Link Farm and Open Thread #7
| January 23rd, 2006What I’ve been reading lately. As always, you are invited to post whatever you want here, including links to your own posts.
In Defense of Sex Positive Feminism
Bitch | Lab defends “sex positive feminism” from a variety of blogger critiques. I have a lot of sympathy for this article - especially the frustration at people who criticize alleged statements of sex positive feminists without actually providing quotes or links. At the same time, I will never like the term “sex positive,” because of the implication that feminists who don’t share those views are “sex negative.”
Jill Fisks an Interview With Anti-Feminist Kate O’Bierne
Changing Jobs from Writer to Janitor
A true-life redemptive tale. As Amber says, it’s very long, “but well-written, so it’s a quick read.”
GenderGeek Discusses Her Past Life As A Christian Fundimentalist
More on The Myth of The Opt-Out Revolution
Showtime Wants To Pick Up Arrested Development
But only if series creator Mitch Hurwitz comes along, and Hurwitz may want to get off this roller-coaster.
On Governor Tim Kaine’s “Discomfort” With The Anti-Gay Legislation He Plans To Sign Anyway
Atrios Gets It Right On Choice For Men
It’s a Big Fat Revolution
If you haven’t yet read Nomy Lamm’s stunningly good, multifacited essay on fat acceptance, you should.
A Sane Position on Iran
At Body and Soul, of course.
Women Are Not Baby-Machines
Redneck Mother relates her own painful reproductive history to her committment to abortion rights.
New Blog To Watch: Feminist Law Professors
Teen Oral Sex Isn’t As One-Sided As We’ve Been Told
There’s been a lot of concern about an “epidemic” of teen girls giving - but not receiving - oral sex. But the research shows that girls are actually a bit more likely to recieve than to give, for whatever that’s worth.
This Is The Title Of The Story, Which Is Also Found Several Times In The Story Itself
This classic recursive short story (very short!) is well worth your time, if you haven’t already read it.
Giving Up On Abortion Rights: All Costs, Few Benefits
Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money questions the current strategy among many (usually male) liberals.
Shorter Peter Morris
Who knew that if you become a father, there’s a chance that one of those icky girls would be born? And that’s just for starters.
Analysis of the Ayotte Decision
Over at ACSBlog, Jennifer Brown of Legal Momentum nutshells the Ayotte decision. Things definitely didn’t go as bad as they might have - I’m grateful this was decided before O’Connor departs.
Medical Innovations Reported In The Canadian Medical Association Journal
“We describe the off-label use of a recreational device (the Super Soaker Max-D 5000) in the alleviation of a socially emergent ear condition…” Via Sisyphus Shrugged.
Groundbreaking Research From The British Medical Journal
Be sure to scroll to the bottom and read the response letters. Via Riba Rambles, who has many more links along these lines.
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:22 pm
If I provided any more direct quotes and links showing exactly where I think so-called “sex positive feminists” have abondoned women in pursuit of capitalist profit and male-approved popularity there will be a e-lynch mob gunning for me. Who isn’t tired of my meticulously evidenced criticisms of prostitution at Alas? I’m tired of them myself, tired of linking to websites with years worth of data collected on them proving the ‘duh’ statement that women don’t want to be whores, tired of reminding people that Nina Hartley is against mandatory condom use in pornography filming, Susie Bright admits to masturbating herself to the court-given testimony of women rape victims, and “sex worker rights” proponents Robyn Few and Norma Jean Almodovar have been convicted on pimping charges.
I’ve written about these things and linked to the books, research, websites, newspapers and journals plenty of times as the Prostitution, Porn and Sex Work archives here attest. I’m tired of repeating myself to mostly deaf ears, because before the week is out someone somewhere is going to say to me, “Why do you hate sex/men/freedom/America?” and I’m going to have to resist the urge to scream. Another book on “Sex Tips From Escorts” just got released to follow up the last one that was a bestseller at my local women’s bookstore a few months ago, and I’m tired of trying to explain how women learning how to please men by mimicking prostituted sexuality isn’t women-focused or “pro-sex feminism” but raw patriarchal capitalism. I’m tired of linking links and quoting quotes it seems very few people read.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:32 pm
“At the same time, I will never like the term “sex positive,” because of the implication that feminists who don’t share those views are “sex negative.”"
Exactly. It’s the hip version of “family values”.
This comment was written by Sheena.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Hee. Good links.
This comment was written by sarah.Report this comment to the moderators
January 23rd, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Hear Hear Samantha. That’s all I can say being one who’s being ripped apart for not being “sex positive enough” (at that blog and at my own)
This comment was written by Burrow.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 12:29 am
Sam, I was by no means criticizing ALL critics of sex positive feminism. I was saying that the specific criticism that “when people criticize a view, they should link to a example of someone actually expressing the view they’re criticizing” is something that I agree with.
As long as you quote or link specific examples of the “sex positive” feminists you critique, when you write such criticisms, then I’m not in any way criticizing you.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 7:43 am
Loved the teaspoon article. I have always wondered where the spoons go….
This comment was written by Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 8:05 am
Samantha: I know your frustration. I get the exactly the same shit. It’s beyond demoralising (which is, I’m sure, the point).
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Samantha,
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.for what it’s worth, I value your viewpoint on so-called sex work quite highly. your posts on the issue have always been well-informed with solid links that gave me much of the evidence I lacked when discussing such issues (I then had to rely on principles only, which is very unsatisfying). I am thankful to your writing on this topic, because it helped me shape a much clearer idea of the problems involved. Your links and quotes were definitely not lost on me, and I am probably not the only one.
Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 11:30 am
I posted on the teen girls receiving oral sex issue back in September 2005, in case anyone is interested.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 11:46 am
Here is an important article about measures that Ghana is taking to correct iodine deficiency in that country.
Really, one important thing that needs to be done to help Africa is to correct trace mineral deficiencies, which have a large negative impact on the health of the people there.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Well, Samantha, what Sheena, CrysT (CRYS LIVES !!), and Jimmy said.
If you don’t mind hearing it from the “liberal…” :D
I’m still trying to figure out how to explain to the rah-rah porn faction that I don’t regard depiction of sexual acts as being exactly the same as commodification of humans, mostly women and kids. The trouble is that it’s obvious to me that treating sex as an industry does inevitably lead to commodification for all but a select few. Yet, we’re expected to treat the select few as the norm, when they are anything but…
And if the supposed sex-positive reader isn’t going to buy my stance, which is very much in the gray area between someone like Dworkin and someone like Bright, they’re sure as blazes not going to go for Samantha’s…
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Exactly what Jimmy Ho said. Samantha has definitely provided arguments & info that I hadn’t seen before which have strongly influenced my thoughts on the matter.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
Thanks Burrow, Crys T and Jimmy Ho; I didn’t intend for such comments but they’re always nice to read. The absence of radical feminist voices, myself included, from the recent prostitution thread is conspicuous and that’s part of what was lingering on my mind as I wrote. While I’m here, thanks to all who took the time and energy on that.
Amp said: I was saying that the specific criticism that “when people criticize a view, they should link to a example of someone actually expressing the view they’re criticizing” is something that I agree with. As long as you quote or link specific examples of the “sex positive” feminists you critique, when you write such criticisms, then I’m not in any way criticizing you.
Reading this practically begs the question, “Critics of sex positive feminism who don’t privide quotes and links like who, exactly? Can you be more specific about who you’re referring to and what they didn’t back up?”
But here’s where you trip over the same double-edged sword that trips up radical feminists who are critical of pro-sex industry feminism. If we don’t name names, dates and lines we’re criticized for not being specific enough, but if we name names, dates and lines then we’re “picking on feminists” or “enforcing feminist purity” or “holding a grudge” when what we want is some accountability for what pro-sex feminists are saying, doing and promoting.
It’s considered unfair or goading to remind people of a certain feminist’s stated belief that men go to prostitutes for emotionally tender and sensitive sex like they can’t get with their wives, but her mocking of a certain conservative young woman with the overdone repetition of a certain phrase is considered par for the feminist course. I’m not saying thoughtless ideas shouldn’t be pointed out or even ridiculed when the time is right, I’m saying the mainstream liberal Othering of conservatives and radical feminists makes criticisms of them acceptable, nay required, in a way basic criticisms of pro-sex industry feminists are not deemed acceptable. What would an article on Gloria Steinem’s continuing babeness be without a gratuitous kick to Andrea Dworkin’s ugliness thrown in?
That’s what I’m talking about, and Crys T is right, the point is to be intentionally demoralising and dismissive to anyone critical of pornography, prostitution, and the sex capitalists slave trade that supplies men’s demands.
From time spent lobbying politicians and working on campaigns I know the most effective political campaigns are those that have a concise, clear message that’s repeated over and over again, but there’s only so many times having this discussion on pornstitution where someone ignores what I’ve said about the Swedish model and asks why I want women arrested before I wonder why I bother. Again, I’m thinking of a particular person who posts here who did this but it would be considered rude or too aggressive of me to name the name and quote the quote that’s supposed to lend credibility to what I’m saying.
In the end I know why I bother, because I love women and want them to be as happy and healthy as possible, but several radfem activists I know have burned out and I see it happening to the social workers, health officers and others around me who work with prostituted women. The struggle to get mainstream feminists, women-focused activists, to see that men are not made of Teflon and the extreme amount of harm they do to prostituted women & children should stick to them is a particularly heavy straw breaking our radfem backs.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
I wasn’t the one making the criticism - Bitch Lab was. And she does provide specific links and examples; for example, F-Words described “sex positive feminists” as “those who believe that women naturally want to be having sex constantly,” but did not link to or quote a single person expressing such a belief. (As Bitch Lab correctly points out, F Words also doesn’t provide a single link or quote to support the view that the “prudes” exist, either.)
Bitch Lab provides at least one other example, but I don’t think I should need to replicate her whole post here.
I’m pretty much a fence-sitter in this particular debate. I’m actually in favor of some censorship; in particular, as I’ve argued on “Alas” in the past, I don’t see any reason why rape porn - either simulated or actual - should be legal. On the other hand, I didn’t agree with the MacKinnon & Dworkin proposed ordinance.
One of the things that has driven me crazy for years when reading anti-feminist stuff is “feminists say X” and “feminists say Y” statements, are unsupported by any actual examples of feminists saying X or Y. It’s largely because of my frustration with that, that I have a lot of sympathy for the point of view which says that people must give a source for what you’re criticizing. Otherwise you end up with intellectually dishonest summaries like “those who believe that women naturally want to be having sex constantly.” Or, for that matter, about ten thousand people who have falsely accused MacKinnon of saying “all sex is rape” without including an attribution to MacKinnon saying that.
That’s a good point, and one I hadn’t considered.
All I can say is, for myself, I don’t consider the quoting of something you want to refute to be in and of itself “enforcing feminist purity.” It seems to me obviosly impossible to have dialog if people can’t even quote or cite the things they’re referring to.
Frankly, radical feminists will always be accused of “picking on other feminists” and “attempting to enforce purity,” regardless of whether or not the accusation makes sense, and regardless of whether or not the radical feminists in question have made specific citations. Since you’re doomed to that criticism regardless, I think that you might as well include the specifics.
Finally, I want to say that I really appreciate you posting on “Alas,” and hope you keep on doing so.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Samantha wrote:
Some of this is surely internalized sexism. We get the message early on that if men cheat, we are to blame. We are not sexy enough. We don’t diet. We’re too pushy. We won’t pass out enough blowjobs, etc etc… It thus logically follows that if men harm other women in the course of cheating on us, the harm prostituted women suffer must also be our fault. >: :(
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
I agree there’s got to be that element at work in some way, alsis (& thanks for your words too).
There’s the confusing idea floating around that the worst thing prostituted people face isn’t really murder, rapes, slashings, beatings, burnings and other physical abuse but social stigma. I think that’s entirely false, but it’s a primary belief of pro-sex industry feminists that if enough people call it “sex work” and try to respect prostitution as “sacred whoring” careers then the men who murder, rape, slash, beat, burn and brutalize prostitutes will somehow be inclined to stop. I saw a woman wearing a “Be Nice to Sex Workers” shirt at the March for Women’s Lives and it bothered me because she was wearing that shirt in a crowd of feminists to say something to feminists about how feminists need to be nice to prostituted women so that men won’t brutalize them so much .
For all the times I’ve been called a Victorian-era prude, the pro-sex industry feminist notion that it’s up to feminists to change how we perceive prostitution so we can then influence men who abuse and enslave prostituted women seems a lot more in the Victorian camp of “women are the moral guardians of men” than anything radical feminism posits. How about men stop the massively profitable global industry of systematic rape and slavery of poverty-stricken women and children such that it influences me to change my feminist opinion on the inherent violence of prostitution? Why isn’t it prostitute-using men’s job to change how they treat and view prostituted women enough to convince feminists the Swedish solution of criminalizing tricks is not necessary?
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
There’s the confusing idea floating around that the worst thing prostituted people face isn’t really murder, rapes, slashings, beatings, burnings and other physical abuse but social stigma.
I was under the impression that the general idea was that the social stigma is what prevents society from dealing with murder, rapes, slashings, etc. of prostitutes.
Put another way, the social stigma produces an attitude of “she had it coming” when a prostitute gets raped, murdered, etc. So if victim-laming does ncrease the incidence of rape in our society, it makes sense that social stigma against prostitution would increase the rape of prostitutes.
