gay men had sex. Why? Because, Burger explained, the Anglo-Saxon notion of privacy was defined as a right of the family to be distinctly governed (and freed from direct outside control).
Burger followed this logic by saying that there was no privacy when two men had sex because there were no relations there with women and children. In other words, it is worth thinking through what this reveals about the concept of “personal” that you see as emerging with the enlightenment: Burger’s point was that legal privacy was (in his view and historically) a function of father right over wife and children, and the right of the man vis-a-vis the larger authority in society.
And there is a profound relationship of the personal with father right. When someone says that the beating of a woman is “a family matter” — they are evoking that concept of “personal” or “private” (that emerged out of the Anglo-Saxon tradition that is the basis of U.S. law and custom).
So, to be dialectical, this breaks down: that realm of personal (which is seen as central to “Western” civilization, and contrasted to “Eastern” civilization) posits spheres of society that the central authority can’t penetrate (without a warrant, without a right of habeas corpus, without probable cause etc.) And (in classic liberal thinking) these “rights” (which first emerged as the right of british feudal lords to rule “their” domains without intrusion from the crown) formed a basis for broader “individual rights” a few centuries later.
But in both history and practice, the rights of these “spheres” reproduces the dominant property and patriarchal relations — and they are not simply progressive. And in particular the realm of “personal” upheld by Carl (and the realm of “private” defined by Chief Justice Burger) are often linked to “a man’s home is his castle” (and its underlying assumption that the women and children in such homes are the property of those men).
We are not talking about politicizing your use of your “personal” toothbrush. But we are debating how to transform the SOCIAL character of the “personal relationships” we all have — to liberate women (and children) from the many things that arise from unchallenged father right (and the silence that culture wraps those rights in.)
And (again) by saying that these are social (and that the solutions are political) is not identical with saying that they should all automatically become public or police matters. People need privacy — but not the historical “privacy” that shrouds and protects the enforcement of “personal” and “private” male supremacy.
One final point: the main problem therefore is not the more exotic subcultures (BDSM etc.) The main issue (in intimate relations) is the boyfriend who says “if you break up with me, i will kill you.” Or the father who smacks his 15-year-old daughter for going on a date without permission. Or the thousand other “ordinary” acts that have passed as “normal” and “private” for centuries. I have talked with many high school girls who “get a boy friend” and quickly find that these boys think a quick slap is part of the “privileges” that come with the status — or the right to order them to “change your clothes” or “i don’t like that make-up” or “don’t talk to those girls anymore, i don’t like it.”
Just personal? Or part of the revolution?
Nando said
Gangbox: yes, your argument is exactly Hannah Arendtish.
The argument of absolutizing the individual and the personal are classically liberal, and are tied to fencing some parts of society off from change.
Now we can cross those fences in destructive ways — and that would not be good. And the myth of “totalitarianism” was constructed by exploiting times and ways that “fences” have been crossed in senseless and destructive ways.
But if the emancipation of humanity (which you uphold correctly) can’t be accomplished without the emancipation of women — and because the oppression of women is so often carried out (and enforced through dependence and violence) precisely in the “private spheres” (and even in the intimate sexual spheres)…. that emancipation NECESSITATES a discussion of how to revolutionize those spheres without destroying the existance of privacy. It is a contradiction and a difficult one.
Mao said “where the broom does not reach, the dust does not disappear on its own.”
Iris said
Gangbox, conventional masculinity, in our culture, is PRECISELY tied to violence, alienation, non-femininity and power over. Masculinity is DEFINED by these things. I don’t mean this as something to self-flagellate over, it is just expressed to me constantly in this culture; I notice it everyday, and it is reinforced in men’s behavior by other men. Really honestly please read Michael Messner’s “Taking the Field”. It is a fascinating study of how violent hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity and misogyny is forced on men from childhood, and how this particularly asserts itself in the sports industry–when my partner read it, he was horrified. It is an easy and very informing read, written by a man with sympathy for men–as well as sharp analysis of violence in our culture.
On androgyny, I said:
“RedFlags, I don’t mean to say we should actively promote androgyny, in some forceful way. But the breaking down of segregation between genders–material (in certain spheres of work or military) and cultural–organically breaks down polarized differences between women and men, white people and black people, etc., etc. Difference and individuality should be celebrated, not erased, but polarization–meaning a dominant group defines itself by how it IS NOT the group it oppresses–reduces with contact and the development of mutual respect. Like I said above, men who grow up with sisters are many times less likely to sexually assault or rape women. The ‘otherness’ of the women they dominate in our patriarchal culture is broken down. Thats what I mean! Of course, ‘add women and stir’ is not what I am advocating here, but something more radical.” and
“Sorry, too bad! I find that the biggest opponents of androgyny tend to be men, as they would lose some advantage in power relations. Where for a woman, her appearance and ability to be sexually appealing to men is so tied to her self worth and survival, androgyny would be a fucking weight off the ol’ shoulders.”
Like I said men seem to be the most afraid of androgyny. How scary to have your tough exterior swept away…And who wants to be like David Bowie? forget him being an artist–what a fag, right Gangbox?
Saoirse said
Any form of gender oppression is wrong and fundamentally limiting. In our society gender oppression and attacks of androgyny, gender queerness are quite prevelant. Some of these attacks are connected to forms of homophobia other have cultural roots of there own.
I think looking at the culture around the thin white duke David Bowie or say glam rock is quite useful. there are many liberatory moments and things to revisit. Yet at the same time, and one can only look at Bret Michael’s TV show, Rock Of Love, there is a strong patriarchial undercut that exists side by side with these actually existing forms of alternate gender expression.
And looking at the gay and lesbian community, for many years, domestic battery and abuse remained hidden, often cloaked in secret because we (the LGBT community) couldnt believe this existed in the “new” world. But it does, regardless of people’s gender expression. regardless of people’s gender. regardless of people’s sexuality.
What this says to me, at the least, is we need both a liberatory movement that celebrates ALL forms of gender including uber butch masculinity, high femme (as its called amongst many dykes) and everything in between.
So we put forward alternative models of expression and behavior we have to model both. I would love a world with a million genders and a million sexualities. All with equal rights. All with a liberatory vision. And we need a feminist movement that seeks to undermine patriarchy and male privilege. And we can expect some people to stop being who they are.
Saoirse said
oops.
the last sentence should read.
and in the process we can’t expect some people to stop being who they are and stop expressing their gender.
redflags said
Like I said men seem to be the most afraid of androgyny. How scary to have your tough exterior swept away…And who wants to be like David Bowie? forget him being an artist–what a fag…
Hey, I wanted to be like David Bowie… and I didn’t even have sisters.
But in truth, I was surrounded by strong, determined, capable and quite often traditionally feminine women throughout my youth. And just like learning algebra (and later Hegel) from a black man made it hard for me to ever succumb to the racist depictions of black men, so too did women just seem people.
And this is what’s hard. In this liberal society, however authoritarian it is these days, there is a real diversity of experiences and even whole cultures. I’ve known women who grew up afraid to wear make-up and who changed their clothes when they left their parents house so they could dress how they wanted (often quite provocatively).
