I love my wifey.
Belle has met her, she is fabulous. Both the wifey and Belle.
But I love my wifey because she says things like
" The world she has an axis and she will continue to spin on it"
We were into a conversation of " young women" and our " issues" and our "activism".
And as young women we came to a consensus.
We have a huge problem here, and it's not getting better.
As a generation we are constantly told how coddled and entitled we are and how we expect everything, except it is something that only applies to some of us.
A lot of the activism we are taught and the " personal is political" we are fed does not resonate with either of us in any way. And that's comically bad
You see I have said this before but I have to at this juncture emphasize how DIFFERENT me and the wifey kins are in terms of where were placed on the socio economic straits.
Wifey is a WASP . She is related to John Wilkes Booth AND SIR FRANCIS DRAKE . She white . She really really white. Country club white , got mofos in her family names Bink white. Private school ivy league knows what the fuck nantucket red is white.
As young women of privilege ( yes I know it's hard to believe but My ass was in private school since the 7th grade I am of privileged and I know it) we were told constantly over and over we could have it all.
Because of our privilege
Not only that but because of our privilege EVERYTHING WE DID MATTERED and could change the world.
This shit is annoying us both to this day.
We are the generation that is constantly considered as the vangaurd for empowerment. How could we be empowered to reach the doors our fore mothers opened for us.
Sadly empowered seems to be slipping really into entitled.
And by slipping i mean walking arm and arm.
Because a lot of these empowerment discussions hinged on a certain amount of privilege, that is then subsumed .
Only a few of us are actually " empowered"
and frankly me and the wifey are not sure that's a bad thing.
In one of my posts I used the phrase " fuck like entitled white men" and didn't explain it. It's a grenade bomb that I actually stand by but I do want to explain it.
In short a lot of my experience on a reasonably open campus about being empowered in my sexuality has not been in enabling me to be upfront in my own desires , but entirely focusing on attaining the PERCEIVED lack of social and emotional repercussions of the "guys".
WE WERE EMPOWERED!
Suddenly every damn thing we did was a STATEMENT. NO ONE CAN TELL US ANYTHING! LEAVE YOUR JUDGMENT OFF MY BODY!!!!!!!!!!
Mind you many of our empowering activities , involved elaborate costuming ( racial or sexual) , built in excuses( I WAS SO DRUNK!), and was measured ONLY in terms of whether we were neck in neck with the guys.
or
holier than thou protesting, pseudo misandry, coopting whatever culture of the day sensuality.
Empowerment was now a competition .
We were eliminating old standards or shifting paradigms with EVERYFUCKING THING WE DID
The thing that bothered me then and still does now is that to often the empowerment seemed not about self reflection or improvement but about telling other people about how AWESOME your life choice was.
We were and are so busy getting ours and fighting power that no one can tell me what ours is?
Activities in college became transgressive only because they affirmed really cl assist and racist stereotyping.
Date Auctions, hook ups and dirty dancing was special because girls like 'us' only did it under SPECIAL circumstances.
Tantra is amazing because it is so DIFFERENT AND MYSTIC.
For empowered young women we sure nuff needed a whole lot of excuses to do shit that we enjoyed, and way to often the justification was this empowerment that translated
to:
I am such a special and privileged star that my very presence at this activity makes it RADICAL!!!!
It wasn't enough to just like something it HAD To be an event.
When wifey did the Vagina Monologues one of the thing I Was annoying and noticed was that for a celebration of vaginas none of the non traditional ( trans , WOC, foreign ) vaginas had happy stories.
Also that it was the only time that we could get certain women to come out for anything women related ,
For empowered sexual women way to many women were way to amused they got to say Vagina in public not mention the empowerment stopped very cleanly at some people.
part of my confusion has to do with the fact that as a women from a non American household many of this " empowerful" activities and discussions seem strange.
Considering the fact that my " it is wonderful to be a woman " speech came from DAD and my mom handed me a mirror to tell me about my anatomy and proper hygiene.
The empowerment comes not from the activity but the belief that as young women our opinions and enjoyment of it is worthy of being reason enough to do it.
Point blank to much of empowerment seems not about making women prepared and ready to withstand challenges but insulating them in privileges to go out and attain more.
And it's not about the activities.
Octagalore asked me earlier about how women can participate in cultural practices without appropriating.
I thought on this heavily and then read this from Belle.
The thing that amused me was that in the train wreck of a post she linked to someone with a straight face denigrated poledancing talked about belly dancing as an empowering activity cause it got her off.
Thats the empowerment trap.
This activity is EMPOWERING cause i like it but this one isn't because I don't.
However I will discuss it only in this vacuous space of entirely how it makes me feel without talking about the entire process of how it becomes acceptable (or not for me to do it).
the only reason pole dancing comes up at all is because it is available to a certain sect of women.
The only reason belly dancing is empowering is because it becomes this a cultural articfact about how certain women feel today.
Any one going ' you know what no" is not just questioning an activity but either stopping a woman's empowerment or de-empowering ( whatever side you fall on) the entire movement.
It is blasphemous to point out that if all you have to worry about is SOMEONE ELSE'S poledancing you win at life.
I guess I also disagree with Ren and Amber here because I don't find poledancing empowering at all. ESPECIALLY because of challenging the stereotype of a pole dancer. What disturbs me is that people seem to feel okay about challenging the decisions of grown ass folk AT ALL because of their job. IF it's something that she enjoys or needs to do why isn't that enough? That the fact that we have to empower it at all is indicative of a whole set of issues that may have little to nothing to do with sex or the actual pole., and that until we crack those instead of busting the isms we just make a whole bunch of special categories where in it might be okay?
OR that if you are timid about saying vagina without a cheering section that might be your own damn issue and not the great feminist concern of the day. And if we do make it an issue you might have to come up off the kid glove treatement and talk about the ways you make it hard for peopel who are comfortable to be made UNCOMFORTABLE( hot latinslut/trashy whore language anyone)
OR that you know what you got a problem with something you might have to stop hiding behind you special snowflakeness and open your fucking mouth and talk like an adult, instead of whinging about your feelings or how hard it is for you to talk up . Yes you may have to actually man up and speak out specifically ( me hating my job right now NOOOOOOOOOOOO)
I guess my blathering is me thinking out loud because all I think it has done is make a place where a woman's opinion has to be EVERY woman's opinion to have any weight.
And I don't understand how that is not just like saying a woman's opinion isn't worth anything at all.
I don't know Discuss help me flesh this out
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Also AMC AMC I wann go to AMC
and so do these wonderful people
Fabulosa Mujer
Hermana Resist (donations can be made through her pay pal email: csdistro@gmail.com
Please Professor Black Woman
Black Amazon(me)
The Primary Contradiction
Wonderful BFP also wants to go to the US Social forum
Please also not that my thank you letters go out tomorrow I have been so remiss and I apologize!
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Also I spend an inordinate amount of time talking about stuff I Don't like
so now I get to talk about something/someone I love
THIS MAN RIGHT HERE
| MAN UP JUNE 1, 2 @ 9:30PM JUNE 3 @ 2:30PM Written and Performed by Carlos Andrés Gómez Directed by Tamilla Woodard Running time: 60 minutes | |
| |
I am gonna be there not sure when . But he is the real deal. You want to go. You want to make sure there are no tickets left. Cause he's kind of awesome.
and just for a preview
114 comments:
VAGINA! Vaginavaginavagina....
Sorry, had to do it.
Okay, the stripper pole empowerful stuff. Flat out, what I find "empowerful" about it:
It keeps me in really good shape, and I like being in really good shape. Being buff is something I personally , me, one person, find empowering.
It pays well, and fuck, money does mean power in a whole lotta ways, especially for someone of my less than stellar economic background.
As for image changing...well, this is going to sound whiny and what ever else perhaps, but I, for one, am SICK SICK SICK of the stereotypical image of a stripper...the uneducated, trashy junkie who has NO other options and no mind whatsoever. I'm not that person. Nor are MOST of the dancers I know, and they like the stereotype about as much as I do. So yeah, if I can CHANGE that image in the minds of anyone, I find it to be good, and empowering, and not just for me...if someone can see I am not that person, maybe, just maybe, the won't assume the next stripper they talk to or see is that person either.
And there ya have it in a nutsack...I mean shell...sorry, the man flesh distracted me.
Actually, BA, that was AradhanaD, not Belle, who wrote that essay at LLL attempting to decry the supposed "appropriation" of practices of people of color by "privileged" sex-pos women.
I find that particularly insulting because she assumes that it's only in the sexual arena where "privileged White women" exploit the rituals of indigenous people...as if radfems and more sexually conservative feminists don't do the same....or that the pre-Christian cultures of the past were in any way so chaste and Puritan.
And so the hell what if middle class women (of any and all races) want to appropriate the Kama Sutra or Tantra as a means of personal sexual fulfillment?? Does that in any way cancel out their potential as progressives or feminists in any way?? Or is Aradhana presuming that only more socially and sexually conservative feminists of color hold the exclusive keys to authentic feminist principles??
Just because someone may feel personally empowered by belly dancing or pole dancing or two-stepping or whatever turns them on should really have little or no relevance, in my view, on their public life or their stands on feminist principles. The fact that Ren or Amber may find pole dancing to be personally liberating to them means about as much as the fact that some other woman may find classic hula dancing or belly dancing liberating for them. That is, it means next to nothing at all...except to those who want to universalize their own personal claims and impose them on everyone else.
You don't have to like what Ren or Amber does or says...but as adult women, they have the absolute right to blow your objections out and make choices for themselves. And you have as much a right not to make the same choices. That to me, in a nutshell, is what I thought the entire concept of feminism was about...not arguing and slashing and tearing at each other over a damn book cover featuring a bare midriff.
But who am I to say anything?? I'm just a working-class Black man..who happens to like bare midriffs...of all colors.
No one should be "entitled" to anything..except the right to be fully human, and to respect the rights of others to be the same.
My nickel...keep the change, FWIW.
Anthony
But tahts what gets in my craw Ren,
Someone thinks that a junkie stripper is okay to disregard,
then it's not teh perception of the job thats changed it's the well as long as she n's not this its okay.
when I feel like
Grown adult who wants to do it why does she need to be all sorts of qualified.
There's NOTHING wrong with it.
Why does it have to be empowering for folks to get that.
What makes osmeone trashy, and teh uneducated no options things are all huge class problems that peopel like to tack on to sex work.
It bothers me that to be respectful or respected ysomeone has to prove out all these things.
She's a woman make her money the way she can
Why do we need all this other shit?
ALso if teh bing buff is empowering then it's not actual stripping thats teh empowerful its mearly a means.
And if those are you r means
Good on ya why isn't teh fact that you enjoy and are of sound mind and body when you do so enough, why is it that so much of our rhetoric as a young person is couched in empowerment.
It' s the undercurrent of well a woman ENJOYING it is jsut not enough , she has to be empowered to be taken seriously
------------------------------
Anthony?
How about these are cultural practices that aren't necessarily jsuta bout getting these women off. That teh fact that these things are empowering or become empowering only when a very specific subset does them or that the y get attention ONLY when these women do it is a problem.
Also because it is realy aggravating to see women ( in terms of specific cultural practises as Arandhana mentions) talk about them as if they are ahistorical .
It is actively disrespectful to use someone sulture like that and then want c some special recognition for doing something taht makes you happy.
And yes i agree with teh grown folk make grown choices. SO id on;t knwo where you get the idea I don't
What I'm wuestioning is why it must always be in a dialogue of empowering or not traitor or not.
Why can't it be grown folk choice made and done?
so teh problem isn't oh he thinks that strippers are low class or trash . but that the designation means tacitly it's play to treat someone poorly.
IF you're not that person great but why do you need to not be that person to get basic human respect?
That's what's bothering me about these discussions and the empowerment talk. Why do we have to leverage class or education or yadyada for folks to be very real on the fact that the ill treatment may not be so much from the sex work but the fact that we are okay with treating the class of people we usually think does sex work any old way
A woman working in any trade should be treated the way she wants to, preconception or not.
and yes the carlos is pretty
BA:
Wait, wait, are you implying I EVER get taken seriously? ;)
ANd you're right, it SHOULDN'T matter. IN NO WAY should it matter, I am very live and let live and judge not and all...but the reality of the world is that People Get Judged and Shit On. It's not the same, at all, in any scope, but you know how you feel when people disregard you or your words for whatever reasons? Discount you as you- well educated intelligent black woman for WHY EVER? I feel shitty when someone hears "stripper" and discounts me wholesale for it. It happens way too much for my liking, and yeah, I DO like my job just for the hell of it, but I don't like the image so many have of the women who do it because it lessens them as people, and changing that, the image? Well, sort of important to me. And I find it rather empowering in this here less than perfect world where bullshit DOES seem to matter.
blackamazon:
you and i will probably agree about as often as ed koch has sex. but i like this post. very real.
you're right. most of us are privileged and disenfranchised at the same time. it's not all black and white, but rather nantucket red.
You also have to remember, class wise, I've been shit on for a good portion of my life so yeah, I probably have a grudge...
RE I hear you but as a youngster , what bothere dme and the wife A LOT as we came up was this oh its EMPOWERING
BECAUSE you oh shiny beacons are doing it
rather tahn
you cna work to not jsut getting all of your habits being tolerated and praised.
You're a stripper youre a humn being
You should get basic respect
and when I hear the sex pos neg debates to often it rings in my ears like
see whomever your talking about human deservbes human respect and while we argue about empowering non empowering boysenberry pie
we get to neatly sidestep why we find it even remotely debateble when it comes to these women
and its not teh pole
its class and money and education
adn that shit
NOT COOL
BA: Heh, my mom and teachers or whomever never used the word "empowering"....more like "see that shit gets done, however it has to get done." Hardasses, my female mentors. But yeah, I get sick of the "my empowerment is real and yours is bullshit cant as well. Truly. It's not a fucking contest. It shouldn't have to be.
also, wrt to class and economics...
some women "have" enough of those things to spend time pondering the greater level of empowerment of various activites for the whole of the female tribe.
Some don't.
Some come from a place where they've always had that, and others have had to pay rent.
Neither are "lesser women" for it. End of story.
In my mind, there is a difference between empowerment and what makes you feel good. If you discover something - pole dancing, tantric sex, hell, fresh baked cookies - and it makes you feel good, excellent. Wonderful. You're figuring yourself out, and unless what you decide gets you hot involves kicking newborns or some real evil shit, stick with it, do you, enjoy.
But if that which gets you going does not get you going out into the world to create change, I don't see how you've actually been empowered. I don't see feeling good on a personal level as something that will radically affect the world.
Having come up in an environment where people lauded The Vagina Monologues as sacred and a woman's ability to orgasm as earth changing, I just don't get it. Like, unless your toes curl and suddenly you discover the cure for some disease or you moan in pleasure and an under funded school suddenly has a freshly stocked library, I don't see what makes you being a sexual being praiseworthy.
Like BA said, ours is a generation where people feel entitled to a whole bunch and this has manifested itself into people thinking they're doing something that radically affects the world when they're really just doing things that affect them.
WIFEY!
And yeah this is not a finished project but a lot of our college experience was about honoring and coddling the choices of certain women to do " low class" or "othered" activities
as if by doing them they had suddenly improved em.
and we were thinking about it
No women arent less ofr having shit but why doesnt it ever ever come up about how their having shit goes
a loooooooooooooooong way in making their decision to do things suddenly empowering or not
or why teh fact taht when it was not them it was considered base.
to tehe point of women literally saying in a striaght fucking face
my orgasm changes the world
Um your orgasm cahnges YOUR world
WHICH IS GREAT
so why isn't taht good enough?