This comment was written by Glaivester.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 6:00 pm
Interesting topic and comments. I do not have much to add on this issue. But if anyone is interested in politics, please visit my blog at http://www.politicsdaily.blogspot.com. I welcome all people from all political persuasions and I encourage visitors to please leave a comment, whether you agree with me or not. Thanks.
This comment was written by Ryan.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
Glaivester wrote:
But who created the social stigma ? Who does the most to perpetuate it ? Who has the most power to stop it ?
It’s already illegal in this country to brutalize and kill women, regardless of whether or not they sell their bodies. The women in Samantha’s camp argue that the “sex positive” camp’s attempts to gussy up the image of women selling their bodies and attempting to organize women who sell their bodies is pointless. It’s pointless in part because the majority of prostituted women do not want to stay in the trade, and in part because the relationship of john to prostitute is inherently, irrevocably hierarchical– and not in favor of the prostitute– because it is a cornerstone of a sexist society that requires such hierarchies in order to reinforce the status quo.
See my questions above. Respond if you care to.
I also have to say that trying to get through the Bitch/Lab’s response to Samantha made my teeth hurt. And I say this as someone whose argued with Samantha before over how she sometimes comes across online to other feminists. (Yes, I know– Pot. Kettle, but I hope that she forgives me.) The points Samantha tried to make over there were completely disregarded, even if the usual name-calling didn’t happen.
Though hearing Nina Hartley, called acurately by another radfem that I know “The Dick Cheney of Porno” for her indefensable bullshit rejection of a mandatory condom policy in adult films, be touted as a Socialist just about had me doubled over with laughter. Individualism is Socialism. War is Peace. Etc… :/
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Lab defends “sex positive feminism” from a variety of blogger critiques. I have a lot of sympathy for this article - especially the frustration at […] Continue reading at Alas, a blog … posted5:51 pm at Alas, a blog
This comment was written by feminist blogs.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
alsis, didn’t that AVN reviewer who kept touting his bullshit on the Ms boards years back claim to be some kind of socialist? (as well as a NOW member)
This comment was written by Sheena.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Yeah, Sheena. And he was Hartley’s Biggest Fan, too. Nice to know that there are constants in the universe, eh ?
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Actually, she “admitted” to masturbating to testimony given during the Meese commission hearings in 1986, and she was being sarcastic. Victimized women certainly gave testimony during those hearings. I do not think, however, that Bright was saying that she finds rape sexy. The point she was making was about the prurient mindset and cynical, self-aggrandizing use of those women by people like Edwin Meese.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 24th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Samantha, I appreciate your point of view and value your voice.
On the recent prostitution thread, I soon left because the thread was open to anti-feminists who quickly dragged the discussion down into misogynistic pronouncements. It’s very difficult to have a substantive debate under those circumstances.
This comment was written by Violet Socks.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 10:47 am
BTW, another suggested topic for discussion might be the new study on sexual harrassment on campus, particularly pointing out to MWA Hugo Schwyzer’s posts 1 and 2.
For all the reporting that men and women are equally likely to be victims of harrassment, the study points out: “the impact of sexual harassment is markedly differently for young women. Female students are more likely than their male peers to have negative behavioral and emotional responses to sexual harassment.”
Inneresting stuff…
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 10:56 am
piny, I’m not so sure she was being sarcastic. People can decide for themselves.
Pornography and prostitution survivor Christine Stark quotes from pro-sex industry Carol Queen’s book Real Live Nude Girl. in her essay “Girls to boyz: Sex radical women promoting protitution, pornography, and sadomasochism”:
“Self-proclaimed ’sexpert’ Susie Bright ‘has said that the best jerk-off book she ever found was the compiled evidence of the Meese Commission’, which ‘focused on the most hard to obtain stuff…the extra kinky’ (Queen 1997). In other words, Susie Bright masturbates to women’s testimony about the degradation and harm they suffered in pornography and prostitution.”
There’s nothing to forgive. I need, and I think everyone would do well with, a respected person’s challenges and criticisms to keep me on the path to self-improvement. I admire persons like you who have the questioning, provoking spirit that is both the source of head-butting and the catalyst for reflection and modification.
Being at the far lefty fringe of American politics and feminism, I’m well accustomed to people disagreeing with me, but as long as the person can take me through how they got from step A to step E I can respect them on some level. It’s when I see people jumping from A to E and not being able to account for the journey through B, C and D that I find hard to respect. Dennis Kucinich adopting a pro-life stance on abortion based on his overall politics about valuing life I can sensibly understand from his point of view while disagreeing, and eventually he changed his stance to pro-choice because people he respected challenged and criticized him.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
No, they can’t. Not when you provide them with an extremely ungenerous, context-free gloss on what was said, rather than a direct quote or anything remotely like it. That doesn’t give people any interpretative leeway at all, and it doesn’t give the impression that there are any other readings besides yours. “Susie Bright admits to masturbating herself to the court-given testimony of women rape victims,” is a slanted reading, and it’s unfair to her and misleading to your audience.
She was reacting, ironically enough, to the demoinzation of her and women like her by certain anti-porn activists. Her comment should be taken in the same spirit as Amanda Marcotte’s cracks about throwing abortion parties to celebrate the Alito confirmation. (And I’m sure that some anti-choice activist somewhere will take Amanda literally, and use her as proof that feminist women really do get abortions when there’s nothing good on TV.)
You’re not proving your point by providing someone else who quotes someone else who’s also not Susie Bright. If I wanted to argue that Andrea Dworkin said, “All het sex is rape,” I could link to hundreds if not thousands of anti-feminist websites saying the same thing. Some of them might even have out-of-context quotes from other feminists–or even from Dworkin herself! That still wouldn’t make the allegation true.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 12:11 pm
Samantha wrote:
Actually, what I’ve read, Bright claims to have been masturbating to the porn the Meese Commission used as examples, NOT other women’s testimony. Not trusting my own memory, I just searched for direct quotes.
From a 1999 interview, Bright herself said:
That doesn’t sound like she’s talking about “women’s testimony about the degradation and harm they suffered.”
Actually, here’s the better quote, from a mailing list last year Bright directly addressed those rumors:
Those are Susie Bright’s own words, denying the accusation.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Thank you, Lis. That last is the quote I’m familiar with.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
I’m not as interested in Bright’s self-defending explanation for such an insensitive and dismissive remark, I care much more about how the many women (and a few men) who braved getting up in front of the government and pornographers to go on record telling in graphic detail how pornography contributed to their rapes felt when learning of Bright’s pornofying of their sexual abuse. She can say she didn’t mean the rape victim’s testimony part os the report, only the S&M rape porn and other “extra kinky” stuff reported by police, but to the extraordinary rape survivors who publicly named their abusers what Bright says she meant the true intent of the remark came through loud and clear:
“as part of the ongoing public satire of the Meese Commission.”
You can claim she didn’t mean to disrespect all of the testimony in the Meese report, just certain parts of it, but nothing she has said makes the distinction until the self-defense wrought from being confronted with this reasonable interpretation of it by pornography’s victims (like Chris Stark.) That comment is callous dismissal of testimony-giving rape victims as the most generous reading, and getting off on the pornographized sexual violence of women as the worst reading. Based on other things Bright has said in defense of pornography and against the feminists who oppose the commodification and exploitation of women, she doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt I gave her when I first read her anymore.
I’m reminded of Bright’s entirely inadequate response to Aura Bogado that was one massive defense of racist, sexist pornography and of herself but that didn’t address the questions about racism and class privilege Bogado raised and accused her of similar misinterpretations. I don’t think Bogado missed the mark when she wrote, “Rather than aligning herself with the real struggles of working women, Bright has chosen to align herself to millionaire Larry Flynt.”
I don’t think Bright is evil incarnate, and I recognize the value of openly talking about sex as a value in itself, but in talking about feminism and the quest for women’s equality I do think she’s all too happy to have sexual freedom, narrowly determined by the sex capitalists that butter her bread, be considered the most prominent goal of women’s freedom. Examples of American feminism shifting to be about individual sexiness first and social justice for all women afterwards are too numerous to name but I’ve brought examples up before and can again if you need me to. Bright has been a key figure and has built her career on this consumerist free-marketism shift that says pornography and prostitution are pro-women because individual women consumers say it makes them feel sexy even while pornstitution is directly enslaving and killing millions of women & children and the demand for prostituted bodies has expanded exponentially in the past fifteen years. This is a real problem, and it is a problem exacerbated by pro-sex industry advocates who are not human rights defenders so much as laissez-faire capitalism defenders.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Lis, thanks for supplying the quote and the context.
You see, THIS is the problem I’m having: IRL, my point of view is probably much closer to Samantha’s than it is to someone like Susie Bright’s. But, just like Samantha, I read the criticism of Bright with the taken-out-of-context quote and was lead to the same erroneous conclusion. Now, it’s totally impossible for each of us to track down the original source every time something like this crops up–if we did, we’d never do anything else. So, what happens? Because people like Queen can’t get it together (what was her problem? either determined to read Bright as an Ultra-Villain or dense or what?), people like Samantha & me come away with some fucking innacurate ideas. How does that help?
I do have to add, though, I have actually gone to Bright’s site and read her own stuff direct from the source, and I STILL think she’s way off-base. Often, IMO, dangerously so. So, given that her stuff is actually quite easy to contest, why bother trying to make her into some sort of monster?
There are dirty tactics being used on both sides, apparently, and the crap thing is that it’s just making US suffer.
(Oh, and hi there, Alsis! Yeah, I’m still alive–and glad to see you again!)
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
And btw, I posted the above without seeing Samantha’s latest.
I agree with her: I’m sick of seeing feminism being turned into some sort of hyper-individualistic consumer-based theory about doing what feels good to you and fuck everything (and everybody) else. As if our individual actions had no consequences for any other people.
Which is my main criticism of most of the “sex-positive” stuff I’ve come across, and the attitudes of most of the self-described “sex-positive” people I’ve had contact with. Most of them seem to have the incredible idea that feminism is about “women doing whatever they want”. WTF? Where did they get that from? That sounds like the sort of left-over hippie philosophy that pissed women off to the point where 70s feminism rose up in the first place.
I always thought that feminism was supposed to be about learning how to understand society so you could then analyse your actions and desires, understand why you want certain things and not others, and then, to the best of your ability, do the thing that you honestly believe is RIGHT…whether or not you necessarily “want” to.
But I guess taking how our actions affect others into account and even thinking that a “right” or “wrong” could exist is just laughably old hat.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
In other words, you’re not really interested in hearing what her views are, or what she meant by a quote that you weren’t even able to find in its first incarnation.
And yes, she mocked the Meese Report. Not because it gave voice to rape survivors, but because she considered it to be, “highly puritanical and prejudiced…inadvertently hilarious…salacious and hysterical.” As she says, she was editing On Our Backs at the time, which means that she was one of the Meese Commission’s direct targets. She did not say that she dismissed people who testified about being raped or abused. She mocked the FBI agents, their tactics, their motives, and their mores. There’s a difference.
Finally, you’re doing it again. She didn’t say anything about “S&M rape porn,” either. And “extra kinky.”
But you know what? She still didn’t say she jacked off to the testimony of rape victims.
Actually, Carol Queen didn’t say anything about Susie Bright finding rape sexy, either. She’s another sex-positive feminist. She probably just wrote without thinking that people would use her words as ammunition against Bright. I don’t think this is an excuse at all. Again, I could do the same thing with “Andrea Dworkin says all sex is rape,” and I would expect people here to stomp me for the lazy-ass self-serving anti-feminist idiot I’d be. This is bad research. The partial quotes and the lack of context for the topic Queen was originally writing on (Puritanism? The public reaction to the Meese Report? Censorship?) are a dead giveaway.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Ah but I did hear/read what her, I just don’t find her post-confrontation excuse convincing and I don’t consider her backtracking on the statement as important as the reactions of the victims of pornography who were brave enough to speak about their sexual abuse in public amidst a media virulently against rape victims in general and pornography rape victims in particular.
No she didn’t, she mocked the Meese Commission itself without once specifying who she intended, so it stands that she mocked the report in its entirety without regard to the large chunks of it devoted to the testimony of pornography’s victims.
She still didn’t say she jacked off to the testimony of rape victims.
I’m going to go through this step by step.
1. Bright wrote in a lesbian pornography magazine, “I masturbated to the Meese Report until I nearly passed out.”
2. The Meese report includes hundreds of pages of testimony by dozens of rape and sexual abuse victims, mostly women, decribing in detail what happened to them and how pornography played a part in their abuse.
3. After being called out by victims of pornography who have given public testimony to their rapes, Bright says she didn’t mean the enormous part of the Meese report loaded with graphic sexual details similar to those she regularly publishes, she only meant to laugh at the people compiling the data and not the people whose stories ARE the data.
Sorry, I’m not buying it. Too little too late, and when put together with her other strenuous defenses of every sort of pornography even more so.
I don’t agree with your assertion that Bright’s dismissively totalizing comment about the Meese report isn’t the real problem, my repeating of that comment is the real problem. There were a lot of ways she could have respected all those brave rape victims while still criticizing the government and it’s workers, and she chose to ignore that for a sexy media soundbite creating the picture of super sexy Susie sexually playing with herself until the sun came up. As she says, “I was widely quoted,” and that’s Bright’s whole reason for existence, not to raise awareness of give respect to pornography’s many victims, or even acknowledge they exist.