There was an art piece back in the 80s with a woman’s face and over it in block letters it said something like “your body is a battleground”.
With the Orientalism around how Muslim women cover or don’t cover their hair and the culture wars in America, it seems one constant is how women are expected to present themselves in public. This is a real fight, with casualties and strange victories.
Is it reactionary for women to wear make-up? Or cover their hair in a French school?
When the French state decrees that Islamic girls of North African family origin can’t attend school with scarves covering their hair… is that about liberation? I don’t think so.
And this brings us back to the issue of where power resides, not the particular signifiers people flash. Lipstick, no lipstick. Scarves, no scarves. Where does power and right reside?
Socialism is not an enshrinement of rights or imposing on those who have imposed. Is people are not at liberty to think, exchange ideas and present their own bodies as they wish – how can we begin to think about “liberation”?
The habits of austerity and sacrifice that attend revolutionary work are not a model for society. We should try to carry out the values in ourselves we wish for the world, but that’s not what this fight is about.
Without ganging up on Gangbox, if we don’t have room in a fighting movement for people with different ideas on these matters, we will be in effect creating a subculture within this world and not revolutionizing the base of society. Without political revolution, I don’t think a progressive social revolution is possible in this world.
People need to breath. And we have to fight for a world where people can breath, and sing.
Carl Davidson said
Intimate relations are both personal and social by definition, because they involve two people.
But simply because they are social in this sense, it does not follow that they are necessarily political,ie, subject to the law, the state, the party.
And don’t carry on about what some men demand as a right. They can howl anything at the moon all they want, just so long as they don’t become abusive, a public nuisance or violate the laws of assault. Any women also has the right to say ‘No’, not to be bothered, and to walk away unharmed. (And if they change their ways, they might even have a shot at getting a date on Saturday night! )
All that goes without saying in civil and civilized society.
I used ‘the personal IS the political’ because it is popular from the feminists of the 1960s till today, without many people realizing the feudal and theocratic implications in the slogan.
The Islamic society envisioned by the salayfists (bin Laden, etc) is exactly one were the personal and the political are one.
Finally, my point about Pol Pot wasn’t hyperbole. I was editor of Class Struggle when Kampuchea was under fire from Vietnam and others. We sent reporters there, were taken on ‘the tour,’ and published a book of smiling photos of kids in revolutionary Kampuchea, where the old ’social relations’ were being transformed, even money was being abolished and new communist relations were doing away with family ties, status an so on.
It was a big lie, for the most part. In fact, in every critical part. We learned how big a year or two later. And my responsibility is not to hide or deny it, but to own up to it, and work to see it doesn’t get repeated.
I wasn’t on the tour, but published the stuff, and put a piece by Pol Pot in our journal.
One thing I dug into about Pol Pot was his fascination with Rousseau, something he shared, at least a bit, with Lenin. you see, most of Pol Pot’s outrages ad crimes were not so much applications of Mao, as they were his understanding of revolutionary democracy (very totalitarin,actually) of Rousseau’s variety and the French revolution, in contrast to John Locke, who influenced some American revolutionaries.
But that’s a long and interesting topic for another time.
personally political said
“I used ‘the personal IS the political’ because it is popular from the feminists of the 1960s till today, without many people realizing the feudal and theocratic implications in the slogan.
The Islamic society envisioned by the salayfists (bin Laden, etc) is exactly one were the personal and the political are one.”
Carl this is so guilt by association, you’re good at that.
redflags said
Carl, you have a remarkable ability to take the wrong positions. From Pot Pot to the Clintons… really, man. You say revisionist with pride, but dude.
redflags said
Siorse writes: Any form of gender oppression is wrong and fundamentally limiting.
Macho is a form of gender expression. Can it not be mocked, “limited” and struggled against? Part of the issue with focusing on the transgressive is that it doesn’t get into the dominant forms of gender expression which then seem like a “normal” that we then have to defend against rather than something to overcome.
gangbox said
RedFlags,
You made a lot of good points in your last couple of posts!
“Socialism is not an enshrinement of rights or imposing on those who have imposed. Is people are not at liberty to think, exchange ideas and present their own bodies as they wish – how can we begin to think about “liberation”?”
“The habits of austerity and sacrifice that attend revolutionary work are not a model for society.”
“Without ganging up on Gangbox, if we don’t have room in a fighting movement for people with different ideas on these matters, we will be in effect creating a subculture within this world and not revolutionizing the base of society. Without political revolution, I don’t think a progressive social revolution is possible in this world.”
I really have to second what you say here…
We can’t change the world by forming some perfect little utopian community (folks have tried that, again and again and again over the last 150 years or so, and it NEVER WORKED ONCE!!)
We have to live in the real world to change it – and yes, that means dealing with folks who, while quite revolutionary on political issues, are totally NOT in favor of giving up gender differences (and I for one am DEFINITELY one of those folks – and I know I’m not alone in that!!!)
I’m all for abolishing gender OPPRESSION – and yes, that includes oppression of folks who defy present gender norms – in particular, the LGBT community (especially the B’s and the T’s) but including straight folks who don’t do the whole masculinity or femininity thing.
With that said, I personally really like the whole tough guy masculinity thing, and I would never ever want to give up on that as far as my own personality is concerned.
We CAN do without the whole masculinity = abusing women and children thing, and I’d be among the first to resolutely oppose that – but, I am absolutely not prepared to throw out the baby of masculinity with the bathwater of male chauvinist violence.
=============================
more big ups for RedFlags -
“and many of the other kids I met who grew up in these fairly encapsulated networks became cynical about what it was they actually were… believing that democratic centralism was a technique of manipulation where the central committees were a bourgeoisie and the cadre a proletariat to be drawn from. Because what else could it be if these so-called freedom fighters were breaking women down in private?”
A whole LOT of so called “democratic centralism” in practice breaks down to the party bosses ordering the cadre workers around.
Quite honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere on the left where “democratic centralism” DIDN’T work out like that!!!
And I know what I’m talking about here, cause I’ve done quite a tour of the far left in my time (YCL,USA and CPUSA – where I got my start politically as a high school kid – PLP, a brief tour of the anarchoid world of Critical Resistance – where they have their own special “consensus-based” dictatorship that’s different than the Leninist kind, but is just as oppressive – the League for the Revolutionary Party and, most recently, the RCP)
And, despite the “line differences” it always seemed just like work – there were foremen, and there were workers (exept the foremen on the jobites on the whole tended to be a lot less psychologically abusive!!!)
And, I’ve always had this voice coming from the back of my head telling me “well, capitalism IS horrible and all, but would you REALLY want to live in a world run by folks like these?? They’re bad enough WITHOUT state power – imagine them if they had access to a secret police and firing squads!!!”
And yeah, that’s cynical, and yeah I fight against that attitude – but frankly, the way the left is, there is constantly new data coming in to reinforce that cynicism!!!
