'Spread'emism' (spread-them-ism), as radical feminist S.M. Berg (creator of Genderberg.com) so wonderfully put it, is "the misleading idea that women can fuck and get fucked into political, academic and social equality with men via prostitution and pornography".
'Spread'emism' is how all the pro-pornography and pro-prostitution so-called "feminism" should be named...
...Tell me, pro-pornstitution "feminists", do you seriously think this is feminism what you're doing? Real feminism?
Well, Renegade answers the woman's various points pretty damn thoroughly, as do a number of the commenters.
-snip-
RE:
...What is the plan, anyway? You know, a lot of us are taking hits for saying “The sex industry? It’s not going anywhere, so let’s work for harm reduction and getting those who want out the help they need, and leave those who want in alone…” So yeah…what is the Amazing, Super Secret Plan to Rid the World of the Sex Industry? We’re dying (figuratively and literally) to know. In the mean time, what with all the talk of not allowing it to be normalized, without ever accepting it as work, without ever giving sex workers any sort of legal status and voice…well, women are being abused, raped, killed, dehumanized, and marginalized...
And yep, I am biased. I am a woman whom has chosen, of my own free will, to make my living in the sex biz…without having been raped, sexually abused, beat up by a man or a junkie. Please, do not attempt to save me from myself! I freakin’ cheer every time I hear of some sort of normalization, the real deal, and not the Hollywood drama y’all seem to take as such, because then it means in some legal sense, well hell, we almost get to be treated like humans! And until I hear this grand plan, that’s what I’m concerned with. That’s where my loyalty, money, and voice go. I will stand with those working to help sexworkers, in the here and now, rather than pretend that the abolitionist plan will not have scores and scores of victims, won’t lead to more cases like this, won’t become Big Sister is ruling my body rather than Big Brother. I am all for making a difference, right now. Choice and right of Domain over ones body goes beyond abortion after all.
(tee fucking hee)
from commenter thene:
*raises hand* Pro-porny who hates porn and never watches it, right here.
...From the post you linked:
"The first failure of pro-pornstitution "feminism" is that it totally capitulates to patriarchy. [...] Many women are socially trained to conform to cultural instruments of sexual brainwashing"
-going along with the long-standing hate that our dear Christian patriarchs have for sex workers *is* capitulating to patriarchy and it is sexual brainwashing.
"Women are commonly trained to please men in this culture. Thus, it is no wonder that among women who are interested in feminism, some will choose a type of 'feminism' that doesn't bother men or does not look like a real threat to men, because these women want to be appreciated by men in what they do."
Yeah, just like that. The sex industry is liek 95% geared towards men and what they like to watch and do, so wasting this many black pixels on describing in detail how awful it is, while all the while there is no plan and the industry is expanding all the time, is hardly 'threatening to men'. It's more like putting them in the middle of your feminism and showing them that your life still revolves around them, really.
from dw3t-hthr:
So long as a whore is subhuman, abuseable, ignorable, discardable, women can be kept in line by the threat of converting them into whores. That's what I see as the essential dividing line, the essential -- if the feminists will forgive an outsider making the comment -- feminist issue here.
One can't fix that problem by abolishing whoredom, even if there were a magic wand that made it possible to do so. That still means that the category is forbidden, and anyone who crosses into it becomes an unperson, a nonentity.
The only thing that can touch that threat, that can unravel it and undo it and make it something without teeth, is normalisation, is treating sex work like work, making sure that its abuses are controllable (which cannot be done under a prohibition standpoint, to send a postcard from Obviousville here), to treat sex workers like people.
*******
What I have to add, myself, is nothing new for anyone who's been following along here; but apparently repetition is important, so here we go again.
1) if cutesy endearments like "spead-em'ism" and shit like this is real feminism, why does it sound so suspiciously similar to the toxic bilge that comes out of your average reactionary fucked-up misogynist?
2) if "pro-pornstitution feminism" is public enemy number one, then clearly this stuff is...well, it has nothing at all to do with what we're talking about here, of course. And I mean, it's not like "real feminists" ever ally with the authoritarian, patriarchal State and/or the Religious Right in the pursuit of "pornstitution."
3) oh goodie, nothing i love more than hetnormativity.
