Do men have a place in radical feminism?

[Hermes]

This is probably yet another ignorant question, so apologies.

I've heard from a couple female feminists that men are not needed, and usually, are not wanted in the feminist movement. Is this true?

Sorry for the short, relatively uninformed post.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

Yes. Whites helped in the civil rights movement, why can't men help in the feminist movement?

[Fourth Internationalist]

Yes.

[Quail]

This (http://www.revleft.com/vb/feminism-and-men-t173799/index.html) is something I wrote about the issue a while back. I think that men are an important part of feminism. The feminist movement should be led by women, but we need men as our allies.

[Ostrinski]

Radical feminism is much different from feminism in general, it should be noted. It seems to be a more exclusivist strand in the feminist movement that puts the blame of gender-based oppression on the conscious actions of males as opposed to existing social structures.

Yes white people participated in the Civil Rights movement, but radical feminists seem to be to feminists what the Marcus Garveys and Nation of Islams were to the Civil Rights movement.

[Hermes]

Thanks for the very quick answers! The thread you linked, Quail, was very helpful, I can't believe I didn't notice that before I asked this.

So, I guess, my next question should be why some feminists view it this way? Would it just mostly have to do with their prior experiences with it, or would it really be impossible to tell without knowing them personally?

Sorry again for posting this in Women's Struggles, I'm never sure whether to place a beginner's topic in learning or in a more appropriate sub-section, etc.

[Quail]

Thanks for the very quick answers! The thread you linked, Quail, was very helpful, I can't believe I didn't notice that before I asked this.

So, I guess, my next question should be why some feminists view it this way? Would it just mostly have to do with their prior experiences with it, or would it really be impossible to tell without knowing them personally?

Sorry again for posting this in Women's Struggles, I'm never sure whether to place a beginner's topic in learning or in a more appropriate sub-section, etc.
In my opinion, I don't see why anyone would say that men are "not needed." To me that is trying to turn patriarchy into a matriarchy, which would have equally bad effects as the current partiarchal system. We need to abolish gender roles, which cannot happen while we still hold sexist beliefs that manly men do one thing and feminine women do another. Men and women both enjoy various things and they can look beautiful at either end of the spectrum.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Absolutely. Anyone who has a grasp on dialectics knows that all social constructs exists in their internal contradictions. The tyrannical construct of gender represents exists based on the contradiction between male and female, without this contradiction, there is no gender to hold humanity back. Therefore the liberation of woman is absolutely essential for the liberation of man, there can be no freedom for one if there is no freedom for all.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

By radical feminism, do you mean revolutionary feminism or the feminist tendency called radical feminism that has a history of misandry and transphobia?

[Yuppie Grinder]

By radical feminism, do you mean revolutionary feminism or the feminist tendency called radical feminism that has a history of misandry and transphobia?

I assume the latter. The term usually used for revolutionary feminists like Simone de Beauvoir is Materialist Feminist.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I assume the latter. The term usually used for revolutionary feminists like Simone de Beauvoir is Materialist Feminist.
Well, then, the misandry often associated with it should answer your question as probably not. Other feminist tendencies, of course there's a place for men.

[Raúl Duke]

Yeah, it depends on what is meant by radical feminism.

On one side, you got feminists who feel that their movement should be primarily made up of and more or less exclusively lead by women yet don't mind having male allies, usually separate from their organizations. Although they may or may not think of it as essential

I guess on the other side would be those who probably are "misandrists" or whatever although I'm skeptical if they have any influence.

[Hermes]

That was my fault, apologies. I thought the blanket term for non-bourgeois feminism was radical feminism, which I now see is incorrect.

[A Sovereign Womb]

It is incredibly easy for a woman to be deemed a "man-hater" simply for identifying herself as a feminist, let alone proposing outrageous things like women-only spaces and functions. The constant apologies and reassurances that inevitably bog down subsequent discussion can be more than a little infuriating.

Yes white people participated in the Civil Rights movement, but radical feminists seem to be to feminists what the Marcus Garveys and Nation of Islams were to the Civil Rights movement.
Not at all. We're the Black Panthers.

[Luís Henrique]

Radical feminism is much different from feminism in general, it should be noted.

Not only that. It is not even a radical brand of feminism indeed; it is the name of a feminist current that is everything except radical - though it is very extremist. We should write Radical Feminism perhaps, to avoid the confusion.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

That was my fault, apologies. I thought the blanket term for non-bourgeois feminism was radical feminism, which I now see is incorrect.

"Radical Feminism" is a brand of bourgeois or petty-bourgeois feminism.

Luís Henrique

[black magick hustla]

:shrugs: even if some radfems consider me a monster i don't think it is entirely correct to dismiss it completely. radfem is similar to "materialist feminism" in some sense because it has a coherent theory of the patriarchy that more or less gives it a structural context - in contrast to the dominant liberal feminism, which is pretty much just a bag of opinions that "feel progressive" to have. So in the sense that it welcomes a structural approach to the issue at hand, it can be sometimes insightful. so they did say some insightful things, like how it's impossible for women to be "social equals" without test tube babies, which more or less is kinda true. i think it's kinda silly to call it "conservative" - it's just different. it's kinda dumb to feel offended by it too cuz' it's kinda marginal today and reserved to a few blogs like this one http://factcheckme.wordpress.com/

[Os Cangaceiros]

Isn't that the blog that argued that literally all sexual intercourse is rape? :lol:

[black magick hustla]

kinda. it argued that penis 2 vagina sex is disadvantaged to women. which is true, kinda, because you know, they get pregnant, and we don't. and the fact that women get pregnant is what fucks them up in the first place. that woman has a male partner though. i wonder how he puts up with this lol

[black magick hustla]

also she says that she would never be able to love a male child

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

also she says that she would never be able to love a male child
I call that pathological misandry.