So when folks talk about imposing “democratic centralism” on people’s personal lives…. well, knowing what “democratic centralism” almost always REALLY MEANS in practice, I just have to jump up and scream NO NO NO NO NO NO NO ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bad enough this system makes us have a “cop in the head” I do NOT want to replace that with a “commissar in the head”!!!!!
Carl Davidson said
Spare me the Clinton charge. I never voted for Bill. And most likely, won’t have to for Hillary, either.
But who knows? a lot depends on time, place and circumstance.
Same goes for Pol Pot. Defending him was not only our party line, but the line of China and the line of the international movement we were part of. Take a deeper look at some of your own trend’s weirdness, and things you defend from afar. You may be surprised, sooner rather than later.
personally political said
“Same goes for Pol Pot. Defending him was not only our party line, but the line of China and the line of the international movement we were part of. Take a deeper look at some of your own trend’s weirdness, and things you defend from afar. You may be surprised, sooner rather than later.”
Well maybe if if your poltitics were more personal then groupthink you would not have made such assanine decisions. Also your view of voting for liberals or conservatives has also been beaten throughout history
the cold lamper said
I hope my quip about Carl’s resumé wasn’t taken too seriously; I don’t really know who Carl Davidson is or what his politics are, other than what he has posted on this site recently, so I wasn’t trying to make some huge criticism of him. It perhaps is more understandable why some might have been misled by the Khmer Rouge at the time, given the desperate situation they were dealing with and how it was predictably exploited by the imperialists.
zerohour said
I agree with Carl here. Ridiculing him for a self-admitted political error was below the belt.
Carl Davidson said
Groupthink? I’m the one of those arguing against it here, if you’ll read over the posts. No worry, I have a thick skin. But with all the non sequitors and ad hominems around here, quite a few here would have flunked my Philosophy 101 class in Logic from 1965. I’d rather discuss the substance of the matter–and don’t give me any crap about ‘bourgeois’ logic, since I included Dia-Mat and other N-Valued Logics as well as Aristotle in teaching the course.
Mike E said
I’d like to speak in favor of collective thinking — through discussion and debate — over the problems that face us. Call it group think if you want, but people need more “thinking about the world” in groups, not less.
Carl Davidson said
Why ‘collective thinking,’ whatever that is. Why not just dialogue, discussion, debate, inquiry? Scientific method requires these, and it also requires peer review, and an open and democratic community.
If this sums up ‘collective thinking,’ fine. But if you mean something more, spell it out.
Nando said
My two cents toward spelling this out:
Often the word “group think” is used to disparage that kind of collectivity — it even goes back before libertarian or “anti-totalitarian” criticisms of communism, it goes back to the very old prejuedices against “the mob” (the idea that when ordinary people think and act “in groups” their “worst instincts” come to the fore.)
We all need to be creative and critical thinkers — as individuals. We need to be looking at things fresh, and comparing ideas to reality.
Working things out collectively needs to involve debate and inquiry — it does objectively, it will inevitably, and we need to develop methods for having that be more openly developed.
But the reason the collectivity of the process is important is because it goes to the question of “what are we trying to do?”
We are not just exchanging “individual ideas” and reaching “individual conclusions.” We are also trying to reach collective conclusions as a basis for common (and disciplined) action under difficult conditions.
But the point (the actual goal of our discussion and debate) is not to make for a better “individual journey” — toward truth, or discovery, or self-fulfillment, or maximum personal contribution or whatever.
The point (for those of us who are rev’s and com’s, that is) is to change the world — and that requires a collective process, that arrives at common insights and plans.
[Salute on May First!]
gangbox said
On the Groupthink question:
In my experience on the American far left (and I’ve been doing this stuff since I was a high school freshman – and that was 27 years ago) I’ve found that the “collectivity” that some speak so fondly of usually amounts to what the Marine Corps would call a “chain of command”.
That is, the bigshots at the top make all significant decisions, and those decisions are in turn handed down through the leadership chain to the folks on the ground who carry those decisions out.
In the Corps, it looks like this: from Commandant of the Corps to Divisional Commander to Brigade Commander to Batallion Commander to Company Commander to Platoon Leader to Squad Leader to Fire Team Leader to you, the grunt on the ground.
Every left wing organization I’ve ever been around worked just like that – but, unlike the USMC, where they’re intellectually honest enough to admit that it’s an authoritarian structure, and they really don’t care what you think about their orders, the left usually puts up this whole Potemkin village of “discussion” and “debate” when, on the real, the real decisions were made by the bigshots on the top.
I’d respect the communist movement a whole lot more if they’d be HONEST ENOUGH to admit that they follow orders that come from the leaders at the top, and if they’d dispense with that whole gloss of “democratic discussion” which we all know is, in practice, meaningless.
The only time I ever saw real democratic discussion on the left was when the CPUSA split in 1991.
One wing – the “Committees of Corrrespondence” wanted to openly subordinate themselves to the Democratic Party, and stop even pretending to be communists.
Another wing – the CPUSA leadership, wanted to continue pretending to be communists and maintaining the pretense of independence from the Democratic Party while in practice being the caboose to the Democrat’s locomotive.
Still another wing – the CPUSA left wing, wanted to actually move towards being real communists. This wing was mostly composed of rank and file CPUSAers who were blue collar workers (and yes, I was one of those folks).
Since our wing was unrepresented in the leadership, in practice we ended up being footsoldiers for the CPUSA leadership (and I do mean “footsoldiers” quite literally as in we were used as a goonsquad to intimidate the Committees of Correspondence folks at the 1991 CPUSA convention)
Oh yeah, there was also the money.
Mikhail Gorbachev had cut the CPUSA off financially in 1987 – and the satellites in Cuba, East Germany and Czechoslovakia soon cut off the cash spigots as well – and that cost the party about US $ 2.5 million a year in income.
That money had helped hold things together in a party that was actually pretty deeply divided internally.
But, without the Soviet cash, the party leadership had to lay off a lot of folks and disband a lot of the party fronts – and that caused a LOT of hurt feelings (not to mention empty wallets), so that helped bring things to a head in 91.
The debate leading up to the 1991 CPUSA convention was the only time I can remember when a left wing party I was involved with had any kind of real internal debate that had any consequences.
Problem was, the CPUSA leadership basically LOST that debate in the only places where it really mattered – the bigger party districts (New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Northern California, Southern California).
So, they had to stack the deck at the convention – and they did.
The leadership controlled the credentials committee, so they uncredentialled as many Committees of Correspondence delegates as possible.
And, they had a goonsquad in place to make sure they didn’t try to come into the convention unauthorized (and to create a general atmosphere of intimidation).
They got us on the CPUSA left to do that for them – since most of us were blue collar or service workers (unlike the other factions which were largely white collar or middle class) it was felt – correctly – that we would be able to handle ourselves in a fight better than the other side.
Also, the CPUSA leadership used the Cleveland Police as reinforcements for the goon squad.
Yes, you read that right, the CLEVELAND POLICE…
The convention was at the Cleveland Hilton, which happens to be a franchized hotel that’s actually owned by the City of Cleveland.
