Not my dirty brain
Great review of the new Girls Aloud CD, although I don’t think the overall interpretation of the album can quite be made to stick; I certainly hope not, as it trys to foist on the Girls an ideology much less radical than they’ve previously displayed. The problem running through the whole piece finally crystalizes in the conclusion:
Look, say the Cold Rationalists, this is what free enterprise leaves us as…sex as soap powder, love as a too-expensive/too-much-hard-work luxury, demographic husks of empty.
Which seems to be nothing so much as an invocation of a _true_ sex and a true love behind the simulacra provided by capitalism. But this essentializing move is disasterous, because the idea of a true love, a true sex, a true body, a use value beyond exchange value, is precisely what supports capitalism, the fantasy that allows it to keep going (unlike what your old-school Marxist would tell you, it is not in his declaration of the death of reality, but in his nostalgia for that reality, that Baudrillard is most clearly the ideologue of capital).
Similar questions, in the context of anti-essentialist feminism, have also been animating the splendid Bitch Lab recently. There’s also this recent article, ‘Pornography is a Left Issue’, which is curious in that it argues, as far as I can see, that pornography is not a left issue. The argument, that is, is that leftists should be opposed to pornography because porn work is exploitative; but of course all work is exploitative, and the only attempt to define the specificity of porn is:
In pornography, the stakes are even higher; what is being commodified is crucial to our sense of self. Whatever a person’s sexuality or views on sexuality, virtually everyone agrees it is an important aspect of our identity. In pornography, and in the sex industry more generally, sexuality is one more product to be packaged and sold.
This notion of the “importance” of sex then goes completely unexamined; which is unfortunate, because it allows a nominally feminist gloss on a classic position of patriarchy: women who have the right sort of sex are good, those who don’t are bad (although perhaps, poor victims of patriarchy, they can’t help it).
Perhaps sex is important in a different way. As Foucault put it, “sex is boring”; but, he immediately went on to say, discourse about sex is interesting. Or, to put it another way, sex is not important because it is naturally important, but because of the particular and entirely artificial position it occupies in contemporary ideology. This would also suggest an alternative to the rather sub-Chomsky notion of media criticism employed in the article above (porn companies make money out of sexist stereotypes? Who knew?). The point of a critique of the media (which can surely only be weakened by trying to isolate and fence off pornographic tropes) can’t be to point out the things in the media which are false; the problem is the way in which the media constructs the truth.
What I would like to see is a different sort of critique, which attempted to understand the methods used to construct truth so we could construct other truths, with more egalitarianism both in the methods and the outcomes. Such a critique would also relate to pornography in a somewhat different way: if porn is objectionable because it is so powerful in constructing a particular sort of domination, what can it tell us about the techniques for constructing non-domination?
10 comments
Leave a comment
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I have a lot to say on this issue, which i feel i will say inadequately at the moment due to circumstances and geographic locales, but i would like to say that the argument forwarded in the Porn is a Left Issue article - that sex work is exploitative, and that sexuality is crucial to a sense of self - does not really insinuate that there are some woman who have the “good” kind of sex, and some who have “bad”, but rather that sex is a fairly sticky and tricky endeavor to begin with and that its commodification is problematic in similar and yet profoundly different ways as/than wage labour.
Of course, I am in no position, nor would I want to be, to condemn women engaged in the sex trade, but the issue is the farthest thing from a cut and dry issue. And I agree that it is a leftist issue in that it is something which is most frequently argued as a polemic. You have the rightists, abolitionists and anti-porn feminists on one side and the leftists, enthusiasts and “third wave sex positive” feminists (a la Spread magazine) on the other. The Porn/sex work debate, though, must not be polemical. While I would not condemn a woman engaged in pornography, I do think it is extremely problematic and needs to be criticised intensenly, and heavily examined including and especially all aspects purporting to be feminist (ie., burlesque shows).
But, I{m on vacation. I´ll get back to you on this one.
Comment by elise @ 12/29/2005 5:25 pm
I don’t think that porn can tell us anything about non-domination because it is an institution of patriarchy. Radical libertarian feminists would says that pornography enables women to free themselves from the shackles of sexual repression, but I believe that pornography maintains, increases, and encourages patriarchal domination/oppression.
Most sources that represent a radical libertarian feminism view fail to include a definition of pornography. I think this is because a pro-pornography definition would expose the inherent ugliness of pornography. To create an inclusive definition of pornography would force pornography advocates to acknowledge the voices of the anti-pornography movement. I attempted to find a pro-pornography definition but unfortunately most of the language revolves around debunking anti-pornographer definitions. If pornography is a good thing for women, I would think that proponents of pornography could give it a meaning which upholds their libertarian values.
http://oregonstate.edu/~stolleer/blog/index.php/radical-libertarian-feminism-paper/
Comment by Eric @ 12/29/2005 8:04 pm
hi Tim,
I don’t know what I think about pornography, other than that I think the power of the workers in the industry has to be factored into any attempts to understand and change the industry and that I support Dworkin-style legislation that’d allow people to sue if they feel they were harmed by the product. I can’t speak to the issue beyond that.