[Os Cangaceiros]

kinda. it argued that penis 2 vagina sex is disadvantaged to women. which is true, kinda, because you know, they get pregnant, and we don't. and the fact that women get pregnant is what fucks them up in the first place. that woman has a male partner though. i wonder how he puts up with this lol

I remember reading that article or whatever, and I remember that the categorization of sex as being universally "rape" was pretty strongly implied. Maybe even explicitely stated? I can't remember. I do remember the rationale being what you said, that women get pregnant, but she also threw in the STD thing. Which to me didn't make much sense as men get STD's too, but whatever.

I also remember her using insightful logic to prove that no, the vagina is not merely some hole to be filled (paraphrasing, but that was essentially the supposedly popular talking point she was railing against)...most of the time it's like a piece of fruit that's been cut in half and then pressed together! No hole here!

As I was reading this I felt sorry simultaneously for myself and for her. Dear god.

I'm sorry, I just don't really see any sort of insightful idea to come out of that sort of intellectual tradition at all. The fact that men get all these benefits from patriarchy (and are unwilling to fundamentally change anything because of them) means that the problem the world faces is not a problem of class or anything else, it's a problem with the Y chromosome.

[black magick hustla]

I

I'm sorry, I just don't really see any sort of insightful idea to come out of that sort of intellectual tradition at all. The fact that men get all these benefits from patriarchy (and are unwilling to fundamentally change anything because of them) means that the problem the world faces is not a problem of class or anything else, it's a problem with the Y chromosome.

maybe, maybe not. that doesn't change the fact that pregnancy is the main thing that disadvantages woman, so in that case, that is insightful. women are not disadvantaged because they are 'physically weaker" or wear dresses, that's kinda silly and unmaterialistic.

men are benefited by patriarchy in some way, that's pretty much a truism. however, i don't think gender and class are as different as you imply. child-birth is essential for capital's valorization and therefore it does require women getting actively pregnant, unless test tube babies are invented. child-rearing in itself is value creation.

i don't really read this things because i find them poltically useful, but because i am interested in the question of gender in general. sometimes extremist and offensive opinions do have some value. i don't really feel offended by them or whatever

[Os Cangaceiros]

If that's true then there's no solution to that problem (well, besides test tube babies...should test tube babies be a part of every communist platform?)

[Luís Henrique]

maybe, maybe not. that doesn't change the fact that pregnancy is the main thing that disadvantages woman, so in that case, that is insightful.

No, it isn't. Women aren't disadvantaged because of the biological fact of pregnancy, they are disadvantaged by the social rules about pregnancy (basically, that being pregnant is their private problem unless they can find a male to stand up for such pregnancy, while males have little incentive for doing it, and face no consequences of any kind if they don't. Plus the idea that pregnancy is sacred and abortion is a crime).

"Radical Feminism" ignores that.

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

I'm not a radfem but I literally cringe any time someone uses the term "misandry".

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

I think a successful struggle to overthrow sexism will have to be multi-gendered. That said, oppressed peoples have the right to organize in any way they see fit. If women want to organize only with other women, we need to respect that, even if we don't agree with it.

[black magick hustla]

No, it isn't. Women aren't disadvantaged because of the biological fact of pregnancy, they are disadvantaged by the social rules about pregnancy (basically, that being pregnant is their private problem unless they can find a male to stand up for such pregnancy, while males have little incentive for doing it, and face no consequences of any kind if they don't. Plus the idea that pregnancy is sacred and abortion is a crime).

"Radical Feminism" ignores that.

Luís Henrique

It's more than "a male that can stand up for pregnancy", there is also the physical damage caused by pregnancy etc. The "social reasons" are due to a material reason, they don't exist in a vacuum.

[Ostrinski]

Not at all. We're the Black Panthers.What?

[Luís Henrique]

It's more than "a male that can stand up for pregnancy", there is also the physical damage caused by pregnancy etc.

Men have traditionally monopolised the activity of war, which potentially causes more physical damage than pregnancy. But the physical damages of war, or the risk thereof, have been used to promote male dominance, while the physical damages of pregnancy have been used to promote female submission. So the determinant factor is still social, not physical.


The "social reasons" are due to a material reason, they don't exist in a vacuum.

Social reasons are material reasons. "Social constructs" are not "mere social constructs, meh"; they are like, "wow, social construct, they rule" (over everything, indeed, even over "physical reality").

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I call that pathological misandry.

I was going to call it "reactionary", but I think your use of words is way better.

Luís Henrique

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I'm not a radfem but I literally cringe any time someone uses the term "misandry".
So what do you call it if someone says they couldn't love a child simply because it's biologically male? You're cringing about the wrong fucking thing, dude.

[black magick hustla]

Men have traditionally monopolised the activity of war, which potentially causes more physical damage than pregnancy. But the physical damages of war, or the risk thereof, have been used to promote male dominance, while the physical damages of pregnancy have been used to promote female submission. So the determinant factor is still social, not physical.
but it's not only "physical damage", it's the fact that pregnancy forced class society to pursue a specific division of labor that ultimately ended up giving women the short stick. the "social reasons" are simply superstructure.




Social reasons are material reasons. "Social constructs" are not "mere social constructs, meh"; they are like, "wow, social construct, they rule" (over everything, indeed, even over "physical reality").

Luís Henrique

but social constructs need to come from somewhere. hence "materialism".