It just never gets old.
And really, we all NEED sexual shaming; wasn't that a song or something? It's so FEMINIST. Especially those of us who're queer, not that this matters in the all-important Battle Against Men, which is of course defined by angry straight women. And it's not like there's any intersection between transhate and whore-bashing, not to mention good old fashioned sex panic, classism, racism, ableism, etc., etc., etc. etc.
4) Finally, in answer to the burning question of whether I call all this "feminism."
Supporting women regardless of whether or not I "approve" of their "choices." Not trying to police other peoples' most intimate selves. Not putting -my- ideas of how things -should- be over what actually -is.- Yes, I call that feminist. More important, however, I call it human. Because when it comes right down to it, the actual people are more important than the fucking label.
On edit, a coda:
That last goes, by the way, for everybody. I've heard people (mostly women) I respect on both sides of the aisle expressing a wish for people who haven't been there or done that to kindly step off. I can't really argue with that, actually, and no, I understand that this isn't just a fun academic exericise. People who are adamant that they're sex workers, that they'd rather be doing what they do than something else, I'll call them "sex workers." People who do not want any such term applied to themselves, who are clear that they found the experience degrading and abusive and harmful, I will use the term "prostituted woman" or whatever they prefer. Questions of policy aside, really, really trying not to define anyone else's experience here, wouldn't even if I did have a similar tale to tell.
I'm just tired of seeing that happen to other people I care about.
31 comments:
Two interesting underlying assumptions in the "spread'emism" thing:
1. Commercialized sex can never, ever, ever be positive or dignified ever. Commercialized eating/drinking/dancing/
other-aspects-of-human-existance can be positive and dignified, but not sex.
2. It is surely not possible that if there was more porn geared towards women, with more men playing the roles that women play now and thus equalizing society's perception of sex workers, that would solve a huge chunk of the problem.
I know both these points have kind of already been made - it just fascinates me to no end that people are unable to examine their own reactions to something.
You simply rock, belle.
hey, welcome tgd
as per the points:
1) eating, drinking, etc. is dismissed as an adequate comparison because women aren't food, but isn't it just telling that you're using such analogies, because porn offers up women as objects to be consumed.
the countering argument that in fact the woman -herself- is not for "sale," she is rather renting her services, tends to get nowhere pretty fast when it stays fixed on the sex industry.
when the analogy is then turned to other -services-, i.e. the waitress who -brings- the food, the person who waxes and washes the car, etc., the argument turns to how none of these other professions involve the extreme likelihood of RAPE happening on the job. (see Dana whosis' thing about "layers of clothing," various about "pandering to men," etc). which is in -no way- the same thing as "really, what did she expect?" because it just...isn't.
follow quickly with, tl:dr reams of statistics from not-at-all biased sources, a lot of ad hom/fem, a lot of really "shocking" imagery, appeals to revulsion & outrage, defense against not-at-all straw arguments using terms like "prude," and so on and so forth.
2) arguments: the last thing we need is MORE porn, and besides you cannot subvert the patriarchy, only full revolution will do. you cannot use the master's tools, (-insert gritted teeth of radical WoC feminists everywhere who are sick unto bloody death of white feminists blithely misusing that quote everywhere), there is no way in this fallen world to use such man-made artifacts as (makeup, certain sex acts, filming the acts, what you will) that is not reinforcing the Patriarchy, period end. or well no, there are long arguments about the semiotics of this or that which i don't have the energy to get into at the moment. just basically: __ means __, and that is that, world without end, AWymyn.
this line of argument is in no way weakened by the proponents' often simultaneous usage of such misogynistic language as "spread-em'ism," "Ms. Plastic Tits," "hot, bisexee, will suck and fuck anything for money," "fuckbot," "cumdumpster" (seriously), and so forth; the meaning of such terms is -radically altered-, even subverted, dare we say, when uttered by a feminist. Even or especially when it's being hurled in the direction of a sex worker and/or sexually "deviant" woman who happens to disagree with the ideological position taken by said "radical feminist." Hey, it's not -personal-.