I don’t know what you mean by the absence of a use value beyond exchange value. There aren’t any? Why not? A use value is just anything that is used to satisfy some want. When people organize a union they get the following uses (nonexhaustive list) - better working conditions and wages, more class hatred, some new skills, some comaraderie and new/renewed friendships. The same goes for more confrontational activities. Sure, these sometimes get turned back into value production, made useful for the bosses, but that’s not given a priori (and sometimes they just get massacred). The commons are/would be use values organized along different lines than the current prevailing mode of organization, the current requirment to submit to waged labor/value production in order to have the things we want (and by things I mean everything from material objects to relationships and experiences - anything of the belly or the fancy, as uncle Karl puts it). Now, if there was only use value there may well be eventually no need to keep the term (just like being is kind of dull, since everything is in it), but that doesn’t mean that things aren’t use values, just that we may not need the use/exchange distinction when some uses stop being yoked to the capitalist use that is exchange.
Lastly, I disagree that any ideology at all is necessary to keep capital going - there’s no way to know that, we could all just end up forced to work at gunpoint and know full well what’s happening, just being too afraid and lacking in abilities to organize to be able to change things - and I’m not convinced that the idea of essences etc automatically supports capital. I think it’s probably all very situational and contradictory - people can do all kinds of great things with really bad ideas, and do all kinds of dumb things with great ideas. (To say otherwise would deny some interesting histories and probably end up in a type of linguistic idealism in which idioms create social practices.)
happy new year,
Nate
Comment by Nate @ 12/29/2005 10:22 pm
Thanks Elise; you’re right that “sex is important” doesn’t entail that there’s a moral and an immoral sex, but that seems to me to be the obvious way to read the article, that is, as making sex important because it is an ‘outside’ to commodification. I absolutely agree with you that pornography, and supposedly feminist uses of it, need to be considered carefully and critically.
Eric: I agree that porn is an institution of patriarchy, but how does that differentiate it from anything else? Everything on which we might attempt to ground an anti-patriarchal practice is tainted by the fact that we live in a patriarchal society.
I’m not sure if I agree that “radical libertarian feminists would says that pornography enables women to free themselves from the shackles of sexual repression,” but at any rate I certainly wouldn’t say that; indeed, what I wanted to emphasize in my post was that the concept of “sexual repression” is a dubious one.
Nate: I actually was intending to post something further about why I think the idea of “use value” separate from exchange value is part of the ideological support of capitalism; hopefully that will go up today or tomorrow. As for people doing good things with bad ideas, I agree with you; but I’d be uncomfortable if that ended up making ideas just epiphenomena with no causal content at all (which is, itself, another kind of idealism, I think).
Comment by Tim @ 12/30/2005 5:29 am
This notion of the “importance� of sex then goes completely unexamined; which is unfortunate, because it allows a nominally feminist gloss on a classic position of patriarchy. women who have the right sort of sex are good, those who don’t are bad (although perhaps, poor victims of patriarchy, they can’t help it).
I think I agree. The notion that women can somehow be liberated from patriarchal oppression by refusing to wear makeup, or by having the right kind of sex, as you said, seems ridiculous, and I think that this was what the article implied, to some extent.
However there does seem to be something different about work in the sex industry to normal work. Women’s benefits being cut because they refuse to accept jobs as prositutes seems more objectionable than their benefits being cut because they refuse to accept jobs in factories. Both are obviously terrible, but there does seem to be something worse about forcing women to become prostitutes. Unfortunately I can’t really justify this at the moment, though.
I also don’t understand why the “idea of “use valueâ€? separate from exchange value is part of the ideological support of capitalism,” but I’m sure your next post will illuminate this :).
indeed, what I wanted to emphasize in my post was that the concept of “sexual repressionâ€? is a dubious one.”
I didn’t really get this from your post; I thought you were advocating a pro-porn sex positive version of feminism.
Comment by rachel @ 12/30/2005 9:08 am
I think we can say that sex work is especially bad without essentializing sex: the problem isn’t that sex work involves sex, but rather that it disproportionately exploits women (sex work might be similar to domestic work in this respect, with added problems due to criminalization and risks of violence). I obviously didn’t express myself very clearly if I came off as being either pro-porn or sex-positive. “Sex-positive” implies a sex which is essentially good, whereas I want to emphasize that, because sex is socially constructed, it doesn’t make sense to say that sex is good or bad, we should be considering the possibilities offered by the processes that construct sex in any given situation.
Also, Nate, apropos the people doing good things with bad ideas, perhaps it’s relevant to emphasize that people can be mistaken about what there ideas are: people can think they have idea X (which is bad), but actually act according to idea Y (which is good — or vice versa).