[black magick hustla]

anyway, here is an article that pretty much fleshes out a solution for the "woman issue" from a communist perspective that it's more than simply "men need to stand up for women" or some shit like that,

http://libcom.org/library/communization-abolition-gender

[black magick hustla]

Long story short, we have to stop giving social significance to sexual difference - i.e. abolish gender entirely, which is precisely that, social significance to sexual difference. obviously that can't happen now, because social difference, like all divisions within social life, are pretty much expressions of the division of labor and class stratification in civilization - so hence communism

[Manic Impressive]

Do men have a place in radical feminism?

Yes to shut up and do as we are told

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Long story short, we have to stop giving social significance to sexual difference - i.e. abolish gender entirely, which is precisely that, social significance to sexual difference.
If we abolish gender, we're still left with two primary biological sexes, and thus the basis for sexism. We need to abolish sexism.

[Manic Impressive]

If we abolish gender, we're still left with two primary biological sexes, and thus the basis for sexism. We need to abolish sexism.

How can you abolish biological differences between men and women?

[black magick hustla]

If we abolish gender, we're still left with two primary biological sexes, and thus the basis for sexism. We need to abolish sexism.

not all biological differences have social significance. lactose intolerance will not cause you a social disadvantage, for example

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

How can you abolish biological differences between men and women?
Did I say we need to abolish biological sexes? No! I said we need to abolish sexism.

[Manic Impressive]

Did I say we need to abolish biological sexes? No! I said we need to abolish sexism.
I apologize if I mis-read you, here's how I interpreted what you wrote.

If we abolish gender, we're still left with two primary biological sexes, and thus the basis for sexism. We need to abolish sexism.
but IF biological sexes are the cause of sexism how can we eliminate sexism without eliminating the cause?

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I apologize if I mis-read you, here's how I interpreted what you wrote.

but IF biological sexes are the cause of sexism how can we eliminate sexism without eliminating the cause?
If I was unclear then I should apologize. My intended meaning is that biological sexes aren't the cause of sexism, they're the basis for sexism in the sense that they are how sexism justifies itself.

I think blaming it on gender, which hasn't always been congruent with biological sex (depending on the culture, and some cultures had more than two genders), is silly because sexism justifies itself not on gender differences but in biological differences.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

not all biological differences have social significance. lactose intolerance will not cause you a social disadvantage, for example
True, but sexism is historically rooted in there being two primary biological sexes. The sexist idea that one sex is stronger and another is weaker has nothing to do with gender.

[Crux]

So what do you call it if someone says they couldn't love a child simply because it's biologically male? You're cringing about the wrong fucking thing, dude.
Let me use a parallel: I am no fan of NOI, yet I don't think "anti-white"- or "reverse racism." are terms we should use. "misandry" implies that it's parallel, equal to, or even greater than, misogyny. I don't think that is the case at all.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Let me use a parallel: I am no fan of NOI, yet I don't think "anti-white"- or "reverse racism." are terms we should use. "misandry" implies that it's parallel, equal to, or even greater than, misogyny. I don't think that is the case at all.
If someone called it "reverse sexism," you would be correct. Calling it misandry? It's the correct word.

[Crux]

If someone called it "reverse sexism," you would be correct. Calling it misandry? It's the correct word.
I've only ever seen the term used by MRA's.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I've only ever seen the term used by MRA's.
I'm not familiar with how MRAs use the term. My guess would be that they're the ones misusing the term.

[Lobotomy]

, but she also threw in the STD thing. Which to me didn't make much sense as men get STD's too, but whatever.

I couldnt find the part of the blog where she mentions this, but There is perhaps a sliver of truth to the idea that women tend to suffer from some stds more than men do. For example women can get cervical cancer from some strains of hpv; most stds are more easily transmitted from men to women than vise versa; herpes outbreaks tend to be more painful for women; women can suffer severe complications if chlamidia is left untreated. I'm not saying that justifies her overall argument though because I actually found the blog to be pretty dreadful when I skimmed it. if all intercourse is rape then I guess us heterosexual women are basically just defenseless children who don't actually know what we want and need to be corrected. That's a pretty fucking disempower inch (edit: disempowering) message that shouldn't be taken seriously in any capacity.

Anyhow, men definitely do have a place in feminism. not as leaders, but as allies, and they can set good examples for how to be a decent human being.

[Luís Henrique]

I've only ever seen the term used by MRA's.

According to Merriam-Webster, the word was first used in 1909. I doubt there were any MRAs at that time.

Seriously, words are conventional. "Misandry" means what we socially decide it means. It used to be a term for irrational hate of men, just as "misoginy" was merely a term for irrational hate of women. One could be a misoginist without being sexist, ie, without necessarily believing women are inferior. "Misoginy" is probably morphing into something different, implying a social structure that systematically disempowers women. It doesn't mean that "misandry" does necessarily has to morph in the same way. But maybe it happens, and it becomes unusable to express mere irrational hate of men, such as expressed by people who "cannot love a male child". Then we perhaps need another word, or we have to stick with a less comfortable phrase such as "irrational hatred of men". What is irksome is the idea that "irrational hatred of men" is something that absolutely cannot exist (perhaps because women aren't capable of it?). Especially when we have clear examples of it, some of them coming exactly from the so-called "Radical Feminist" movement.

Misandry or not misandry, the idea that one "cannot love a male child" is an expression of a demented personality - more than of a merely reactionary worldview.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

if all intercourse is rape then I guess us heterosexual women are basically just defenseless children who don't actually know what we want and need to be corrected.

Or the gender equivalent of non-class-conscious workers; victims of false consciousness or just plainly "gender traitors".


That's a pretty fucking disempower inch message that shouldn't be taken seriously in any capacity.