Why suddenly must it be the rocking of teh universe
and if yours is good enough tow rock the universe why isn't hers and frankly we're not likeing the answers we come up with.
amazon--i don't know what the hell is going on, but i'm not getting your blog feed until a day after it is up!!!! I just got this in my reader today, I thought it was a new post--and I was shocked to see 13 other people had already commented on a brand new post!! I don't know *what* is going on!!! Did you change your feed or something??
and katie?? Right on.
and Anthony--puhLEEZE don't you too start with, so what if a white woman wants to steal poc stuff. at the very least, even if none of us can agree on sex positive/rad fem/ empowering/lustful what the hell *eva*--we can all agree that the appropriation of another culture is not good? especially when the culture doing the appropriating has a tendency to fuck with what ever it appropriates in really damaging and horrible ways?
There's nothing wrong with your reader - the post ran and got commented on a lot. Real quick.
I haven't read all the comments here - I'm kind of busy.
Mr. Kennerson, I especially hate arguments that make presumptions about what "I THINK":
Quote: "Or is Aradhana presuming that only more socially and sexually conservative feminists of color hold the exclusive keys to authentic feminist principles??"
If you've ever read anything by me - you'll notice I'm equally critical of 'goddess culture' shit by radical feminists, and a lot of assumptions made by radical feminists, you can look under the tag "white feminism" on my blog.
If you must make an assumption about me - then you'd have to read everything I've written. The underlying point being - that neither 'sex postive' feminists nor 'radical feminists' address anything adequately that pertains to WOC and sexual 'work'. One group wants to treat us only in regards to how we benefit 'their movement' but don't comprehend when we are critical of them. The other wants to pretend that there is a level-playing field. Which is kind of what BA is getting at in this post.
What's problematic is that we are always forced to choose 'sides', when neither of them really address injustices in all such white-centric movements. I've discussed this somewhat here at bfps: http://brownfemipower.com/?p=1179
I am not suggesting that there aren't WOC sex-positive feminists, there are like Leah lakshmi and Coco La Creme. But like them there are also WOC who are radical feminists.
I do not consider myself either, and feel comfortable calling myself a socialist/anti-racist/anti-imperialist feminist. If I need to define myself by every damn politic I believe in - so be it.
Thank you.
Also Mr. Kennerson, I find it highly offensive that you missed an integral component of my post. That it was a non-profit SEX-POSITIVE ORGANIZATION that felt comfortable 'appropriating' religious and cultural iconography from South Asia to promote their event. A lot of which was akin to black face.
How can you deny that this is offensive ESPECIALLY considering the outright decrying of it by local activists?
This is a story that is not new - the fundamental problem wtih early sex positive feminists was that they made 'sex workers' a universal identity, as though there aren't differences BETWEEN SEX WORKERS, namely those of race/class/attractiveness/geography/type of labour. The funniest thing about early sex-positive writers is that they used this universal identity by making 'sex worker' a homogeneous category BEYOND SPACE AND TIME. I.e. so in that sense a devadasi has more in common with Heidi Fleiss than she does with another woman of her time... which of course is simply not true.
These distinctions can't just be pushed under the rug. That's the same problem that WOC face with radical feminism.
AD
yes yes oh my god yes yes
and thats what Katie and I were chewing over.
whats getting lost in teh its all grand ide a
why arent we feeling it
what is the befit of that kind of thought and why isn't it universal.
and hwo can you gain cultural acess to things by money and not just actuall identification
YEs
i have to go to bed ill be chewing ove rthis in my sleep!
right on AD--
i especially like the part about the differences between sex workers--it's the same problem on the other side as well--we're all the same, when really, we're not.
and katie--something *is* wrong with some part of my computer, i'm not sure what tho!!!! this is posted on the 29th, but my feeder says it was posted on the 30th and i went to my feeder three times, and nothing showed up until about four hours after I think this was posted...
the same thing happened with the last post as well...
you'd think after all this time online, i'd know what the hell is going on, huh?
I think it depends on what you mean by empowering. I remember a history teacher of mine didn't like the word empowerment, and this post, or rather trying to compose a reply to this post, makes me see why--it's a really vague term.
So, having thought this out a bit (okay, not at all so this might not make sense but)--to me the concept of empowerment involves discovering something about yourself that makes you like yourself better. Like, the whole concept of orgasms, I don't find orgasms empowering, but I can see how to someone raised thinking that her body is disgusting and shameful and whatever, discovering that it's not, and that in fact it can do this really fun awesome thing, can in fact be empowering, which I think is a big reason so many women respond to the Vagina Monologues.
or, i have a dear friend who is a survivor of sexual abuse for whom her first satisfying and successful sexual relationship was empowerig, for similar reasons to the above.
for me, i've done a lot of things i find fun and thrilling and stimulating but most of them i wouldn't count as empowering. one thing that does come to mind as kind of empowering is when i did theater tech in high school, because i think of myself as a very clumsy and incapable person, so it was cool to discover about myself, hey i can wield power tools and not get killed, i can read a draft and direct a team of less-experienced members to build the flat it describes. that made me respect myself more.
i feel a little like that now that i've taken up knitting--i can take two sticks and some yarn and make a totally beautiful scarf (and someday hopefully other cool things)! like magic, but cooler. so for me, things are empowering when i find that i am discovering competence, because that's something i've felt i lack access to.
so for me, i think, if you discover something about yourself, that does count as empowering. i guess i define it as somewhere between katie's two extremes, of something that is more than just something you discover you enjoy, but less than something that changes the world. i think it's okay to celebrate discovering that you can do something, that you have access to a part of yourself you thought didn't exist. but i also agree it shouldn't be the be-all end-all of anything.
and on second thought that was not really the point of the post and just a tangent i got caught up on, so i will say: i definitely agree that things should not have to be empowering to be consider worthy of respect. and, while i think i have agreed with that for a long time, i don't think i have recognized that i thought this until, um, just now. so thank you for making me examine my thoughts (a favorite activity of mine, i should take up blogging in earnest one of these days).
you see that's why I'm iffy on it and i free posted cause for a woman whose been trianed to not enjoy herself oh how i feel for her when she does get to
BUT
on the other hand
That shit shouldnt be considered optional. The fact taht she doesnt isnt about now she i suddenly filled with power but
SHE IS GETTING WHAT SHOULD BE GIVEN
and all this talk about empowerment often serves to sidestep I think the fact that unless we are talking about certain women these aren't seen as rights or requirements .
WE SHOULD be ensuring sexual expression, not because it's about gaining power ( another thing that sends kingk up my spine) but because you need it as a human being.
FULL STOP
cause it feels good
FULL STOP
And unless we talk about why their not it does become about have versus have nots and not the actual stuff.
And as a younsgster I'm worried cause a lot of our acivism is about empowerment and no one can reallly tellme why or what the heck that is
so i've been thinking about what you said ren about finding empowerment in changing perspectives--and i honestly don't know even a little bit how to think about a lot of this stuff within that context. It all seems to be SO complicated--because I agree with you--i think lot's of important work is being done by challenging the idea of stripper=trashy junkie. but I agree with amazon as well in her first set of comments.
and then trying to negotiate your own sexuality amongst the two ideas that each of you speak of (much less within the context of a racist classist, sexist, ableist etc system)--I don't know. It seems like some times, the better idea is just to shut up, masturbate occasionally and leave it at that.
and that's where i have to say, amazon, i admire you and the missus for working through this shit. Here i am, 30 something and still scared to death to talk about my privates. haha. well, not scared to death, just gun shy. that's why i love people like chica boom--as a chicana--to see another chicana that is not only standing up to racist representations/violations of chicanas with her sexuality but ALSO standing up to cultural expectations--well, for me--that's unheard of, and i admire the shit out of her.
And as a younsgster I'm worried cause a lot of our acivism is about empowerment and no one can reallly tellme why or what the heck that is
My personal read on what it means is the internal and external conditions required in order to change one's environment and circumstances. The focus is usually placed on the internal conditions (I deserve better, I should get this, the world should be this way) rather than the external because that's where a person has control. At it's most basic, one's control is in one's mind and body and choices and not much beyond that; you can condition other people to do what you tell them, but that's not a 100% guaruntee (thank the gods). I'd say that true empowerment is the desire to change something in the world and the knowledge of how to do it and make it stick. This is, of course, entirely without moral statement at the moment; some of the most empowered people, in my mind, have been dictators, who could shape entire countries or eras in their own image.
I don't think empowerment is the full-stop-good thing it's often portrayed as.
My opinion on how it's being primarily used is as a synonym for "makes me feel good". It's being used less as a statement about one's agency in the world (desire and ability to change one's environment) and more as a new emotional state one can achieve with the right amount of chocolate. Now, feeling you have the right to shape the world by your vision and knowing how to do it, that can feel damn good (also damn scary), but the emotion is the byproduct, not the goal. The action part of power has been neatly stripped away in how "empowerment" is commonly used and the focus shifted to an internal state which won't change anything.
I don't know how or who, but someone hamstrung what should be a revolutionary impulse.
and just one last "working it out in her own mind" comment from bfp.
i think the thing that is always the especially hard stickler for me--i don't think that there's even one other industry in the world where I would agree with the idea that if a few people could "make it" then it would help all the rest of the people. For example, i don't believe that farmers in the u.s. being paid well through nafta tax breaks is going to "rise up" the farmers in guatamala or mexico. So i don't know how it could be argued that this is possible with the sex industry.
at the same time, however--i *do* think that revolution can happen if farmers in guatamala or mexico rise up together against NAFTA-so I do think, in that sense, it's possible for revolution to happen by centering sexuality/sex industry.
i'm just getting the idea that the revolution has to start in a place that is much different than what all of us (including myself here) are imagining. i really love what the YWEP is doing--I think that they are doing work that is making it possible for women in my community (poor, imprisoned, drug users etc), to find and enjoy a healthy sexuality.
sigh. i don't know. my stomach still hurts from my three damn beers. haha.
i was just surfing the YWEP site, and the thing i noticed that sort of comes back to this conversation, for example, is the whole drug user thing--for example, rather than saying "we're not ALL like that," they are saying, "What's *wrong* with being drug users?"
and i think that's where i think the idea of starting at a different place sort of plays out.
OK...I see that some clarification is needed on my part.
BA:
I see your point about how some cultural activities and rituals do indeed get appropriated and disjointed...but the way I see things (from my "plain socialist" perspective, that is more an issue of how cultural activities are sold to the general public by a tabloid-style media and a capitalist system that is constantly on the march for new selling points to enhance their profits. It's no surprise that most of that media plays to mostly White upper middle class folk because that's where the money is; and that the understanding of other cultures will be filtered through that particular lens to the point where the real truth of indengenous culture gets washed away in the process.
But that is much more a problem of the overall system, not in any particular individual like or dislike of an activity. That is the very reason why I don't attempt to read into Amber's or Ren's personal "empowerment" over a particular activity (in this case, pole dancing) as a statement of universal desire for all.
Of course, I do think that middle-class folk could stand to be more educated on how the state and the media does work to incultrate upper-class White cultural habits as the norm at the expense of other cultures. But that is a bit different than merely saying that because you are "privileged" and you like a certain activity that may have originated in a working class or indigenous culture, you are somehow "appropriating" (or to use BfP's term, "stealing" their culture just to get yourself off. In my view, that comes pretty dangerously close to radfem territory ("Rich White women masturbating on the broken backs of people of color").
Next...to BfP:
Yes, I can agree with you pretty far that in most cases, those who attempt to appropriate other cultures do not have the original culture's best interests in mind. But what does that have to do with individual women taking on rituals of POC and adapting them to fit their own personal needs?? That is no more "stealing" than me buying a Windows XP computer and hacking it to run Red Hat or Ubuntu. As long as there remains basic respect for the originators, I really don't see the issue here.
That why I really wonder whether all this fire and brimstone is really just a hint of sexual backlash against middle-class women who happen to be more able due to their "privilege" to use rituals of people of color to their personal benefit. I mean, if Jessica Valenti had used an image of a woman in a power suit and named her book "Power Feminism", would the outcry be nearly as intense??
And I should say that it is just as true the other way around as well; that POC often can adapt White cultural rituals just as often as vice versa. (Of course, th power differential between race and class plays a fundamental role in that, but that doesn't mean that some POC can't adapt other cultures based solely on personal taste. It's just a case of the personal getting too political and the political geting too personal....and seperating individual initiative from institutional motives.
But whatever our disagreements may be on this, I do think that BA is right on the button on one thing: it's about damn time that we quit attempting to paint any individual activity as innately "empowering" or "degrading" merely based on some media campaign or group assumptions. All actions should be judged solely on their merits and their results and how they affect people; not whether some group decides that it becomes "hip", or "cool" or "radical" or even "feminist". In the end, even the wealthy and privileged share one common trait with the working class and the poor and all cultures alike: We are all HUMAN BEINGS.
I understand where you stand, BA and BfP....and now you know where I stand. Agree to disagree and still work together in the fundamental struggle??
Finally, to Aradhana: Out of respect for BA's space, I will defer to my own blog my fundamental criticisms of your latest screed, which I simply found to be insulting, scapegoating, and just plain down low mean spirited. I just don't believe in starting any flame wars here...but I will only say that if you have that much of a problem with those of us who defend personal sexual autonomy as "stealing from others just to get off", then you might as well just sign up with the Genderberg/Ann Bartow radfem caucus and be done with it. I don't deny you your right to say whatever, but I do reserve the right to challenge it...that's not silencing anyone, that's debate and discussion.
That is all from me....actually, that's more than enough.
Anthony
After reading this, I guess my question is how is telling a woman that poledancing is not empowerful when she does in fact think it's empowerful not the antithesis of what feminism is supposed to be about? If person A says it's empowerful, who are WE to tell her it's not? What makes your take on poledancing hold more weight than theirs?
BA. Katie, BfP:
Heh, here I am with the personal as political crap again...
Me getting off doing what ever isn't empowered or empowerful or any of that crap. It feels good, I dig it, but yeah...biology at work there.
Growing up, class wise, I was pretty low on the totem pole. Now, due to a different type of pole, I can pay bills, not have to worry about my lights being cut off, pay for food, gas and even luxury shit. That other pole paid my way through college, gave me the time to learn how to fix cars on the side, and allows me the time and cash to help other people. So, if we are looking at "empowered" as the definition of "vested with the power to..." Well then, yeah, it is. Not the act itself, but the payment for the act. The proceeds. And, I am also well aware that the pay is higher than I would get elsewhere doing something more "respectible". I also feel good doing it, which while not all that "empowerful" is really nice.
And I think we're all about challenging stereotypes used and universals across the board, yes? Which is why I feel it is important to challege the "stupid strung out whore" one whenever possible...because almost all of the strippers, porn women and escorts I know are not that stereotype, but it effects and damages us all the same...
I forsee a post on this, feel free to drop on by and discuss if you want.
Hey, BA, just a heads-up, the link that's supposed to go (I think) to my place goes to LLL again.
and yeah, I see what you mean about the "empowerment" riff. But y'know, you read what Ren says about pole dance in her first post--keeps me in good shape, pays well, feels good--and, if it weren't so -freighted- by people whinging about -examining- it all the time, she could be talking about, I don't know, pro sports.
That is, they're "empowering" at a roughly equivalent level. Keeps in shape, feels good, pays well, something you're good at and enjoy, you're in the "groove."
Living well in a way that feels organic to one's self is, I submit, the goal, or one of them. Ideally it'd be better to be focused on other people who can't do that for various reasons -as well;- but it seems to be that people who are relatively satisfied on the Maslow hierarchy of needs are in better shape to focus on others, or ought to be, than those who aren't;
and that in any case singling out certain people or groups of people who are not, (say), heads of multinational conglomerates and thus -directly- impacting the wellbeing of others, telling them that they -must give up- (or at least should seriously fucking -examine- it, again) something that feels right -to them- because it is -hurting others- in a way that is somehow -more hurtful- or -more important- than all the other myriad ways in which we all fulfill our -selfish- needs, or--directly or indirectly--live off the flesh and spirit of others
--is crap.
"Hey, buddy, thanks, really. Incidentally, you've got some bigass thing in your eye, did you know?"
