Free-Speech Feminism: The Far Rights' Favorite Sex toy

A bit of a windy long read, but the author some of the issues we've been struggling with-- the objectifing of women by liberal men. I don't wonder WHY this happens, I know why, but it's interesting to see a man address the issue, in a damn fine slapdown.
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"Radical feminists are dangerous creatures. They are at once an unseemly fringe element of society, something so outlandish that most people can scarcely even admit they still exist, and yet their stony eyes still bewitch the courts and media to do their bidding, damning the American public to their doleful Politically Correct agenda. Radical feminists are rather like Martians, only worse: Death Rays can only kill you; feminists can suck all the fun out of your life. For the crime of caring about sexual exploitation, prostitution in both its traditional and televised forms (the word pornography magically transforming an illegal act into protected “speech”), they are often accused of being “closet conservatives” who are more than willing to align themselves with religious fundamentalists.

Nothing could be further from the truth but the male Left requires such mythology: these allegations of collusion allow liberals to discount their own selfish attachment to sexism, choosing instead to view radical feminists (clearly “not the fun kind,” in the words of Gloria Steinem) as the greedy party: uppity women who are more than willing to jeopardize the rights of underprivileged men just to put an end to the sex industry’s exploitation of women. Worse, they even include the exploitation of those spoiled white women in that ambition. They now stand as perhaps the most universally despised demographic: even liberal white men popularly brag of their contempt for white women in order to displace their own responsibility for racial privilege. This deflection hides their misogyny under a slick veneer of progressivism. While the patriarchal reversal of “gluttonous” feminists, eager for more than their fair share, is hardly more clever than average for the genre, the guilt-trip it imparts has the advantage of encouraging it as a talking point amongst women themselves. This is especially true for feminists as they tend to be more sensitive to such issues to begin with, something their liberal male peers are more than willing to exploit."


http://adonismirror.com/06022006_leader_free_speech_feminism.htm

"...To make a long story short, a number of white men—lawyers and liberal politicians—discovered they could get rich defending the riches of other white men, pornographers, who had found their own business threatened by other white men, Republicans, who wanted to shore up their own powerbase and its derivative riches. Women were notoriously absent from the proceedings. Free-speech feminism was invented to remind those men that women could be lawyers, pornographers, and Republicans too: maybe all three at the same time, even if they never quite achieved the same levels of power or wealth as their male counterparts...

When dealing with men, however, those hats must often be exchanged: the free-speech label adds an additional layer of credibility when acting as the legal strong-arm of the sex-positive movement. White men value free speech over all other concerns because they have the privilege of misrepresenting their disproportionate control over society and the violence it takes to maintain and expand upon it as “speech.”...Indeed, the primary purpose of free-speech feminism is to disguise the very much open financial and philosophical links that sex-positivism has to conservative forces..."

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I stumbled over that line about "white men value free speech over all other concerns" a few times, thinking that that, in itself, is a privilege - nevermind the rest of the sentence. When the rest of the world is worrying about survival and starvation and rape, it's a privilege if the biggest problem you have is free speech. That's a liberal privileged position which we see a lot here.

Don't get me wrong, I'm as outraged about the NSA eavesdropping as the next person, but look at the amount of ongoing attention that got on DU as compared to the abortion bans or denying access to birth control. Only one of those comes down to actual survival ... and it's not the one everybody cared about.

(little off topic from the main blog point itself, just ranting here)

when I noticed the men that the adonismirror site has on their link page ->


Professional pro-feminist writers and speakers
(inclusion not necessarily an endorsement):

Rus Funk

Stan Goff

Robert Jensen

Alan Johnson

Jackson Katz

Michael Kaufman

Michael Kimmel

http://adonismirror.com/links.htm
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I noticed the subtitle of David Brooks NYTs piece today:

"Consciousness-raising doesn't turn boys into sensitively poetic pacifists. It just turns many of them into dropouts who hate reading."


One of the dumber things I've heard. It's ridiculous that men like that even get published, anyway.

I suppose he is suggesting that if people have their consciousness raised that they will be less likely to want to participate in a fucked-up culture. Unlike himself - with no consciousness - who will say whatever stupid thing comes to mind to defend the patriarchy - and get paid for it.

that I thought about posting here, by Julian Real: A Feminist Line in Racist Patriarchy’s Sand: On Bondage and Freedom
http://stangoff.com/?p=300

Don't know if you saw that. I thought it was exceptionally disturbing for a number of reasons, not the least of them being my own reaction - that the race games being played out seemed worse than the gender games that are played out in exactly the same way in pornography. They shouldn't logically be any worse, so I'm wondering why I'm more appalled at that sort of role-playing than the usual porn fare. If that makes sense.

Curious what you make of that.

(David Brooks, what is he thinking? If he considers raising consciousness is a bad thing, what is the purpose of his own writing - to dumb down our national consciousness?)

"White master seeking black slave, however, seems the more popular of the combinations."

It does have a lot of emotional baggage - race/slave relations.

I suppose it's the same psychological thing that causes us to react just to the idea of it - that the people who want to engage in it - to "play" with that emotional baggage - as if it's a toy.

It seems like one of those things - where maybe for some people it seems like they are dealing with the effects of the patriarchy - where it seems to me that they end up perpetuating and reinforcing the patriarchy. :shrug:

I had to think about that one. I was trying to explain it to my husband. We know a few people in the "alternative" sex scene. The ones involved in the more extreme areas have significant emotional baggage. A few are searching for the ultimate orgasm or the edges of their own sexuality, they seem to approach it in a purely sexual way, and seem fairly healthy.
A lot of it is dress up, play-- The professional clubs have strict rules about boundaries. But I've never seem the value of BDSM as a lifestyle simply because of the time and effort both physical and psychological involved. Especially for the ones working out "issues". For those it eventually trends to the self-destructive and seems to indicate loathing of self as a sexual being. (I certainly don't think sex needs to be always transcendent, it's not and play or play-acting can add a lot.) Adding a racial element IS very disturbing. If one is looking for domination, you don't get more dominant that a white male. My guess is a black Dom, or a black submissive involved in such racial play could very well of those working out "issues" And it is reflective of white patriarchal values.

When I first started looking around the internet. I decided to see what was out there. I'm not afraid of porn, and I had run into a few bizarre sites. So I searched. And looked. This was a few years back, I don't know what it's like today but there were a lot of free pictures back then, in all "categories" I knew more or less what I would find, but I was saddened to see so many pictures of abuse and degradation. Mostly involving women, of course. And it crossed international boundries, for instance Japanese porn is pretty intense and again, the woman is the exploited one or the abused one. The real or quasi-mutilation or some of the more dangerous "play". The racial element that I remember finding was more white and black. Usually black men with white women, which is racist porn from the gate. (I could go on about why but I don't need to, I think)So the racist element has always been intertwined with national sexuality, and I guess I'm not surprised it's in the BDSM community. The ones who defend it no doubt think it as a step forward,ie. "I" am the one who allows you to call me names, and express racist expressions, therefore "I" have the control"
Reminiscent of the attitude of some submissives.

Sometimes I wonder if BDSM is a way of working out inequality, since sexism and patriarchy is so internalized, is both overt and covert and hurts everybody-- even those who benefit from it are severely damaged. Sexual activity is a powerful tool. Not always a healthy one, but powerful.
So I have to add to my personal, eternal question now. What would sex, the perception of sex and indeed pornography be like if there was no sexism? If we lived in a gender balanced society? Now I need to add, (and I look at it as a complete irresponsible oversight on my part because the information has always been out there) what would it be like if there was no racism?