And that should be fully criticised, both by women and men, for the intellectual imposture it is.

Luís Henrique

[o well this is ok I guess]

Let me use a parallel: I am no fan of NOI, yet I don't think "anti-white"- or "reverse racism." are terms we should use. "misandry" implies that it's parallel, equal to, or even greater than, misogyny. I don't think that is the case at all. What distinguishes the two is that misogyny is structural and widespread, whereas misandry is individual and sporadic. Let us analyze this sentence: by using the word "misandry", I have implied that misandry is on par with misogyny. I must have meant that misandry is actually structural and widespread, or that misogyny is actually sporadic and individual. How sexist of me!

I mean, say what you will about the idea or the concept of misandry, but it's utter nonsense to remove a perfectly serviceable word out of ones lexicon merely because someone you don't like uses it.

[human strike]

Feminism is for Everybody (https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:hGNhHWMC1rYJ:excoradfeminisms.files.wordpr ess.com/2010/03/bell_hooks-feminism_is_for_everybody.pdf+&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShC_PEunMZuNjsIFxOkGD8yCBCL3kV9bSti_47Z jrNa94m160tXrxjzPP3rQVSYhAnHSBaJe9A39E7l5XqtDWmuSg gt8lpRdUW8mPMFVzPLXBkvAyRKj14OdSMCkfrGyNa2g7OF&sig=AHIEtbQu0yTKi7Z6SvmiL4HUB7IINGrAJA) by bell hooks

[A Sovereign Womb]

What?
Self-organization among women does not necessitate separatism and/or supremacism as you seem to be suggesting. It is no more "exclusivist" than the Black Panther Party which sought to establish and coordinate black solidarity so that they might advance the interests of their communities. They welcomed the support of sympathetic whites, but did not allow themselves to be subordinated by them. This is a much better parallel to feminists advocating forms of self-determination within the broader movement.

As has been acknowledged by comrades throughout this thread, men have an indispensable place in feminism - "radical" or otherwise. They just need to learn when to shut up and keep a respectful distance.

[blake 3:17]

I'm with ASW on this.

And thanks to General Strike for the bell hooks reference. It has been ages since I've read hooks and should reread a couple of her books. People interested in this particular thread topic might be especially interested in her book with Cornel West, Breaking Bread.

I think the issue of misandry is a red herring, and would agree with LH that a hatred of male children is a sign of being disturbed rather than a politics.

A girl that is sometimes in my care, is extremely afraid of men, and when I have tried to comfort her I made her more upset. I explained as clearly as possible that she was safe, and that I was sorry she was so upset, that I would leave her alone, but if she wanted my help she only had to ask. I moved away and she calmed down.

I believe this in the spirit of ASW's comment about learning to shut up and keeping a respectful distance.

[black magick hustla]

I guess us heterosexual women are basically just defenseless children who don't actually know what we want and need to be corrected. That's a pretty fucking disempower inch (edit: disempowering) message that shouldn't be taken seriously in any capacity.


I don't think she says it is "rape" though, simply that it is biologically disadvantaged for women. Which is obviously true (pregnancy).

[black magick hustla]

And that should be fully criticised, both by women and men, for the intellectual imposture it is.

But people are not really criticizing any of the points. They simply reject them on a moral basis. You know how it implies something disturbing like "men are incurable" or "women are powerless babies". Nobody has made a compelling argument against why pregnancy is not problematic.

[black magick hustla]

True, but sexism is historically rooted in there being two primary biological sexes. The sexist idea that one sex is stronger and another is weaker has nothing to do with gender.

It has everything to do with gender, cuz' acknowledging that reproductive capabilities make you a "woman" creates the category for "women being weaker"

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

It has everything to do with gender, cuz' acknowledging that reproductive capabilities make you a "woman" creates the category for "women being weaker"
Yes, but that's based on biological sex not gender.

[black magick hustla]

Yes, but that's based on biological sex not gender.

I don't really get what you want to say? The act of acknowledging a social significance upon biological sex is gender. Without gender there is no sexism, because there is not a category of "women" to be sexist against.

[A Sovereign Womb]

I believe this in the spirit of ASW's comment about learning to shut up and keeping a respectful distance.
Very much so, comrade.

One key reason self-organization and women-only space is so essential is that a significant number of women are unable to express themselves openly around men - this is especially true of victims of physical and/or emotional violence.

[Os Cangaceiros]

But people are not really criticizing any of the points. They simply reject them on a moral basis. You know how it implies something disturbing like "men are incurable" or "women are powerless babies". Nobody has made a compelling argument against why pregnancy is not problematic.

I went back to actually read the "intercourse series" (lol), and yeah, she doesn't actually come out and say that sex = rape. But passages like this



if you can even imagine that this might be the case, then you have to also consider that women have somehow managed to eroticize something thats not inherently erotic, to whatever extent they might “enjoy” PIV. and there are many reasons this might be the case for any individual woman, and for women as a sexual class, around the world. love. motherhood. garnering attention and affection from men, who love to fuck women, even women they hate. because to some extent, most women in most places eroticize PIV somehow. most women who are engaging in it dont report “feeling raped”, afterall, whatever the fuck that means (although many more find it about as arousing as going to the gynecologist). do try not to imagine what would happen if they changed their minds at some point though, either mid-act or across the board, within the context of het relationships.