BA, I understand what you're saying about feeling that the personal is not (necessarily) political, and appropriation can be condescending and inappropriate.
But I agree with Ren and Anthony on their qualifications to this. Something that's personally enjoyable but also, by doing it even individually, allows one to "CHANGE that image in the minds of anyone," is to my mind legitimately empowering. Sure, to use the sex worker example, all sex workers deserve respect, and the presence of non-junkie and educated sex workers shouldn't be required for every sex worker to be given basic respect.
But realistically, the presence of people in any profession who are educated and healthy is going to be uplifting to the image of that profession. And if one can help to improve the image of a profession one cares about, then I believe that can indeed be considered empowering.
And I agree with Anthony's statement that "merely saying that because you are 'privileged' and you like a certain activity that may have originated in a working class or indigenous culture, you are somehow 'appropriating' (or to use BfP's term, 'stealing' their culture just to get yourself off. ...I can agree with you pretty far that in most cases, those who attempt to appropriate other cultures do not have the original culture's best interests in mind. But what does that have to do with individual women taking on rituals of POC and adapting them to fit their own personal needs?"
I agree, a white culture adopting a practice and acting as if they'd developed it, without respect to its origins, is all kinds of insulting. But as our country is international, how can we not have various customs cross culture lines? For example, when my sisters were adopted, our family shopped at Korean markets, we learned some Korean dances, etc. I dont't think my sisters viewed this as whitey appropriating their country's traditions, as much as an attempt on their adoptive family's part to learn something about their culture that we could all enjoy together.
Also re what you said in another post about beauty traditions. How to tell when one has gone from harmless experimenting to appropriation? I've cornrowed my hair in the past, for example. I also brought back a kimono from Japan which I wore. I don't think there was any significance or "empowerment" being claimed, just having fun trying different things I thought were attractive.
Are you suggesting that the distinction is that it's OK to ENJOY doing something that reflects another culture, but not to describe it as empowering with the implication that this is because someone of privilege is doing it? If that is the case, I absolutely agree. But I think we should make the distinction that if a white person does yoga or belly dancing or if a POC does whatever is considered white (golf? country clubbing? I don't do any of that stuff so I'm not sure), it's not necessarily a bad thing or some sort of cultural appropriation, just a PERSON doing an ACTIVITY. If on top of that there's the suggestion that the activity takes on a different "empowering" connotation because that person is doing it, then that's a problem.
Thoughts?
After reading this, I guess my question is how is telling a woman that poledancing is not empowerful when she does in fact think it's empowerful not the antithesis of what feminism is supposed to be about? If person A says it's empowerful, who are WE to tell her it's not? What makes your take on poledancing hold more weight than theirs?
My official stance in that arena is that I'm not gonna tell someone that they're lying, but I can sure as hell put it out there that I don't care if poledancing is empowering.
But, honestly, exactly how am I obligated, as a feminist, to take the whole "empowered" framework as gospel? I think the concept is seriously flawed, and as it applies to the sex industry, I think it's HUGELY flawed.
but back to "empowerment:"
The "feminist" part comes I suppose from bucking the stereotype--in both cases. (i.e. pro sports, and sex work--
--of course this latter provokes screams, butbutbut it's Fulfulling Male Fantasies and thus -reinforcing- stereotypes! unlike say becoming a nuclear physicist! which -must- always be for the Betterment of the world, and is inherently better because it's Science and the brain is better than the body! or playing rugby, which is just plain good wholesome fun! and also: BUTCH)
Point being, though, if you took away the stereotype, it'd -still- be "empowering" in the sense that any career choice that feels right is empowering.
Point number -two- being: the constant whinging about "examine" this and "why does it have to be THAAAAAT," you know, why -that- form of dance, why -that- form of "fun," whywhywhwhywhywhyWHY
--it naturally provokes defensiveness, of course;
and it also, I maintain, -contributes- to the stereotyping, by reinforcing it. "It can only mean or look like thus and so because the Patriarchy says so."
I point out, say, a cute male couple doing eroticized pole dancing for fun and (probably not too much, but still) profit, or bearded gay Bears having fun with "Viking pole dancing," and well, (if any of that lot had even deigned to look over or mention it) that's--*cute*, but essentially meaningless, nobody really knows about that stuff, now back to the REAL IMPORTANT ISSUE of -straight people-, who are, just in case you've forgotten, the overwhelming majority, and most especially a particular sub-segment of straight people with certain demographics, level of privilege and general knowledge about the world, and (boring) tastes. Let's talk about them some MORE! MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE!! and in the process of doing so, wring hands about WHY O WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY, conveniently ignoring or glossing over any evidence that it may -not- always be This Way for everyone, in fact;
f'r instance, Amanda comes swanning in and whinges about how there are -so few ways for women to bond- outside of preparation for Pandering To The Male Gaze (which poledancing automatically is, which going to the beauty salon, which she indulges in but is self-conscious about, so it's okay, automatically is)
and, well, besides HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH*chokeson heteronormativity as well as sheer lack of imagination*
"Gosh. Sucks to be you, I guess. I mean...damn. -Really?-"
but, again: -then name some ways of bonding that you Approve of, already, for fuck's sake;-
because, otherwise, you're gonna keep going around that hamster wheel for all eternity.
maybe you -prefer- that, but I. am. Bored. Now.
not least by the smug solipsism, but well never mind that now, take the tablets Tiger Buddy...
--anyway, what I was starting to try to get at before I sidetracked myself:
A lot of what this boils down to--in theory, at least--is the limits of individualism.
Trouble is, I submit, that most of the people railing against "selfish" individual "empowerment" are doing it in a very selective way, and in fact are no less "selfish" themselves, arguably more so for disguising grandiose solipsism (The Class Woman, It Is I) as genuine concern for others.
The way you tell the difference is, how you react when the "others" act in a way that wasn't according to script.
But, so, yeah, 70's style "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it..." isn't going to change the world -of itself.-
nonetheless, neither is "I'm -not- good enough, I'm seriously flawed just for existing, and--oo, goody, here's a way to translate that into a political framework. Okay! Now, instead of 'thin thighs in thirty days,' it's "seven weeks to a More Consciousness Raised Me." mmMMMmmm, Virtue."
and, further, given a choice between people of those two types as a -starting point- for genuine consensus-bases activism, I'm gonna go for the relatively satisfied ones. Know why? Because while both types can be irritatingly myopic, (as can we all), at least people who have other ways of fulfilling their -selfish- needs are less likely to take out their frustrations on the people on whose behalf they're supposedly fighting.
RE( also I hope i anser belle a bit too)
And thats what i'm wondering. You liek what you do. As a person concerned with teh welfare of women you likeing what you do and being of sound mind to make that decision. Really means
I need to leave you the FUCK ALONE.
Degree or no , amount of money or no, if you're okay with it and are not COERCED into doing it .
I really think peopel need to toddle their asses off somewhere and sit down.
The smashing stereotypes thing I completely understand but I guess what is so constantly hinky for me in teh sex debate is that there is always it seems a first step in getting to the
" GROWN PEOPEL DOING WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT"
is to show how it's not people of this class or this place or it is in some way part of acceptable peopel doing it.
LIke there is something I can't put into words that is severely disturbing about that being a necessity.
OCta and ANthony.
I think what the problem is exactly what you said Octa.
Wanna do it fine , go head have a blast ! Be respectful do you!
NOT DEBATING THAT ONE AT ALL
But it's when people suddenly want to call themselves uber progressive or becomes a tool of making very specific consumers with no history on the thing think their revolutionary
For doing shit that makes them happy
AND STOPPING THERE
Which is what LLL i think is contesting and I personally Anthony resent her being lumped in with Ann bartow because you know she might have aproblem with some treating a cultural practice as a tool for mighty whitey revolution while demonstrating a lack o f context .
and i also resent it because that kind of mess is the exact shits thats said to make pole dancing a "bad " activity
but belly dancing a " good one"
We class them unconsciously and teh argument becomes not why the class prejuidice or the erotophobia is dumb and wrong but why our classing of the activity is incorrect.
When we try to unmoor shit form its cultural class specificity I get a bit worried
which is something that is happening increasingly for young women my age
And BFP?Belle
i guess I'm with the second opinion you expressed BFP that I really w ant to know whats so wrong with strippers however they are in the first place ?
Not that the stereotype busting is bad at ALL but why is it so necessary for some people before we treat women in sex work like human beings ?
and when we do discuss it as an ACTIVITY it's merits HINGE on teh fact its okay for certain women we find acceptable?
ANd janey my issue isn't with teh I know empowerful more than you
is that if you like it and its good for you why can't you say that
and what about feminism is creating this atmosphere where THAT is not good enough for other women to go
and I'll leave you to it then.
Especially when as Katie asks you dont really do anything els eiwth it
BA:
"And BFP?Belle
i guess I'm with the second opinion you expressed BFP that I really w ant to know whats so wrong with strippers however they are in the first place ?
Not that the stereotype busting is bad at ALL but why is it so necessary for some people before we treat women in sex work like human beings ?
and when we do discuss it as an ACTIVITY it's merits HINGE on teh fact its okay for certain women we find acceptable? "
Ohhh, raises hand and jumps around like a six year old...
THE reason it is "hard" for some people to treat sex workers of any stripe like human beings is because of WHAT they are selling. Good Girls Don't Get Naked and/or Fuck for Money. They may be wild and crazy a sexually liberated, they may scream Vagina from the rooftops, they may love their orgasms...BUT THEY DON'T SELL IT. Selling it is low-class, "not empowered" and...icky. Real Woman Fuck, they don't Fuck for profit, because its bad (just like every male dominated culture and patriarchal religion and society has told all of us for so long). MOST women cannot IMAGINE selling it...getting naked or gasp, having sex for and with Male Strangers...so, it's easy to see women who do as other, less than, fucked up....Not Like Them.
That's why it's easy to fail to afford them basic human respect.
You know how many times I've heard a woman, who has of course NEVER had to worry about Making That Decision say she would flip burgers and scrub toilets for a living before she's strip, because stripping is just...well...dirty and good girls Don't.
YEah I hear that
And i don't buy it
and while showing that othe rowmen do it is great and wonderful and commendable
we REALLY need to start talking about the why we got here
and as i said before this is something I was ruminating on with a woman of a certain age
hwo by the time the conversation is being giving to us
the focus isnt
on why we need to eliminate the stigma /improve conditions
REGARDLESS
but its great wonderful and empowering
because you are doing it
oh special special girl
BA: I can only shoot from what I see, hear and feel on this issue. Prolly gonna post on it and everything, because see, now I'm angry. Not at you or any one person....just angry. Tired. Of all of it. Expatriate and all. I mean, we all see things, due to our experiences, differently. And yeah, it is total bullshit that sex workers OR ANYONE else for that matter has to fight for their right to be seen and treated as a human by anyone, but they do. And not just with the menz. Once long ago I stated that I though feminism was about basic human respect...well, I've seen and learned differently...and yeah, I am bitter.
As for why we got here, well you know I have a pretty grim view of people as a whole, and I think we got here because it is in the nature of humans to both attack what they do not understand or comprehend and tear others up to make themselves feel better.
But I am surly like that.
And i think thats why me and wifey were turning thois ove rin our heads so much.
BEcause not taht I am super enlightened AT ALL. I Have issues all over this space but
YEs people have to fight for their rights I'm hard knocked enough to see that
But teh way teh fight has filtered down ,the isolation of things the framing of issues
I don't think it''s the pack mentality .
I fully don't believe its human nature
I think it's calculated
VERY VERY CALCULATED
and it's odd for me to be on the side of privilege but
my gues sis that there is somethihng to be gained from making it commodifiable and commercially viable sans stigma to women of a certain class, degree , ethnicity
WHILE
at the same letting them feel merely participating is action in solidarity
WHILE
keeping many of the originators out the conversations
WHILE
making it hard to critique ( FOR SOME PEOPLE)
a field day to attack others for
AND
filtrating it to specific talk points in young women with teh possibility of affectingh change
and expatriate to expatriate
the thing me and the wifey keep coming back to is that
as much as people tallkabout it
it isn't necessarily
THEM
it is
US
and no one is pulling out why.
BA:
See, now that's interesting...thoughts on why is it us? And who is "us"? I mean, before I go anarchy all over my own blog, I'd love to hear more about that... I mean, I don't count as a young anything any more, but...
People expecting too much?
Not considering enough (the different views inspired by class, race, whatever...)
See, now while still ragey, I am curious to know more...
Dammit, why can't I be a bug on the wall at your place! ;)
"good girls don't"
To flesh out (no pun intended) the "putting out there ones presence in the sex work biz is empowering" idea, the reason I think that can be true is substantiating the idea that it's something that can be, though may not be in each instance, freely chosen.
Certainly, whether a sex worker is lower-income, uneducated, or a drug addict, shouldn't deprive her of basic respect. However, these qualities might make some wonder about true consent. Someone not just DOING sex work, but SPEAKING OUT about it, who can establish that she is educated, not an abuser of drugs/alcohol, and still chooses this profession (and maybe even enjoys it) does go beyond the "hey I'm having fun la la la" thing. It communicates to those who choose to listen something about the profession that they might not have already known. And might go some distance towards changing the level of respect with which other sex workers are treated, as well as establish an argument that the correct methodology should be sex workers' rights rather than elimination of sex work.
So whether or not the presence and vocalness of educated, healthy sex workers SHOULD BE necessary to influence these things, the reality is that it COULD make a difference. And that's why it's empowering.
Obviously, empowerment is a sliding scale. I mean, feeling empowered about curing cancer or dedicating ones life, funds, and 100% of ones free time to combating world hunger, are at the top of the totem pole, and most of us cannot claim these levels of empowerment. But if what we're dong is more than just enjoying our own little orbit, if we're reaching out in some way and touching others in some way, even if just to make them think a bit differently, I think we can feel some legitimate empowerment about that.
That doesn't mean that we all shouldn't ask ourselves, every day, hey, is there anything I can be doing at a more fundamental level to get outside of my comfortable little zone? But I don't think we need to be stingy about affording ourselves some warm feelings even for modest contributions, or about calling tht feeling empowerment.
--by the way, that latter doesn't necessarily mean "materially satisfied." Just: have -something- that floats your boat, okay. As I've said: if it's not "sex positive," O.K., but -something- positive. Something to fight -for-, not just -against.- Something you -like-, okay, I mean on this mortal coil as it exists -now-, not in some future vaguely imagined Utopia; maybe you'd like a lot -more- of it for -more people,- but the point is, something you have an -idea- what it looks like and feels like.
And thats what i'm wondering. You liek what you do. As a person concerned with teh welfare of women you likeing what you do and being of sound mind to make that decision. Really means
I need to leave you the FUCK ALONE.
Degree or no , amount of money or no, if you're okay with it and are not COERCED into doing it .
I really think peopel need to toddle their asses off somewhere and sit down.
The smashing stereotypes thing I completely understand but I guess what is so constantly hinky for me in teh sex debate is that there is always it seems a first step in getting to the
" GROWN PEOPEL DOING WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT"
is to show how it's not people of this class or this place or it is in some way part of acceptable peopel doing it.
LIke there is something I can't put into words that is severely disturbing about that being a necessity
Yeah. That.
I was thinking about it over lunch, and clarified, maybe, a little further:
It's like this.
What Amber and Ren are saying, in a nutshell, is
"This makes me happy."
What I hear bfp and maybe you as saying is,
"Okayfine, yay for happiness. Now, about this idea of group solidarity and action..."
iow, that it's great that you're happy, but representation is not sufficient; political work requires collection action.
That is NOT what I hear, say, Twisty or yep Amanda or a bunch of people more or less in that mode, from various factions of "liberal" to supposed "radical."
What THEY are saying is, they DO think representation is activism in and of itself; they just think people like Amber and Renegade are doing it -the wrong way.-
so that for them, "selfish" doesn't mean "only thinking in terms of representation," what they mean is, "you're making us look bad."