You’re not going to convince me Bright had a single thought in her head for all those rape victims when she said that.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Bright may not have masturbated to testimonies of rape porn survivors, but her insensitivity to (some) women’s reports of having been raped is undisputed. Within a day or two of Andrea Dworkin’s death, in her (opportunistic and self-serving) “memorial”, as she had in the past when it happened, publicly, she called Dworkin’s report of having been raped while in a hotel abroad a lie and referred to Dworkin’s report of having been raped as evidence of Dworkin having had a “mental breakdown.” If the report of having been raped comes from a woman who opposes, or has been harmed by, the porn Bright makes, which sells her magazines and puts food on her table, then I think the evidence is that Bright could care less about that rape or that woman. To the point that she’s willing to straight up and publicly call her a liar. Masturbating is only one way people get off on the grief and subjugation and oppression of women.
Heart
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
I went to Bright’s blog to get links to support what I posted there, and lo, the link to Bright’s reference to Andrea’s “nervous” (not “mental” as I posted) breakdown doesn’t work. And in order to read what she wrote about Andrea’s rape when it happened, guess what. You have to BUY the little publication Bright put together containing everything Bright ever wrote about Dworkin.
Well, I have much better things to do with my money than support the work of Susie Bright. But with the goddess on high as my witness, that’s what Bright posted. That reference in her “Andrea Dworkin has died,” blog entry, that link, previously took you to Andrea’s report of having been raped while in a hotel, and after having been drugged. Andrea’s husband, John Stoltenberg, wrote in one of his speeches or articles after Andrea’s death, that Andrea was never the same after that rape, that rape being the one Susie Bright wrote never happened.
Heart
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Okay, then! Glad we agree!
Here’s the memorial post I remember:
http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2005/04/andrea_dworkin_.html
…Which contains a dead link to her post about the rape, which I remember.
Here’s a link that should work:
http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/m-fem/2000m08/msg00082.htm
She wasn’t the only one who doubted Dworkin’s account, apparently. So did John Stoltenberg.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Never mind, I found the article, cached on google here.
To wit:
The Baffling Case of Andrea Dworkin
by Susie Bright
A couple of weeks ago, Andrea Dworkin published the most extraordinary story in The Guardian (UK) in which she says she was raped last year in a Parisian hotel. She gives a delirious account of the events that followed— her devoted partner John Stoltenberg disbelieving her, her father dying, a hospital stay that cost the use of her legs, physical disfigurement, and more.
Her description opens in a hotel garden, at age 52, where she sat drinking Kir Royales and reading a text on French Fascism. The next thing she knew, the bartender and his serving boy had drugged her champagne, and brutally, brutally raped her.
By the time you finish reading it, you know she has finally completely lost her mind.
[snip paragraph after paragraph of Dworkin-bashing]
While I am fascinated by the details of her story’s setting, I find Dworkin’s description of her rape incredible. It would be too cruel to tear it apart point by point, but suffice it to say there are too many odd bits and contradictions to fit any rape pattern I’ve ever known. Andrea Dworkin has made so many aware of how rape happens, and what its detailed circumstances are, that now when she cries “wolf”, all her students such as myself are bound to look askance at her account.
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Heart
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January 25th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
Thank you, piny. I had a similar reaction.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Whoops, posted too fast and other commenters got between us. I was referring to:
This comment was written by Lis Riba.January 25th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
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January 25th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
So what if Dworkin wasn’t believed, including if she wasn’t believed by John (which isn’t the case). So the hell what. Lots of times men don’t want to be believe that their wives or daughters or mothers were raped. Lots of times men blame the raped women, say they made it up, say they lied. So what. Nothing new there. Feminist women expect something a little bit different from feminist women. Raped women expect more from raped women or women who know raped women. Ya know.
I’m saying that Susie Bright not only called Andrea Dworkin a liar when she reported her rape, she got a whole lot of mileage out of calling her a liar publicly. Just as she got some mileage out of Andrea’s death by selling what she wrote about Andrea, including that Andrea lied about being raped. I am saying, I am not impressed at all by this insistence that Bright is sympathetic to the testimonies of raped women, and oh, no, no, she never masturbated over the testimony of porn rape survivors during the Meese commission, perish the thought. In Andrea’s case, she certainly was not at all sympathetic. Like Andrea, the Meese Report rape survivors opposed pornography. There’s no reason to believe Bright cared about them, and many more reasons to believe she (1) didn’t care, (2) didn’t believe them.
In response to this article, Susie Bright wrote on her blog, “By the time you finish reading it, you know she has finally completely lost her mind.” Bright was no friend of Dworkin’s…they had clashed over the years on various issues (porn, stripping, fisting)…but she wasn’t the only one who found Dworkin’s account hard to accept. “John looked for any other explanation than rape,” Dworkin wrote in the Guardian. “He abandoned me emotionally.”
“I thought they were gonna split up over that,” says Nikki Craft, a close friend of Dworkin’s who managed her Website.
Stoltenberg, for his part, says, “It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her, it was that I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want that to have happened. I completely concede that she may have understood that as not believing her, but I was trying to find possibilities that would have exempted her from this. She’d been raped enough.”
http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11907/index4.html
Heart
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I’m trying to follow the logic of Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff’s first comment and having trouble. There are a number of concepts all intertwined with loaded language, so I’m trying to break them down into syllogisms:
• We have no evidence that Bright masturbated to testimonies of rape porn survivors.
• But Bright has been insensitive to Andrea Dworkin’s report of rape.
Therefore, what?
• because she was insensitive to one woman, she could care less about other rapes?
• Because Bright’s livelihood depends upon porn
• Therefore she doesn’t care about rapes of women harmed by porn
• Because Bright joked about masturbating to one aspect of the Meese Report
• Therefore, she gets off on the grief and subjugation and oppression of women
None of those conclusions seem supported by the evidence provided. Even in the link to her essay on Dworkin. It seems more like guilt-by-insinuation.
I have sometimes experienced communication-problems on feminist forums and would like to avoid those, so could you please explain in more detail what you were trying to say about Bright, or what I might be missing in your logic?
——————–
[BTW, a tip: If you find a link has died, one of the quicker/easier ways to find it is to enter the URL in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Here's the Dworkin essay you referenced.]
====================
Meanwhile, I find myself wondering how this thread got onto the topic of Susie Bright anyway.
Samantha wrote a criticism of “so-called sex-positive feminists” (she added the perjorative “so-called”), mentioning several by name, including “Susie Bright admits to masturbating herself to the court-given testimony of women rape victims”
Now it turns out that Susie Bright did no such thing, but why should the truth get in the way? She’s done other things just as bad. What those things are is unspecified. Samantha doesn’t substantiate those, beyond the most general unattributed claims.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
The more I think about it, the more I figure it would be better if Bright really did masturbate herself after getting hot & bothered reading the Meese report instead of making up a sensationally sexy blurb intimating as much for the media.
A private act of masturbation, even masturbation to the tellings of rape victims, would be less detrimental on the whole than what happened with the so-called sexpert putting such an atrocious statement dismissing the recountings of rape victims out there for the malestream media to circle jerk with.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Susie Bright is a sex merchant, a self-promoter, and a vampire. Why some people hero-worship this self-proclaimed “sexologist” is beyond me, but they do.
This comment was written by Violet Socks.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Maybe it’s just me, but I find it incredibly disingenuous that everything the Meese commission encompassed can be boiled down and described merely as the testimony of women rape victims.
According to Wikipedia (which acknowledges their article is incomplete), “the report is divided into five parts and thirty-five chapters.” Looking at a site which claims to have the full text, witness testimony forms only a small portion.
Furthermore, I may have only been a highschool student at that time, but I was an active feminist back then and remember following the news during high school. I remember the complaints of bias in whom they chose to speak. I remember authors and scientists complaining that their writings and research were distorted. It was clear from the get-go that Reagan & Meese had a particular conclusion in mind when they created the commission, and shaped all the evidence they gathered in order to reach that conclusion.
I sympathize with and respect rape victims, whether or not they appeared before the commission. But that doesn’t obligate me to respect the Meese Report as a whole.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
Wow, she’s a vampire???
So now we’re not even bothering with facts or justifications, but just calling her outright inhuman.
There doesn’t seem to be any interest in discussion or debate, merely insults.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Cheryl, I get out of bed each morning with many goals in mind, but impressing you isn’t one of them.
Susie Bright “got a lot of mileage” out of criticizing Dworkin the same way Dworkin “got a lot of mileage” out of criticizing Bright and women like her. They were both writers, activists, and public figures. They talked, and tried to get other people to listen. And she sells her writing just like every other writer; the collection of essays she marketed online represented a hefty body of work for the asking price. Dworkin published and sold books herself; that didn’t make her any less of a feminist activist, or any less worthy a person.
Oy. Let’s recap, shall we? Samantha said Susie Bright said something she didn’t actually say about doing something absolutely horrible, apparently because she saw Carol Queen’s paraphrase, which was quoted out of context by yet another person. I’ve seen the quote in its original context, and seen Susie’s explanation of it, so I complained. Now both of you are admitting that she never said any such thing, and that she probably never did any such thing. Except she’s still a horrible person because of these other things she said about someone completely different.
Plus, you’d have been telling the truth.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:30 pm
piny, I’d like you to find me something, anything, that Andrea Dworkin wrote about Susie Bright. And especially, I’d like you to show me where Andrea Dworkin compiled her insults about Susie Bright and sold them for a fee, not after Bright’s death, of course, because unlike Dworkin, Bright is still alive. And then tell me exactly what “mileage” Dworkin got at Bright’s expense. Dworkin died hated and trashed and lied about by the likes of Bright. Bright prattles on to enthusiastic male throngs in her own porn magazine and in Playboy and wherever she can make a buck doing what she does and has forevermore amen. Dworkin never did anything remotely like that. She spoke out on behalf of exploited, oppressed, marginalized, vicitimized, raped women, the world’s most vulnerable women. Women like her. She got NO mileage out of that. She got relentlessly vilified, she was hounded, she was hated. She was NOT popular and sought-after, as Bright is popular and sought-after for suggesting, for example, that all of those marginalized, victimized, raped women Dworkin so deeply cared about really weren’t, golly gee whiz, they actually find it all so gosh-durn *empowering*.
I don’t know what Carol Queen did or didn’t say. What I do know is that the fact that Susie Bright didn’t say what Sam thought she said doesn’t really mean much, in light of all that Susie Bright *has* said, continues to say. That’s the point I was making.
And I’m ignoring your gratuitous and irrelevant dig there. You’re welcome.
Heart
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Vampire in the sense of a rather ghoulish parasite, which was how I saw her writing about Dworkin’s rape and the subsequent uproar, as well as her gleeful mockery of the Meese Commission. It’s just my opinion, of course.
Look, it’s possible that I actually agree with Susie Bright on many issues. I’m just recording my very negative impressions of her as an individual. Whenever I look her up or do a search or encounter one of her books, she’s pushing sex, pushing herself (”America’s favorite sexpert”! “America’s sexiest intellectual!”), dramatizing her Galileo-like martyrdom at the hands of the close-minded prudish feminist establishment, and weeping crocodile tears over poor Andrea’s disintegration. And of course — telling people that her “mission” is to help feminists “relax” and finally “enjoy sex” — as if we weren’t already enjoying sex.
Yes, of course all of that is simply my opinion, my impression of Bright. Others read her and…I don’t know. Whatever she’s saying really makes sense to them.
This comment was written by Violet Socks.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Samantha said Susie Bright said something she didn’t actually say
Not true, piny. She admits she said, “I masturbated to the Meese Report until I nearly passed out.”, even says she’s got a picture of the quote on her desk. What’s being discussed isn’t the fact of the quote said but your interpretation of it, my interpretation of it, Chris Stark’s interpretation of it. You and I don’t know whether she was telling the truth or making up a sensational lie for media attention (and I don’t think intent matters much after the media gets ahold of it), but that doesn’t translate into her not saying she masturbated to the Meese Commission report.
And yes, other things Bright has said about other women who have said they were raped certainly affects any intepretation of that one statement.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
You remember the last thread we interacted on, don’t you? Don’t even try to pretend you’re above gratuitous and irrelevant digs. I’m surprised you haven’t gotten around to calling me out for threatening you yet.
Andrea Dworkin was a published writer who made her career out of criticizing people who make porn–and, later, sex-positive feminists. That includes Susie Bright. According to Bright, they also had some very acrimonious personal interactions, all of which resulted in publicity for both of them. That doesn’t make Andrea Dworkin a publicity-seeker, or a cynical manipulator, or a devotee of Mannon. It makes her a writer and an activist.
Exactly. The point I’m making is that it does, too, matter that what Sam said wasn’t fucking true.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:48 pm
“Seansational lie for media attention”? Yes, I’m sure she wanted the media to demonize her even more than they already were. She was being sarcastic, participating in satire. As she explains, the report read like a Dragnet voiceover set in a burlesque hall. That’s not masturbatory material. That’s absurdity. Oh, and you didn’t mention the Meese report at all. This was what you said: “Susie Bright admits to masturbating herself to the court-given testimony of women rape victims.” What does that sound like to you?
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Samantha, what you originally wrote was:
Now, unless you’re willing to state that the Meese Report is nothing more and nothing less than court-given testimony of women rape victims, then your original statement was factually incorrect.
Because I tend to think in logic, here’s the equations.