PIV is not inherently erotic for women, but it *is* a fundamental part of the narrative that keeps us in servitude, to men. women are fucked by men, and men fuck women. its essential that it be this way, because PIV causes pregnancy. PIV causes illness. pregnancy, illness, and babies (upon babies, upon babies) cause women to become dependant on others, on men.

women as a class are subservient to men as a class, then, due pretty exclusively to PIV.

now. gays and lesbians are vilified, under this system, because homosexuals fuck up the narrative (again, the narrative is, and must be, men fuck women, and women are fucked by men). see? regarding gay men, they make it too clear that men have asses that can be fucked. its not *just* women that can be fucked, men can be fucked too. but how is that supposed to work???!!!!!1 no, its not fucking unless women are fucked. its not “fucking” unless someone can die from it, unless someone can become pregnant. because fucking and female subservience are the same thing.

and lesbians fuck up the narrative too: they make it too clear that PIV is not inherently erotic, for women. so, they arent really women, at all. and what they are doing to and with each other isnt fucking. because its not fucking unless someone can die from it, unless someone can become pregnant. because fucking and female subservience are the same thing.

and i have kinda been harsh on transwomen in this series, but they fit in here too, dont they? because transwomen are men, and they have asses that can be fucked. they have fake fuckholes that can be fucked. but its not fucking unless someone can die from it, unless someone can become pregnant. because fucking and female subservience are the same thing. and its not a fucking coincidence, is it, that many times when a straight man murders a transwoman, its after he has fucked her (or right before), and finds out that shes not a woman? because the transwoman reminds him that he, too, has an ass, that can be fucked. that what they have just done or almost done together wasnt fucking or almost fucking, it was something “disturbing” in fact, because its not fucking unless someone can die from it, unless someone can get pregnant.

because fucking and female subservience are the same fucking thing.

...are kind of ridiculous, and while there is *some* truth to the notion of what's being said (particularly the part about babies disadvantaging women, some of the medical problems associated with pregnancy etc), there really is no proof to any of her claims. Which is important because some of said claims are, at face value, completely ridiculous (like that women who like sex perhaps only do so because they've been traumatized in the same way that men who are sent into violent wars are!), and thus require some extraordinary evidence.

[black magick hustla]

...are kind of ridiculous, and while there is *some* truth to the notion of what's being said (particularly the part about babies disadvantaging women, some of the medical problems associated with pregnancy etc), there really is no proof to any of her claims. Which is important because some of said claims are, at face value, completely ridiculous (like that women who like sex perhaps only do so because they've been traumatized in the same way that men who are sent into violent wars are!), and thus require some extraordinary evidence.
I agree, that part is pretty loopy. But I think the most important point is "pregnancy", which was the basis of radfem. Anyway, I am not a radfem lol, it just bothers me when people reject things out of some moral kneejerk.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I don't really get what you want to say? The act of acknowledging a social significance upon biological sex is gender. Without gender there is no sexism, because there is not a category of "women" to be sexist against.
By gender, I mean the complex interplay between social roles and gender identity. While there is a link between gender and biological sex, if you remove gender from the equation, there are still two biological sexes, and so there is still a basis for sexism to exist.

[Luís Henrique]

But I think the most important point is "pregnancy", which was the basis of radfem. Anyway, I am not a radfem lol, it just bothers me when people reject things out of some moral kneejerk.

You say that the basis of "Radical Feminism" is "pregnancy", but when I read them I don't see that; I see the basis of "Radical Feminism" is heterosexual sex - which is misconstrued as something that women cannot enjoy, and that most men enjoy to do even to women they dislike.

And then the stupid notion that "men" and "women" constitute "classes".

Which are all completely contrary to facts, of course.

Luís Henrique

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

You say that the basis of "Radical Feminism" is "pregnancy", but when I read them I don't see that; I see the basis of "Radical Feminism" is heterosexual sex - which is misconstrued as something that women cannot enjoy, and that most men enjoy to do even to women they dislike.
Let's not forget that some radfems argue that heterosexual women should only have sex with other women.

[black magick hustla]

You say that the basis of "Radical Feminism" is "pregnancy", but when I read them I don't see that; I see the basis of "Radical Feminism" is heterosexual sex - which is misconstrued as something that women cannot enjoy, and that most men enjoy to do even to women they dislike.
except that radfem is more than just about "sex". nor the article said that women "can't enjoy sex". radfem's whole structural approach is based on the fact that women get pregnant (and therefore the author, and someone like dwokins, reject piv sex as damaging to women).




And then the stupid notion that "men" and "women" constitute "classes".

Which are all completely contrary to facts, of course.

Luís Henrique

well, radfem is not marxism so i don't know what's the point of this comment?

as i said it just annoys me when people reject things cuz' it offends their sensibilities. in fact a lot of marxist stuff done on gender is genealogically related to radfem's structural approach, including pregnancy as a very important category. however feminists that are marxists situate pregnancy in the context of value creation/critique of political economy, instead of some tranhistorical concept of the patriarchy. there is a really popular book out there called "caliban and the witch" by silvia federici, which situates domestic labor and reproduction as permanent primitive accumulation. Here is a review about the book http://www.anarkismo.net/article/14373 . Maya Gonzales, an "ultraleftist" situates also pregnancy in the center of women's experience viz capital's valorization, and that's why she conceives communism as the abolition of gender too http://libcom.org/library/communization-abolition-gender.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Rather than abolishing gender, we should advocate for a multiplicity of genders and severing the ideological tie between gender and biological sex.