Since it was a municipally owned venue, the CPUSA leadership was able to use the police to kick out folks that they didn’t want to attend
And no, they actually didn’t see just how deeoply and profoundly fucked up that was politically.
Some of us on the goonsquad saw it – but of course as low ranking party members (and mere blue collar workers at that) our opinions simply didn’t matter… in fact, we wern’t even asked beforehad about how we felt about standing shoulder to shoulder on the same side of the barricades as the cops.
Even with the intimidation, there was, for the first and last time in my time in the CPUSA, an actual lively debate at the convention on real live political issues.
This discussion wasn’t window dressing – it was REAL cause it had real consequences (that is, if the CPUSA leadership lost, the party as such would be disbanded and merged with the Democratic Party).
Of course, if you are a Gus Hall (or a Bob Avakian, or a Sam Marcy, or a Jim Robertson ect) that is, the big tunafish in a tiny left wing party, a mini me version of Nicolae Ceausescu who is the absolute dictator of a couple hundred people, you do NOT want to risk that power trip with the possiblity that you might lose your spot and go back to mere mortalhood.
You still have to make a show of having internal debate – but at the end of the day, the big tunafish make the real decisions.
And I know all of y’all know that!!!
So let’s cut the bullshit, and keep it real – the left is run by groupthink and a chain of command.
Some of the better groups (the RCP for instance) WILL actually ask your opinion.
But at the end of the day, the big tunafish decides what will be done.
Now, this works against individual initiative, and it continues the bourgeois path of suffocating the immense creativity that burns inside of the skull of every human being, at the expense of the ideas of a few bigshots being imposed on all.
Carl Davidson said
If you want to take on the CPUSA, CCDS, or any left group, set aside anecdotal quips, and deal with the substance of the issues. I’m a CCDS member, often a minority gadfly, but your little descriptions aren’t accurate or helpful here. It is a group that posits ‘pluralism’ as part of a description of its internal political trends, and it has more interesting discussions than most on socialism and the issues of the day. It doesn’t claim to be a party or democratic centralist, and I’m not presenting it as such. At best, it’s a transition to something better.
There’s a grain of truth in your Marine Corp analogy, but if you leave it at that, without going into an alternative, you just reinforce anarchism and anti-Leninism.
gangbox said
Carl,
I’d like to ask you to take the bass out of your voice, and speak to me respectfully, if ya don’t mind!!!
I’m giving a historical narrative here of events that I was actually a part of – and that I have a rather unique perspective on.
Now you can agree with me, or disagree with me, but you cannot deny my voice on this, Carl!!!
Carl Davidson said
I took part in the same events, and do my best to be respectful to all. I’m not sure what you mean by the ‘base’ in my voice. Make your points however you like; I’m asking you to elaborate, especially as to the alternative.
Linda D. said
Okay, admittedly I haven´t read through all 101 responses to “On telling each other how to fuck,” but do think it interesting that there have been 101 fucking responses.
And I would bet out of 101, plus of course Mike E.’s original post, someone has touched on what I think is and should be the main “thread” running throughout this discussion: “Women’s oppression.”
Simplistically put, we live in a world where there’s not one society that isn’t male dominated, and patriarchal–patriarchy affecting everything from economics to politics to sexuality, to moral/human values, yada yada.
Three female, NON-Marxist/Leninist/Maoist writers are the ones who really got me to thinking about how deeply ingrained this all is, even amongst more enlightened and revolutionary-minded folk, and how women’s oppression permeates all societal relations–sectors, classes, genders, et al. Think this has everything to do with how we look at sexuality, the “4 alls,” et alls. (I personally think that women’s oppression is going to be the last bastion of struggle.)
The 3 authors I’m referring to are: Andrea Dworkin, Margaret Atwood, and Marge Piercy. In Dworkin’s “Right Wing Women” she discusses and exposes the roots of homophobia, e.g., that because women are basically viewed as vehicles for procreation, homosexuals, notably gay men, are seen as the ultimate threat to the straight male (never mind worrying about whether or not this same straight male is pleasing his female partner sexually). Dworkin, who I often times didn’t agree with but she sure as hell was provocative–also had an incredible essay in her “Letters from the War Zone”–”A 24 hr. truce on rape.” She was addressing a crowd of 500 “enlightened” men, “who were in touch with their feminine side,” and suddenly stopped her lecture. Basically she said, “why the hell are all of you trying to impress me with your (new found) feminism? Instead why don’t you go into your locker rooms at the gym or wherever, and talk to those guys about a 24-hour truce on rape?” (Interestingly enough, the most success so far in quelling the rapist is when he is made to feel like the objectified victim of his own violent crime.)
I would bet that most participants in Kasama are familiar with “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood first published in 1985. Certainly still relevant today with all the reactionary moralistic, maniac fundamentalists running rampant.
But Marge Piercy proposed a whole different society in “Woman on the Edge of Time”–a kinder, gentler, and more equal society, and while the relations, be they sexual or more in terms of the society at large, were pretty much androgynous, Piercy proposed a whole other mind-set, and for the most part eliminated the oppression and exploitation of women. The greatest irony in her novel was that the narrator was locked up in an insane asylum…her “insanity” of course determined by the for real criminally insane, i.e. the government.
Am not trying to sell all 101 responses short, but so far some of the responses strike me as not being particularly scientific. On the other hand, just because Dworkin, Atwood and Piercy were not quoting Marx, Lenin and Mao line and verse, doesn’t mean they should be dismissed either.
TellNoLies said
Linda,
Fascinating list of writers. I’ve been influenced by all three as well. While I don’t agree with everything Dworkin says she is a much more serious thinker than many who dismiss her realize. I haven’t read “Right Wing Women” but “Letters from the War Zone” really woke me up to these issues. I also like Piercy and Atwood’s novels. Atwood wrote an interesting piece in the NYTimes a few years back about how “The Handmaids Tale” was inspired by a visit to Afghanistan in the late 1970s and the experience of seeing the condition of women there. Piercy has a bunch of interesting novels, but “Woman On the Edge of Time” is the one that made the biggest impression on me.
Nando said
welcome back Linda. And amen to the list of books, and the thumbnail summation of the writers. “Woman on the edge of time” — i have been planning to read it again, and expect to find it even wiser now that it was when i was first impressed by it.
Dylan: “ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
gangbox said
Linda D.
I really can’t cosign any of those sisters – in particular Andrea Dworkin. From saying all man on woman sex is “rape” to helping the capitalist state criminalize adult media producers, Dworkin’s kind of feminism has serious problems.
I haven’t read “The Handmaid’s Tale” (although I did see the movie), and I think one of the serious flaws with it’s narrative was it’s RCPesque vision of a Christian Fascist future that I, quite frankly, don’t think is going to happen.
As for Piercy, I really cannot get behind this whole “androgyny” deal!
This idea that the only way men can be revolutionary is for us to become some kind of latter day Chinese court eunuchs is as far from emancipatory as we can get.
Beyond that, it’s rather odd that feminists would embrace an old patriarchal custom – restricting male sexuality.