And, further, in some cases, and most infuriatingly,
"Vas is das 'happy?'"
Either they simply can't or won't conceive that someone else might derive their personal satisfaction, i.e. "empowerment" fine whatever, in a way that contradicts their own experience; "happy" means finding the Happy Medium, i.e. Be Just Like Me (except of course no one ever admits that, who would)
or, worse, have either implicitly or explicitly renounced the idea of "happiness" as irrelevant, in the "how dare you sing while there are penguins starving in Antarctica" mode.
Which is sort of understandable, if deeply unpleasant and (I still think) wrongheaded when the "how dare you" person is in fact a tireless activist on behalf of the penguins;
far, far less so when the "how dare you" person is NOT particularly any more active on behalf of the penguins than the person sie's "critiquing."
And, further, when the critiqued, feeling pushed into a corner, defends hirself as "look, here is a list of all my penguin and/or Antarctica-related -activism-,"
is informed, basically, that works are not sufficient, what really matters is -faith,- penguin-solidarity is an in-your-heart thing, did you SEE the heartbreaking way they live in that movie? and here you sit, -enjoying- yourself in your tuxedo, eating fish, you selfish, selfish...
(*cough witchy-woo cough*)
p.s. say hi to wifey
...yeah. So, respectively, what I have a problem with, I'm dubbing (hey, everyone else has cutesy names for groupings they make up on the spot, why not me) "grim feminism" and "Baby Bear feminism"
--the latter being, you know, not too hot, not too cold, not -too- radical, not god forbid conservative(ptui, ptui); and especially sexually, not -too- slutty, just -sex positive enough-, you know, -just right.-
See RE
I think what we have been throwing out as little priviliged brats that we are
As women a lot of our focus is being shifted to making us glass ceiling breakers
intellectuals
et cetera
and for all the talk that environment really does demand a very specific kind of woman.
And rather than try and expand it , a lot of energy was made into making us those kind of women or reforming those exact same places
and way to many women fall not into that mold.
And while they went on to do their own thing , they also had the bad form to to maybe have fun doing it.
So you can't if you have poolicy and power based feminism explain away women outside the frame
so you a) bring em in
b) try and look like your bringing them in while checking em
c) bring in their activity but devoid it of context so people view it as a static thing that can be transformed
So instead of dealing with that you now have a whole host of activities ( i chose pole dancing cause it was already being talked abut but i also have a riff on sport s and femininity)
that are no safe
and by safe I mean commodifiable and consumable by women whose OTHER identifiers won't damage the movement
or will " remove the taint"
So here we ( me and teh wife are) being told you can do what you want
YOU
YOU SPECIAL IVY child
can change it just cause it's you
while at the same time disencouraging us form non sanctioned intellectual and or policy activites
or identifying with
THOSE GIRLS
My university has a sex magazine annd a sex blog which i fucing lathe not becaus eof the sex but because of teh high minded were so special shit
and like i said its not a fully formed idea
but as we're talking me and teh wife unit started to notice as young women
WE ARE ENCOURAGED TO BE VERY VERY SPECIFIC about how we are activists what we activist about
and who we choos eto include.
Like Octagalor
I agree with you
the problem is as young women even by feminist places were mor elikely to be encourage to not be the typical girl who likes stripping than to make things
SAFE for ANY girls who like stripping
and like I siad as ai think through it it's got some class race sexuality and other connotations
we just don't like
BElle when it comes to those peopel I'm happily at the
" and you can not talk to me THANX KAY BYE"
stage
like go have fun
ove rthere
away form me
What is srtresisng me is how we as youths ae getting this message
and i honestly don't think it's just that section of teh special
...oh, I think I maybe missed your point there, BA, about the disturbing thing.
...yeah. I think (correct me if I'm wrong, as follows) I see what you mean. Again, though, I chalk it up to understandable defensiveness. Because, they're dealing with the double or triple-bind again.
I guess what I connect to is the whole tension within the various LGBT communities, the more "mainstream" and thus acceptable faces versus the less acceptable ones.
thing is, I don't see Ren (say) as being in a position equivalent to, y'know, HRC, or the Mattachine Society; iow, she's not damning people who DO fit various less-acceptable stereotypes, or, worse, telling them to somehow get in line, you know, again with the "you're making us all look bad."
but, I mean, I can see why it's infuriating to keep getting painted as something you're not. I mean, I think there's a way in which that saying "thanks for your concern, but I'm actually neither a dropout nor a crack addict" is relevant without going on to (and I don't see Ren as doing),
"yeah, ptui! those filthy dropouts and crack addicts! I am SO not like THEM, reassure, reassure, -now- do you like me a little better?"
more like,
"wrong again, asshole, now fuck off."
...if that makes sense.
O I don't think thats what ren is doing at all.
Like i said i'm thinking out loud here
but I see a lot of theory and marketing about this being
" It's oaky for you suzy creamcheese to do"
while not having to do anything else
in a way that ensures that anybody thats not suzy creamcheese
is gonns have a task and a half to get stuff done
and the first one ( which i Dont belive ren or amber are doing)
is FLAGRANT among women our age
and semmingly happily uncoorrected
slip. okay--well, again, yeah, I think maybe then what I was saying about -representing- not being sufficient.
and, then comes the question of "break the glass ceiling into what?"
So, it's about relative privilege; but it's also, maybe, about radicalism vs. reformism. Maybe.
I dunno, I see it as a both-and;
just, if we're really talking about a -radical- transformation of society, I'd like to at least have some kind of road map.
Talking about--no, TO/WITH, all the people who get left out of the fight-to-the-death-over-the-top-ten
percent of resources or so is a start, I agree.
" It's oaky for you suzy creamcheese to do"
while not having to do anything else
in a way that ensures that anybody thats not suzy creamcheese
is gonns have a task and a half to get stuff done
yeah, that's what I was trying to get at. Particularly the -while not having to do anything else.-
which, again, I think the "grim" and especially "Baby Bear" (there's some overlap) set is ALSO often (not everyone) doing.
Part of the reason Twisty's site drove me so up the wall is that it to me had the worst of both worlds: there's nothing concrete you can do, certainly not as a group, the personal is the political in a very navel-gazing sort of way, AND, unless it dovetails with the acceptable standards (which originate with no one in particular, of course, o no), your "happiness" is at best irrelevant, at worst delusional and actively harming other women in some obscure way.
barf.
"So, having thought this out a bit (okay, not at all so this might not make sense but)--to me the concept of empowerment involves discovering something about yourself that makes you like yourself better."
What I think is that we've got two different concepts:
1) something that makes a person more sure of her own personal power (for example, a survivor who has internalized the idea that her sexuality belongs to those who hurt her discovering she can choose consensual sexual experiences)
and
2) a political gain for a group (for example, women having been empowered by getting the right to vote, the right to choose, etc.)
I think both of these things actually CAN have political impact -- that survivor in 1), for example, may use that experience to help others like her, either by something like talking to friends of hers or by forming groups, writing articles, etc.
But far too often people gloss over the differences between 1) and 2) and don't get into how 1) really looks. Either they assume "oh, that's just nice for you personally dearie *patpat*" even if it does have political impact, or they go "whoa, that article you wrote about how you love to fuck now? it's proof that all women are sexually free."
I will read through all the comments as soon as I can but just wanted to say two things, fresh off reading the post and renegade evolution's comment.
1. I am relieved and happy to see these kinds of thoughts written about, Blackamazon, thank you.
2. One of the things that's hard for me about a not-all-sex-workers-are-druggies-and-bimbos conversation is that it feels to me like it both - unintentionally or not - dismisses/puts down women who are in sex work and not "empowered" by it but actually struggling with fucked up lives, and that from what I've seen, women from the I'm-paying-my-way-through-law-school-or-just-happily-avoiding-the-drudgery-of-nine-to-five-via-sex-work are the ones whose "plights" (is she deluding herself or is she proving stereotypes untrue?) get more attention in mainstream media/the popular imagination. I'm glad for women who are in any profession and enjoying it/making some $$. I'm not so glad that the amount of women NOT making good cash and NOT kicking up their heels about the kind of sex work they're doing - much of it involuntary around the globe - is larger than the amount of women who, like me, got into sex work voluntarily and enjoyed some of it some of the time. And made a living at it. And worked for myself.
I saw an article in BITCH magazine a few issues back that was called Hooking Up, I think, and towards the end there was some passing mention of people who are forced into sex work and not having the ball that the rest of the women in the article were, and it fucking killed me. (The rest of the women were, like me, mostly from the white middle class who chose to get into sex work and made a couple to a few hundred dollars an hour at it.) It fucking kills me that of the tiny amount of people who found out about me and read my book after it came out, way less than that know about, or seemingly care about (it feels like a lot of the time) any of the women in my city, your city, someone else's country, for whom sex work means one endless rape with many different faces and still not enough money to get by.
I don't intend this as a shut-up-about-your-pole-dancing-enjoyment-already rant. I just don't ever, can't ever, think about sex work, stripping-as-passtime, etc. and separate it from this stuff.
BA:
::Click:::
That was the sound of everything falling in place...I think..at least is some sense...
So, if I read that correctly, you and wifey feel as though you could have it all and be empowered and rock the damn house...if you did it this way. And not, well, that way. And the bullshit has revealed itself, and the question is now "why the hell does it matter, basic human respect and all?"
Did I get that right?
and so, on the flip side of that, I think, is the "Full Frontal" approach, which is, as you say, very much about Suzy Creemcheese and what she's -entitled- to, bathed in a sort of rosy, very (yeah) U.S. sort of easy optimism, blithely ignoring how very -not- easy it is for a number of people in any number of ways, and, more important, specifically what Suzy Creemcheese (among others, yes) might want to -do- about this, concretely.
I get the fury that that inspires. (putting aside all the personal and blogland shit, for now, please, just using that as an example of the phenomenon I think you're talking about). i guess for me, I still find it less objectionable than the myopia combined with this sort of punitive nihilism that I see at IBTP. if that makes sense.
not saying that means those are the only two choices, of course, and I think precisely what this and other, similar conversations we've been having is to lay out exactly what the problems are with those worldviews and what, specifically, is missing. just ruminating out loud.
WHAT TRINITY SIAD WHAT TRINITY SIAD!!
It's not that one isn't important .
No never that but a lot of times especially to young women
1 IS 2
ONE IS WHERE IT ENDS!
And theyre told that is teh same thing as ACTUALLY GOING OUT TO DO SHIT!
Ren:
Also we have the real underlying sense that we only got "empowered" cause we are privileged Ivy league brats.
That this message would not and does not filter out otherwise
JOan
I read your book! I liked it!
and yeh I read that article I had to put bitch down for about four months after it
It's like were throwing alot of attention to why this good and fun and acceptable
FOR THESE WOMEN
rather than
how do we make it less uscky for these women
and it's almost entirely for the benefit of girls like the wife and are
SUPPOSED TO BE
and it just floats
Joan Kelly: I agree. I think that maybe what needs to happen is the recognition that that tiny-minority-of-relatively-privileged-and-happy vs. everyone else dichotomy you're talking about isn't -just- true for sex work, it's true -across the boards.-
which is why I find a lot of the (at least one of the more prevalant forms of, mostly white) radical feminist approaches in this regard actively detrimental;
it's not just that it's getting in the way of the privileged few who are enjoying their empowerment;
it's that it reinforces the ancient shibboleths that -sex is different and special-, which has always, ALWAYS been used very much to -reinforce- existing structures (call them patriarchal or what you will).
and, further, by focusing so relentlessly on sex sex SEX--which of course most people are more than happy to do, hey, everyone likes to talk about that shit, sometimes it's all the better if you have the excuse that you are virtuously shaking your finger at something as opposed to y'know talking about sexxxxy stuff because, if you were honest, you find it -more interesting- than talking about say the World Bank,
but now, see--yeah, that. We have an excuse, we "enlightened" political folk, for dwelling on the same shit as is all over the mainstream media: bread and circuses, only without the bread. We're doing it DIFFERENTLY, see, this obsessive navel gazing and focus on the minutia of consumer culture without ever really getting to the roots of it or, more to the point, the gigantic elephant squatting less and less patiently in the rec room, dwarfing the puny pole that's been installed in its shadow.
(what's your book, Joan?)
Joan:
I'm going to have to read your book...
And yeah, I know it's not so nice and pretty for everyone...
I go now to rant on my blog...I shall return...
So BA:
Yeah, that "message" you're talking about...
I don't think it's just a generational thing, actually, although I think that your generation is probably feeling it more sharply than mine did, and in turn there was a disconnect between us and the Boomers, for many of the same reasons; in your case, I think, only more so.
I -do- think that people across the board are experiencing, more and more acutely, the vast disconnect between the American Dream and the reality as it is now.
the tricky part is, while in -some- respects, the "representative" part, let's say, the American Dream -seems- more attainable to more kinds of people than ever before;
at the same time, in stark cold concrete terms, the material aspects that are necessary for the basic foundation on which that Dream can happen (as you put it once, "cover the basics"), have become less and less obtainable for more and more people.
But that's what we're talking about, bottom line, I think. The American Dream. Anyone can make it if you -really try.- We are all born with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; it really is that simple.
Except when it's...not.
There is also the whole "the business of American is business," but that might be a separate rant.
so, the "respresentation" thing, I think, you know, at the least sophisticated levels, people point to Hillary being a candidate or even Condi Rice being in a major office and use it as justification for "see? sexism and racism aren't problems anymore, not -really."-
part of the problem is, there are so many things wrong with that that it's hard to know where to start.
and we often end up getting sidetracked with one or two of them, to the detriment of the others.
if that makes sense.
...and further, when you use "representation" as the most important or even the SOLE marker of "you've come a long way, baby," not only does it tend to ignore other ways in which sexism and racism manifest;
but it also tends to (christ, -am- I becoming a socialist in my old age? i'm starting to sound like it, i guess) ignore the -material- factors of -injustice.-
Which ties into the American Myth, again (the more optimistic, 'liberal' version): this is a land of plenty, there's more than enough for everyone, we can 'make the pie higher,' all you have to do is work hard and take away the -overt- markers of oppression (i.e. we most of us now pretty much agree--insane pundits and other foaming wingnuts aside, although maybe they shouldn't be, come to think of it-- that segregation was a bad thing, that womens' suffrage was a good idea, and so on), and everyone can make it. And, those who most -merit- it are the ones who end up on top.
and: another yeah, what trin said. exactly. "the personal is political" really only goes so far. or, at least, "i do not think that means what you think it means," in many a case.
"Okayfine, yay for happiness. Now, about this idea of group solidarity and action..."
iow, that it's great that you're happy, but representation is not sufficient; political work requires collection action
belle, as I kept reading, i was thinking to myself, I think this is it! I think this is it! and i was gonna quote the whole thing, but then realized, you've already said everything, why do i need to quote it again??? haha.
anyway, i think that you've got it all there. earlier today i was thinking to myself, why does it always wind up in a fight? why does this always happen when, in the end, it really seems like we all want the same thing? And i think that it's the approaches--that's *exactly* how I am looking at it, i don't know fer sher about amazon--but I'm looking it all within the context of collective action, as I look at *everything* that way--how can this bring about revolutionary change rather than, how can this make me feel good?
and yes, feeling good is a *part* of revolutionary change and action--but I don't think it's the whole thing, i really don't. Eventually, some type of confrontation is going to have to happen, whether in the form of creating new community and forms of accountability or direct action like organizing to unionize. it's going to have to happen eventually, and I think the frustration for *me* stems in the idea that yet again, women of color need to push a hell of a lot harder to get their needs met, and everybody wants to end it at "feeling good". i've been talking with some woc sex workers, and they've told me about how they've lost jobs and money and have been banned from clubs because they refused to do racist material--but when you have people saying, "but that makes me *feel good*"--then the conflict springs up--what's more important, you feeling good, or me being able to make a living doing things on *my* own terms?
so to go back to anthony--i think it *does* matter when a white woman appropriates other cultures for her own stuff--because when you put that woman next to a woc sex worker who *refuses* to do the same material for "empowerment" reasons, the woc is the one that's going to get screwed.
stripping than to make things
SAFE for ANY girls who like stripping
*that's* where I'm coming from. and i agree with belle, it will take an intergrated approach--it will take confronting every aspect of society--including the stigma around welfare recipients, the stigma around sex work, the stigma around sexualized females (and I mean *all* females, not just those that could make it in the business)--just like there's stigma to be a pregnant migrant worker, there's stigma being a latina sex worker--and i think that's all interconnected and needs an *extremely* nuanced and expansive approach to confront--and it's not something that "reclaiming pole work" is really big enough to confront--although having said that--I still agree, there is a place for *doing* that in a larger movement. It just needs to be connected to something MUCH bigger.