[black magick hustla]

Rather than abolishing gender, we should advocate for a multiplicity of genders and severing the ideological tie between gender and biological sex.

but gender is completely defined as the social significance we give to sexual differentiation. the point is that, in a human community probably whether you wear a dress and makeup or whether you wear makeup but wear cowboy male work jeans at the same time would have no social significance except as some sort of fashion taste or something

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

but gender is completely defined as the social significance we give to sexual differentiation. the point is that, in a human community probably whether you wear a dress and makeup or whether you wear makeup but wear cowboy male work jeans at the same time would have no social significance except as some sort of fashion taste or something
Take away gender or make it a binary tied to biological sex, and you're defining people in purely biological terms. Someone with a penis is a man, and someone with a vagina is a woman. It's biological reductionism.

[Luís Henrique]

Let's not forget that some radfems argue that heterosexual women should only have sex with other women.

Ya, the absexuality of those people is remarkable.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

well, radfem is not marxism so i don't know what's the point of this comment?

Well, part of the point is exactly that: that "Radical Feminism" isn't Marxist, and isn't Marxist Feminist either - though it quite evidently uses and misuses marxoid terminology in order to appear more radical and more leftist than it actually is (which in fact makes it more of a pastiche than anything else).

If you can read Portuguese, which I suppose as a Mexican you can, you might enjoy this text (http://obeco.planetaclix.pt/rst1.htm) (O valor é o homem, translation from Der Wert ist der Mann (http://www.exit-online.org/link.php?tabelle=autoren&posnr=25)) by Roswitha Scholz.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

anyway, here is an article that pretty much fleshes out a solution for the "woman issue" from a communist perspective that it's more than simply "men need to stand up for women" or some shit like that,

http://libcom.org/library/communization-abolition-gender

From it:


Woman is a social construction. The very category of woman is organized within and through a set of social relations, from which the splitting of humanity into two, woman and man – and not only female and male – is inseparable. In this way, sexual difference is given a particular social relevance that it would not otherwise possess.

Albeit the article as a whole is extremely confuse, it doesn't seem to uphold your idea that the biological fact of pregnancy is the cause of sexual oppression. It clearly recognises gender as a social construct, and posits that it is the social interpretation of pregnancy under class societies that constitutes the social construction of "women" as opposed to "men".

Luís Henrique

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

"They expect we’ll be shocked to see statistics about them being killed, and don’t realize, some of us wish they would ALL be dead." - RadFem blogger BevJo about trans people

Radical Feminism is a hate group.

[Luís Henrique]

"They expect we’ll be shocked to see statistics about them being killed, and don’t realize, some of us wish they would ALL be dead." - RadFem blogger BevJo about trans people

And I wouldn't be surprised if they said or thought similar things about prostitutes or gay men: it follows quite seamlessly from their premises.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

There is also this purest gem:


“because the fact of the matter is that unlike born-women, who have everything (literally, everything) to lose from rape culture, transwomen have at least something (everything?) to gain. to a transwoman, cutting off her dick and turning it (inside out) into a fuckhole between her legs makes her feel better. from transwomens own mouths, we know that these fake fuckholes alleviate transwomens suffering. turning their dicks into extra-large condoms for other men to penetrate (or not, whevs…thats my hat-tip to the internet “lesbian transwomen”) actually tamps down their anxiety, and feelings of dysphoria.”

So, before anyone starts talking about "reverse sexism", let's see this for what it is: shameless misoginy, in which vaginas are equated to "fuckholes" and to "extra-large condoms".

The self-hate is sickening.

Luís Henrique

[black magick hustla]

From it:



Albeit the article as a whole is extremely confuse, it doesn't seem to uphold your idea that the biological fact of pregnancy is the cause of sexual oppression. It clearly recognises gender as a social construct, and posits that it is the social interpretation of pregnancy under class societies that constitutes the social construction of "women" as opposed to "men".

Luís Henrique

I didn't say gender is biological. I explicitly said that gender is a social category built on the splitting of human beings on the basis of sexual differentiation. However, that does not mean that the social construct doesn't have a biological reason, which was pregnancy and the way pregnancy shaped the subsequent division of labor and thus, class society. Feminists that are marxists recognize the structural-social ramifications of pregnancy, even if it is under a critique of political economy. The point that Maya (not Ramona, she just posted the article) was raising is that there can't be communism without the abolition of gender, the abolition of splitting the human being through some idea of sexual differentiation.

[black magick hustla]

There is also this purest gem:



So, before anyone starts talking about "reverse sexism", let's see this for what it is: shameless misoginy, in which vaginas are equated to "fuckholes" and to "extra-large condoms".

The self-hate is sickening.

Luís Henrique

ummm, i don't agree with the transphobia but her point is that a real vagina is not a fuckhole, but a surgically created one is. I.e. she is stating that transwomen create vaginas cuz' they wanna be fucked. her argument against PiV is partly based on the fact that vaginas are not holes, nor are they meant for fucking.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

ummm, i don't agree with the transphobia but her point is that a real vagina is not a fuckhole, but a surgically created one is. I.e. she is stating that transwomen create vaginas cuz' they wanna be fucked. her argument against PiV is partly based on the fact that vaginas are not holes, nor are they meant for fucking.
Actually, trans women who have the surgery do so to make their body congruent with their internal gender identity, whether or not they use their surgically created vagina for sex. The fact that you believe a trans woman's vagina is a "fuckhole" and a cis woman's isn't is telling.

[black magick hustla]

Actually, trans women who have the surgery do so to make their body congruent with their internal gender identity, whether or not they use their surgically created vagina for sex. The fact that you believe a trans woman's vagina is a "fuckhole" and a cis woman's isn't is telling.

i don't believe anything. i'm merely explaining what the article is about. sorry if i'm annoyed when people strawman other people just cuz' they disagree with them

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

i don't believe anything. i'm merely explaining what the article is about. sorry if i'm annoyed when people strawman other people just cuz' they disagree with them
I think we can all quite understood what the article is about without you explaining it to us.

