Antiprincess sums it up. Now maybe I can finally stop with the bloody "sex-positive" posts for a bit. Can't say it any more clearly than this.
This may not be what the average antiporn feminist is actually saying to me, the average consensually-kinky feminist, but this is what I hear:
"but if YOU PEOPLE would just get over this selfish obsession with your stupid little orgasms and REALIZE the REALITY of PORNOGRAPHY (which is not free speech anyway) and how it HURTS WOMEN, then you could get on board and everything would be fine."
Trust me, antiporn feminist, you don't want someone on your side who has been bullied and belittled into agreeing with you. People who are beaten into submission don't make good supporters over the long term. They make good echo chambers, good receptacles of your vitriol, good amen corners; but not because of their deep abiding love for women, simply because they don't want to be seen as selfish and obsessed. You don't want someone on your side just because they don't want to piss you off and risk humiliation.
Consider that if that kind of badgering and humiliating worked, we wouldn't still be hammering this out twenty five years on.
and then, from the latest post:
I can't speak for the entire universe of non-anti-porn feminists, but there is a particular aspect of antiporn theory that does deeply trouble me, and immediately calls to mind (for me) certain aims of the Christian Right.
That, specifically, is the idea that one can deliberately alter one's personal sexual fantasies and purge them of any pornographic or woman-hurting content or overtones.
This reminds me of the aim of many ex-gay ministries, which is to turn gay people straight by deliberately altering their sexual fantasies until they are purged of any same-sex content or overtones.
...Here is where I see radical feminism and right wing christianity meet in action, if not in ideology. And it scares me. I fear deprogramming by anybody, good guys or bad guys.
Go read the rest at paleofeminist.
exactly. I wrote nearly the exact same thing to some leninist/maoist types once.
ReplyDeletesome fctions pound away trying to "advance" the consciousness of those already on the left. shame. humiliate. call you "not leftist" etc.
i finally said the same thing AP does: you really want to have someone on your side who's only on your side because you have made them feel miserable -- repeatedly? this isn't embracing your position from one of strength, but of weakness. And, it's precisely that kind of following that turns into rabid, uncritical masses of followers that have more in common with a religious cult than with the way we ought to be trying to get from here to there.
not that this changes the way they operate. I'd have better luck pissing at a hurricane and expecting not to get pissed on than I would with these wankers.
I posted this in antiprincess's comments too, but to link to a specific post in her template, click the little pound sign in the bottom left corner of each post.
ReplyDeleteI love this, I think I'm going to quote it on my blog too.
>not that this changes the way they operate. I'd have better luck pissing at a hurricane and expecting not to get pissed on than I would with these wankers.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course. Because that's the way they treat *themselves.* When people say shit like "well, I don't let myself off the hook, either! I'm harder on myself than anyone!" they absolutely mean it. And if they don't say it, it's probably true anyway.
Thing is, that doesn't make it any better. Why would I want you to make your*self* miserable, fercrissake? Jeezus, be happy already, if and how you can. Honestly, it's not gonna kill any more starving children in Outer Fuckwitania if you do lighten up on yourself. In fact, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Easier said than done, of course; and if someone's not gonna hear you, they're not gonna hear you. So be fucking it. Just don't let them drown you out when you're trying to make your own voice heard by the people who *will* hear you.
Thing is, that doesn't make it any better. Why would I want you to make your*self* miserable, fercrissake? Jeezus, be happy already, if and how you can.
ReplyDeleteHeh. This is exactly the realization that led me to embrace sex-positivity back in college...
Back to the original post -- "REALIZE the REALITY of PORNOGRAPHY (which is not free speech anyway) and how it HURTS WOMEN" -- I hate the rhetorical fallacy that if somebody disagrees with you they must somehow be ignorant.
'You don't see it my way? Clearly you're uneducated and haven't experienced the right things!' usually accompanied by exhortations to read and/or get out more.
Why can't folks accept that different people can reach different conclusions (in the social sciences, at least) without having to brand one side as objectively wrong?
Many of these disputes are matters of interpretation, rather than hard evidence one way or the other.
For some reason in these threads, my mind keeps coming back to an old ramble I blogged, right now I'm thinking of this passage from one of my college papers:
In many cases, the same controlled experiment is used to justify completely antithetical conclusions.
In a very famous study, ten-year-olds watched a fifteen minute television program -- sometimes violent, sometimes not -- and were then asked to monitor the behavior of two younger children by means of a television monitor. Unbeknownst to the subjects, the kindergartners they were supervising were actually prerecorded so all children saw the same staged fight. Grossman uses this as an example of desensitization: "The children who had just finished watching fifteen minutes of television violence were five times more likely to simply fail to summon help." (p. 33) Jones takes a less alarmist tone, going so far as to suggest, "calling for adult intervention at the first sign of aggression might not have been the wisest course." (p. 107).
Regardless of the point to an argument, the more radical and one sided someone gets the more people they alienate. Life can not be black or white. We're so goddammed involved with defining good and bad. No subject is that simple.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that difficult an observation that radicalism is a fairly consistent thing across all kinds of radicalism - Islamism, Dominionism, radical feminism, Marxism... the radical left and radical right are pretty similar. The radical right has unfortunately abandoned the standard radical plaque that political effectiveness is for wimps, but there are still plenty of robust parallels.
ReplyDeleteYou said it much better than I did FMMA - the whole idea of deprogramming a sexual desire based on political etc ideology is scary - and worse - to be told you don't really know how much you are harming yourself and other women because of your sexual desires - combined with WHO GETS TO DECIDE what porn is or isn't and therefore can build laws etc to censor it... yipes!
ReplyDeletedykotomy.
ReplyDeletedont' you geddit? you were programmed to have that desire anyway. society makes you. Feminist unmake you! Get with... the program!
and yes, of course, i said something exactly like You because you are genius.
Every day I think, thank god Dwayne Monroe and others told me that I should start a blog. I have met the fucking smartest, funniest, coolest fucking women I've had the pleasure of reading and caring about.
I am in awe some days at wome frckin r00lez!