"1) something that makes a person more sure of her own personal power (for example, a survivor who has internalized the idea that her sexuality belongs to those who hurt her discovering she can choose consensual sexual experiences)
and
2) a political gain for a group (for example, women having been empowered by getting the right to vote, the right to choose, etc.)"
I think in many contexts Trinity's (1) can lead to (2). I agree, it's wrong to assume it will or just focus on (1) to the exclusion of (2). But (1) can be an important step to help further (2).
Looking at the sex work example. SOmeone who's gained personal power through this work can be best positioned to help others and to best understand that the root cause for the issues Joan Kelly describes as "endless rape" is not the sex industry; it's poverty and lack of other options.
And regarding the glass ceiling option. Sure, the idea that having women or POC in high places is going to solve all the world's problems is a faulty one. But those who get to those places are well positioned to act on behalf of the groups they represent.
BA, you mentioned in a previous post that students were motivated and piqued by the fact that you as a WOC had top degrees. So there's an example; you had your personal empowerment a la (1), and used that to demonstrate to others it was possible a la (2).
So there are a lot of people who stop at (1) and don't even worry about (2), but I don't think the assumption should be that focusing on (1) can't be a preliminary step in a larger process.
Belle,BfP:
::does back flips::
Okay, follow me here...fuck it, in fact you're ahead of me. Actions DO matter...and I don't care if you are a sex worker, or a WoC, or a white upper class woman, transwoman or whatever the hell else, if you are doing something and not just speculating and ponificating on how all those sex workers, WoC's, white upper class, transwoman whatever the hell else fuck it all up...I want in. That's what I want to be a part of! That's where I want to help out, in the doing, without contributing, however well meaning, to the demonizing, discounting, and shunning of other people (who deserve that basic human respect). We can't get to the deeper examining and changing if we can't freakin' agree to disagree long enough on how empowering pole dancing for any reason is to see that, well, hey, people are getting killed, tortured, having their rights stomped all over and maybe that is more important and we should address it first!
And it makes me want to rip my hair out. Big time.
I know for a fact there are people out there who would NEVER work with me on raising awareness or money for women's medical care, or legal funds, or for sex education because I happen to do and like porn and they can't get past that to see there are things where working together is possible.
It's frusterating.
Octa your so very right but what i keep coming back to with teh wifey unit is that as young women
it's not so much taht one is n't great
but we are really and truly told that once we do one
WE're done we've helped the movement
WHERE's OUR COOKIE!
to the point we are allowed to non engage in rea l work
and for real it's only happening to "us"
that we can't even do the glass ceiling representation because
they really think
being there is the step
THat covers EVERYTHANG
and it's such a insiduous and very specific message
and its couched in this empowerment lingo that makes challenging it
even as the primary audience of it
realy really difficult
So there are a lot of people who stop at (1) and don't even worry about (2), but I don't think the assumption should be that focusing on (1) can't be a preliminary step in a larger process.
I think part of the problem is that focussing on 1 can lead people to believe 1 is the end all and be all. Or, in extreme cases, lead one ot believe 2 in't even possible.
THAT isn't helpful.
I think this drags us back around to looking at power, though. What does "your personal power" look like when it has to incorporate the personal power of everyone around you? When power is only power over another with that other's joyful consent?
yeah. and in addition wrt the responses to octo's point: sure, someone might be in the position to do something from a leadership/vanguard view, once she's gotten there; but that's no guarantee she WILL do it.
that's one thing. "I got mine, Jack."
but more to the point here, I think, is, again, this idea--again, it comes down to something rather built into the U.S. consciousness:
-representational democracy.-
Iow, we support these let's say vanguard women, the ones who have the book deals, the ones who make it to CEO, the ones who open a multimillion dollar franchise or media empire of some sort, because in a way, we -elected them to represent us-, just as we more straightforwardly elected the political representatives.
as in the latter case, many of us didn't vote for these people; and many of us are wondering why these are the only choices on the "ballot," and some of us are even thinking we had our vote outright stolen;
but there are almost universal complaints about the "job" the representative is doing. We elected you; now your job is to initiate the sweeping changes that we desire.
And instead, what happens is, the person not only won't or isn't able to make the changes sie promised (implicitly or explicitly), due to other factions, but sie is also now sufficiently removed from the people who "elected" her, AND, is now spending a goodly chunk of hir energy maintaining that "on top" position. Which is "politics," whether it involves ballot boxes and government jobs or not.
You can call it "power corrupts," if you want. To some degree I suppose there's truth to that, for some more than others, certainly--some people genuinely are -only- interested in the limelight, sadly, to feed their own ego, but learn how to talk the talk convincingly enough to get in in the first place.
But even among those who -do- hold ideals, I think, it's just sort of built into the system, this -representation-, especially combined as it is with the -other- piece of American Mythos, i.e. We're Number One is really important, and the overvaluing of competition.
So the question is: what's the alternative?
bfp is always holding up examples of -direct- democracy in other parts of the world.
I'm going to put aside how that might or might not work in the actual U.S. political system, because--well, even assuming that radical a change in the system is something we want, (and no, my own personal jury is still out on this, I've had enough bad experiences with attempts at "collective" governing even on a very small scale that I'm dubious about how it might work on a grand scale, especially if it's so alien to the cultural narrative) that's pretty fucking huge.
For now, I'd just like to how you say -examine- this idea that certain people's voices are more important because they -represent.-
That is--I wonder if some of us don't really unconsciously believe this at some point, even though consciously we reject that idea.
Do you know what I'm saying? -Power.- To some extent the structure exists independently of any one individual or small cluster going, "well, I don't believe in you anyway, so nyah." It's best to acknowledge the truth: this is where the money goes (and how), this is where the attention goes, this is where the energy goes.
But the question then is: how do we change that?
Because what I am thinking is: this whole notion of "truth to power," at least with the connotation of "power is the person in the Executive Chair/the Prom Queen, so let's talk to her -first,- and the rest will trickle down as it were from there, if we can only make -her- see Reason/have empathy"
--maybe, you know, that's been part of the sticking point. I'm not saying for any individual in particular, I'm saying, it feels like this is the...dynamic, you know.
And at the same time, I'm not totally throwing that idea out the window; I don't want to say that because so and so is in the Power Seat, so and so is Corrupt and there's no use trying to make an alliance. It's -one- avenue. It's just not -the- avenue. Yeah?
I think this drags us back around to looking at power, though. What does "your personal power" look like when it has to incorporate the personal power of everyone around you? When power is only power over another with that other's joyful consent?
deoridhre: did you mean to say "without" that other's joyful consent, there? Or-Can you elaborate on that?
bfp: I think in that instance then the question at least partly becomes, well, who runs the clubs, and why has this cornered the market, and how did it get to the point where the choice (as so often) is between "do something that makes you feel like a sellout or don't make rent," and what can be done about -that.-
I mean, I'd rather look at it from -that- angle than, go to the customers and hector them about their racist fantasies, at least -first,- you know? Because that way, at best, you just get a slightly modified fantasy (publically expressed); the rest of the situation doesn't change.
and if you move to just shut down the clubs--well, that also doesn't address some rather key aspects of the situation.
But, just to get back to the "why isn't it enough" question:
again, I guess, I make this parallel:
"Why do you need a parade?"
And I mean that not in the sense of your average ignorant-ass homophobe, but rather in the sense of: the parade has gotten corporate and commercial and vacuous and it doesn't really represent me and mine.
Yes But.
All that, BUT.
As long as there -is- that level of flat-out ignorance and hate, yeah, there are gonna be trite rainbow flags and jewelry--politics as identity and even commodification, yes, okay, that, but also: it is a Statement, you know. It has to be. It shouldn't -stop- there, with the feel-goodism for the lucky few (no, I know it's not a perfect parallel, but nothing is).
Point being: as long as people continue to gay-bash, people are gonna keep to the rainbow flag and choose even rather insipid and sometimes infuriating crap like HRC and the L Word over nothing at all.
and, as long as people continue to slut-bash and whore-bash, people are gonna keep to the "stripper chic" and so forth as preferable to nothing at all.
This is, by the way, meant as amplification to all the other points made by you and others here, not a countering.
BA, I think we’re agreed that (1) isn’t the end of the line.
And in fact for those who don’t go on from (1), it can be simply a continuation or expansion of personal privilege.
But we don’t always know who is going to stop where, which can lead to some assumptions about who’s smugly self-congratulatory and who’s in some stage of moving beyond (1).
Deoridhe said “What does "your personal power" look like when it has to incorporate the personal power of everyone around you? When power is only power over another with that other's joyful consent?”
With respect, it looks like: a fantasy. And one that would hold women and POC back. Nobody in any position of leverage is going to be all things to all people, and if white men can have power period but women or POC need to worry about everyone over whom we have power being joyfully consenting, we are not going to get to places of power, period.
I’m not saying that we should gleefully trample over one another to claim some kind of exalted spot that could maybe, someday in the VERY distant future, enable us to do some remote trickle down benevolence while sipping the champagne on the private jet.
But that if the test of whether we can aspire to certain positions, in which we have real and immediate ways of making a difference in fundamental ways, is that “it has to incorporate the personal power of everyone around you,” may as well forget it right now. Leave the seats of power to the fat white male butts, while all we women and POC and others with incomplete privilege stay in positions with spheres of influence so limited that we’re guaranteed that nobody will feel that our power infringes on them. So great. That will perpetuate the status quo, and we can continue to bemoan it.
Because the hurdles for those without complete privilege are pretty stiff, and if we add to them that we can’t take upward steps without taking on additional guilt and responsibility burdens along the way, why even bother. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to do what we can at each step. But let’s not stack the deck in such a way that the whole opportunity to get to (2) with the optimal clout possible becomes moot.
belle: No, I meant with. I was trying to include situations where one doesn't mind being in, or even prefers, the support role.
The idea being that power over others is only appropriate with the joyful consent of the people one would have power over.
Does that clarify?
BA said:
That's what's bothering me about these discussions and the empowerment talk. Why do we have to leverage class or education or yadyada for folks to be very real on the fact that the ill treatment may not be so much from the sex work but the fact that we are okay with treating the class of people we usually think does sex work any old way.
A woman working in any trade should be treated the way she wants to, preconception or not.
-this is so beautifully put. it's what i felt when i was doing sessions. i did professional kink sessions, often in a submissive/masochistic role, sometimes dominant, and conventional hetero sex acts (intercourse, blow jobs, etc.) were not considered part of the job. [sidebar - thank you for reading my book and i'm glad you liked it, and as BA now knows from reading it, i DID fuck on the job once in a while] what i would get irritated by was my peers saying things like "we're not prostitutes," and "waht we do is a kind of erotic art, it's not prostitution." and i cannot help it - you can't talk down to or talk down about whores on my watch, and not just because i identify as such. and renegade, i am not saying this is what you mean by it, i'm saying this is why i get my knee-jerky reaction around the need to differentiate (among pro dommes) from prostitutes or the need to differentiate as a stripper from being the kind who's on drugs, etc. to me, the possibility of somebody dismissing me as "being like" some stereotypes that i may not fit is something i can only *really* address by saying - you don't have the right to dismiss anyone who does, in your opinion, fit that stereotype. forget about me, i know what my life is like and what i'm doing - how fucking dare you act like it's okay to look down on a woman who sucks cock for a living, or shoots up between lap dances? who are you to think somebody is less human, less deserving of anything including your respect, because they don't look/act like that woman who started "the s factor" while they're doing it?
and still, i spent a chunk of my six years in kinky sex work feeling angry about people thinking i was a "certain type of person" or whatever just because i got tied up for a living. i'm just telling you from my own experience among other sex workers and outside it - my gut feeling is that if i have to turn even a degree away from another woman, in my claims of the kind of woman *i* am, so people don't lump me in with her and treat me the shitty ways they treat her - then we're all on our motherfucking own. and i don't want to be on my own, it's intolerable. and i don't want you to be on your own. i never felt okay telling people that "what i do is legal, it's not prostitution," because it felt like saying "i may be a sex maniac, but i do have some standards and self respect!" and.....i fucking said it anyway sometimes. not because i ever thought prostitutes were "less" than me (i don't read you as feeling that way about junkie strippers, either, ren), but because for fuck's sake it's uncomfortable enough in the silence between when someone met me and when they found out what i did for a living and when/if they ever said another word to me. my mind would fly..."they are picturing me sucking some guy's dick right now, and it's making them feel sorry for me, at best, or afraid of me, at worst, and what can i say to reassure them that i'm not different from THEM so we can jsut go back to being two people." not, what can i say to reassure them that i AM different from x, y, or z. just - not different from them. and yet - it validates the assumption that i AM different from x, y, or z. and i say this not in a we-are-the-world cheesy way, but i am not fundamentally different from a streetwalker on drugs. we're just doing different things.
and BA, i also loved this:
WE SHOULD be ensuring sexual expression, not because it's about gaining power ( another thing that sends kingk up my spine) but because you need it as a human being.
right the fuck on.
an aradhanad this nailed it for me also, re:sex work stuff:
This is a story that is not new - the fundamental problem wtih early sex positive feminists was that they made 'sex workers' a universal identity, as though there aren't differences BETWEEN SEX WORKERS, namely those of race/class/attractiveness/geography/type of labour. The funniest thing about early sex-positive writers is that they used this universal identity by making 'sex worker' a homogeneous category BEYOND SPACE AND TIME. I.e. so in that sense a devadasi has more in common with Heidi Fleiss than she does with another woman of her time... which of course is simply not true.
i have always felt cranky about the "sex positive" label because i feel like - either you're framing sex as something you can willfully feel "positive" about (and goddamn don't i wish that were true!) or you're claiming an oppositional stance to...what? feminists who want everyone to have negative experiences with sex? feminists who hate sex and so don't want you to have any? meanwhile the writers i have read the most "she-hates-us-sex-positive-feminists" complaints about (dworkin, for instance) are writers who clearly, from my obsessive reading of their books, hate sex BEING negative in all the ways that it is, specifically, but not only, for women.
regarding empowerment as a concept, i agree with what deoridhe said here:
It's being used less as a statement about one's agency in the world (desire and ability to change one's environment) and more as a new emotional state one can achieve with the right amount of chocolate.
i have written elsewhere before that i did not find my engagement in sex work empowering because I NEVER LACKED THE POWER TO CHOOSE SEX WORK. as a middle class whitey, no one is standing in the way of my getting a job, or staying home to raise kids, really. my interest in empowerment as an idea and a lived dynamic is in listening and looking for the places where people's lack of power means a) someone else's increase and b) the should-be-a-givens of a human life are out of their reach because of it. and i am interested in the ways young women, young women of color, and anyone else, feels like they are being marketed ideas of what empowerment is supposed to look and feel like and accomplish, in connection with sex, sex work, or anything else. that is also at the crux of why stripper chic is something that hits me wrong - when did my 40 year old middle class white chick friend not have the power to go to s factor classes? and what, if anything, does that "power" avail her of in the world specifically as a woman? feels better about her body? fantastic. i felt the best about my body that i ever had, when i was in my early 20's, and the guy i was dating who raped me anyway during that time did not consider/care/stop because of it. i do not equate self esteem itself with the exercise of power in the world. like what BA said about ensuring sexual expression, i want people to feel good about themselves and free to do what makes them happy because you need that as a human being, baseline, should be a given. it's not about "you're bringing down my REAL struggles for empowerment with your silly talk of pole dancing, bimbos!" it's that i want you to have what you're getting out of it because you should get to have AT LEAST that much. staring into my cats' eyes while we semi-nap in a late afternoon does not increase my power in the world - but i fucking love it, it makes me deliriously happy, and no i'm not okay with you trivializing it or wanting me to feel bad about doing that instead of being out at a march in that moment. that's all i'm really getting at.
bfp, i liked this that you said:
--i don't think that there's even one other industry in the world where I would agree with the idea that if a few people could "make it" then it would help all the rest of the people. For example, i don't believe that farmers in the u.s. being paid well through nafta tax breaks is going to "rise up" the farmers in guatamala or mexico. So i don't know how it could be argued that this is possible with the sex industry.
i agree.
janey - my questioning of anything is not to make someone else feel like they don't have a right to like or do what they want, or that i will call it not-feminist-enough. i just want to be able to tell the truth about where we may differ, and why. i want other people to do that, too.
last thing i remember wanting to say right now -
i am most uncomfortable with the empowerment-through-sex-work thing because of how i feel like people in that camp end up acting like it will weaken their right to choose what they're doing and claim enjoyment in it if the lame times, in even a happy sex worker's life, get talked about. similar to how i don't want to talk about how i actually had some really good sex with that guy who raped me when the rape wasn't happening, because of that old "it'll be used to invalidate me" fear. and maybe the way some supposedly sex-negative (i can't even say it with a straight face) feminists do, genuinely, have trouble allowing for any talk about someone enjoying stripping - for fear that it will be used to justify what gets done to people in that realm, that it will be used to dismiss women as a class in order to abuse some women in the most vulnerable positions of that class - "see, they're all like that, they all want it, it's in their natures, these ones here will back me up that there's nothing wrong with it!"
i am late to go home, feed the cats, go to sleep at an old-lady-early hour, but wanted to thank you again for your fantastic-ness and all the places you went in this thread so far and all the questions you think to bring up, i feel like i just fell in love with you girls. (i know, you're women, and i'm 39, you're young to me.) (and fucking amazing.)