[black magick hustla]

i dont really have any opinions about the trans experience because i don't really understand it and it's pretty hard for me to wrap my head around it. so i don't really have "beliefs" about it. i just know it must be extremely distressing to not identify with your own body and feel like there is something really alien about it. some kind of hell that i can see is a hell but it's hard to really intuit about it

[black magick hustla]

I think we can all quite understood what the article is about without you explaining it to us.

luis apparently doesn't. cuz' she expicitly said women's vaginas are not fuckholes. sorry if that offends you for some reason or whatever but i really dislike when people do things like that in a discussion forum

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

i dont really have any opinions about the trans experience because i don't really understand it and it's pretty hard for me to wrap my head around it. so i don't really have "beliefs" about it. i just know it must be extremely distressing to not identify with your own body and feel like there is something really alien about it. some kind of hell that i can see is a hell but it's hard to really intuit about it
Well, the most important thing to understand is that it has nothing to do with sex, which is apparently beyond radical feminists who think trans women are gay men who have surgery so they can have sex with men, without being able to explain why actual gay men have and enjoy sex with men without a vagina (while they also ignore that trans women can be lesbian, bisexual, or heterosexual just like anyone else).

[Luís Henrique]

i dont really have any opinions about the trans experience because i don't really understand it and it's pretty hard for me to wrap my head around it. so i don't really have "beliefs" about it. i just know it must be extremely distressing to not identify with your own body and feel like there is something really alien about it. some kind of hell that i can see is a hell but it's hard to really intuit about it

Yeah, I can't really relate to the experience either, being firmly cis and all. What I think we all, regardless of biological sex, gender, sexual orientation or sexual identity, can - and should - do is to recognise and repudiate sheer bigotry when it shows up. Which, of course, is the case with the quotes Danielle and me have brought up.


luis apparently doesn't. cuz' she expicitly said women's vaginas are not fuckholes. sorry if that offends you for some reason or whatever but i really dislike when people do things like that in a discussion forum

Ah, yes. So a vagina is a fuckhole if it is a transwoman's vagina, but it is not a fuckhole if it is a ciswoman's vagina. And why not? Because ciswomen were cursed at birth with a vagina, and foolish and stupid transwomen decide to have one by themselves (by this showing that some people consciously want to be women, and so threatening the Oppression Olympiad argument about how only women are oppressed, and how lesbians are the most oppressed of women)?

Really, no matter how many caveats these people put into their bigoted opinions, the reason underneath it is clear: vaginas are fuckholes, that no sensible person would choose to have.

Or do we have to take in serious all those "I'm not a racist/sexist/homophobe/xenophobe, but..." clauses bigots so much love?

Luís Henrique

[A Sovereign Womb]

While I don't think it is particularly fair to trot out a couple of blogs as a reason to dismiss an entire tendency (I'm sure most here are able to appreciate how pointless that is), I acknowledge that the reputation for transphobia among radical feminists is well-earned. It is an unfortunate stain on the movement and verily warrants repudiation at every opportunity.

As pervasive as it is, however, I reject the assertion that it is integral. An increasing number of radical feminists are coming around and denouncing this trend, myself being among them. The regrettable association (coupled with the level of hostility from some of our more obstinate sisters) has caused many to reject or abandon the label outright. I simply refuse to do so; I will not allow the unconditional surrender of radical feminism to the transphobes. For me, it is important to battle this problem from within. You can call me sentimental, but I still identify as a radfem.

[Luís Henrique]

lshe expicitly said women's vaginas are not fuckholes.

She explicitly wrote "fake fuckholes"; I suppose ciswomen's vaginas are "authentic" fuckholes? Or why else does she need the adjective?

Luís Henrique

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I will not allow the unconditional surrender of radical feminism to the transphobes.
Fair play to you.

[Quail]

I think the discussion of what kinds of vagina the term "fuckhole" includes is going off topic. I think we can discuss radical feminism and the transphobia that unfortunately often comes with it without posts and posts about "fuckholes."

[Luís Henrique]

I think the discussion of what kinds of vagina the term "fuckhole" includes is going off topic. I think we can discuss radical feminism and the transphobia that unfortunately often comes with it without posts and posts about "fuckholes."

Yes, I think their transphobia, misandry and general reactionarism can be discussed without mentioning that. Perhaps their glaring misogyny can, too, but I am not so sure.

Saying that these people are "man-haters" is an understatement; they hate women also, and perhaps foremost.

Luís Henrique

[DancingEmma]

My problem with the Radical Feminist tendency is not its misandry, as I don't believe hostility toward men is a significant social problem. My problem with the tendency is its hatred of so many types of women. Many of the first radfems were partisans of the authoritarian left, and they took their vanguardist approach with them into feminism. Radfems are convinced that they are the ones to lead the revolution for women, whether other women like it or not. It's not just trans women that most radfems condescend to and hate on. Radfems also often display contempt for women who are sex workers, who are into BDSM, who are "too feminine," and--in extreme cases--any women who have sexual relations with men. Lesbian radfems, after all, have at times posited that being a lesbian was not an inborn sexual orientation but a political choice (the right political choice) and that they were more evolved in their consciousness than the poor widdle women who still found males attractive. Oh yeah, and you couldn't be a real political lesbian either if you were a woman and your female partner used a strap-on because that's too much like a penis or something. So yeah. I'm happy that this rubbish has mostly fallen out of favor in the 21st century.