“masturbated to the Meese Report” == “masturbating … to the court-given testimony of women rape victims”
only if (factoring out the verb “to masturbate”)
Meese Report == court-given testimony of women rape victims
BTW, the most testimony in the Meese Report was given before the commission, not before a court.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Crys T wrote:
“If it feels good, do it.” :p I used to know a particularly sleazy acid casualty-bornagain-Xtian hippie who had gone from this philosophy straight to the idea that he could do whatever he wanted because God said it was okay. It pays to be wary of anyone who believes that whatever works for their immediate gratification is “naturally” the right thing to do;Be wary whether they site Jesus, Leary, or any combo thereof. :D I learned that in an ugly way from my dealings with that particular scum-bucket, let me tell you… >:
I suspect more feminists than we know about have grave reservations regarding at least some officially “sex positive” thought. Nobody wants to be thought of as a shill for the far Right, though, so we keep quiet. You thus end up with a Catch 22: As long as secular feminist thinkers whose reservations about swallowing in their entirety the teachings of Bright, Califia, Block, et al. keep quiet, we make it a sad fact that just about the only potential allies radical anti-porn feminists will find will indeed be the sorry and hypocritical likes of the lovely Mr. Meese and his successors.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Violet wrote:
What did me in was the constant clueless assertion that prostitution is a “victimless” crime. [rolleyes]
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
Yes, I’m sure she wanted the media to demonize her even more than they already were.
???
The porn-lovin’, man-made media doesn’t adore and give much exposure to Susie Bright?
Lis Riba, I’ve already explained my interpretation of what Bright said as including the testimonies of rape victims that are a part of the Meese report. You can believe she didn’t intend to include the testimonies of women raped by and through pornography included in the Meese report in her masturbation statement if you want, but I believe otherwise.
piny and Lis Riba: I do not believe Bright’s post-criticism excuses for that comment. You do. That’s the way it will stay, and I’m okay with that. You should try to be okay with that too, because I just don’t believe her convoluted explanation and I have good reasons to believe she’s not given much thought or respect to the victims of pornography.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 25th, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Something about this phrase is rubbing me the wrong way and I’m trying to figure out why.
I think it comes back to a comment a friend recently made, complaining about debates in which “someone … presumes that because I haven’t come to the same conclusion they have means I haven’t thought about it”
Given the amount Susie Bright has written about porn and how much she’s engaged in discussion, I find it hard to believe that she’s as… stupid/ignorant/blind/callous… as you’re making her out to be.
Elsewhere in this thread, Bright is being condemned for questioning another woman’s personal account.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Yet aren’t you doing something similar by refusing to accept Ms. Bright’s description of her own actions?
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January 25th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
alsis writes:
I don’t think it’s “clueless”, like “You really don’t know what you’re talking about” so much as not-fully-informed. Ignorant, perhaps.
I think that many people who fall into the “really should know better” crowd — the left-leaning intelligensia (because the right-leaning seem to think G-d is going to hurl a lightning bolt at all of us any moment now) — aren’t familiar with the seedier side of life. They’ve never had a conversation with a woman who’d just sold her body an hour ago so she could by a rock of crack cocaine which she smoked 30 minutes ago because tomorrow is going to suck worse than anything they’ve ever imagined.
To them, “sex work” is sex-show types who make money by finding interesting combinations of a speculum, a flashlight, and a camera. Or perhaps dancers who make $1,000 a day in a “gentleman’s club” that has real security, because they’d never go to a strip club where the women don’t earn shit and the one bouncer they’ve got turns a blind eye if a patron does something to a woman he shouldn’t.
For every “sex worker” who’s making $1,000 a day, there are hundreds who can’t get more than $5 for a blowjob because that’s all a blowjob is worth in their neighborhood. And it takes a lot of $5 blowjobs before someone can make rent or groceries or bus fare. Or support the drug addiction they’ve got going which allows then to escape a pretty miserable existence for an hour or so at a stretch.
To understand prostitution one really has to start by listening to the almost insane ramblings of a “crack whore” who’s wound up on crack during the conversation. This is so far removed from — and yet intimately connected to — the 20-something grad student blond bombshell with breast implants paying off her undergrad student loans one lap dance at a time. And yet unless one is willing to associate with people on the dark underbelly of American society, all one is likely to encounter are “sex workers” who enjoy the same protections they take for granted.
It’s a pyramid from the regularly raped and beaten women turning tricks in impoverished neighborhoods so they can make rent money, to the street walkers who can turn tricks in hotels with closed circuit television to protect them, to the high-dollar surgically altered “escorts” who make more in a day than me.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Who said it? Who’s the author? Anyone know?
“As Andrea has always said, virtually every woman has been overwhelmed and intimidated by non-consensual sex at some time in her life…not always brutal, but always damaging.”
It’s Susie Bright, in the very article Cheryl is denouncing. Honestly — and believe wonder why I want actual quotes — and now it looks like I’ll have to demand full texts before I can take others seriously?
This is hardly a way to treat ourselves or our allies. We are all in this together and we deserve nothing less than a willingness to present our interlocutor’s arguments in the best light possible. We must argue with them on their own terms, via sympathetic critique. Without that commitment on our part, we fail to respect ourselves and one another and we fail to honor the long line of women who’ve forged the way for us to have these discussions in the first place.
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:06 am
believe should be people
bitch, who can’t type for shit late at night or early in the morning, whatever you want to call it, it’s called no enough sleep!
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:50 am
Cheryl: FWIW, I clearly remember reading such statements just after Dworkin’s death. I have to admit, I didn’t remember specifically that they were written by Bright, but I definitely remember them.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:14 am
Crys T writes:
Well, maybe, but who decides what’s right? Or, on what basis does ‘one’ woman decide? Feminism overall has yet to reconcile politics with sexual desire. So, while analysis goes on, and always, individual women - feminists - have every right to make decisions and choices for themselves, which is also ‘a’, (if not ‘the’ for some) fundamental platform of feminism.
Cassandra Pinnick wrote in her review of Martha Nussbaum’s book ‘Sex And Social Justice’ ‘…against radical feminists Nussbaum persuasively argues that the very politics of caring and communitarianism that is central to the radical feminist should entail an allegiance to the liberal principles of individual rights. This is because, Nussbaum points out by means of a look at real cases, when political theory is refocused onto the group, then the group runs roughshod over women’s interests and obscures internal hierarchies that exist in any group. Both (of these) outcomes are anathema to the radical feminist stance. That all of this is so, Nussbaum asserts, remains the case, no matter how strongly professed is the communitarian nature of any group.’
If an awareness and acceptance of this were present in debates between feminists around sexuality and sex-work issues, is it possible that those debates could be less bitter and accusatory?
This comment was written by cicely.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:18 am
OK, so again I posted before completing the thread. Whatever.
This thread is an example of why I often just don’t bother commenting on these things. Everyone is pushing their particular line and making no real attempt to understand the other side’s POV or–more importantly–own up to their own errors.
Look, implying that Bright actually got off reading rape victims’ testimony–which is what the text I first read about this episode did (NOT a text supplied by Samantha or anyone else here, I must stress)–gives a fucking false impression of her. It makes people who don’t know anything else about her think she’s a monster. It’s a demonisation tactic, pure and simple. For god’s sake, as actual, proper quotes in context that some of you here have supplied clearly show, it’s easy enough to counter her position with honest argument. So stick to that rather than smear tactics. What’s so hard to understand about that?
And the Bright fans are WAAAAAY too quick to excuse her capitalising on doubting Dworkin’s assertions of rape. Maybe I’m wrong, but I strongly believe that if any other woman did that to someone other than Dworkin, those of you who are refusing to criticise Bright for it would all over her. And rightly so. In a feminist community, it is fucking unacceptable behaviour.
What the hell is it with people that they have to have little idols anyway? Why should we give more weight to people like Bright–or Dworkin, for that matter–than we do to the women who are writing right here? Because they’re in the public eye? Well yeah, if someone like Bright has the ear of the male-dominated media and can therefore put over her personal viewpoint as if it represented a substantial proportion of women, we should be concerned about that, but focussing on her as an individual seems to me to be beside the point.
Anyway, I’d like to second Alsis’s post #53, especially the last paragraph. I know that’s been a problem of mine. I in no way want to be associated with the Christian Right, or those who think any representation of sexual activity is in and of itself wrong. So sometimes I don’t speak up–often because my uneasiness with some of the sex-positive dogma is vague. Because as we all know from personal experience, when you’re facing down hegemonic thought (which, A LOT of the sex-pos theory is, despite their protestations of victimisation), if you don’t have a 100% consistent, perfectly thought out alternative theory with absolutely no holes or grey areas in it, any criticism you make is automatically invalid. Never mind that you’re one person facing down centuries of lies and distortion on a world-wide scale, if you can’t fix it to perfection in 5 minutes flat, you have no right to speak up.
And I get tired of that.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:33 am
Chrys, have you ever read Dworkin’s article about her rape. Her own partner doubted her.
Futhermore, if you read Bright’s article it is not at all clear that she doubts Andrea nor does she suggest, if I understand the complaints here correctly, that Bright says that her rape was the *result of* a mental breakdown.
Bright obviously has voiced some admiration for Dworkin in the article to which Lis Riba point you. Read it.
Finally, I am truly disgusted by all this crap about “someone like Susie Bright” — particularly since it seems to be based on either outright lies or serious misreadings of both Bright and Dworkin.
Recently, I was asked to write for a 97% male audience, one typically hostile to feminism, and do so AS my Bitch | Lab persona. IOW, to go in there and bitch and sass and snit about feminist issues — including talk about what I put forward, the post that strated this thread, about what sex positive feminism originally meant and why it continues to be relevant.
I’ll be prepared for the huried attacks because, lord know, no one should want someone like me daring to be a feminist.
I have a category on the blog called feminismS — that’s because there are many different kinds. We’re going to have to get used to that and deal. We’ve been talking about the topic for about 30 years now. MAybe someday we’ll be able to deal with it.
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:06 am
Bitch/Lab: well, re the quote attributed to her partner above, he didn’t actually doubt her rape, he didn’t want to believe it for her sake. But that is beside the point: feminist women shouldn’t be playing the doubting game in the first place. Not because women never, ever lie or are ever wrong, but because so many women are not believed in the first place. If there is any real evidence that Dworkin lied, put it on the fucking table, but don’t come at me with “it’s just not belieeeeeeeeevable” bullshit that we hear all the time from the rest of society. A lot of true rape stories don’t sound “believable” at first, especially if you’re listening to them through a patriarchal filter. At little innocent until proven guilty theory applied to women who say they’ve been raped is all I’m asking from women who claim to be feminist.
And as for “people like Bright”, I honestly don’t give 2 shits. Like I said, why the hell should I listen to her over Samantha, or Heart, or Piny, or you? I don’t buy into the celebrity bullshit cults, especially when it comes to political thought. Yeah, sometimes those people who are more in the public eye say things that are inspiring or eye-opening, but most of my political education has come from listening to and arguing with “ordinary” (ie “not famous”) women.
I’m therefore not interested in establishing whether Susie Bright herself is a nice or good person or not. I’m interested in whether feminist debate is being sidetracked by the fact Bright, Dworkin et al. are/were celebrities, and I’m worried that some people tend to buy into ideas simply because those ideas have appeared in books that others quote, and the authors have an aura of fame about them. I’m also concerned that some people stick up for their personal idols at whatever cost–which I’ve seen happen before. Admit Bright, or Dworkin or whoever it is you personally think is fab can fuck up. And most likely, being human, did fuck up on more than one occasion. That’s all I’m after.
As for the “feminisms” bit, don’t come after me on that one. I realise you don’t know me, but one of my big frustrations in dealing with those who think they own feminism is getting them to understand that many women don’t live lives like theirs. However, I also think there is a danger of saying that feminism can mean whatever one person decides can. If it can mean anything at all, then ultimately it will mean nothing. There has to be a basic core of beliefs.
Cicely wrote: “Or, on what basis does ‘one’ woman decide?”
That’s the problem: we all have to decide based on the information we have at hand. Which evolves and changes, which is why we are none of us perfect.
“Feminism overall has yet to reconcile politics with sexual desire. So, while analysis goes on, and always, individual women - feminists - have every right to make decisions and choices for themselves, which is also ‘a’, (if not ‘the’ for some) fundamental platform of feminism.”
You’re leaving out the bit where these women have to be completely honest with themselves about how their decisions are going to affect both themselves in the long run and, also importantly, other women. None of us exists in a vaccuum. It’s far too easy to say to yourself, “This is what works for me, so it must be okay” when what you’re really feeling is “THIS IS WHAT I WANT”. It’s also far too easy to just fall into justifying what you want and not looking at WHY you want it or what your accepting it, or doing it will mean for women other than yourself.
“the very politics of caring and communitarianism that is central to the radical feminist should entail an allegiance to the liberal principles of individual rights. This is because, Nussbaum points out by means of a look at real cases, when political theory is refocused onto the group, then the group runs roughshod over women’s interests and obscures internal hierarchies that exist in any group”
Of course there has to be a sane balance between the individual and the group. Not that that is an easy task, but to say that just because it’s difficult, we’re going to continue down the road of individual-worship is ridiculous. Also, the above quote makes no sense if the group in question IS WOMEN. I know “group” is a scary concept for Anglos, but the rest of us know that without it, the individual is sunk. What use is it to me to be free, sexually or otherwise, if dozens of other women are suffering, especially if I’m helping in any way to contribute to that?
It is scary how in cultures dominated by American media, even some minority people are now buying into the hyper-individualistic ideal. But then again, it wouldn’t be hegemony if it couldn’t convince people to work against their own best interests.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:20 am
FWIW, Crys, I don’t think of myself as a Bright fan; she’s not my idol by any means.