I personally don't see how a bunch of middle class chicks taking a pole class for exercise is going to make it safe for the women in my city who are affected by poverty, racism and sexism (who strip). I'm not sure how this is going to make people stop calling little girls fast or sluts or whatever. It just doesn't connect for me.
This sort of comodified stripper chic has not much to do with sexuality, and a whole ton to do with selling a bunch of shit to people.
YEah Shannon thats the thing and thats my question
you and I are of similar age
and is it just me and teh wife but I feel that we keep getting told it WILL.
not to mention we also aren't told that teh fact we like it is GOOD ENOUGH reason to do it.
Why is that?
YHEE
Thank you joan we are loveable people.
And I think pollyanna that I am is my reason for bending teh blonde's ear on this all the time.
I feel that a lot of this is grounded
in strengthening a class loayalty in certain women
who I only became one of once i hit college
and that loyalty is dependent on obfuscating certain class nad race and societal issues by forcing peopel to excuse or explain behaviors that they shouldnt have to
and combined with privilege and
don't get me wronga t all a very real erotophobia
we get this strange society where women who organize and have nothing and still manage to make ginourmous strides don't get counted cause their strippers
and women who DO THE SAME activity on a friday night on my college campus bar for free
are suddenly THE NEXT WAVE OF FEMINISM
while talking shit about the strippers
because one happened at Smokes the other at magic city
I have no idea though thank you everyone for indulging me thinking a loud
Joan:
“and i cannot help it - you can't talk down to or talk down about whores on my watch, and not just because i identify as such. and renegade, i am not saying this is what you mean by it, i'm saying this is why i get my knee-jerky reaction around the need to differentiate (among pro dommes) from prostitutes or the need to differentiate as a stripper from being the kind who's on drugs, etc. to me, the possibility of somebody dismissing me as "being like" some stereotypes that i may not fit is something i can only *really* address by saying - you don't have the right to dismiss anyone who does, in your opinion, fit that stereotype. forget about me, i know what my life is like and what i'm doing - how fucking dare you act like it's okay to look down on a woman who sucks cock for a living, or shoots up between lap dances? who are you to think somebody is less human, less deserving of anything including your respect, because they don't look/act like that woman who started "the s factor" while they're doing it?”
I hear you on that. I’ve done almost everything one can imagine regarding sex and sexuality for payment, and most people who do it are doing it to pay their bills. Some love it, some hate it, some are cope with it in ways I don’t. They’re still people…
“and still, i spent a chunk of my six years in kinky sex work feeling angry about people thinking i was a "certain type of person" or whatever just because i got tied up for a living. i'm just telling you from my own experience among other sex workers and outside it - my gut feeling is that if i have to turn even a degree away from another woman, in my claims of the kind of woman *i* am, so people don't lump me in with her and treat me the shitty ways they treat her - then we're all on our motherfucking own. and i don't want to be on my own, it's intolerable. and i don't want you to be on your own.”
Yeah, but we ARE all different in some way or another, and none of us really wants to ever be judged by the impressions given by another person, we want to be judged on our own merit, right? That’s not snobbery, that is someone wanting to be recognized for who THEY are.
“i never felt okay telling people that "what i do is legal, it's not prostitution," because it felt like saying "i may be a sex maniac, but i do have some standards and self respect!" and.....i fucking said it anyway sometimes. not because i ever thought prostitutes were "less" than me (i don't read you as feeling that way about junkie strippers, either, ren), but because for fuck's sake it's uncomfortable enough in the silence between when someone met me and when they found out what i did for a living and when/if they ever said another word to me. my mind would fly..."they are picturing me sucking some guy's dick right now, and it's making them feel sorry for me, at best, or afraid of me, at worst, and what can i say to reassure them that i'm not different from THEM so we can jsut go back to being two people." not, what can i say to reassure them that i AM different from x, y, or z. just - not different from them. and yet - it validates the assumption that i AM different from x, y, or z. and i say this not in a we-are-the-world cheesy way, but i am not fundamentally different from a streetwalker on drugs. we're just doing different things.”
Agreed. But look at the whole 90% statistic. THAT’S the image out there, the one everyone likes to use and abuse. And it’s wrong.
And that, that burns me. I’m not better than anyone, but I am me…and not some fucking statistic or image people like to use. NONE of us are.
I personally don't see how a bunch of middle class chicks taking a pole class for exercise is going to make it safe for the women in my city who are affected by poverty, racism and sexism (who strip)
It isn't.
What -would- help a little bit, with this part, though,
I'm not sure how this is going to make people stop calling little girls fast or sluts or whatever.
would be a more active commitment to stop the slut-bashing in feminist circles. Yeah, it's real, and no, wiggling around with "'sexbot' or 'fuckbot' isn't meant to insult any individual PERSON" doesn't fly, imnsho.
Because you know, I firmly believe that one of the many not so -examined- joys the System bequeaths is the delicious pleasure of mocking the dumb slutty bimbo and oh-my-God-Becky look what she's wearing. And what she's doing. -You're making us all look bad.- I'm so beyond sick of it. Just frigging shut UP about the goddam pole dancing and the goddam sports corsets, okay, christ, it's been done to death, this is going beyond nowhere, you want to deal with the more important shit, fine, deal, right there with you. But enough of the junior high crap dressed up as righteous feminism. -Please.-
even more to the point:
I still remember the way kh and some self-ID'd sex workers got treated at Pandagon and Punkass Blog. and yes, those (at least some of 'em) were -liberal- feminists and progressives, along with the radicals. Baby Bear sex positivism. The whole thing was vile.
"she-hates-us-sex-positive-feminists" complaints about (dworkin, for instance) are writers who clearly, from my obsessive reading of their books, hate sex BEING negative in all the ways that it is, specifically, but not only, for women.
Well. Perhaps. But, I'm not at all sure her mm approach, or at least the legacy people have been carrying on in her name (i.e. Sheila Jeffreys) really is helping all that much to remedy that situation. Either.
"I think in many contexts Trinity's (1) can lead to (2). I agree, it's wrong to assume it will or just focus on (1) to the exclusion of (2). But (1) can be an important step to help further (2)."
Oh, just to make sure I'm clear on this I in no way meant to deny it. I'm VERY pro-1, in general.
I just think that people often talk about 1) and 2) like they're interchangeable -- like the personal experiences of one woman are on par with the struggle for the vote, or the like -- and this is where the disconnect comes.
Because the people who are doing 2) (or trying) are very often like "wait, what? Why are we talking about pole dancing AGAIN?" or whatever
and if we don't examine the links between 1) and 2) and the disconnects
we get, for example, the people wasting time rolling their eyes at personal stories about pole-dancing on the one hand
and a very surface pop-feminism on the other
and NEITHER really does much of anything.
I'm very sympathetic to the idea that 1) can lead to 2) and even that many people come to activism of various sorts because they're on fire from their 1)'s.
But I think a lot of people who are radical for the fad, or who want to be cool by being more leftist than thou or whatever the hell... stop at 1) when they really need to be making more connections.
It's not that people shouldn't have 1)'s it's... okay, so now what? Are you making your voice heard in some meaningful way or are you posting self-congratulatory stuff in a blog that no one reads?
like, if you're blogging: are you posting articles and news and info that inform, that spread the word, or are you just "yay me!" ifying? if you're posting about yourself, are you getting people thinking? are you opening minds?
if you are that's different than just "hey, look!"
which I don't think any of us HERE is doing
but which happens a lot
(note that this is not meant as a dig at anyone I know with a blog.)
OG: what I hear you saying is that you are leery of what is sometimes known as "downward mobility" otherwise known as "hairshirt politics." If that's the case, I hear you on that, too. Believe me, I have no desire to spend the rest of my life arguing with the rest of the co-op (the ones who are still on speaking terms at all) about how to spell our pronouns of choice and whether we really -need- a task force on the task force for the quorum for the pre-meeting meeting, or who's responsible for flooding the (one, tiny, sinkless, mildewed) bathroom again.
At the same time--I think, you know, it's worth looking at whether certain of the structures we take for granted are the best vehicles for the sort of change we want.
...and then inevitably the question of "who's 'we' and -specifically- what sort of change -are- we really talking about" emerges.
So, there's that.
I think that there can be a puritanical streak in radical movements (of all or most ideologies). Maybe it's inevitable. Certainly that's the fear lurking behind the (*nods at BA*) "Sofia Coppola" school of feminism: if we're Marie Antoinette, are we for the chop? What happens if you really pull the cork on all. that. packed up. shit. collective and individual, layer upon strata of...
-rage-.
Justifiable. But rage nonetheless.
Sure, it's counterintuitive to pretend it's not there, don't even -look- at it, and just keep loading on the pressure, forgetting that the more you overload it the more likely it -really is- to explode.
But that's what happens. People fear meaningful reform because 1) it's "hard work" and 2) who knows where it'll end up? -fret-
"I still remember the way kh and some self-ID'd sex workers got treated at Pandagon and Punkass Blog. and yes, those (at least some of 'em) were -liberal- feminists and progressives, along with the radicals. Baby Bear sex positivism. The whole thing was vile. '
Vile does not begin to cover it.
as per "sex positive:" personally I look at it as in opposition to a "sex negative" -society-. I think that while it's intersectional with feminism, queer activism/theory, anti-racism, socioeconomic approaches and so on, it is in fact a strand in and of itself; I think it's orthoganal to feminism, in that sense.
Yeah, I think there are some strands of feminism that aren't particularly sex positive, just as there are strands that aren't particularly class-conscious or concerned with intersections with say colonialism (hence the need for such distinctions as "socialist feminism" and "post-colonial feminism"); and yeah, the phrase has historical roots in internecine wars (although again, AD, others, what keeps getting erased here for me is that a lot of those early wars were between factions of -lesbian- feminists), but...I still think it's legit, in and of itself.
One of these days I'm going to write that post on "in opposition to what," I'd been meaning to for a while.
I just think that people often talk about 1) and 2) like they're interchangeable -- like the personal experiences of one woman are on par with the struggle for the vote, or the like -- and this is where the disconnect comes.
Because the people who are doing 2) (or trying) are very often like "wait, what? Why are we talking about pole dancing AGAIN?" or whatever
and if we don't examine the links between 1) and 2) and the disconnects
we get, for example, the people wasting time rolling their eyes at personal stories about pole-dancing on the one hand
and a very surface pop-feminism on the other
and NEITHER really does much of anything.
*nod nod head falls off*
That said, I do think that...there's a way in which one's shall we say self-actuation (or whatever the damn phrase is) can be helpful to others in itself. I mean...that's the theory behind pretty much all of the mental health industry, which is always where I ground my own experience with the sex positive/sex radical community(ies), albeit a rather fringey and unorthodox subset.
even, say: you know, the pole dancing classes, okay, if you look at it from the -teacher's- point of view--first of all, Amber probably knows more about this than I do, but I think it's pro dancers who teach the workshops, right? I mean--it seems to me that giving workshops to "mainstream" women is one viable source of income outside of y'know working the clubs or the party circuits; and why the hell not? You know?
In a way it strikes me as really fucking gross when people like at the Pandagon thread get all freaked out; the way it went, it struck me as very "not in my back yard." Or, you know, the lines are all blurry, and -that's- what's so horrifying, THAT'S what gets certain people, yeah, even nice liberal people, all het up about "pornified" culture. Because the strippers were -always- there, and it's -always- had a sort of demimonde "glamour" for certain types, if you want to complain about that angle, the "chic" business. It's just, before, you know, it was over -there,- mostly. In the special zones, on the other side of the tracks. Not being sold to l'il Janey and Susie Creemcheese as "empowering..."
the class shit, the insulting bit, it really cuts several ways at once, it seems to me.
Yeah, but we ARE all different in some way or another, and none of us really wants to ever be judged by the impressions given by another person, we want to be judged on our own merit, right? That’s not snobbery, that is someone wanting to be recognized for who THEY are.
*nod* It's sort of, I guess, like the whole "yer just a bunch of hairy butch man-hatin' lezbos!" thrown at feminists (hairy, butch, man-hatin' and/or lezbo or otherwise). How you want to respond to that depends I guess on the context, mood, and...style.
Ideally you have Flo Kennedy going
"Are you my alternative?"
(when asked "Are you a lesbian?" by some hostile fuckwit)
...but not everyone is that quick on their feet.
So, you know, I don't blame Renegade for responding to some random troll armchair psychoanalyzing her with a dry point by point "actually, you are wrong, and here's how," mostly because she does it in a way that doesn't so much denigrate the people who might fit (armchair psych's profile) so much as make the troll look like an idiot.
If she were to go, instead, something like, in response to "Are you a crack addict?" with something like
"Yeah, but I'm good company,"
or whatever, it'd have the same effect I expect, really, since mostly it's just skewering the troll for the delectation of the audience; it certainly isn't to persuade the hostile person of anything, it never was.
“the need to differentiate as a stripper from being the kind who's on drugs, etc. …who are you to think somebody is less human, less deserving of anything including your respect…my gut feeling is that if i have to turn even a degree away from another woman, in my claims of the kind of woman *i* am, so people don't lump me in with her and treat me the shitty ways they treat her - then we're all on our motherfucking own.”
I agree and disagree. Absolutely, making a statement along the lines of “because I’m not a junkie, I should be treated with more respect than a stripper who is” (which isn’t what anyone here is saying) isn’t cool. But I think it’s absolutely fine to say “because I am a stripper who is healthy, educated, and other things that, privilege-derived though they may be, are GOOD THINGS, my choice to be in this business says something different and more positive about the business than the choice of others who, possibly through no fault of their own, aren’t as able to demonstrate that they’ve made a free choice to do this.”