Remember, polygamous Mormon cults in present day Utah exile young men – the better to force women into polygamous marriages with the male elders by denying them other possible mates.
And they aren’t the only ones – throughout history, patriarchal male elites have restricted the sexuality of lower class men, so as to give the wealthier guys the opportunity to engage in polygamy.
This has taken many forms – from doweries to long terms of drafted military service to monastaries to outright castration.
It’s odd that communists would embrace this idea – but, since the days of mandatory celibacy for male enlisted men, non commissioned officers and lower ranking commissioned officers in Mao’s 8th Route Army and New 4th Army, we see this medeival phenominon presented as somehow revolutionary.
Look, communism is supposed to be about the working class liberating all of humanity (including the men!!!)
Linda D. said
Thank you TellNoLies and Nando. Glad to hear that the likes of Dworkin, Atwood and Piercy have struck a meaningful chord with you as well.
Thought the comment about the interview with Atwood and Afghanistan fascinating. Am going to try and look it up in the NYT archives. I of course thought the main thrust of THT was an expose of the “moral majority” and where their “thinking” leads.
But you inadvertently raised something else–and while this post is mainly about sexual relations,I wanted to add something, perhaps insignificant, about women’s oppression and circuitously about Afghanistan, via Turkey.
Eons ago I was in NYC and saw Yöl by Yilmaz Güney, when it first came out. Was by my lonesome, seated on one side by two women, the other side a couple of punkers, and in the entire row in front of me, a huge family from Turkey. After this incredibly profound and complex movie was over, the two women said, “That’s ridiculous. How could those women allow themselves to be treated like that? Why didn’t the director raise the issue of equal pay for equal work,” etc. This just blew me away. So I say to these two women–”Excuse me, you are taking the oppression that these women face totally out of context. They live in a semi-feudal society. How can you even be thinking about the ERA?” Well, this caused somewhat of a furor, but unfortunately not with the two “sisters” whom I was addressing. Instead, one of the Turkish women stopped me on the street later, and said, “I totally agree with you,” and she and I proceeded to yak together for hours over cups of coffee–unfortunately not Turkish coffee, and she told me lots about women’s lives in her native country.
My point is–when we’re discussing women’s oppression, or even “telling each other how to fuck” I think it would behoove us to analyze the different social systems that still exist, even though women’s oppression is obviously universal. In many parts of the world, the answer to a woman “committing adultery” or even not being covered properly is outright assassination at the hands of either the state or the woman’s clan. And as far as women being satisfied sexually–hey in many countries a clitoridectomy is still performed like the woman was having her tonsils out.
Which brings me back to what I was thinking while reading a lot of the responses to the original post–think there is a tendency to view sexual and/or “intimate” relations, and women’s oppression from our own experience while living in the most developed capitalist and imperialist country in the world.
Was also curious as to why I didn’t see much mention of AIDS/HIV and the worldwide devastation from this disease. As long as people were misinformed and homophobic, and AIDS was thought to be limited to gay men, most heterosexuals didn’t give a damn. And certainly with the over the top chauvinism in the U.S., the fact that the highest death rate of African women amongst AIDS victims meant even less to the status quo.
Am beginning to sound like Oprah’s book club–but if it hadn’t been for Randy Shilts and “The Band Played On,” and his important exposure of the Reagan administration, etc., am not sure that many in the U.S. wouldn’t still be fairly unaware of AIDS.
chegitz guevara said
In 1994-5, I took part in a discussion of sexuality on the Marxism mailing list. During the debate, I made the innocuous comment that women liked sex also. It oughtn’t have been controversial, but even in the 90s, many people in general, and on the left, were under the impression that sex was a burden imposed upon women by men. I was actually threatened by some Maoists, who said they wanted to drive from Detroit to Chicago to kick my ass. I don’t know what party they were with. All I know is that is pretty fucked up.
For a number of reasons, communists in the U.S. have some of the worst hang ups about sex I’ve ever seen. I have a quite few misogynist comrades, who nonetheless saw fight to chide me about my relaxed attitudes about sexuality. I’ve seen or heard of a few “harems” of female comrades. I’ve met a few extremely creepy comrades. Then there’s the whole SWP defense of the rapist, Mark Clark. In Democratic Kampuchea, the number one reason people were sentenced to death was for sexual misconduct (according to Michael Vickery in his book Cambodia, 1975-1982).
Really, these are not the people I want to create a sexual revolution. When it comes to sex, I side far more with Alexandra Kollentai than with Lenin. Sex, like any other human action, can be liberatory, oppressive. I don’t like the idea of privileging sex outside the realm of all other human activities. Feeding someone is an incredibly intimate act. And if the cooking is good enough the pleasure achieved can rival great sex. The intense pleasure of good company can rival the “afterglow.” We’re socialized to put sex in a different sphere, and I’d like to see a liberated society get away from that. I’d like to see a liberation movement get away from that.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
Linda D. said
To Gangbox and Chegitz G., más o menos:
Don’t you find it a little fascinating that this topic has received 107 responses, while something about say Nepal has received half that many?
Anyway…re Andrea Dworkin. Like I said originally, I didn’t always agree with her but found her provocative, and at least willing to be controversial. Even her attitudes toward controversy were controversial. But often times she was misquoted or misinterpreted (she had many law suits pending to prove it)–e.g. heterosexual sex being “rape.” What she did say in “Intercourse” was that it was invasive, almost likening the male to an imperialist, which to me was ridiculous and extreme. But as far as “helping the capitalist state criminalize adult media producers” I personally could care less about the adult media producers and care much more about whether or not pornography is exploitative, abusive, and bolsters the objectification of women. Furthermore, those same adult media producers make a bundle off of the exploitation of women. So do you think Dworkin and thousands of others, men and women, were in error to “Take Back the Night” and expose (if you will) pornography (and sexism) in the first place? Ironically, Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon backpeddled on pornography because of the First Amendment, and were in a dilemma about the exploitative workings of pornography vs. censorship. (A tricky question for sure.) But all of this should be viewed in the context of a capitalist/imperialist society.
My main point about Dworkin was more about her analysis of homophobia and the hypocrisy even amongst more revolutionary forces when it comes to sexism.
Think there is a HUGE difference between snuff films and say the art of Robert Mapplethorpe! Even his “X” photos were more a display of some of what was happening in the gay community before the onslaught of AIDS, and not some “sadistic” titillation while the Jessie Helms types were having coronaries about all of Mapplethorpe’s photos.
As far as androgyny goes…well, not my bag, but in a more open and less oppressive society there’s room for that too. And as far as “The Handmaid’s Tale” goes…hey written long before the RCP’s freneticism around Christian fascists rising to power. THT wasn’t just about Christian fundamentalists and/or fascists, it had everything to do with how women are viewed within those ranks…and those same views reinforced by the Bible, both Old and New Testament.
Seems to me we have to look at things more all-sidedly and not take them out of context or put our own personal preferences at the helm (or Jessie Helm(s).) But I think that both the responses from Chegitz and Gangbox get away from what the main deviation is when it comes to sex, as well as human relations, even if you prefer fucking a giraffe on some “free”way.