Honestly, I entered this debate because I saw a question about what somebody said. That got my librarian-juices flowing, so I decided to seek out the actual quote. [A quick exercise of my searching skills, and hoping to find a few facts to contribute to the conversation, rather than trying to take an ideological side. That given, I did seek out the exact quote because the interpretations given didn't match my memory and I wanted to find out the story for myself.]
Once people started responding to these facts by saying truth didn’t matter, well that got my dander up a bit and I started pressing people.
Now, I do grok that opinions can be emotionally-based or fact-based, and both can be valid expressions. But I also recognize that they’re different discussions.
As I’ve been rereading, part of what got me here was that the argument started out by presenting logic-based rationales. When the evidence emerged and didn’t support their contentions, they switched to emotion-based rhetoric.
Now that I recognize that, I can try to stop pushing them to defend their argument based on the facts, because that’s not what they’re about.
Now I will add that I do consider myself a sex-positive feminist, and I rather like BitchLab’s definition:
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:41 am
Did you read the entire article Chrys? Because it doesn’t read to me as if Bright said anyting about her lying. Read all the way to the end. I’m sure you can do it — if you’ve got time to write four ‘graphs about, you’ve got time to get to the end of that article. YOu’ve also got time to read where she pointed out the debt she owed to Dworkin. You’ve also got time to read the part when Bright agrees with DWorkin (re: the quote I quoted in my post) regarding non-consensual sex. Does that read toyou like someone who is a person who can’t be trusted to represent feminismS.
You wrote: Because they’re in the public eye? Well yeah, if someone like Bright has the ear of the male-dominated media and can therefore put over her personal viewpoint as if it represented a substantial proportion of women, we should be concerned about that, but focussing on her as an individual seems to me to be beside the point.
If there are a multiplicity of femnismS, and if Bright is airing a view that you consider feminist, then there’s nothing to be concerned about. IS there?
You’ve also assumed that Bright is claiming to reprsent all of feminismS. I don’t know that she does that, do you? So, why assume that’s what is going on. And please explain your reasons, in detail, for thinking her views are dangerous to others.
In detail, supported with quotes and, preferably, some kind of theoretical arguments and/or evidence. While you’re doing that, you might want to go right over to her blog and ask her some questions. She might just answer you and tell you what she thinks about unionizing sex workers, exploitation in the porn industry, etc. etc. etc.
Finally, claiming that people idolize anyone is another logical fallacy. You have no evidence on which to base such a claim. It’s another way of saying that we are mindless atomatons, about as useful as some boy band group in terms of our abilities to think critically.
In other words, it’s another logical fallacy.
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:48 am
Crys T, your second post just showed up as I was writing:
My question for you is, how do you know that other women aren’t sufficiently self-analytical, just because they come to conclusions you disagree with?
[BTW, using the phrase "completely honest" does carry a certain implication that others are dishonest or lying, which is a harsh accusation. I am not saying you're doing this intentionally, but just pointing out some of the subtly loaded language that comes out in these discussions and can make civil conversation more difficult.]
I never just accepted my sexual desires, and deeply questioned them. Since puberty, I’ve spent massive amounts of time thinking about the roots of my sexual desires and whether they’re healthy or not and how I may have been affected by which childhood influences.
[I can't speak for anybody else, but I've gotten the impression that many people whose sexual desires don't conform with what's normal or expected go through similar self examination.]
At any rate, those thought processes were what led me to adopt a sex postive attitude.
You keep saying “it’s far too easy…” Well, I wish I’d had an easier time of it. Maybe I overcomplicated matters, but (given the sexual dysfunctions I developed later) I’ve probably spent more time overagonizing about my sex life than actually enjoying it, and that certainly doesn’t seem right.
I could go on and elaborate further, but I’ve got to get back to work.
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Though it’s not directly about sex positivism, this post I wrote about stereotypes is also relevant to what you say about affecting others.
Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 9:04 am
“Did you read the entire article Chrys? Because it doesn’t read to me as if Bright said anyting about her lying. Read all the way to the end. I’m sure you can do it ”
Don’t fucking patronise me, right? I’m also sick of the bully tactics that get used by people when all of us don’t automatically cave to their pov. If we’re going to go that route, why don’t YOU learn to read well enough to learn how to spell my name right? Plllllllllllt, that gotcha, didn’t it? Insulting your opponent’s intelligence is always better than making an actual point.
“You’ve also assumed that Bright is claiming to reprsent all of feminismS. ”
I never said or implied any such thing. Unlike you (apparently) I don’t obsess about Bright. In fact, I rarely give her any thought at all. This is the sort of conversation I have about rock bands (”Oohh, X was so unfair when he said Y had no talent!” “Nuh-UH, no way!”) I’m damned if I’m going to have it about something truly important.
I’ve occasionally gone to her site and read some stuff. In general, I haven’t liked it. End of fucking story. Accept that or not, I personally don’t give a shit. And if you think you can shame me into being a good little girl and dutifully trotting over to find quotes just to prove to you that I’ve done what I said, you can REALLY fuck off. Who the hell are you that I need to prove myself, anyway? A lot of people here know who I am, whether they like me or agree with me or not, so if you think you can cast me as some sort of faker, you’re trying it in the wrong place.
Lis: “My question for you is, how do you know that other women aren’t sufficiently self-analytical, just because they come to conclusions you disagree with?
[BTW, using the phrase "completely honest" does carry a certain implication that others are dishonest or lying, which is a harsh accusation. I am not saying you're doing this intentionally, but just pointing out some of the subtly loaded language that comes out in these discussions and can make civil conversation more difficult.]”
How do I “know”? I don’t claim to “know” much of anything. Obviously, the context for each instance need to be taken into account. And, as I said earlier, each of us can only work with the information we have at the time. So a lot us make bad decisions in good faith.
And yes, “completely honest” is a loaded term. But, OTOH, we all know that we are less than honest with ourselves sometimes. We should be able to own up to that. I’ve never met anybody who hasn’t rationalised their heads off in order to justify a decision that they really wanted to make, even if they knew it wasn’t 100% “right”. And of course, I include myself there.
” Since puberty, I’ve spent massive amounts of time thinking about the roots of my sexual desires and whether they’re healthy or not and how I may have been affected by which childhood influences.”
There will be others who’ve done like you, but also many more who never will. And that’s the problem: I’ve had this argument with a number of people who self-defined as “sex-positive” and they have, in so many words, said that what happens during sex should be kept apart from the rest of life. I’m not claiming that’s a generally-held tenet amongst all people who’d accept the “sex-pos” label, but I’ve certainly come across it a lot. And I flat-out don’t buy it. In fact, I believe that what happens during sex is crucially important to what happens to relationships of all types in “the rest of life”.
I’ve never understood why sex had to be cordoned off as some sort of special little area & given special status amongst all other human relations, either by the truly sex-negative or the so-called sex-positive. Every human interaction you have has meaning which carries over into every other interaction you’ll have. Putting sexual behaviour on some sort of pedestal or locking it away in a closet are both bullshit.
I’ve read what you wrote on stereotypes, and while it is interesting and I agree with some of it, there’s still that hyper-individualism thing going on. Yes, if Jews are stereotyped as spendthrifts or misers, you’re fucked any way you go. But I’d say in such a case that your choice when faced with that situation is to call bullshit about the stereotypes in the first place.
We all know that women are denied owning sexuality while simultaneously being expected to be the suppliers of sex. So yeah, any demonstration of active interest or desire in sex is going to be misinterpreted. That’s one issue, and it affects us all. A different issue is buying into patriarchal definitions of what sex is and what sort of behaviours it can or should incorporate. I mean, for fuck’s sake, we’ve all come out of societies that have incredibly twisted, screwed-up definitions of sex, how the hell can we expect that what we consider sex or sexy will be healthy? Yet in argument after argument that I’ve had, both online & IRL, that’s what I’m expected to do: just accept that dominance/submission is a “natural” part of sex (sorry, that’s evo-psych bullshit–won’t accept it as an explanation of men “naturally” dominating women in everyday life, won’t accept it here)(and, btw, I know that here is where someone will come sailing in to point out that there is same-sex BDSM and also dominant women/submissive men…blah, blah, blah….yeah, and of course NONE of the above could POSSIBLY have internalised society’s generally fucked-up message that D/S is “sexy”…nahhhh) so it’s beyond criticism, or that sex work will “always” exist, blah, blah.
I’m sorry but no: nothing is beyond questioning when it comes to behaviour. I can understand that people whose sexuality is not mainstream feel upset & threatened when this happens, but all I can say is that I question ALL sexual expression, not just those that mainstream society calls “perverted”. I don’t think it’s possible at this point in time for anyone to have a truly healthy sexuality. We’re all too polluted by patriarchal thinking.
However, I’m also not advocating that we all therefore stop having sex. I’m also not pointing any fingers & saying that certain types of sex are “worse”. We’re all fucked up and sick when it comes to sex and all I want is some fucking recognition of that and some effort made towards making it better, instead of lame attempts made to justify sick practices that only serve to keep us ALL down. And yes, I’m including het vanilla sex, which I consider the height of hypocritical, there too. And no, Sex-Pos Ooh, Victorian Prudery! Squad, I don’t envision a future with nothing but platonic cuddling, either. I want to fuck, I just want to find an honest way of doing it.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 10:04 am
True, and it ties to my core point about “sex positivism” of which Bright is but one example mentioned in the first post: Bright has been a key figure and has built her career on this consumerist free-marketism shift that says pornography and prostitution are pro-women because individual women consumers say it makes them feel sexy even while pornstitution is directly enslaving and killing millions of women & children and the demand for prostituted bodies has expanded exponentially in the past fifteen years. This is a real problem, and it is a problem exacerbated by pro-sex industry advocates who are not human rights defenders so much as laissez-faire capitalism defenders.
You can substitute Bright’s name for Hartley, Few, Queen, Leigh, etc., this is what I wanted to say about what’s known as sex positive feminism.
I feel the need to restate this: If we don’t name names, dates and lines we’re criticized for not being specific enough, but if we name names, dates and lines then we’re “picking on feminists” or “enforcing feminist purity” or “holding a grudge” when what we want is some accountability for what pro-sex feminists are saying, doing and promoting.
I believe responding to a report whose entire purpose is to collect details of sexual abuse, rapes and other pornography-related crimes against women as she did comes off very “Rape schmape, it’s just jerk off material” and projected into the media it is nothing but harmful to women. In the infamous sex wars of the 80’s spoken of in these debates, the sexual capitalists ‘won’ in part by deploying bombs like this they knew the media was eager for. The terror, rapes and beatings of Linda Lovelace recounted in the Meese Commission report didn’t stand a chance against such a perfectly packaged soundbite tailored to a Deep Throat-happy public.
Pornographers and their supporters use the term “Linda Syndrome” to refer to former pornstitutes who speak against the pornography industry, another way of belittling women sexually abused by pornographers by suggesting all the rape and lingering trauma exists in their mentally unstable heads. A running theme in sex positive feminism is to downplay and dismiss victims of all aspects of the sex industry, which is how it came to be that the recent theatrical re-release of Deep Throat caused barely a critical ripple in mainstream feminist waters and generated more than a few pro-Deep Throat comments by some known sex positive feminists (Laura Kipnis to name one name.)
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 10:23 am
God damnit Crys, I’ve always respected what you had to say, but this shows that you didn’t even read the BDSM thread from a couple of weeks ago, where nobody said that sexuality or BDSM shouldn’t be examined. Instead, a bunch of us who identified as BDSMers talked about how and why power dynamics created within the controlled invironment of a consensual scene spill over into the wider world. Any accusation that BDSMers refuse to analyze what we do should be pointed elsewhere than the readership of this blog.
I’m the first to say that the term “sex-positive” ought not to be used as a club to beat anti-porn feminists, and I think I’ve made it clear that I agree with at least a good portion of what anti-porn feminists say — enough that pro-porn forks think I’m anti-porn, though I’m sure the anti-porn folks still think I’m pro-porn for my staunch defense sexual minority communities producing their own images of what they do. But when this comes up, there’s always somebody that thinks part of the anti-porn package is throwing the BDSMers under the bus.
Way to build bridges.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Taking the risk that I misunderstood, because I skimmed, Bright references Bright’s earlier article trashing Dworkin for “crying wolf” about rape and lieing about it, in a link to her earlier article about that. That link is disabled. But it’s by linking to that article that she called Dworkin a liar.
As to not believing Bright’s excuses, as feminist women we are not obligated to accept one another’s excuses, justifications, political interpretations or analyses of anything at all, that’s not what it means to believe women, which is why I’ve been here saying I think what Susie Bright has done to Andrea Dworkin and other women sucks dinosaur eggs. We ARE obligated to believe another woman when she tells us she’s been fucking RAPED. Hello. And if we cannot find it in our hearts to believe her, then we are obligated to shut the hell up until we have more information. And why is that? Because we can *count* on it — count on it — that PLENTY of people are going to call her a liar anyway, without our help, that ALWAYS happens to rape victims, those calling her a liar don’t need our assist, which is why girls and women have continued to be raped in large numbers, by men, with impugnity, from time immemorial (and still are). Feminism aimed to confront the way women are called liars for reporting their rapes and blamed for being raped. So. In part the solution to this problem of never believing rape victims was to simply believe them. Which is what feminists did and do. If we can’t believe a woman, then we reserve judgment pending further information, and we remain silent. What we DON’T do, if we’re feminists, if we give any kind of goddamn about women, is publish our incredulity and disbelief for the world’s enjoyment. We try to avoid, you know, shouting our scorn and contempt and disbelief from the housetops as throngs of approving men applaud and encourage us on. What we DON’T do is SELL our articles expressing our disbelief and incredulity, seizing the moment like a good little capitalist days after the woman we called a liar has died an untimely and shocking death.