Let’s get real. It’s not about “better” or “worse.” As an ex-stripper, I don’t think I am “better” than a prostitute. But yes, I have zero problem turning “a degree away from another woman” who is a junkie so that “so people don't lump me in with her.” For the simple reason that I am not a junkie and deserve to be acknowledged accurately. Not, as you suggest, to be treated better or because she is “less human.” But just because people assume strippers are junkies doesn’t mean I need to accept that out of some false idea of solidarity.
“Why do we have to leverage class or education or yadyada for folks to be very real on the fact that the ill treatment may not be so much from the sex work but the fact that we are okay with treating the class of people we usually think does sex work any old way.”
Agree, it’s not appropriate to leverage class or education to get better treatment. But the fact is, while it’s true that some of us “are okay with treating the class of people we usually think does sex work any old way,” others are open-minded, and presenting the fact that strippers come in many varieties of level of education can indeed give a more accurate view of sex work and the decision to do sex work.
“I personally don't see how a bunch of middle class chicks taking a pole class for exercise is going to make it safe for the women in my city who are affected by poverty, racism and sexism (who strip). I'm not sure how this is going to make people stop calling little girls fast or sluts or whatever. It just doesn't connect for me.”
Agree. I don’t think anyone’s making this claim though, since recreational pole dancing isn’t stripping or sex work and therefore cannot really affect the image or treatment of sex workers. And similarly, nobody’s claiming that it connects in any way with the misogyny that causes people to call little girls fast or sluts. I don’t do recreational pole dancing (already got that out of my system the more standard way), but from what I’m hearing, the claim is a more modest one. It is a kind of expression that makes women feel good about their bodies and sexuality, and as a form of exercise it’s exciting in the way that building strength can be.
Whether this is “empowering” is an issue of semantics. According to dictionary.com, 70% of linguists feel that “empowerment” needs to have political ramifications, as I read the definition. So we can get into that kind of minutiae if we wish.
But personally, I think trying to force onto a thin pole the ability to solve world hunger is a bit of a stretch. Why isn’t it possible for women to go to a pole dancing class, feel good and yes, even powerful, about it, and then go volunteer at a domestic violence hotline afterwards, or donate money to a charity for starving children in third world countries, or both.
Why should we assume that the pole dancers, even the ones who dedicate more time to discussing pole dancing than charitable ventures, are stopping at the pole?
For the simple reason that I am not a junkie and deserve to be acknowledged accurately.
Mm. I mean, though...well, no one likes to be misjudged, it's true. Still, when you say "deserved" in this context, it does carry the connotation of...that "junkie" is understood to be lower in status than "stripper."
I mean, again--false sense of solidarity...but what's the context? Why not express solidarity?
shrug. again, I keep going back to "big hairy angry dyke" and "feminist." truth is, some of us -are- any combination of the above. And some aren't. I think it's -amusing- to be mischaracterized (i.e. when some homophobe assumes I'm some sort of giant butch), but, "deserve?" Well, shit, I don't -deserve- to be sneered at by this assclown; -nobody- does, that's the point; and while I might or might not correct the assclown in question about my personal standing, I also don't want to give the impression that it's okay to go ahead and kick someone else, then.
But personally, I think trying to force onto a thin pole the ability to solve world hunger is a bit of a stretch. Why isn’t it possible for women to go to a pole dancing class, feel good and yes, even powerful, about it, and then go volunteer at a domestic violence hotline afterwards
That, I agree with.
...and, further, that feeling good actually -makes it likelier that a person is going to have more energy for the activism she's doing,- less likely to burn out. In THAT sense, yes, absolutely, I think it's political. As is gardening, smiling into your cat's eyes, or whatever the hell else gputs the cream in your coffee.
It sounds self-evident, but I think a lot of activists do tend to forget that; "self-care" gets all tangled up in "selfish selfish," when it really isn't.
Ever play 'The Sims?" (I was just over at a friends', catsitting, and playing his Sims 2, so it's on the brain). They have these little bars of "needs," hunger, bladder, energy, comfort, social, environment (i.e. aesthetics), and fun, and uh something else. When all there little bars are more than halfway full, or their overall "mood" is good, they'll do whatever shit you want them to do. But when they're not--they drag their ass, just like their non virtual counterparts, they start out to do it but get distracted on the way...even start having tantrums, and, eventually, if things get dire enough, start hallucinating such things as the "social bunny" (it's a fun little game).
"I think we can all learn a lot from the Sims."
i'm kidding but i'm really not, you know...
"Still, when you say "deserved" in this context, it does carry the connotation of...that 'junkie' is understood to be lower in status than 'stripper.'"
Not at all, it carries the connotation that "junkie" is lower in status than "non-junkie." We don't have to trip over our liberalism here. I have a family member who's been an addict and don't believe it's a state in which people should be trampled on or judged. But let's get over our need to question the reality that, yes, irrespective of personal worth, it's better not to be addicted to drugs, and most reasonable people would prefer to be perceived as not being addicted to drugs.
"Why not express solidarity?"
Why not indeed, and I've done more than express solidarity to help sex workers who don't have the options I had. I won't throw out a laundry list of activism here to demonstrate this, but it is actually the case.
However, I don't think saying "yup, I'm so humbly drowning in sisterhood that I'll accept the appelation of junkie" is an act of sisterhood.
From the article linked at LLL: When white people parade around in saris, it is fashionable; when brown people do, it’s just ethnic and unmarketable to mainstream consumers.
The same goes for pole dancing, what I gather is that BA is pointing out that when strippers do it, it's low class and trashy; but white middle class women pole dancing is EMPOWERFUL and A FEMINIST BREAKTHROUGH even.
The question is why is it only a certain class person with a certain level of privilege who is "special" when he or she appropriates and commodifies what someone else has been doing all along. They certainly haven't made the lives of south Asian women any better for wearing saris or learning tantra, nor have they changed perceptions about strippers.
Donna:
"They certainly haven't made the lives of south Asian women any better for wearing saris or learning tantra, nor have they changed perceptions about strippers."
WHich is why I think it only helps when we - from the South Asian Women to the strippers- do it ourselves.
But I don't feel I get to knock Jane Housewife for getting a kick out of a pole dancing class so long as she does not judge me for doing it for 'real'...
And I now officially hate the word "empowerment".
It's sort of how I feel about cultural appropriation. We have all kinds of phony "shaman" and new agey types who learn a little bit about some Native American tradition or spirituality and then go on to market their bastardized version which is the worst, or the individual who incorporates that bastardized version in his or her own life. That isn't a big deal to me as long as they aren't calling it "official Lakota sweat lodge" or the like. That's where they hurt us, making others believe their nonsense originated with us and that we do it for their dumbass reasons etc. I don't care if white people enjoy doing a sweat lodge for whatever their reasons, if it makes them happy, fine and dandy. I do care when they say the Maliseet/Lakota/Navajo do it for mumbo jumbo reasons and get out of it more mumbo jumbo blah blah blather and especially when they charge for this idiotic advice.
I don't care if white middle class women pole dance either, but seeing it as a step towards helping others? Uh that's not a step thats a giant leap in logic, even if she goes directly after class to the domestic violence hotline. C'mon. I brushed my teeth before sitting at the computer and commenting here. One did not lead to the other. Brushing my teeth does not make me want to read blogs and pole dancing does not make a woman have an urge to volunteer at a shelter either.
who is saying that pole dancing is a feminist act of empowerment for all women.Ren and Amber have always made clear that their def. of empowerment has zip to do with the more predominant use of the world. Amber has explicitly connected it to thereapeutic empowerment for her self.
Joan: " have always felt cranky about the "sex positive" label because i feel like - either you're framing sex as something you can willfully feel "positive" about (and goddamn don't i wish that were true!) or you're claiming an oppositional stance to...what? feminists who want everyone to have negative experiences with sex? feminists who hate sex and so don't want you to have any? meanwhile the writers i have read the most "she-hates-us-sex-positive-feminists" complaints about (dworkin, for instance) are writers who clearly, from my obsessive reading of their books, hate sex BEING negative in all the ways that it is, specifically, but not only, for women."
Who are these sex positive feminists? Have you read Susie Bright on Dworkin? Me? Like the post I wrote, Dworkin, Sex positive feminist, sorta...?
And yeah, I pretty much think that LLL is dishonest in her characterization of sex positive feminists -- the claim that the early sex positive feminists homogenized sex workers. IOW, no doubt she can find some quotes, but to do so, she'd have to ignore a slew of other writers -- and she'd have to completely ignore sex positive feminism's roots in queer identity politics and its particular focus at the time.
So, I have to ask: which sex pos would this be. Gayle Rubin -- the one who lit off the sex pos/queer theory bomb back in the early 80s and started to make a break from a feminism that didn't include the gay sex workers getting thrown in jail in Ann Arbor?
She basically said that feminism has no room for a queer sex positive feminism. To which Judith Butler got all pissed and wrote her own sex pos stuff.... Maybe it was Judith Butler who homogenized sex workers, eh?
Was it the Susie Bright and Nina Hartley whose early commitments were to *labor* and unionizing struggles? Or that whole crew, which included other sex workers lkike Carol Queen in the early 80s who tried to organize themselves and other sex workers?
The Nina Hartley who has written that most of porn is degrading to women, right? The one whose socialist politics were steeped in anti-racism initially?
Wendy McElroy, who libertarian capitalist politics I despise, but who's book on sex workers and feminism used a survey in which she was very careful to point out the very privileged nature of the sample population in a survey conducted by COYOTE?
When the claim gets made about today's sex positive feminists, who you talking about? Emi (of Eminism?) bell hooks who fired off one of the few boosk read by tons of young women through the eighties and nineties when she attacks both liberal feminism and a variant of radical feminism for confusing heterosexual practice with a critique of heterosexism?
Wendy Brown who employs post colonial theory to talk about the ways that mainstream feminism uses a politics of wounded identity -- and how that theory has been taken up to show how the feminist groups who want to "save brown prostitutes" do so without including said brown prostittues own voices?
Gloria Anzaldua's critique of how her femme sensibilities as a Chicana were ridiculed?
The Sex Workers conferences where it's all about empowerment through pole dancing right? No, it's not. Audacia Ray who's written about trying to create porn while avoiding racism, sexism, heterosexism, etc. and the struggles she was up against that made her realize how hard it is for an individual to promote change. Melissa Gira who has complained about the lack of class consciousness in sex positive feminist thought? The countless feminist professors who have taught porn studies, teaching people to unpack the racist, hetero/sexist, classist narratives in porn.
Yeah, the documentary film by a sex positive feminist about korean soap house workers in canada and how they face deportation threats... that's all about homogenizing women. The interviews with whores that's about being a "ho" in a "sex worker" world.... Yep. Homogenized sex workers.
So, we're back to where we started lo so many months ago> sex positive feminism is treated as about disliking "sex negativism" as if what that meant was people "don't like sex." It's treated as if the nameless faces or faceless names of some woman in a mainstream news media article is the voice of sex positive feminism -- when there are books and articles galore, and conferences and performance art, and interviews, and documentaries that present an entirely different face of sex positive feminism that no one wants to deal with b/c it doesn't match the stereotype they want to bash.
Joan -- Gayle Rubin coined the phrase. It has zippo to do with people liking/disliking sex.
Recently, Janet Halley has proposed "Shame Affirmative".
* as for the cultural appropriation stuff... well, I had a client last year who almost drove me over the edge. He was a white guy who is a mutli millionair buddhist guru who teach mostly white peole from denmark, sweden, and norway how to have better sex. ask me about appropriation and his sorry ass. Yeah, I get it.
But then, I went to Afram this weekend and we were one of 6 white people in about 3000 people. i went there because i've been getting involved in local politics in a town that is 65% black. i stopped by to visit a new friend from work -- and to get a flavor of where politics are in the community. i also hoped to buy stuff from local artisans since it was sponsored by the black cultural arts center. 'cept everything there, except for one booth out of 100, was pre=packaged crap. there were no paintings from local artists, just reprints of stuff that are sold outside of the local walmart when they have their 'art sale.' (In this town, since the majority is black, the shops, etc. cater to black folk and people of color so instead of the paintings I saw in Tampa Bay, geared toward suburban white marketing, the paintings, the book displays, tv programming, commercials, businesses, etc. are marketed to blacks and people of color.
So, what's happening? Capitalism markets schlock to a black audience. No one has to worry about not having the things they want. e.g., you don't have to work hard to find hair care products. heh. had to laugh. I went into the dollar store to get shampoo. I couldn't find any because all to expensive stuff was for black hair. :)
But then I thought, is L'Oreal for black hair really *for* black hair? Or is it some marketing gimmick or idiotic claim not unlike this shampoo for thick hair, for thin hair, for dyed hair that always makes me wonder: is there anything different in these bottles?
as i said on my blog, without tackling that question -- what are the forces at work that create these choices like the forces that create our so called choices of laundry soap?
that, to me, seems to be the larger question BA is trying to get at.
I love your rant, but then I always do. You teach me, BA. When the envelope doesn't want to push, you pick it up and move it yourself. I thought about what you said all day and by the end of it, found myself voicing your opinions as if they had been my own already. Thank you.
And as for Carlos Andres Gomez, I ordered his cd instantly. So thanks twice.
Belle says:
At the same time--I think, you know, it's worth looking at whether certain of the structures we take for granted are the best vehicles for the sort of change we want.
...and then inevitably the question of "who's 'we' and -specifically- what sort of change -are- we really talking about" emerges.
*nodnodnodnodnodheadplop*
And I think part of the problem is that neither of these gain much value from theory. You have to go out and do and screw up and figure out why you screwed up and try again to answer all the questions but "who's we?" And screwing up really isn't much encouraged, so most people try to avoid it. And the "who's we" is fraught with conflict because, except for many whitefolk, most women are expecting to get stabbed in the back by other women, and ditched and such, and mistakes can look like backstabbing and even BE backstabbing. So even once you establish "we", it can be gone in the blink of an eye because some women have the need and the right to protect themselves.
And honestly, most of the experiences of organzation that can accomplish things that I've seen have been both patriarchal and requiring of a scapegoat to channel rage into so that it doesn't destroy the group. I'm not sure what an eglitarian, open, conflict-accepting, effective organizational structure even looks like. How in the nine worlds am I supposed to produce what I've never seen? Or even recognize where I can find it?
Right now, all I know is that dealing with groups of people (either positively or negatively) as if they were the same isn't it. Neither is a system where women have to jettison major parts of themselves in order to be acceptable. And people who have been hurt are the most important to stand by and listen too. Outside of that, I'm walking on nothing and not sure when it'll stop supporting me.
Donna says:
From the article linked at LLL: When white people parade around in saris, it is fashionable; when brown people do, it’s just ethnic and unmarketable to mainstream consumers.
The same goes for pole dancing, what I gather is that BA is pointing out that when strippers do it, it's low class and trashy; but white middle class women pole dancing is EMPOWERFUL and A FEMINIST BREAKTHROUGH even.
This is a major concern because it shouldn't be that way. It really shouldn't. The message that "I can take your culture, but I don't need you" is incredibly racist and incredibly common.
COYOTE would be a sex positive organization, (well other than back in the 70s they didn't have that term yet), right QD? They were fighting for prostitute rights which leads me to think they would accept the sex pos label. Why did McElroy have to point out to them that their survey results were skewed?
In fact, why do I suspect almost all the writers you source were pushing back against the very thing that Aradhana is talking about within mainstream, liberal, and sex positive feminism? Are these women identifying problems within the feminist groups they are working with, including sexpos or are they critiquing only the evil radfems?
Melissa Gira who has complained about the lack of class consciousness in sex positive feminist thought?
This woman definitely needs a smackdown. She sounds too much like Aradhana.