SEX SHOULDN’T BE ABOUT POWER…BUT sexism is all about power over others, most prevalent over women.
Andrea Dworkin has been labeled a “misandrist”–misandry being the hatred of men. There are numerous men who are misogynists (overtly and covertly). In the new society we are striving for we can’t afford to be labeled misanthropes–but instead somewhat like Chegitz said, striving for a liberated society that is not based on exploitation and oppression (and the outright avariciousness of a few)–where none of us gets fucked over.
TellNoLies said
Gangbox,
Can you write a little more about what you have read of Dworkin, Atwood and Piercy?
Dworkin is a contradictory figure. I think her expansive definition of rape was wrong (if nonetheless fruitfully provocative of critical self-reflection) and I saw her anti-porn work up close in Minneapolis and think it was deeply misguided. At the same time I found her actual writings to be much more nuanced and compelling than the public caricatures and soundbites of her that most people felt was all they needed to know. She was ferocious in her determination to bring before our eyes the very real victims of the porn and sex industries. While I think her characterization of how porn shapes ideology was mechanical I also think it is naive to pretend that it hasn’t had massively pernicious effects. I don’t embrace her solutions, but I think we ignore her critiques at our peril.
I agree that Atwood’s dystopian book shares some central features witht the RCP’s view of the threat of Christian Fascism. The critical difference being that one pretends to be a scientific analysis of the present trajectory of US society while the other is a dystopian novel. The point of a dystopian novel, I would think, is not to predict what is actually coming but rather to think through some possible implications of current trends. I don’t think Christian Fascism is the dominant tendency within the US ruling class or eventhe Bush administration, but I do think it is in the mix and worth contemplating the possibility for it to gain the upper hand in a moment of crisis. I think, for example, that in a context in which the ruling class felt compelled to resort to wholesale repression of popular movements that there would be a powerful tendency to give an enhanced role to the religious right.
Finally, on androgyny in “Woman on the Edge of Time” I think again the question is what we ask speculative novels to do. I get the sense from your comments that you regard any expectation that you look critically at your own masculinity as something other than a force of nature as some sort of intolerable hassle. Piercy’s androgynous utopia is an attempt to envision a society that doesn’t oppress women. I think such thought experiments are worthwhile even when the particular solutions arrived at are unsatisfying. I’ve been struck here by the characterizations of the RCP’s internal culture around male sexuality. As a matter of policy I of course agree that celibacy is a non-starter, but I do respect the radical willingness to uproot existing man-woman relations and I’d be interested in seeing a more extended discussion of how central this was to the RCP’s internal culture. I do think that there needs to be room for people to experiment with such things as they work through the ways this society has made them complicit in women’s oppression.
My basic view is that if we take womens oppression seriously we need to also take seriously the way that a sexist society constructs men as “masculine,” think what that is in the service of and be prepared to fight it. Real life and literary experiments in celibacy and androgyny seem like neccesary starting points more than ultimate solutions to figuring out how to construct a counter-sexuality that does all the things we needto do. I understand why people might not have big expectations of such experiments, but the hostility directed towards them suggests that they touch nerves and we should be open to investigating what that is about.
In this vein I had a professor who once said something to the effect that when you find yourself experiencing a revulsion towards an idea before you’ve even really taken the time to think about it that there is a good chance it has touched on matters, that for reasons of psychology or socialization, you are seeking to avoid thinking about and that this is a good reason to make a real active effort to really entertain the idea and to try to excavate the reasons for your revulsion. Its a proposition that has forced me to constantly rethink not just deeply felt and cherished views but also vast areas of personal ignorance. Its forced to me to see my own discomfort as a productive thing.
Nando said
There is a big difference between Handmaid’s Tale and BA’s “Coming CW”.
Handmaid’s Tale is fiction. The author was not suggesting that this is where things are literally (or necessarily) going. she took a movement and a way of thinking and said (to herself and her readers) “Ok, let’s imagine an America where these people have their way…”
And that produced a biting satire, and a revealing social critique in the form of fictional distopia.
By contrast, BA implies that this kind of Christian fascist culture/state is where the dynamics of dominant politics are almost certainly heading if not prevented by a powerful oppositional movement that can (in his view) only really effectively be led by himself and his followers. It is reductionist, and simplistic. (Many people have pointed out its two extreme manifestation in print: “God the Original Fascist,” and the posters that imply that girls will be stoned or executed for dressing as a witch on halloween etc.)
One is fiction, the other is hyped prediction based on reductionist analysis.
As LindaD points out: Handmaid’s tale was both prophetic (in the way it pointed to the growing danger, which started with the rise of the Religious Right as blowback to the 60s) and engaging.
The RCP’s analysis was a snapshot of what was happening at the time it was written, but has seemed less and less prophetic as time has gone on. Certainly the Christian Right is around, and we will hear from it again. It is a part of the reactionary coalition that may remain in power after November. And it has “marked” the dominent culture in some lasting ways, already. And it has succeeded in some arenas — the judiciary has been a focus of their demands on their various coalition partners, and an area of creeping ascendency, and their influence in schools and the military are also worth noting *and combating*.
But the predicition that no other section of the ruling class could get a coherent program together to challenge them…. (see BA’s Pyramid Piece which generalizes that moments Democratic politics and projects that moment’s weakness as a fundamental trend) well, that prediction (on which so much was based, tactically and strategically) was simply wrong. The Dems may still lose (obviously, perhaps likely!) but who can deny that they have an oppositional program (or even that forces among the republicans have come up with a program less marked by Christian rightism)?
Here are some details missing from those assessments: First the Christian Right is a minority (even among republicans). And the overestimation of their “hard-core” character rested on the assumption of too close a correspondence between fundamentalism and fascism. In fact, while Christian fundamentalists (especially in the south, and in their geographic areas of hegemony) tend to form a hard core “voting block” (and political base) — this is not simply true overall. There are plenty of Jimmy Carter Baptists… In other words, the real theocrats (those who really want a theocratic Christian state) are a minority among Religious Rightists, who are themselves a minority among Republicans.
These are forces who work in coalition (within a ruling class coalition) to get a seat at the table. And they were given some payback for their efforts (particularly a veto over judiciary appointments, and influence over federal reproductive policy, like birthcontrol policy for foreign aid etc.) They have, as they will quickly tell you, been bitterly disappointed with Republican governments on abortion (from reagan to bush 1 and bush 2) they think they got lipservice and rhetoric but no action. And the reason is that any party that forces through a ban on abortion will have to deal with the major political fall out for years (knowing well that there remains close to a majority of people pretty clearly supporting women’s choice).
Is there a clear rise of christian fascism that is serving as a “stage manager” for a rev in this country — comparable to the Japanese invasion of China….? (This is the core theory of BA’s analysis of the political moment four years ago.) No. They had a growing influence with Bush’s election (and then his re-election)… but that moment passed and the situation quickly became more complex. With the fiasco in Iraq (lack of quick victory) and the departure of (the genuinely christian fascist) Ashcroft from the Justice Department, and the related congressional victory of Dems in 2006 — all of these trends shifted. These trends could shift again, of course. McCain could pick a religious running mate and pass away in his first month of office — which could change things again. But such new twists would not make the BA analysis of larger trends any more correct.