Comment by Tim @ 12/30/2005 9:18 am
hi Tim,
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this use value stuff, as I think you’re wicked smart and I don’t think I could agree more strongly with your politics. I don’t like the language of people mistaking the ideas they hold - that implies a someone who knows people’s real ideas, and an idiom in which ideas are most clearly visible. I don’t see how that could play out as anything other than a demand that people speak as we do (”you say C but you mean X term from our idiom”). I prefer to think of this stuff in terms of translations (”what you call C sounds like it might be close to what I call X”) as that doesn’t imply any final court of appeals. (Not that I’m against final courts of appeals - in fact, I prefer my own a great deal and pretty unequivocably, but I suspect only convinces those who I agree with.)
All of that aside, after reading your remark on a positive/unambivalent sex posited by ’sex positive’ people, I’m more willing to consider your position on use value. There certainly is no unsullied use value that needs to be merely … umm … made use of. To my mind everything is bound up with the contradictory reproduction of the capital relation (no one’s innocent, everything’s fallen). But that also means that “Y reproduces the capital relation” is not a particularly strong attack, unless it means that the subject at hand does not do so in ambivalent/contradictory fashion, such that it doesn’t also connect to other noncapitalist possibilities.
How does this sound: you say “‘Sex-positive’ implies a sex which is essentially good, whereas I want to emphasize that, because sex is socially constructed, it doesn’t make sense to say that sex is good or bad, we should be considering the possibilities offered by the processes that construct sex in any given situation.” I totally agree.
I imagine you’d say the same of certain “use-value positive” perspectives too, right? Part of the point here, I think, is to say “let’s be more specific, lots of things fall under the term sex”. But, I imagine you’d say that at least some of these constructions of sex are not totally one-way or the other (not good or bad) but ambivalent/bound up w/ antagonism. Is that right? If so, can we make analogous claims for use value(s) while avoiding the pitfall you mentioned in your initial post? I hope this makes sense, my head’s a bit jumbled.
take care and have happy new year,
Nate
Comment by Nate @ 12/31/2005 12:45 pm
The thing that makes sex important is its privacy. On the one hand, it’s a critical means whereby private property may be kept within a particular class (via inheritance for example, or in the case of the catholic church, the denial of sex serves to contain the fortune). For the rest of us, along with such accoutrements as romantic love, it’s the heart in a heartless world, that which we come home to (not in actuality of course, but in aspiration). In other words, there’s nothing naturally important about sex, any more than there’s anything naturally important about eating tomatoes. Only in a world where the social is so devoid of humanity can sex appear to be any more important than any other human activity (I expect angling comes a close second for magazine sales in the U.K., for the same sort of reason).
Comment by Bill @ 1/2/2006 8:17 pm
First, thanks for the link Tim and thanks for appreciating my wacky rants. I’m saddened to learn that anti-foundationlist criticisms of mainstrean feminism are so few and far between these days, let alone well-understood.
At any rate, Bill, isn’t the notiong that there is something “special” about humanity the same issue? In other words, usually someone means by humanity that there’s a natural state in whicho ur humanity exists, outside the social. it si now warped and repressed by the social relations of class society. We yearn and pine for it, because there’s this “it” someone that’s hidden, that’s desperate to get out, cut lose, be free.
So, if we could just get out from underneath that repressive mantle of stultifying, inhumane, dehumanizing social relations, we could realize who we truly are and then not be so charmed by the lure of a sex displayed publicly. Porn would no longer ‘work’, no more than ‘tomatoes’ work.
That’s how the statement reads to me, though perhaps I’m putting to much on it. But, if it is, then I think that’s what Tim was on about in the first place.
If there’s no “sex” taht isn’t produced, then there is no state of humanity free from/of the very social realtions that make it so.
Comment by Bitch | Lab @ 1/4/2006 12:54 pm
To understand what some of us mean by sex positive, here’s a little rant:
It’s not about saying sex=good. IT’s about a rejection of foundationalist claims about women — the famous “woman question” _in_ feminist thought.
The wikipedia entry isn’t bad on the topic. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are pro-porn and that you don’t have a lot of criticial things to say about pornography as it exists in contempoary life. But those things would hardly be much different than what I might have to say about a series coming out on Oxygen called Campus Ladies. Or Maxim.
Nothing has hit home to me more than running my own struggling business where we are barely making ends me, just how much Ihave to put on a smile and pretend to like the people I’m working for. How much I have to fake joy about writing marketing copy. So, it’s pretty hard for me to say that faking an orgasm (or, heck, even having one) with a stranger for money is a whole lot different.
As I always ask: what’s the difference between selling my fabulous skills at baking an applie pie and selling my fabulous skills at performing hummers?
Comment by Bitch | Lab @ 1/4/2006 1:13 pm