Great analysis of the main pseudo arguments and the most effective rebuttals. Hope folks are listening!
razza frazza fury frazza razza
whoof, yeah.
sry, that's a bit rambly, but any time I see this shit I just want to holler and just ask: so where DO mwd fit into this whole system of suck, anyway? can it ever count that sometimes not "using women" (blech) is not always easy?
tangentially, as i think i commented over at Ren's: the business about falling into "whoredom" always being a weapon against -all- women as long as it's stigmatized is, I think, a corollary to the ways in which homophobia works to police men. (women, too, but to a lesser extent in this case).
I'm kind of trying to square my sex-positive feminism with my anti-capitalism, and wondering if that's even possible...
In my ideal world there'd be no such thing as prostitution, but not for the same reasons as the radfems' - there'd be no such thing as prostitution because there'd be no such thing as money (see wikipedia article "gift economy"). Would there be "sex work"? Well, there'd probably be people who would choose giving others sexual pleasure as their main purpose in life (I'd possibly even be one of them). Would that be "sex work"?
I think my problem is... yes, i find sex-work-as-it-is-under-capitalism inherently degrading, but no more so than any other form of paid work under capitalism. Factory workers, shop assistants, waiters, [whatever] sell their bodies every bit as much as prostitutes do, and capitalism degrades every aspect of life that it touches, as far as i'm concerned...
OK, i probably need to think about that some more and expand it into a blog post of my own. But, meh, just curious as to how sex-pos feminists feel the radfem/sex-pos debate intersects with the pro/anti-capitalism-in-a-broader sense debate, i guess...
Also, i kind of feel, as a disabled man (presuming that's what "mwd" stands for in Trinity's post), that i should have a response on the disability/porn/paying for sex thing, but, even tho i am involuntarily celibate as a result of disability, i actually don't really feel like it applies to me, since the aspects of sex that i have a desire for are ones that are fundamentally incompatible with paying for it (at least IMO). I can dig up a few links to postgrad research on the subject, tho, if you want...
[once again, really wanting to be able to comment on Trinity's blog, but unable to do so because it's on Livejournal... *sulk*]
hey, welcome, shiva.
personally i'm sort of agnostic on the economic...stuff; i lean toward socialism in many ways but i'm also not anti small-c capitalism as such. i'm sort of a "checks and balances" person, i guess, whatever that actually means.
as per sex pos: well, you find a range. in general they tend to be more libertarian and thus anti-State, but that ranges from economically right-wing-ish a la Wendy McElroy or Cathy Young to leftish anarcho-syndicalism/anarchy/whatever the going terms are, anyway, there's a wide range.
there are also a number of socialist and/or Marxist feminists who basically take your stance re: sex work/capitalism, and thus put emphasis on (decriminalization, obviously, and) unionization and other forms of organization, which you will note a lot of people who aren't actually socialist at all--RE, for one--will get behind. so.
shiva: email me and I will post yr comment :) trinityva a.t yahoo
btw, per lj, you can register an account and just use it for commenting on other peoples' elljays. that's what i've done. slight initial pain in the ass but worth it ever after.
and, well, shiva: Things are a bit easier for me, as I'm not anti-capitalist. Pretty much for the same reason I'm not radfem: sounds nice, but how does this economy come about? what happens if (when, I'd say) your new economy isn't universally adopted? etc etc.
shrug. i think, well, i'd have to read more about what the "no money" society is about; I've seen a little on "gift economies." my off the cuff reaction is that what might work very well within a small community just isn't applicable to any kind of infrastructure at the size we have now; and that a planet with 6+ billion people on it -needs- some sort of macro infrastructure, and if/when the current one(s) break down another will arise to replace it.
there's probably more about human nature and so on, but i'm sort of flu-y and haven't the headspace to engage it properly at the moment.
anyway, though: i think, y'know, as with "withering away of the State" or "abolition of the Patriarchy," one can look at these things as, well, long term goals, and still consider what is and isn't compatible with such ideals as well as least harmful in the short run.
again, supporting unionization is probably more classic socialist than what it sounds like you're talking about, but it is a step away from state as well as big corporate dependence; and the necessary first step of decriminalization goes a way toward destigmatizing sex work as -different-, in the way that you lay out.
similar, i think, in some ways to:
i know some queer people who are against the very idea of marriage. i'm, again, agnostic about the whole thing. i have some ideas about what i think might transpire longterm, or what i'd like to see; meantime though, i know that as long as it's something that's accessible to het pairings but not same-sex, it means
1) that we're forever going to be stuck on this within the queer community, as yes it is used as stigmatization and it's far less likely that marriage per se will end before same-sex couples are allowed to participate, hell, they already are;
2) meantime, yeah, it'd be nice if my transnationally-partnered friends at least didn't have -that- anxiety hanging over their head.