And anybody who thinks that “memorium” was anything better — best case — than a self-serving and opportunistic damning with faint praise, anybody who actually buys Susie Brights endless, “I’m such a victim of those manhating radfems,” I’m sorry, is plain devoid of understanding of what has actually gone down with respect to Bright and those of us who oppose what she does.
Heart
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Bitch|Lab, yes, I agree, Susie Bright stashed enough apparently positive stuff in there about Dworkin that it could pass the damn-her-with-faint-praise test and could schmooze people with not much knowledge of feminist history. It made it possible for someone determined to read Bright generously and to ignore feminist history to excerpt the nice stuff out of a huge gigantic litany of horrible stuff and to say, “See there? She said that nice thing.”
I wanted to respond to one more thing:
Andrea Dworkin was a published writer who made her career out of criticizing people who make porn”“and, later, sex-positive feminists
That is not an accurate characterization of Andrea Dworkin’s career. Andrea Dworkin built her career on a specific critique of male power and on an analysis of the way male power works in the world to subjugate women. Her analysis of pornography and prostitution were only part of her work (albeit the part men hated her the most for, threatening them where they lived, ahem) . The central focus of her work was not “sex positive” feminists so called, let alone on Susie Bright or people who make porn. The focus of her work was the subjugation of women to men and all of the machinations that make that subjugation possible, beginning with compulsory heterosexuality and the institution of the patriarchal family, moving on to include institutionalized marriage, patriarchal religion, medical, psychological, religious and cultural objectification, exploitation and abuse of women’s bodies, rape, incest, molestation, objectification, sexual harrassment, rape for genocide. The difficulties between the so-called “sex positive” feminists and Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, and other anti-pornography feminists began when the latter began to be deliberately excluded and marginalized in various ways BY “sex positive” feminists. The public difficulties began not with Dworkin, et al’s critique of “sex positive” feminists, but with “sex positive” feminists like Pat Califia and Susie Bright basically throwing down over the issue of pornography and demonizing radical feminists as ten kinds of prudes and manhaters and so on. Be that as it may, Andrea Dworkin created a body of work, written in one of the most amazing prose styles of this century, around a deeply intelligent analysis of precisely how it is that women have been subjugated to men. What Dworkin accomplished cannot be dismissed as you’ve dismissed it there, reduced to criticizing feminists she disagreed with. That is a characterization that is really unfair and just wrong.
Heart
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Thomas wrote:
Why on Earth is Crys obligated to have read that thread from two weeks ago? Why even assume she was paying any attention at all to “Alas” at that point?
Considering how undiplomatic your own post is, I don’t think your post positions you well to criticize other folks for lack of diplomacy.
Here’s what you could have written, which I think would have made the same basic point, but done so in a more effective fashion:
[NOTE: Due to limits on my time and energy, moderation is only done in a "random spot-check" fashion. This system will of course lead to unjust outcomes, in which I criticize post A but fail to criticize post B which was ever so much more offensive. I am sorry about this, but it unavoidable.]
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Thomas writes:
FWIW, I came away from that discussion even more convinced that BDSMers refuse to analyze what y’all do. In particular, the absolute instance that what y’all do doesn’t validate what other people do, and your dogged instance that doing it “the right way” has nothing to do with people doing it “the wrong way”.
I don’t claim to understand this connection between pr0n, busses and BDSM, but I do know that pr0n — as it is practiced in all forms — creates excuses for why abusive, woman-objectifying sex is “okay”, just like (I believe) BDSM — as it is practiced in all forms — creates excuses for why violent, woman-hating sex is “okay”.
What is most disturbing about “pro-sex feminism” for me isn’t that it implies I’m an “anti-sex feminist”. It’s that being pro-sex doesn’t have to mean being pro-woman-hating. And yet, somewhere along the line that’s where it always winds up.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Crys, I apologize. I overreacted.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
FCH, are you saying that whatever any of us BDSMers do in invalidated because some patriarchal asshole somewhere abuses women? When you say that we insist that what we do has nothing to do with the bad folks, I don’t think I’m insisting that at all. I’m saying that folks shouldn’t trash safe, sane, consensual BDSM because some other folks are doing something that shares some common elements with what I do but that amounts to abusing women.
It is clear from the BDSM thread that some of us (Charles, in particular) are critical of the role of eroticizing power dynamics in BDSM and are looking for ways to prevent that from replicating patriarchal dynamics. If your impression was that the participants in that thread don’t analyze what we do, I frankly don’t see how you get that. If what you mean is that none of us repented and renounced all forms of consensual sexual power-play, well that’s true. We didn’t and I for one will not. If you only accept that people are listening to you when they adopt your position wholesale, then you’re not really engaged in dialog.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Bitch/Lab, having read the way you treated Samantha and some others on your home ground, I advise you take your own words to heart, ASAP. So far, I only see you placing a sympathetic light on the Hartleys and Brights, not those who can’t stomach their particular racket.
All or nothing, B/L,when it comes to sympathy– though I personally don’t regard my skepticism of much “pro-sex” thought enough to make me an “interlocutor” of anyone.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
FCH, it’s a pity that you didn’t post #57 in the last/afformentioned prostitution thread. Maybe you could’ve gotten through some of the thicker skulls there, though it’s not a given…
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
Thomas writes:
Nope, I’m saying that the dogged assertion that BDSM is “safe, sane and consensual” creates an environment in which that patriarchal asshat can have his behavior excused or justified as also being “safe, sane and consensual” when it is, in fact, none of the above.
Because, to be blunt, the only difference between what “safe, sane and consensual” BDSMers do and what that patriarchal asshat does, that he also calls “BDSM”, is most often consent.
By repeatedly mewling about “consent, consent, consent!” you create the terms of engagement by which abuse becomes “BDSM” — convince the woman she really wants it. Kinda like what guys into pr0n often do to get women to engage in painful and humiliating sex — “Gee, look — she’s got a smile on her face!” Abuse pretending to be BDSM is all about getting to “yes”. Coincidentally so is most rape.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
No one asserted that “BSM is ’safe, sane, and consensual.’”
Nor does any of it hinge on consent, although I should point out that “consent” definitely is not defined as “getting to yes.” The safety and sanity play a big part as well.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Alsis writes:
Yanno, I wonder how many “pro-sex” feminists have ever had a conversation with a woman who makes less than $10 for a trick. There’s probably, like, some magic number for being pro-sex — if all the street walkers one has ever spoken to earned more than $50 a trick, they are “pro-sex”, if more than some number have never earned more than $20 a trick they are “anti-prostitution”.
There’s a federal research grant involving a LOT of travel in there somewhere.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:28 pm
piny writes:
I don’t doubt you believe that, but then, many rapists believe that “getting to `yes’” is the same as consent. Go read the “Women who don’t call it rape” thread.
And please, I’m not consenting to being badgered by y’all. Conversation with BDSM folks are often themselves BDSM and very much all about “getting to `yes’”. So … feel free to ignore me if that’s what it takes.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
Furrycatherder wrote:
FCH, I’ve appreciated your contributions to this thread so far, but I want to remind you (and everyone) to treat other posters not just with politeness, but with respect.
And (more in regard to this specific statement), everyone is free to respond to your posts as much as they like on “Alas,” and it’s inappropriate for you to suggest they shouldn’t respond to you. If you don’t want to participate in this conversation, then you shouldn’t be posting to it. If you do want to participate, then you don’t get to blame other people for responding to your posts.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:56 pm
FCH, your interpretation of the BDSM thread reverses the argument, and unfairly so. Nobody I know of is saying, “all BDSM is okay because it is by definition safe, sane and consensual.” I and I think some other folks are saying that some BDSM is okay if and only if it is safe, sane and consensual.
I say consent is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. Further, I’m not saying that “consent” is getting the word “yes.”
(Also, I don’t believe most rape is about “getting a yes.” Rape survivors I know, and that’s a substantial portion of the women I know, never said yes. Some were threatened, some were beaten, some were simply terrified, some were unconscious. All were raped by someone they know; I don’t know a single woman who was raped by a stranger, though it sure does happen. As I said, the word “yes” is not necessarily consent, but to say that most of rape can be analyzed as coercing women to say a word … I don’t see how you get to that conclusion, and I really wonder how that sounds to the women who were threatened and beaten.)
“Safe” and “Sane” are relative terms, of course, because people do lots of things for fun that carry some risk, like skiing and rock climbing. However, I think it is reasonable to say that folks doing BDSM have an obligation to educate themselves on technique and understand the risks they are minizing and how to avoid them. Sane is the avoidance of abuse. Where a relationship, taken as a whole, is not one that a reasonable person would enter into for the purposes of intimacy and sexual gratification; or put another way is one that a person would leave if sie were in full possession of hir faculties and free to make hir own decisions, it is not sane. It’s abuse, and the abused person is in it because of abuse.
FCH, you said this:
I think this model assumes that the world of BDSM consists only of male-identified people topping female-identified people. That’s not the world I live in. I was born a man, I live as a man, and I’m both a submissive bottom and a masochist. Is my consent just a meaningless word procured by my wife’s abuse? Nonsense. I consent because I like the scenes we do. So why would you assume that when (as happens on occasion) she bottoms to me, she is doing so only becuase I abuse her? Perhaps you make no such assumption? And if so, if you accept that both my wife and I can do safe, sane, consensual BDSM with each other in the context of our relationship, then are you really saying that we should stop just so that the patriarchal asshat has fewer models of ways to be a patriarchal asshat?
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Finally, if you don’t want to have a conversation, don’t resurrect it. I resent the implication that I’m being abusive by responding to your comments. I really resent you comparing me to a rapist. If you don’t want to talk about it anymore, fine, but you don’t make that terribly clear when you start talking about it yourself.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Amp,
I’m responding to a specific style of response that is very common in BDSM conversations. This response by Thomas is typical –
It suggests that because =I= haven’t stopped expressing my beliefs that I’m not engaging it dialog. It’s a reversal.
I don’t expect BDSM folks to change their beliefs — heck, I’d probably respect them less if they just gave up their position (because they’d be just as likely to switch back when someone challenged the way they changed). I gave what I believe are very cogent arguments. It’s an abusive dialog because it refuses to engage the points, but instead attacks the speaker by suggesting they aren’t engaging in dialog (or are a prude or anti-sex or “vanilla” or …) Because it’s a conversation in which I’ve stated “BDSM is used as an excuse to justify abuse” I think saying “I do not consent to engage in an abusive conversation with you” is perfectly valid. And I don’t. If the pro-BDSM folks want to engage my argument, that’s fine. But if they want to suggest I’m not listening because =I= refuse to change my mind, well, that’s abuse.
Anyway, gotta pack for a road trip. Hopefully this explains why I take the stance I do in BDSM discussions.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
FCH, echoing what Amp said, I am just not willing to let someone call all BDSM rape (I do understand you to be saying so explicitly in your response to Piny, and if you’re disclaiming that you ought to be plain) without responding. You’re calling me a rapist because I ask my wife to kick me in the testicles. That’s bizarre and unsupportable.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
And since this apparently just can’t be repeated often enough: unlike rapists, I wholeheartedly reject the idea that “getting to yes” is the same as consent in any meaningful sense, or that “getting to yes” does not amount to coercion, or that “getting to yes” is not an abusive strategy, or that “getting to yes” qualifies as the kind of respectful careful process that fits into a safe-sane-consensual ethos.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Thomas writes:
I’m not saying that, explicitly or otherwise, and I’m not going to disclaim your misinterpretation.
The context is abundantly clear. I was discussing abuse which occurs under the name “BDSM” even though it does not fit the description y’all present. I explained how using “consent” to justify or legitimate the type of BDSM you engage in provides the “road map”, if you will, for how people who wish to engage in abusive behavior under the guise of “BDSM” (and which I acknowledge is entirely different from your desire to be kicked in the testicles of your own free will, for whatever neurochemical high that might produce) can have their abuse justified — pursue consent, which is also sometimes called “getting to `yes’”.
As for why I focus on women and not on men, the majority of people harmed through violent sex continues to be women at the hands of men. I’m not willing to pretend that women are coercing men into violent sex by pretending it’s BDSM. Heck, here’s the quote that I think I wrote initially in this thread to link abusive BDSM (which I freely acknowledge is different than what you do) to rape –
So … since I’ve agreed repeatedly that there is a difference between “real BDSM” and “abusive BDSM” (though y’all refuse to call the later “BDSM”, just humour me for the same of creating a distinction), the only way I can see this implication (that I called all BDSM rape and all BDSM folks rapists) is if it’s a willful misinterpretation intended to force me to respond to your claim that I called you a rapist. And that, now that I’ve laid it out as plainly as can be, is why I consider your form of response to be a type of non-consensual BDSM.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
And, since piny is now saying that he doesn’t view “getting to `yes’” as consent, I’ll remind people that the second word in the second blockquote above is “pretending”.