Put another way: Handmaid’s tale was prophetic fiction. BA’s Coming Civil War was simplistic analysis that proved somewhat fictional in its lack of prophetic power.
redflags said
Don’t you find it a little fascinating that this topic has received 107 responses, while something about say Nepal has received half that many?
Linda, is it fascinating or does it make total sense? What we know of Nepal from here is largely refracted documents and mediated reports, while the politics of sex are something each of us has dealt with and deals with intimately. It is where ethics take real form, and so sexual politics are how many of us understand our place in the world, our hopes and fears. It’s also something that isn’t so “off in the distance” – but which can and should have immediate impact in our lives.
It’s also interesting that while there is plenty of commentary around sexual issues, there is apparently little interest in practical activity around the political/social questions involved. Events in Nepal, on the other hand, seem to demand attention and action…
So what is that about?
——
On the topic of speculative fiction and gender, Ursula LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness is set on a world with a humanoid species is much like us, save that they have no set sex. While some, though not all, tend towards the male or female, each coupling brings out its own genital dynamics. It’s not about andogyny exactly, but trying to conceive of how a culture would develop were we not physically born either male or female, and if such roles (including physically) were arrived at through the relations of the people involved.
Imagine! Instead of a dualistic mind, a culture with a dialectical mind! I liked it very much in high school when I read it, though I wonder how it would hold up after a decade or so as a grown man…
——-
If the culture we build in groups means that men are always on the defensive, particularly men used to a gendered entitlement, we run the risk of creating ethical subcultures that expect men to be something like priests… and that will attract and hold who it does. People’s personal behavior could be used to politically manage people. Who hasn’t noticed how double standards on interpersonal behavior are applied?
Is it the loudmouth who gets “called out”? Or the sly operatory/leader who says what people want to hear and keeps his business dirty on the down low?
And what of this activist culture of people getting “called out”?
——
How much do people think, as TellNoLies says above, that “sexist society constructs men as masculine”? Is it really “sexist society” that does this… or are men generally masculine in ways that may manifest differently between cultures… but may just be a part of how we are put together as men and women?
Marge Piercy sees reproduction as totally removed from women, and that “freeing” women from being women is what it takes for them to be people in her androgynous world. Ursula LeGuin likewise creates a world of completely fluid sexual roles. But we aren’t in those worlds, and are women really demanding to be free from being women? To not give birth, raise children and such? Do people want that?
Are we building liberation with and through real people, or hoping for some future world (or immediate subculture) where we surpress/transcend the living contradictions that are the stuff of life?
Nando said
Dworkin is thought provoking and does good exposure. But she is wrong on that: Not all sex between men and women in this society is rape. It is simplistic, one-sided, pessmistic, and misses what else goes on.
People can and do carve out moments and spaces of mutual love and support — in struggle against the counterpressures in society (and within themselves). Even as we all struggle for a larger society whose values and structures make those moments more common and generalized.
And that means we have to have a sense of proportion:
The traditional family (which has many forms and variations, including classic dating, teenage pairings, child abuse, ) is a major source of intimate oppressions, and needs to be our major target for exposure and radical rethinking. We need to speak to the quiet unhappiness men and women (and girls and boys) have with what this society “offers” them (and imposes on them).
That means a few things:
Unlike previous c movements, we can’t mainly target the fringes of sexuality (for criticism as “decadent”) as if the core relations (i.e. the traditional family) is OK.
And it also means that we have to understand that most people find important solace and value in their families (in raising kids, in being loved, in having ongoing connections) — and not mock or dismiss all that in a generalized, one-sided and cranky way.
We can’t be so locked into our assumptions (in general favor of monogamous marriage, for example) that we take a jaded view of experimental and alternative sexualities.
Part of that is having living discussions (especially among people in high school and college) about what revolutionary views toward relationships are, and how we think people should treat each other in intimate relations, and how to struggle for that (both by creating a social culture for it, and by making it part of the relationships themselves.)
What does that look like?
I think we (i.e. as a rev movement) need to be strongly, fundamentally, loudly and fearlessly against the oppression of women. Not just the forms it takes in Iran or Saudi Arabia, but the also horrific (but very different) forms it takes here. We need to call it out — the date rape, the physical abuse, the belittling of women, the sale of sexuality, the unrelenting objectification of women as things and toys, etc.
And i think we need to do it in a way that doesn’t seem bitter, hostile to men generally, pessimistic about love and human contact, or devoid of enthusiasm for human pleasure and intimacy.
redflags said
Yes Nando!
Put simply, a love ethic.
chegitz guevara said
Linda D. Says: “SEX SHOULDN’T BE ABOUT POWER…BUT sexism is all about power over others, most prevalent over women.”
But here’s the thing. Everything in class society is about power over others. Sex is no different in this regard than eating, working, drinking at a public water fountain, etc.
Linda D. said
Wish I had the energy to respond further to Nando, Redflags, and TellNoLies and their thought-provoking responses…but instead will have to settle for a quick response to Chegitz:
Everything is everything…right Bud?
What a cop out…
cassiusghost said
There’s way too many people on this planet, and little wonder with the number of posts on this thread.
cassiusghost said
BTW Linda D. I posted a follow-up to you over at the “Flat Earth” thread. Thanks for the memories. No pun intended on this thread, either.
redflags said
Everything in class society is about power over others.
Is that true?
Is this is the same as the argument that every piece of art, every sentiment has a “class character”?
Do people believe this is true?
Nando said
i, for one, don’t think its true. And, I specifically don’t like any implication that since we (supposedly) can’t get away from such power relations, we should accept being part of them (and reproducing them ourselves.)
Yes, if you raise kids in this society, the school, the state, the ties of economic dependence, etc. force you to be a certain kind of parent and exercise certain kinds of authority… but that does not provide us a reason to abdicate our responsibility to struggle through to relations that are not typical (and that don’t simply mirror the dominant, traditional models of intimate relations).
We live in the framework of class society. It stamps (but need not define) all our relations and all our ideas.
Saoirse said
I sincerely appreciate everyone’s contributions to rethinking Dworkin. I feel a bit humbled as I think I should go back and read her one more time.
As a queer feminist I more often fell on the other side of these debates arguing against restrictions on pornography. We tended to argue that anti-porn feminists were sex prohibitionists and drew more reasonable linkages to there “anti-sex” politics that tended to treat men, BDSM, porn, eroticism, sex and gender expression all as pariahs.
That said, and I’ve mentioned this before on this thread it is worthwhile looking at the queer community as both a real world model (with all its faults) of the utopian feminist novels of the 1970s. Discussions of challenging masculinity sound so good on paper but when played out in the real world there contradictions readily appear.
The weirdness of some feminist and anarchist shunning people rather than engaging them and alternatives forms of masculinity actually have and are being explored in our world in all there grandness and limitations.
zerohour said
Redflags -
What do you mean by class character? Please elaborate?