I am definitely not liking the way that you are selectively quoting and deliberately misinterpreting the things we are saying to put forth your straw arguments on your blog. I have to wonder why? You know I didn't say that you are JLo, in fact I went on to explain and clarify exactly what I meant by bringing her up. I said that just because someone has a working class childhood doesn't mean they champion working class issues later in life. I also asked for evidence of this on JV's part from you, Amber, and Anthony and got silence. You're entire website is evidence of you championing these issues and raising class awareness and analysis. But you insist on identifying with Jessica and any of the complaints about her. I wonder if there would ever come a day where she would identify with you?
I also specifically told you that no WOC is accusing you of stealing our content, but you keep going back to a throw away line at Ilykas. How is this different from Amanda saying that the burqa fracas was just about three white women? Even though the issue is real, our content is being stolen, but it's all about you and being miffed at one white woman now.
*Mann you people work faaaaaaaaast*
Qd :
I hear what your saying but LLL in her post talks about a specific incidence that happened where in teh sexpositive POC objected and it got rushed off.
And where in Tantra ( in an article she linked to ) was posited as life changing and amazing because it challenged an assumption that had conviently become white people versus white people.
Also when i wrote this avec le wifey we were ruminatiing specifically on how We as young women were gtting this message about empowerment and sexuality and appropriation not becaus eit reflected a shift in attitudes but because it was one more way we as priviligeded young women were getting passes to do whatever and say whatever
and call it empowering or radical
Not because we done anything not because we challenged anything
But because we had stuff to make us happy. And that the reason we got THIS message of activism had nothing to do with helping other women
but because we went to the " right" schools.
And that for women our age from as many feministplaces and academic places this was being honored.
We say and have said Time and time agian that if you feel goood about it and it heals you and shifts you
WE ARE ALL FOR IT.
GO YOU!
But we want to know why as young women who are supposed to be groomed for greatness and for proactivity why this kind of laziness is in a lot of ways being indulged?
Octa I agree with you it's not that it's implossible or we're saying that we shouldnt have women working through this venues but it really REALLY is a very codified among people of a certain age message that
GETTING THERE IS ALL YOU HAVE TO DO>
And we sat and thought of why and we really really did not like it .. AS girls of point blank RIDICULOUS privilege.
Your talking about LLL finding some quotes but so are you.
We ( me Katie the peopel who started this) really really aren't trying to say that women can't do whatever the hell they want.
In fact we are all for it ( and experiencing the subsequent life difficulty)
What were wondering is why we're getting a very specific messga ethat LLL using a SPECIFIC example exemplified.
And especially as she talks about devadasi , and fleiss much of what we get nnot the theory but teh stuff we are told as V day organizers sex counselors , peopel trying to be young and organising
sits on teh se broads strokes and thiese ra ra symbols
REGARDLESS OF THE THEORIES
which is what were asking
As belle posits when we as young women try to start looking not only outside expected structures and within them we are as hampered by negative critique as we are by positive enablism and we want to know why we are being targeted for it.
AT TEH EXPENSE OF OTHERS
and yes I'm also with ODnna in asking after I apologized to you on your website ( and yes I havent had further contact I apologize but right now I;m not doing much with anybody) and we aske d for dialogue WITH MANY PEOPEl and it wasn't forthcoming what else can we do?
BEcause the way were being quotd and adressed is actively inhibiting and coroding our points
Thank you everyone for your thoughts I have to run to work now. Peace
Ahhh....excuse me, Donna.
Before you drag my name through this, perhaps some facts are in order.
All I said all along was that I was willing to give Valenti the benefit of the doubt about her working class history and her relationship to "sex-positive feminism" pending my reading the book. If you want to distort that into me boosting the book uncritically, then that's your mistake, not mine.
And you probably missed the part where Queer Dewd states clearly that although she does recognize a lot of what Valenti says, she still has a lot of disagreements with the book. But hey, why not accuse her of being in Valenti's panties merely because she doesn't rip the book as an "appropriation" of WOc feminists?
And it seems that every time Amber Rhea or any other progressive White woman attempts to steer a middle ground between recognizing the legitimate claims of BA, BfP and other WOC feminists and her own personal experiences and her belief that the book might have at least some relevance, you are there to smack her down as a "J-Lo" wannabe who only wants to justify pole dancing at the expense of "us" women of color.
You know, I really do want to think that this whole debate is about the absolutely relevant issue of how WOC (if not POC) cultures do indeed get transformed and mutated by the dominant White culture, and often at the expense of the original cultures. I really do want to stand with BfP and BA in total agreement that appropriating Black and Brown people's cultures without giving them the proper credit and working to maintain the originals is certainly wrong.
I really would...but it all seems to come right back to baiting middle class White women for their sexual liberalism, and dissing them as "appropriators" and "thieves" masturbating on the broken backs of women of color.
After all, what can you say when Aradhana uses an example of "Bollywood" (which, if I remember right, hardly fits the definition of "sex positive") and the totally legitimate issue of the lack of authentic South Asian actors thereof, as a club to beat down sex-pos women as pilferers of cultures of color?? Or when she basically smears Barbara Carilles for her "Urban Tantra" variant (probably just because she happened to interview for Valenti's magazine??)...as if the mere expression of alternate sexuality by middle-class White women is automatically "stealing" for personal profit and pleasure??
And how else can you interpret it when Shannon breaks in here with the same old tired radfem meme of "just White women getting off on the patriarchy"...and gets nothing but agreement from the usual folks??
And no, Donna, the fact that folks like Melissa Gira (who, let us remember is an active sex worker and activist) or Margo St. James or any other progressive sex worker activist just so happens to sound most of the same self-criticisms that Aradhana attempts to do does not make them the same. Actually, if anything, it's Aradhana who is doing much of the appropriating here, since she basically taps into years of analysis delivered by organizations like COYOTE and BaySwan, then twists and distorts them around to serve her purpose of trashing them for using people of color.
All in all, it is frustrating and disappointing to see people who I respect mightily reduce this debate to such depths.
Sex radicals and sex-positive progressives have as much to contribute to the table of radical thought as WOC do; to continuously distort their writings, dismiss their experiences, and cast them aside as irrelevant is sheer sophistry. To undermine their efforts and smear them as gleeful elitist sex-obsessed racists, however, is much worse.
Whatever legitimate issues you may have about Valenti and her book, going down that road only leads to a bottomless cliff for everyone.
This will be my final word here on this topic. If we can't agree to disagee on this...well, I guess that some bridges just can't be rebuilt.
Anthony
And honestly, most of the experiences of organzation that can accomplish things that I've seen have been both patriarchal and requiring of a scapegoat to channel rage into so that it doesn't destroy the group. I'm not sure what an eglitarian, open, conflict-accepting, effective organizational structure even looks like. How in the nine worlds am I supposed to produce what I've never seen? Or even recognize where I can find it?
Right now, all I know is that dealing with groups of people (either positively or negatively) as if they were the same isn't it. Neither is a system where women have to jettison major parts of themselves in order to be acceptable. And people who have been hurt are the most important to stand by and listen too. Outside of that, I'm walking on nothing and not sure when it'll stop supporting me.
Yeah. That.
...what I will say about that is: while not perfect, god, I wish to christ more political organizations (official or otherwise) would take a page from the therapeutic world, esp. group.
I've met Barbara Carrallas. Kate Bornstein's partner. She gave her Urban Tantra presentation for Lesbian Sex Mafia. Apart from using the word "tantra" and some of the I-presume basic concepts (breathwork, mostly), it wasn't particularly Mysterious East, as I recall.
and LSM is a pretty diverse group, at least that particular gathering was, both race-wise and class-wise.
For that matter, Kate and Barbara--white they may be, and middle-class they may be, but they're not exactly what you'd call mainstream in a number of other respects.
OK Anthony at this point if it is better for you to go then fine
because while you're talking about AD she's not here
and your saying it's a beat down on white middle calss sexuality bu
one of the most repeated phrases by me and others
IS WE're OKAY WITH THAT
what we are not okay with is a very real question we have on the presentation and it's place within frame works.
And how is being honestly upset and offended at the presentation of AS CULTURAL ARTIFACT FROM HER OWN CULTURE
( incidently mine as well )
does that make urban tantra the devil ? No but yes it is really really aggravating to be waving the beating up women for the sexual freedom.
Adn teh fact you use probably or smears indicates you didn't read
and yes if AD is saying the SAME THING it is teh same thing
Donna is asking a valid questio ( you don't like it but it is VALID You didn't read the book but DEFENDED her analysis which you admit to.
She asked for a defense of it and yes she admits to having issues and DONNA feels unanswered.
Adn I am now pretty annoyed at teh fact that time and time agin we have said we are okay with whoever doing what teh fuck ever they want to.
BUT WE WANT TO EXAMINE WHY ITS PHRASED IN MARKETED IN CERTAIN WAAYS
being constantly transformed ( and by constantly ) I mean by very few people
into
YOURE AGAINST U SOR YOU ARE ANTI SEX
YES THESE THEORISTS ARE IMPORTANT and we acknowledge them
but that does not mean their not problematic and those problems arent as passionately problematic for us as you are for them.
And great yes Urban TAntra and ms carlissles can be nice wonderful peopel
AND STILL HAVE SOMETHING THAT ENFURIATES US
as members of teh culture intent or not
It is not " sheer sophistry" to have problems with them to the point of going they have nothing to do WITH ME or may be violently misrepresenting me
It is not sheer sophistry
it is frankly point blank the way peopel my age are getting the message
so yeah some of tehm are elitist sex obsessed racists
but the next generation
is
and to get to the disconnect yes
we might have to be a lil critical.
Whihch i think LLL is and SPECIFICALLY so in a way that criticisms of her are not
and that BUGS
I think LLL has a valid point. I don't have a hugh problem with people doing tantra or whatever else (belly dancing, kung-fu, so on) as long as acknowledgement and respect is paid to where it came from.
My people? We gave you vodka, messed up communism, Ghengis Khan, the and chicken noodle soup. Respect please. (sorry, I HAD to make a bad attempt at some levity here).
I'm here with white women getting off on the patriarchy! Seriously, even if everybody stopped saying sexbot on the internet, that wouldn't make our strip clubs safe for women, men or other human beings(our=Memphis). Are the strippers, whores, etc here getting shelter, unemployment, decent food that doesn't give people health problems, decent schools so that their kids can learn or in fact, other job opportunities? Me saying that pole dance classes are cool doesn't give my cousin tuition to community college so she can get a job that's not in a strip club full of drugs!(You may be a super human who is not tempted by drugs, but she is not!)
If I stuck my fingers in my ears and said la la la to the patriarchy, none of that shit would get done anyway, so let's just acknowledge reality and get on with it.
Sigh..
Shannon...my working as a stripper/porn whore is helping put my neice into community college so she doesn't have to work full time in a wing house, or a strip club for that matter. That's her reality and mine, thanks.
Even us blatant stupid frivolous patriarchy fuckers can use our powers for good on occasion.
BD: “At the same time--I think, you know, it's worth looking at whether certain of the structures we take for granted are the best vehicles for the sort of change we want.
...and then inevitably the question of "who's 'we' and -specifically- what sort of change -are- we really talking about" emerges.”
I agree with this. We shouldn’t be blind apologists for the current systems. At the same time, and I know we’ve discussed this some, I am concerned that without representation in positions of power within, analyzing and questioning from the outskirts, with no leverage, may not result in any more than a masturbatory exercise, a lot of theory, and ultimately no real change.
Now, I’m not saying that means working the system from within is the be all end all either. (In fact, I’m getting an idea about this that I will post on in the next day). I think there need to be people both outside, looking at more revolutionary concepts, as well as those inside with the wherewithal to determine what’s feasible and to greenlight.
BA: “Octa I agree with you it's not that it's impossible or we're saying that we shouldn’t have women working through this venues but it really REALLY is a very codified among people of a certain age message that
GETTING THERE IS ALL YOU HAVE TO DO”
That’s true. And sure, “here’s the new boss same as the old boss” isn’t a great solution.
But we cannot get to the larger political movement-related efforts if women and other groups who represent them think there’s something wrong with the “boss” concept from the get go. I don’t think “power to” is possible without “power over,” although, of course, stopping at “power over” is NOT all you have to do.
Shannon, I am confused about what you are saying. I don't think the people who don't like the use of "sexbot" or who do like pole dancing from the "individual sense of strength" POV are thinking that by taking these positions they are putting food into anyone's mouths.
It seems to me that most here ARE in agreement with BA that (again using Trinity's (1) and (2) cause I'm lazy like that) being told (1) is AOK is wrong in all kinds of ways.
But I think people need to operate at different levels at different times. I mean, when my mom had lung cancer (luckily, resolved for the time being), I still went out and bought tylenol when I needed it, even though I was also trying to help with her issues. Similarly, posting on occasion about sexbot-bashing or pole-dancing seems pretty harmless to me.
We all need to check ourselves from time to time to make sure we're not focusing too much energy on the trivial. But being told that the concerns we have which do happen to be trivial -- newsflash -- won't save the world, seems a little superfluous.
Personally, I would love to spend some of the time that we devote to making and defending against accusations of being superficial in more productive ways. Here is one of my issues and maybe some folks can advise. I would like to do more hands-on activism. I work 10 hours a day and do a large share of the child-care, as well, though. I do contribute fairly substantially to charities focusing on children in third world countries and also battered women. When I was a stripper, I also hooked fellow strippers up with discount legal services and helped use high tech and legal connections to find jobs for some who wanted out -- but I haven't done that in years.
For others with these kinds of time issues, any ideas about what kind of activism might be doable, and any ideas about how we might collaborate?
You know, I really do want to think that this whole debate is about the absolutely relevant issue of how WOC (if not POC) cultures do indeed get transformed and mutated by the dominant White culture, and often at the expense of the original cultures. I really do want to stand with BfP and BA in total agreement that appropriating Black and Brown people's cultures without giving them the proper credit and working to maintain the originals is certainly wrong.
I really would...but it all seems to come right back to baiting middle class White women for their sexual liberalism, and dissing them as "appropriators" and "thieves" masturbating on the broken backs of women of color.
I disagree with this. I had a lot more to say, but a lot of it was derailing and personal, so I put it in my blog where it belongs. I'm keeping what I think is the relevent bit.
One can be sexually liberated without taking cultural markers from other cultures. If the only reason one is interested in another culture is because one can "let your hair down," or "be more natural" or "be sexually liberated" by acting like them then, quite frankly, one is colonializing that culture. One is not interested in that culture from an authentic, curious, respectful stance but from a "what can I get out of that culture" stance, which is a colonial attitude and is, at it's most basic, racist; it is making culture a commodity for sale. If one has to leave one's own culture and racial identity in order to feel sexual, natural, or relaxed - something's wrong with one's culture. Projecting the bits of one's personality that one can't experience within one's culture doesn't free one in any major way, it just objectifies an entire other culture as "not us".
And that isn't healthy for either end. If women of color are the sensual, natural, sexual, erotic, warm examples of being female, that means my pasty ass can't be - and I don't buy that. If women of color are ONLY all of the previously stated, then they're denied their ability to be whole people outside of their sexual identity. It's a severing of the self at a profound level, a cutting off of a major part of being human, and as I said in a previous post, that's one thing I know I don't want.
Shannon ,
While I am e very much on teh empowerment isn't from the pole , it isn'ty negated by it either
That's teh flip side of it
The things you talk about , to me, are not at all endemic of strippers or whores ( and I;'m not a dffan of that term)
It's about class and teh way we view these women which while yes informed by teh patriarchy is often as screwed over by the matriarchy as well
BEing strippers of ANY class doesn'ts top them from doing amazing things that should be talked about EXCLUSIVELY without bringing in either patriarchy or matriarchy or oligarchy but what is life for these women.
I also having amother who worked in a very very patriarchy influenced position that did not involve sex work am not a fan of the fact taht patriarchy erasure complaints ONLY come up when we talk about sex work
.
I am closing this thread to start another one so s no one has to scorll tthemselves crosseyed!
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