In other words, so it is REALLY CLEAR, I very carefully created the distinction that “Abuse” is NOT NOT NOT the same as what the BDSM folks here do. In more other words, because I created that distinction VERY CAREFULLY there is no legitimate way anyone could reach the conclusion that I called them a rapist.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:27 pm
I think it’s a little more complex than that, but I consider my read to be odious enough. FCH is not saying that I am a rapist or that I have committed rape, but that because I believe that BDSM can be consensual, I support a model of “consent” that permits rape and enables rapists. BDSM play may not always amount to rape, but there’s no way to address or even identify rape in the BDSM community. Needless to say, my uncritical acceptance of this potential for abuse speaks to a pretty selfish, irresponsible, misogynist attitude on my part. It also means that I have no conceptual framework for addressing rape, that I don’t even understand what it is. I may in fact commit it in future, or witness it; as far as I’m concerned, it’s inextricable from what I consider to be consensual, correct BDSM practice. I disagree, for reasons we’ve all painstakingly outlined in the earlier thread.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Which would totally hold water if we weren’t clearly, emphatically defining consent as we understand and require it. It’s not tossed around like a hat. Abuse–and abuse of formal consent–is discussed and condemned in detail. In fact, so are the power dynamics discussed in non-BDSM interactions that can compromise formal consent or make it meaningless. If abusers practiced BDSM and decided all on their own that “safe, sane, and consensual” included “passed out,” would we be responsible? In one of the cases Amp discussed in his latest rape-definition thread, people think consent is meaningful in the context of a kidnapping. Are feminist anti-rape activists responsible for that?
To the best of my knowledge, you, and you alone, have used the word “real” in conjunction with the term “BDSM.” I don’t think anyone else has used the phrase “real BDSM” to describe “BDSM as we practice it.” You’re responding to a “no true Irishman” fallacy that we’re not engaging in. Nobody is disputing that abuse occurs within the context of BDSM, or that BDSM practice is never abusive, or that people who commit abuse within the context of BDSM consider themselves BDSM practitioners. We dispute the idea that BDSM == abuse, or that BDSM is necessarily abusive, or that it necessarily condones abuse. If you’re not saying or implying that, then I’m truly sorry I’ve misunderstood you, but that is definitely what it sounds like.
Finally, this is what you said to me:
The word pretending doesn’t appear there. You’re explicitly comparing me, and my definition of consent, to the definition of consent held by a rapist.
I am reading and responding in good faith, and will continue to do so. I’m not sure what I can do to convince you of that.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Piny,
Nope, didn’t say that either, and my post above yours makes =that= abundantly clear.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Calling argument tactics you don’t like BDSM rather stretches the term into meaninglessness, doesn’t it?
You’ve actually made yourself much clearer. I now understand that you don’t have an objection (or much of an objection) to women topping men, and that you do believe it is possible for people to do safe, sane, consensual BDSM for “whatever neurochemical high that might produce.”
So, if I understand you correctly, your major issue is that people who are patriarchal abusers see SSC BDSM, and model their behavior on it, imposing abusive BDSM (adopting your term) on women. I’m not denying that happens. On my account, however, men who are patriarchal abusers of women get that way by exposure of a rape culture where a woman is an object whose consent is meaningless, either literally or because it’s a mere procedural hurdle to be circumvented. I have no reason to believe that they reach adolescence or adulthood with healthy attitudes about women and become abusive because they are exposed to BDSM; and if all they are doing is modelling the particular form of their abuse on as BDSM, so that it mimics SSC BDSM, then BDSM is not the cause of the abuse and its absence would not prevent the abuse. In fact, penis-vagina rape and penis-vagina intercourse are both penis-vagina penetration, and I think we would all agree that rapists model rape of a vagina with a penis on penis-vagina intercourse. Few folks advocate eliminating PV intercourse because rapists model their woman-hating assaults on it.
If what you’re saying is that women might see SSC BDSM and confuse abusive BDSM inflicted on them, the same is far more true of PV intercourse. The whole culture pressures women to consent to have their vaginas entered by penises. As we know from the new rape thread, women in this patriarchal culture are so conditioned to the normalcy of invasions of women’s bodies by penises that many rape victims don’t call their experience rape, even it they were penetrated by a penis in the most coercive circumstances. But few of us think the solution is to ban PV intercourse because it allows rapists to convince women that penile penetration is normal.
The solution to rape is to call men out on their behavior, tell them that consent is not “getting a yes” but enthusiastic participation, and hold them to that. The solution is a culture where women know they have to right not to have sex if they don’t want it, not to feel ashamed of it if they do, to have their needs met, their wishes and bodily autonomy and boundaries respected. The solution is a culture where men know that if their partner is not an enthusiastic participant, they have to stop and respect her autonomy, and that if they don’t the culture will not protect them or excuse their conduct.
The solution to abusive BDSM is the same thing.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
And is a pretty good argument against the idea that FCH ever made a clear distinction between abusive BDSM and the BDSM practice we’re describing, or between abusive BDSM and BDSM in general.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Piny,
Sorry, we cross-posted. My response at #93 was to an earlier response of yours.
NO, I’ve never, not once said that all BDSM is abuse. Or even, for that matter that what you do is abuse, ever, under any circumstances, theory, whatever. Hell, I’ve conceded the point that what you do is NOT abuse because it’s central to my argument that there exists a thing called “BDSM” that isn’t abuse, or that at least is regarded by some / many / most as not being abuse.
As for not including the word “pretending”, I used “pretending” in #79, you responded in #80, and I responded in #82. At which point in time, having neglected to include full disclaimer that I’m not talking about YOU YOU YOU, y’all went off and asserted that I called you a rapist.
There are three conclusions I can reach –
1). “Alas” has a policy which requires that all posts be non sequitors
2). “Alas” has a policy which requires that all posts include all previous posts in their full and unedited form.
3). You intentionally misinterpreted what I wrote.
Pick one.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Actually, I never asserted that you called me a rapist. I said that you compared me to one. I explained what I thought of your comment, and disputed Thomas’s understanding of your comment as calling me a rapist.
And in #82, it sounded as you were talking about me, that you were describing my definition of consent, what I “believe” to be meaningful consent.
I’ll go with (4), none of the above. Why is it abusive when we say, “You’re not listening! That’s not what we’re saying!” but not when you say the same thing in far more insulting terms and furthermore accuse us of arguing in bad faith?
From Thomas’s and my understanding of the point it seems you were trying to make, I get the sense that we rejected it as an interpretation just because we think it’s a really, really bad argument. It didn’t occur to me that you could be making that argument in earnest.
Finally, in other places in this thread, you haven’t argued that there’s such a thing as BDSM that doesn’t involve abuse. Take this statement, for example: “dogged assertion that BDSM is ’safe, sane and consensual,’” in which you do lump all BDSM into one category and imply that we do, too.
And you’re kinda doing it again here:
“or that at least is regarded by some / many / most as not being abuse.”
This is true, apparently, of having sex with someone after abducting them at gunpoint. It’s true of many forms of BDSM and non-BDSM sexual relationships that I would absolutely consider abusive and coercive. My position is that there are kinds of BDSM that a reasonable person would not consider abusive, that do exist in a framework of meaningful, evolving consent. I would argue as well–and perhaps this is where some of the confusion comes from–that any BDSM practice that does not clearly define consent such that consent cannot be understood to include coercion is abusive, does enable abuse, and does carry enormous potential for abuse by all of the people who practice it and not merely by abusers covering themselves with the BDSM label.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Piny writes:
Didn’t compare you to one, either.
Look — I’ve been down this road with BDSM people before. You’re going to make outrageous accusations that I’ll have to defend against. I can’t be sure why, exactly, you’ll do this, but I suspect it’s because BDSM is compared to abuse because that’s the nature of the beast. If BDSM were “flying kites” you wouldn’t be compared to rapists or abusers, you’d be compared to kite fliers. That you don’t like comments about “bad BDSM” people isn’t my problem. Really.
Here’s an analogy –
When I started driving there was no concept of “responsible drinking” as contrasted to “irresponsible drinking”. There was only “drinking”. So people who drank “irresponsibly” were no different than those who drank “responsibly” because no one had ever created that distinction.
Somewhere along the line, because I’m an old fart, M.A.D.D. started speaking out about drunk driving in ways that no one had ever gotten up and spoken out against drunk driving. Out of that movement was created the distinction “responsible drinking”. They didn’t call it something else, they called it “drinking” — “If you drink, don’t drive. If you drive, don’t drink.” Both sides of “drinking” remained “drinking”.
What I’m saying is that there is something akin to “responsible BDSM” and “irresponsible BDSM”. That’s the reality — what many here do sounds like “responsible BDSM”. Except that you refuse to allow that distinction to be created. And you do that by denying that “irresponsible BDSM” is, in fact, “BDSM”. Y’all are the ones doing it — not the “irresponsible BDSM” people. And as with “drinking”, I used to do it as well. I knew my limits, and I’ve known my limits since I was too young to drink legally. So I supported the belief that it was OK to drink and drive because I could do it “responsibly”, which, for the most part I did.
Today, because of that distinction, it’s impossible for me to claim that what I did before was “responsible”. Why? Because “responsible drinking” is defined by the phrase “If you drink, don’t drive. If you drive, don’t drink.” There’s no “if you think you can handle it” or “If you have a high tolerance” or “I’ll drive extra careful”. In many ways this is very much like all the “consent, consent, consent” talk. EXCEPT that instead of calling what you do “responsible BDSM” and what abusers who co-opt BDSM call “irresponsible BDSM”, you say “No, all BDSM is responsible BDSM because we have these rules.” And in doing that you become just like me when I was 16 or 17 and still out there drinking and driving, but, yanno, being really careful not to drive while actually drunk.
Now, why the big beef with BDSM? Because BDSM as a sequence of actions — meaning, hitting, slapping, kicking in the testicles, humiliating — is INDISTINGUISHIBLE from “abuse”. I’m talking here about ACTIONS, not “intentions”, not carefully choreographed “scenes”. I’m talking about the individual ACTIONS. “Responsible BDSM” people slap, “irresponsible BDSM” people slap. And so on down the line — action by action.
You and others here are resisting the very distinction that I feel is needed to disconnect “responsible BDSM” from “irresponsible BDSM”. Are neurochemicals a great way to get high? Sure. I love my neurochemicals, too. In that sense I’m never going to say that BDSM is always “bad”, which is the same sense that I’m never going to say that drink is bad.
Anyway, I need to spend more time looking for shirts to pack and less time arguing.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
I explained why I interpreted your statement the way I did. I apologize for misreading you.
I have no problem with comments about “bad BDSM” people. There are bad BDSM people. That’s not a controversial statement, and it wasn’t one in the original thread. Do you get that statements like, “you don’t like comments about ‘bad BDSM’ people” do not lead me to understand that you’ve been listening to a thing I or anyone else has been saying? Do you get that they make me think that you make no distinction between abuse in the context of BDSM and BDSM in general or between my practice and the practice of BDSM by other people? I have a problem with the following:
(1) Making generalizations about BDSM and then complaining when people read them and thereby misunderstand you.
(2) Arguing that everyone else is engaging in fallacies they aren’t engaging in.
(3) Accusing the people you argue with of arguing in bad faith, absent any evidence but some misunderstandings.
No one is denying that “irresponsible BDSM” qualifies as BDSM.
See Thomas’s comment about how you can make exactly the same argument with regard to any sexual interaction. Not just that, but a definition of “abuse” this narrow would leave a lot of BDSM practitioners in a very dangerous situation.
No one is saying this! No one is saying that “All BDSM is responsible BDSM because we have these rules.” No one! Not Thomas, not anyone arguing on this thread or the other thread, and certainly not me! I have disclaimed this statement over and over and over and over and over. So has everyone else. I have also rejected any similar formulation along the lines of “real BDSM,” or “true BDSM.” I have also rejected the idea that “BDSM” and “abuse” are mutually exclusive, or that BDSM cannot happen in the context of abuse. This is why we keep saying that you’re not listening: if you think that’s what we’re saying, you can’t be. And this, I’m guessing, is why we keep reading a conflation between abusive BDSM and BDSM in general: because it’s the understanding you keep attributing to us.
Again, no, we’re not.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Here, from this thread, are the places where we either imply or explicitly state that there is abusive BDSM, that there is indeed such a thing as “irresponsible BDSM:”
Me: No one asserted that “B[D]SM is ’safe, sane, and consensual.’”
Thomas: Nobody I know of is saying, “all BDSM is okay because it is by definition safe, sane and consensual.” I and I think some other folks are saying that some BDSM is okay if and only if it is safe, sane and consensual.
Me again: Nobody is disputing that abuse occurs within the context of BDSM, or that BDSM practice is never abusive, or that people who commit abuse within the context of BDSM consider themselves BDSM practitioners.
Thomas again: So, if I understand you correctly, your major issue is that people who are patriarchal abusers see SSC BDSM, and model their behavior on it, imposing abusive BDSM (adopting your term) on women. I’m not denying that happens. …The solution to abusive BDSM is the same thing.
Me again: It’s true of many forms of BDSM and non-BDSM sexual relationships that I would absolutely consider abusive and coercive. My position is that there are kinds of BDSM that a reasonable person would not consider abusive, that do exist in a framework of meaningful, evolving consent.
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Folks, I really want to see this discussion cooled down several notches. (And for goodness sake, do NOT respond by telling me it was the other person’s fault!)
FCH has said that she didn’t intend to compare anyone to a rapist. That’s good enough for me; let’s all accept that it’s true.
Piny has said that he didn’t intentionally misread FCH. That’s good enough for me; let’s all accept that it’s true.
Please be careful to treat each other with respect - which means not only not swearing at each other, but not making snide or belligerant remarks. Try waiting five minutes after you write a post and then rereading it and editing out snark BEFORE you hit the “post” button.