Linda D. said
Some comments that will not do the thoughtful responses justice…but am pressed for time.
And BTW…thank you Cassiusghost for your other (heartfelt) comments on the DWTMI post.
Am a little hesitant to make blanket statements, because often times Mike (or Nando) refreshes my memory, and I realize as far as the RCP or rev.com.jargon goes, am lots of times incorrect. Sorry folks…however…
Just a couple of things on Dworkin, male bashing, etc. As far as “rape” goes–there has been a lot of debate as to whether or not Dworkin was equating heterosexual sex with “rape” or heterosexual sex as being “invasive” for women. And while I personally don’t think that heterosexual sex is necessarily invasive (Hello, we are physically different, ¿verdad?)–I can’t help but think Dworkin was making a larger point here. My interpretation of Dworkin’s invasive proposition was that she wanted to reveal women’s traditional role sexually–e.g., that more often than not, men are dominant–exemplified by sex, but symbolic of the society at large. Personally, I find it invasive when a man just assumes he can “woo” me (whoa, I just gave away my age!)because of course I’d think he was attractive and he doesn’t know shit about me. Or the fact that I can’t freely take a walk, without some idiot hassling me. Etc. Am sure every single woman, be they straight or gay knows what I’m talking about.
Rape, on the other hand, is something very different. Rape is NOT a sexual act, but an outright violent crime against both women and men. It has nothing to do with mutual or consentual sex, love-making, sexual preference, etc. It is one of the ultimate “power trips”. (Mike, you can correct me if necessary but what I thought significant in revolutionary China was that rape was considered a capital offense–above murder!)
So when Chegitz lumped everything, ala power over others together, in a class society, I went into orgasmic convulsions.
Chegitz: “But here’s the thing. Everything in class society is about power over others. Sex is no different in this regard than eating, working, drinking at a public water fountain, etc.”
So is sexism, racism, ageism, classism, etc. on par with eating, drinking and being merry? or not merry depending on your position in class society? When we talk about transforming society, social relations and people’s thinking, where the hell do we start? At a drinking fountain?–although under Jim Crow a drinking fountain was an appropriate place to do battle. Yes, we have a shitload of contradictions to deal with, but what’s primary and secondary, or even tertiary? General and particular, etc.
As Nando pointed out: “We live in the framework of class society. It stamps (but need not define) all our relations and all our ideas.” I might add to that that I think, in terms of say sexism and male chauvinism, we are all “victims” of this rancid system and its ideology. I don’t like being a victim!
In small part in answer to some of what Saoirse touched on: Here’s what I see as a problem, as people righteously fight against their oppression, whatever form that may take. Often times, a particular oppressed and exploited “group” thinks they have a monopoly on being oppressed. I say it is time for people to have more compassion, and downright outrage at any form of oppression be it racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, classism, etc. Aren’t we about liberating humankind?
Also, don’t you think that a lot of these feminists (or separatists) were proposing and envisioning a more “utopian” society in reaction to the outright reactionary society we live in and not simply engaging in male bashing?
Redflags asked: Is this the same as the argument that every piece of art, every sentiment has a “class character”?
This is a very legitimate question, and one that we hopefully can discuss further. Maybe we can start with a debate about Mao’s Yunan Forum?
P.S. to Redflags re Ursula LeGuin–wow, haven’t thought about her in ages. To me she was coming more from an anthropologist’s point of view but always thought it interesting that she tried to create a universal language, kind of like Esperanto, to try and break down language barriers between people.
chegitz guevara said
I think you have grossly misinterpreted me.
“So is sexism, racism, ageism, classism, etc. on par with eating, drinking and being merry? or not merry depending on your position in class society?”
Not necessarily, but sex is “par with eating, drinking and being merry,” and the act of sex is what we are discussing. Sex, like every other relationship in class society, is mediated through power relationships. I’m a man, my wife is a woman. I’m white, she’s black. I’m employed, she’s not, etc. No matter how decent a person I may be, no matter how much we strive to create an egalitarian relationship, it will never be egalitarian, because while I may reject the power, it exists. It cannot be escaped, and both of us are aware of this (her more than me). Within this society, we can only fight against it. We cannot defeat it permanently. We must destroy this society in order to destroy the power I have. (We could also destroy me, but I find that a rather unpleasant option).
This is no different from any other relationship that exists in class society. My boss, no matter how decent a human being he is, always holds power over me. I cannot escape this. If I go to a restaurant, I hold power over the waiter. No matter how decent a human being I am, I decide whether or not he gets paid, and he is completely aware of that throughout the relationship. Every relationship in class society is a power relationship.
So what privileges sex over every other type of human relationship as a special concern for communists to scrutinize, to make decisions about?
My argument is that it should not be. While I wouldn’t argue that it should be like drinking a glass of water, I might argue it should be like drinking a glass of really good wine. Neither the intensity nor the sensuality put sex onto a higher plane. Thanks to advances in contraception, it has largely been decoupled from its procreative aspect. If it’s the act itself, then why don’t we discuss autoeroticism? We’re only concerned in these discussions with sexual relations between two or more people, and once you involve more than one person, a power relationship enters in to the picture.
It is the power relationship, not the sexual nature of the act, then, that is the key. This is what we need to attack. This is what we need to examine and overthrow. If we destroy the relationships of power in our society, racism, sexism, etc., then the act of sex becomes free. That’s what I want. I don’t want communists telling me how to fuck or who to fuck or who I can’t fuck. I don’t think anyone else does either.
Paul said
I agree with Chegitz Guevara:
>I don’t want communists telling me how to fuck or who to fuck or who I can’t fuck. I don’t think anyone else does either.
“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living,” not least in matters of human
sexuality. Chegitz Guevara’s analogy with food and eating is useful to explore. Consider how absurd the early
denunciations of gluttony now seem: “Put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony.” I anticipate that imprecations
against sexual pleasure, including moralism that is confused with struggle against gender oppression, someday will seem equally ridiculous. That in no way implies that there is not such a thing as enlightened self-interest, or a conflict of
interests, or a mutuality of interests, in either sex or food (not excluding the interests of the animal being consumed).
I think it’s wisest to sever the political from the moral, since Western leftists descend into moralism so readily. Communism,
in which individual interest and social interest no longer stand in opposition, is not the “Reign of Virtue.” Marx, who wrote,
“We do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one,” is not
Rousseau, who wrote, “if it is good to know how to deal with men as they are, it is much better to make them what there is need that they should be. The most absolute authority is that which penetrates into a man’s inmost being, and concerns itself no less with his will than with his actions.” Reactionaries, as well as pseudo-Marxists like Zizek, make the error of
confusing the dictatorship of the proletariat with Terror, “the dictatorship of Virtue.”
The statement, “I think our approach to different forms of sexuality CAN’T simply be liberal tolerance and laissez-faire” is itself imprisoned by the discourse of liberalism; there exist only the options of liberalism and anti-liberalism. What is
absent, what cannot be conceived, is the self-liberation of the oppressed.