Does this mean that, as Andrew Sullivan once wittered, we can all hang it up and live happily ever after, once this is attained? Fuck, no. Not from where I'm sitting. Does it mean, like the religious right fulminates, that it's a slippery slope from that to poly marriages, and from there "marriage" itself not meaning what it used to? Possibly; and you know what, hey, that's all right with me.
so, you see.
"rug. i think, well, i'd have to read more about what the "no money" society is about; I've seen a little on "gift economies." my off the cuff reaction is that what might work very well within a small community just isn't applicable to any kind of infrastructure at the size we have now; and that a planet with 6+ billion people on it -needs- some sort of macro infrastructure, and if/when the current one(s) break down another will arise to replace it."
YES
Shiva:
Can you be both a sex-positive and a critic of capitalism, even an anti-capitalist??
Damn right, you can.
I just so happen to BE an anti-capitalist sex radical, and I have no freakin' conflicts about it, either.
Don't let the noise of folks like Maggie Hays or Nikki Craft deceive you....they may sound like anti-capitalists, but their true agenda is about as anti-capitalist as Ron Paul's or the Scientologists. Their rhetoric is only just that....rhetoric to use "socialist" or "leftist"-sounding phrases to justify their monomanical obsession with "pornstitution" and controlling male and female sexuality to fit their narrow, repressive agenda.
Now, there are also other sex rads and sex positives who don't share my own personal Libertarian Left views (like Ren, who's more libertarian, and Trinity, who seems to be more of a traditional liberal); and that's all right by me, because not everyone will agree on everything. But, it is possible to be both a critic of institutional capitalism and sexism and racism, and defend the right of people to define their own sexual destiny and engage in consensual sexual activity and nondegrading sexual expression.
Don't ever allow the antiporn "feminists" tell you otherwise.
Anthony
Wow, thanks for all the replies...
I think this will lead to at least 2 or 3 blog posts, when i can get my "writing head" together...
Trinity: I want to comment on, like, *most* of your blog posts. Thanks for the email address, tho, if it's OK to use it for that purpose...
Yeah, i suppose i could get an LJ account and do Trinity's "This is not my blog" thing in reverse. Might do, altho TBH Trin's is the only LJ blog i know of that i ever want to comment on (well, there's one other, Chaotic Idealism, but she allows anonymous posting).
Blogspot doesn't require adult content notices, BTW. Don't suppose you could be persuaded to switch? ;)
(TBH, i would have gone for WordPress if i had heard of it when i started blogging. I might switch to it soon, actually.)
Anthony: i've actually never heard of Maggie Hays or Nikki Craft. Should i have?
Thanks for the support, tho. I'm a... sort of libertarian-anarchist-communist. Probably anarchist is the best one-word description, altho all 3 of those words have stereotypes attached to them i don't like, but i think "anarchist" probably has the least worst, and contains within it the essence of both the others, IMO...
Belledame: on marriage, i'm one of those people who want it abolished altogether, but i recognise there are instances (such as the nationality/immigration status thing) where the legal status of marriage is useful to people. That's the same as any "using a flawed system to what advantage you can" thing tho, really.
I think i'd rather have the "rights" that come with marriage (such as "next of kin" status, etc) be ones that can be assigned to anyone you choose (and not even necessarily all to the same person) - cos, y'know, what about people who are asexual, or promiscuous in the true sense of that word, but have very close non-sexual (and non-blood-family) relationships? Or those who simply haven't found a partner, but don't want their parents/siblings/whatever to have those rights? Or those who have more than one partner, but those partners have very different and separate roles, etc, etc, etc...