And all of you, please don’t force me to be more heavy-handed with my moderation.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
Sure, Amp. I’ll be more diplomatic. Sorry about the flaming.
On a sidenote: you’ve committed a malapronoun.
[Sorry for the typo, FCH - I've corrected it. -Amp]
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
you say “No, all BDSM is responsible BDSM because we have these rules.”
FCH, that is flat-out wrong. I’m not saying that, I didn’t say that, and as Piny pointed out, he and I have explicitly said the opposite over and over again. I adopted your term “abusive BDSM.” Insofar as your point is that there are people who do BDSM committing acts of misogynist abuse, I Agree With You. Please stop accusing us of denying this.
To the extent that you’re arguing against excusing the behavior of abusers because they call their abuse “BDSM” you are engaged in a battle with a strawman.
You also said this:
You’re assuming your conclusion. Hitting is indistinguishable, not from abuse, but from hitting. It’s abuse when it’s done in an abusive context. When my doctor jabs me with a lancet, is it “indistinguishable from abuse? Or shoves a finger in my ass? No! It’s medical treatment! “abuse” isn’t an action, it is a context that arises from the absence of meaningful consent. An action rarely if ever “is” abuse in and of itself.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 26th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Whoops! Sorry. I meant to blockquote:
This comment was written by piny.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 2:24 am
Way back up there in post 68, Crys T wrote:
I think that this gets at the axis of the sex question that matters, and is worth some serious discussion. I totally agree that neither side of the libertine - anti-sex divide answers the relevant questions, if it refuses to look at the way that sex is tied into patriarchy (and other systems of oppression), and that patriarchy (and other systems of oppression) is tied into sex. I don’t think there is much benefit to an “its all good” attitude towards sex that doesn’t incorporate that recognition that - actually - its not all good, its all pretty fucked up.
Crys and I probably disagree somewhat on what to do with that understanding, and how to get to an honest form of fucking, but - while I think that disagreement would be worth exploring - I think the understanding that sex must be seen within its oppressive cultural context is more important, since without that step, there isn’t even any hope of meaningful dialogue.
Anyway, I think if we could drop the BDSM terminology discussion in favor of returning to the important parts of Crys’s response, that would might be really interesting.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 5:11 am
Thomas writes:
No, I’m not assuming any conclusions.
As a sequence of ACTIONS — and a “context” isn’t an action — the actions involved in “physical abuse” and the actions involved in “BDSM” are often / frequently indistinguishible.
And to stear this away from a BDSM terminology discussion, the ACTIONS involved in rape, and those involved in patriarchal oppression of women are also often / frequently indistinguishible from consensual sexual intercourse and egalitarian relationships.
Yes, of course it’s all about CONTEXT. It’s the context of non-consensual sexual intercourse which makes it rape. It’s the context of patriarchal oppression which makes it patriarchal oppression. And so there’s no arguing about ‘context’, here’s the definition I’m using –
The circumstances in which an event occurs; a setting.
An “event” is an “action”. What are the circumstances in which a penis is inserted in a vagina? What are the circumstances in which a woman performs a particular task in a workplace or home environment? What are the circumstances in which a man hits a woman with a piece of wood?
I would argue that the existence of feminist women who’ve concluded that the “rat race” is bad for them can be used to convince non-feminist women that they “really” belong in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Is this sufficiently less controversial than BDSM that we can discuss that without claiming someone has called someone else a rapist? Because I’m making the same argument with respect to BDSM and feminists have discussed the harm that occurs when women publically opt out of the rat race and return to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.
This comment was written by FurryCatHerder.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 7:06 am
“Bitch|Lab, yes, I agree, Susie Bright stashed enough apparently positive stuff in there about Dworkin that it could pass the damn-her-with-faint-praise test and could schmooze people with not much knowledge of feminist history. It made it possible for someone determined to read Bright generously and to ignore feminist history to excerpt the nice stuff out of a huge gigantic litany of horrible stuff and to say, “See there? She said that nice thing.”
Chrys, I invite you to read my blog and then tell everyone I know nothing about feminist theory and history.
For the record, I’ve taught women’s studies courses in gender, sexuality, the family, and sociology of work at 5 different universities. I rec’d my graduate degrees at a University that offered a special certificate in Teaching Women’s Studies, a certificate I received. I also attended a feminist women’s studies department with a mentor who, along with several other women, sued a well-known university in the 70s for sex discrimination. All of them, but two had to drop out of promising academic careers b/c of that suit.
Part of my work for her was helping her sift through and organize tons of feminist materials from the 70s. In those days, there weren’t publishers who’d publish the work and it was all produced on mimeographs, stapled together or placed in three prong folders and passed about.
In other words, aside from living feminist history for the past 40s years, I studied and taught it.
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 7:15 am
“Bitch/Lab, having read the way you treated Samantha and some others on your home ground, I advise you take your own words to heart, ASAP. So far, I only see you placing a sympathetic light on the Hartleys and Brights, not those who can’t stomach their particular racket.
All or nothing, B/L,when it comes to sympathy”“ though I personally don’t regard my skepticism of much “pro-sex” thought enough to make me an “interlocutor” of anyone. ”
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. Because I mocked Sam for telling me that I’m only concerned with my “moist pussy”?
Telling a feminist that her politics are about her moist pussy is pretty disgusting.
Otherwise, perhaps you have me confused with the commenters at the blog.
Sympathy has nothing to do with emotions. A “sympathetic reading” might better be understaood as what is otherwise called “an internal critique.” You understand something on its own terms and criticize the author on their own terms.
For instance, If you’re a Marxist, you don’t read something by an anarchist and then criticize the anarchist for not being a Marxist. That would be called an external critique and the audience for such critiques is usually someone already sitting in the Marxist choir.
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 7:24 am
>>I’ve occasionally gone to her site and read some stuff. In general, I haven’t liked it. End of fucking story. Accept that or not, I personally don’t give a shit. And if you think you can shame me into being a good little girl and dutifully trotting over to find quotes just to prove to you that I’ve done what I said, you can REALLY fuck off. Who the hell are you that I need to prove myself, anyway? A lot of people here know who I am, whether they like me or agree with me or not, so if you think you can cast me as some sort of faker, you’re trying it in the wrong place.
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 8:22 am
FCH, now it appears that you agree with much of what I wrote. If the physical actions of rape and consensual intercourse are very similar, and the physical actions of abusive BDSM (not I’m not denying the existence of such a thing) and SSC BDSM are similar, then do you agree that the solution to the abuse problem in BDSM is no more to attack SSC BDSM than the solution to rape is to attack consensual intercourse?
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 9:48 am
An interview with Bright that a reader sent me:
Boston Phoenix Interview
I’d appreciate hearing more about why people are so upset with sex positive feminism, but I won’t be checking into Alas as much as I’d like: too much work. Please send the info to me offblog. you can find the contact info at my blog http://blog.pulpculture.org or post it to my questions at the blog.
thanks
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Oh, I think that it’s safe to say that you were mocking Sam from the get-go. So let me get this straight: You have a cleavage shot as your blog logo, for pity’s sake. Susie Bright can talk endlessly about tits, pussies, cunts, cocks, assholes, etc., but her critics cannot mention the word “pussy” in passing because that’s crude ? WTF ?
Let’s rephrase it then. Samantha is claiming that Bright and those who aaccept her teachings wholeheartedly are letting their sex drive do their thinking for them. They have decided that anything that sexually arouses a woman is good and should not be closely examined for its effects upon the larger world. Any detrimental effects on someone other than the sexually aroused woman are not her problem. I think that you already knew that’s what Samantha meant, but there. I’ve jumped through your hoop. Now you can find something to ridicule about me, too.
“Otherwise, perhaps you have me confused with the commenters at the blog.”
Sorry. Perhaps so. But I’ll pass on returning, I think. It’s obvious that there’s a policy of hostility there even toward those of us who aren’t quite as radical as Samantha or Cheryl. Frankly, the contradictions embodied by people like Nina “No Condoms It Interferes With My Profit Margin and By the Way I’m A Socialist” Hartley make my head hurt.
That sounds like a contradiction to me. Up above, you were angry at Samantha for using the word “pussy,” in a room full of people who largely dig porn and exhibitionism. What ? Only you can decide when discussing genitalia is A.OK ? That’s quite a marked deck you use in your poker games, B/L.
I’d say that you should go take a good look in the mirror then. Because your own attitude on your blog sure didn’t make me anxious to run out and buy Bright’s books or Hartley’s videos.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Charles wrote:
That would be nice.
Incidentally, I didn’t have all that much of a problem with the interview Bitch/Lab linked to until I got to the part where Susie Bright seemed to think that the two choices for a lonely single woman on Valentines Day were to hit a singles bar in a sexy dress or go to an orgy. A lot of why our approach to sexuality IS so fucked up is contained right there. I mean, THESE are the only choice a woman has ? I wonder if there’s any circumstance at all in which Bright would say, “Maybe it’s just not a good idea to get laid at all. Maybe sex wouldn’t make you feel better. Maybe your troubles lie in some other arena and you should turn your attentions there instead of bowing to the peer pressure against being alone on Valentines Day.”
That’s the problem you run into when dealing with someone who imagines sexuality as a product, and then makes a career of selling it back to her audience. Once sex is a product and it has a pitchwoman, there is simply no way that she’s ever going to admit that her product might fall short in some areas;That no one product can do everything for everybody.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
I get this reaction sometimes when using the sexual words common in prostitution to speak about it, like “whore” and a recent example where I used the phrase “heads up their vaginas.” Usually I try to ignore it or brush quick past it so as not to get sidelined from the main point, but I always wonder why the opprobrium is directed at me while the pornography industry they are defending has best-selling titles like “50 Guy Cream Pie Whore” and “Shockingly Stretched Meat Tunnels #12.”
I’ve never seen pornography or prostitution advertisements that refered to a women in them as “sex workers” instead of whores, hoes, bitches, sluts, lolitas, lesbos, cum-swallowers, jizz-guzzlers, any number of barnyard animals, etc. “Cum see hawt sex workers getting nasty” doesn’t have the same marketing appeal to porn-using men as calling women “fuck pigs” does.
Despite this, someone who can’t decide whether such standard porn terms are pro-feminist or anti-feminist and therefore claims a Switzerland-like neutrality on porn had no problem coming to the rapid conclusion that me using the phrase “heads up their vaginas ” is indubitably anti-feminist.
If any of these folks who bitch at me about my language in debates on pornstitution have written one letter to a pornographer protesting the woman-hating language they use to make billions I would be very surprised.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
January 27th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Bitch|Lab, I have no doubt that you know a lot about feminist history. But it’s very clear to me that like many, many feminists, including women’s studies teachers and professors, you have only heard one side of the story as to the Sex Wars. That is understandable because that is a story that a whole lot of people have worked very hard to erase. My saying that you don’t know what went down between Susie Bright and Andrea Dworkin and other anti-pornography feminists is less an insult (though I admit I felt aggravated when I wrote what you responded to) than it is an observation.
Heart
This comment was written by Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff.Report this comment to the moderators
January 29th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
alsis:
“I wonder if there’s any circumstance at all in which Bright would say, “Maybe it’s just not a good idea to get laid at all. Maybe sex wouldn’t make you feel better. Maybe your troubles lie in some other arena and you should turn your attentions there instead of bowing to the peer pressure against being alone on Valentines Day.””
Yes indeed.
“That’s the problem you run into when dealing with someone who imagines sexuality as a product, and then makes a career of selling it back to her audience. ”
Double yes. I don’t like the idea of sex as a product, full stop - and somehow, some people seem to interpret that as meaning sex-negative, vanilla, whatever.
This comment was written by Sheena.Report this comment to the moderators
January 30th, 2006 at 2:21 am
Total agreement on not liking the idea of sex as a product. And I’m hard to call vanilla (sex-negative, who knows).
I was talking with Sarah (my spouse) about porn the other night, inspired by this thread. Sarah is heavily involved in fandom, so, for her, porn mostly means slash fiction, and we were talking about why slash seems acceptable to both of us, while male targetted porn does not. After some discussion of the different positions of men and women (which we both agreed were important) and the issue of visual versus written forms (the importance of which we disagreed on), and recognizing the importance of the conditions of the creation of most mainstream male targetted (visual) porn, we settled on the difference between slash (acceptable) and romance novels (creepy). The big difference? Slash is created to be shared in a community of reciprocal relationships that revolve around what the authors and readers mutually find exciting. Romance novels are a commodity created to appeal to what the audience is assumed to find exciting, designed to sell as much product as possible.
In slash, sex is not commodified.
Anyway, I thought it was interesting.
This comment was written by Charles.Report this comment to the moderators
January 30th, 2006 at 2:43 pm
Thanks, Sheena.
You, too, Charles. I really wish that there was more acknowledgement that issues change when we commodify. Or, more rarely, de-commodify.
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
October 31st, 2006 at 10:39 am
[...] I read some pretty weak nonsense in response to my and Ampersand’s (Alas, a blog) desire for discussions grounded in something other than assertion. Things were a little more reasonable over at Pandagon but I was amazed that the discussion (here) and (Here) continued to revolve around sex or liking sex. [...]
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab » Pivot babe for the circle jerk.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 6:00 pm
[...] to look at the way that sex is tied into patriarchy (and other systems of oppression), and that patriarchy (and other systems of oppression) is tied into [...]
This comment was written by The Rhetoric of Patriarchy.Report this comment to the moderators