Decriminalisation of course i'm 100% for, as i am for everything ;)
wrt economics: well, i think the only thing that will get humanity through the (*definitely* oncoming) collapse of the current system is very radical decentralisation - as in, food self-sufficiency for every town/county. But that's another huge topic that i'm not sure i could even address fully in a 1000+ word blog post, so i'm not even going to try in a comment to someone else's...
think i'd rather have the "rights" that come with marriage (such as "next of kin" status, etc) be ones that can be assigned to anyone you choose (and not even necessarily all to the same person) - cos, y'know, what about people who are asexual, or promiscuous in the true sense of that word, but have very close non-sexual (and non-blood-family) relationships? Or those who simply haven't found a partner, but don't want their parents/siblings/whatever to have those rights? Or those who have more than one partner, but those partners have very different and separate roles, etc, etc, etc...
agree. i just think in this country, marriage equality is a lot likelier to happen first.
Maggie Hays is the person that RE has linked to, as cited in the OP. apart from that, "no," not really.
The thing that gets me the most about this is the conversion experience. Here's Maggie, broken for non-trackbackery:
http://maggieha ysagainstporn.blo gspot.com/2008/01/th en-and-now.html
"Then, I did not use to care much about other people's lives or, more exactly, I wasn't very much aware of what really happened in their lives, women's lives in particular.
Then, whatever happened in my life, however much male cruelty or male indifference I had to put up with, I thought these experiences were only parts of my life, not of someone else's. I mean that there was probably nothing in common between my life and other women's lives....
I wore a lot of make-up; I dressed in short skirts, tight tops, stockings and I wore high heeled knee high black boots. And I went dancing. And I remember them saying to me: "You are very sexy" or "You're gorgeous", etc. And I liked it. I craved male approval of me because it was giving me a way of feeling a form of empowerment somehow, albeit illusory.
....One day, I was online and I was introduced to an anti-pornography article which led me to radical feminism. I found out about the harms of pornography and prostitution. I then ordered and read books to instruct me on what was really going on around me and on the fact that I was living in patriarchy and had always been.
Since that day, nothing has ever been the same for me. Since that day, I became a feminist. I genuinely cared about women's lives and what was happening to them."
It fascinates me: *one* article turns someone's whole life upside down.
"Oh, wait, my whole life has a totally different meaning than I ever thought! Everything is different now! Everything I used to do for fun is tainted!"
I've never been quite able to figure it all out. For me, well... the idea of living that fractured a life, where you can just totally abandon your former way of moving in the world because it's just simply *wrong*... well, it bothers me. Creeps me out, honestly.
I don't think humans can live like that. I've tried, more than once, and it's always fallen apart.
yep, i was just noting the same thing, elsewhere.
"I once was lost, but now am found..."
and it's so incredibly dreary, besides everything else. so smug, so small.
the part that really got me: among the other things she's now forsworn: dancing. DANCING. like, okay, not everyone likes to, but if you did?
i wonder if this dame has a Calvinist-type background. so many of this type seems to, and the narrative is so, so similar in so many ways.
I read it as that she foreswore nightclubbing, not any and all dancing. still, why not do that?
I mean, I read her saying she liked being told she was sexy, and... yeah, I just can't parse that being a bad thing. Yeah, some men are really creepy oglers, but in my experience there is in fact a difference between "wow, you look fantastic and hot!" and leering.
well, yeah, that's what i meant. and y'know, she said "dancing," presumably that's where she did most of her dancing...i mean, not that i don't think she's probably a swell time at parties or anything, but...
and then too, it's like: I forswore all these things to become a better feminist, because i want to turn all my tender warm compassionate feelings toward women. Other women who aren't me, that is. p.s. isn't "spread'emism funeeeee??"
does not compute -whirr-
yeah, exactly.
I think liking "spreademism"... well, I don't want to put words in someone's mouth, but for me, if I ever did a 180 and hated sm and all this, I think I'd like "clever" (not really) things like that too.
because when I hate myself for my sexuality, there's a kind of wanting to be degraded there. a kidn of "remind me of how BAD what I was doing was, so I'll never want to do it again."
It'd be, for me, like "yeah, I liked this, but that's because I was a spreademist then. at least I'm not now."
well and also: yeah, feel the love for -other- women, there, really.
because when I hate myself for my sexuality, there's a kind of wanting to be degraded there.
It may be that... or it may be something a movement requires of new initiates. It's like a loyalty oath - you're made to humiliate yourself in front of the group in order to ensure your true commitment. I'm sure that's why Christianity makes you kneel when you pray - to ensure that the people who pray aren't faking it.
"I'm kind of trying to square my sex-positive feminism with my anti-capitalism, and wondering if that's even possible...
In my ideal world there'd be no such thing as prostitution, but not for the same reasons as the radfems' - there'd be no such thing as prostitution because there'd be no such thing as money (see wikipedia article "gift economy"). Would there be "sex work"? Well, there'd probably be people who would choose giving others sexual pleasure as their main purpose in life (I'd possibly even be one of them). Would that be "sex work"?
I think my problem is... yes, i find sex-work-as-it-is-under-capitalism inherently degrading, but no more so than any other form of paid work under capitalism. Factory workers, shop assistants, waiters, [whatever] sell their bodies every bit as much as prostitutes do, and capitalism degrades every aspect of life that it touches, as far as i'm concerned..."
OK, i probably need to think about that some more and expand it into a blog post of my own. But, meh, just curious as to how sex-pos feminists feel the radfem/sex-pos debate intersects with the pro/anti-capitalism-in-a-broader sense debate, i guess...
I think that's a very different critique than the one the anti-porn radfems. Its been made abundantly clear by reading and arguing with radfems that their critique of commercial sex is not so much a critique of the fact that its commerce as a basic problem with the mode of sexuality it represents. For them, any sexuality that involves "domination" or "objectification" is wrong by definition, whether it involves the exchange of capital, nor does it matter if its totally consensual. For all their protestations to the contrary (eg, the title of one of MacKinnon's essays, "Not a Moral Issue"), its very much about sexual morality with them. And this is where it gets really problematic in the same way as the religious right does, because it becomes about holding everyone to their particular standard of sexual morality, and trying to use the law to punish people when they don't adhere to it.
To get to the issue of where this intersects with anti-capitalism, I think you have to look at the fact that there are some very different modes of anti-capitalism. One mode, and one that I think has a lot overlap with anti-porn feminism, is the moralistic/neo-puritanical critique of capitalism. In this kind of moralism, over-consumption (or the wrong kind of consumption) is seen as a personal moral failure, personal desires for things or experiences are denounced as capitalist brainwashing, and generally, a kind of hairshirt-ism is held up as the ultimate "progressive" ideal. The critique of capitalism in this mode typically loses sight of any systemic critique and becomes moralistic and personal instead. Also, rather than critiquing the ways that capitalism manipulates people's desires, and uses unjust social arrangement to meet people's needs and desires (and meets those needs and desires in a decidedly unequal fashion), it chooses instead to condemn those desires in and of themselves.
One sees this mindset in much of the anti-consumerism movement (in Adbusters in particular), vegan activism, straight-edge punk, and, of course, anti-porn radical feminism. Conversely, Ellen Willis, who was an early critic of this kind of moralistic anti-consumerism (see, for example, "Women and the Myth of Consumerism"), was also the first person to use the term "pro-sex feminism".
Its not surprising, then, that certain APRF's are also big-time advocates of a kind of moralistic anti-capitalism, notably Robert Jensen. (I refer you here for a discussion I had with Anthony, Trinity, and others on what a joke Jensen's critique of capitalism is.) And don't even get me started on the so-called "anarchists" among the APRFs, who I've seen praising anarchism and calling for Swedish-style anti-prostitution laws or British anti-"extreme porn" laws in the space of a single essay. One has to wonder what kind of "anarchy" regulates personal behavior even more strictly than most liberal states! (But, of course, that points to one of the problems with "anarchism" is that its become stretched to the point of meaninglessness. Google "national anarchism" and you'll even come across a set of white nationalist, North Korea-praising "anarchists"!)
I can imagine garden-variety misogynist men chortling over a nasty-vagina-joke like "spreademism" with no trouble. What a vicious, anti-feminist, anti-female thing to say. Sam obviously means to impress the beer-drinkin fellas at the strip-joints, since she sounds just like one of them.
Is hating sluts supposed to be the New Feminism? What's feminist about that, again? Damn, I am confused--particularly when the so-called 'feminists' sound exactly like Rush Limbaugh.
Great post, Belle.
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