[black magick hustla]

My problem with the Radical Feminist tendency is not its misandry, as I don't believe hostility toward men is a significant social problem. My problem with the tendency is its hatred of so many types of women. Many of the first radfems were partisans of the authoritarian left, and they took their vanguardist approach with them into feminism. Radfems are convinced that they are the ones to lead the revolution for women, whether other women like it or not. It's not just trans women that most radfems condescend to and hate on. Radfems also often display contempt for women who are sex workers, who are into BDSM, who are "too feminine," and--in extreme cases--any women who have sexual relations with men. Lesbian radfems, after all, have at times posited that being a lesbian was not an inborn sexual orientation but a political choice (the right political choice) and that they were more evolved in their consciousness than the poor widdle women who still found males attractive. Oh yeah, and you couldn't be a real political lesbian either if you were a woman and your female partner used a strap-on because that's too much like a penis or something. So yeah. I'm happy that this rubbish has mostly fallen out of favor in the 21st century.

beyond all those crazy positions, don't you think though that some of the structural approaches brought by radfem were valueable? i just find it interesting that it concerns coherent structures, in contrast with liberal-fem-bag-of-positions, etc.

[DancingEmma]

beyond all those crazy positions, don't you think though that some of the structural approaches brought by radfem were valueable? i just find it interesting that it concerns coherent structures, in contrast with liberal-fem-bag-of-positions, etc.

Ehhh. . .I suppose they've articulated some useful ideas, like the analysis that rape is often a patriarchal form of terrorism that serves to keep women as a whole in line. I don't place a lot of stock in their overall structural approach, however. Basically, they seem to be saying that all social problems are derived from men as a class oppressing women as a class, which frankly, I think is complete bullshit. I have similar problems with the insistence of doctrinaire Marxists that all social problems ultimately boil down to the hegemony of the capitalist class. Social reality is complex and multi-faceted. I don't think all oppression has a single root cause. Things like white supremacy, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, and ageism can't simply be reduced to being byproducts of some other structure. And a lot of the radfems' "crazy" positions are logical extrapolations from their dogmatic and flawed original premises.

That said, I'm not a big fan of liberal feminists either. I most admire those feminists who have acknowledged the variety and complexity of oppression while still being anti-capitalist: women like Emma Goldman or bell hooks.

[Luís Henrique]

Radfems also often display contempt for women who are sex workers, who are into BDSM, who are "too feminine," and--in extreme cases--any women who have sexual relations with men. Lesbian radfems, after all, have at times posited that being a lesbian was not an inborn sexual orientation but a political choice (the right political choice) and that they were more evolved in their consciousness than the poor widdle women who still found males attractive. Oh yeah, and you couldn't be a real political lesbian either if you were a woman and your female partner used a strap-on because that's too much like a penis or something.

The name of that is absexuality - the kind of repressed sexual arousement that comes from messing with other people's sexual lives and pontificating on what is and what is not politically correct in bed. Most common in conservative, latent homosexual males in denial, but very aptly aped by such brand of "feminists".

Luís Henrique

[DancingEmma]

The name of that is absexuality - the kind of repressed sexual arousement that comes from messing with other people's sexual lives and pontificating on what is and what is not politically correct in bed. Most common in conservative, latent homosexual males in denial, but very aptly aped by such brand of "feminists".

Luís Henrique

Haha! Well, there may be something to that! It's certainly satisfying to rhetorically turn the tables: "You say I'm a pervert! Well, you're the real pervert!" Truth be told, though, I think that most of the radfems' shortcomings mirror the prejudices of the larger society, compounded by the sort of arrogance that overeducated white, middle-class people often bring to their discussions of political topics. Accusing them of sexual deviancy or psychological pathology may be personally satisfying, but I suspect the etiology of their "evil" is far more banal.

[A Sovereign Womb]

My problem with the Radical Feminist tendency is not its misandry, as I don't believe hostility toward men is a significant social problem. My problem with the tendency is its hatred of so many types of women. Many of the first radfems were partisans of the authoritarian left, and they took their vanguardist approach with them into feminism. Radfems are convinced that they are the ones to lead the revolution for women, whether other women like it or not. It's not just trans women that most radfems condescend to and hate on. Radfems also often display contempt for women who are sex workers, who are into BDSM, who are "too feminine," and--in extreme cases--any women who have sexual relations with men. Lesbian radfems, after all, have at times posited that being a lesbian was not an inborn sexual orientation but a political choice (the right political choice) and that they were more evolved in their consciousness than the poor widdle women who still found males attractive. Oh yeah, and you couldn't be a real political lesbian either if you were a woman and your female partner used a strap-on because that's too much like a penis or something.

I realize this caricature has become quite accepted in this thread by now, but I'm going to have to request some kind of substantiation for these charges. Who are all these radfems who so "often display contempt" for some of the worst victims of patriarchal coercion and abuse? When has the critical stance on PIV and BDSM (perfectly valid, in my estimation) ever taken the form of shaming? Apart from the clumsy and misleading rhetoric inevitably involved, why is political lesbianism as an identity so fundamentally illegitimate and deserving of scorn?

It very much seems to me that you're not so much taking issue with radical feminism as you are with the usual bundle of cliches.

[DancingEmma]

Thanks for challenging me, A Sovereign Womb! I appreciate the opportunity to think through my positions more clearly and make sure they are based off of actual logic and evidence and not just hearsay or stereotypes.

In terms of sex workers, it's pretty clear from my perspective that the abolitionists as a movement (if not necessarily every abolitionist as an individual) have contempt for them. I don't think many sex workers view radfem advocacy to criminalize their customers (the touted Swedish model) as helpful or standing in solidarity, and many radfems take it a step further and support the continuation of police harassment of sex workers themselves. If a political movement, say, supported jailing plumbers or the people who call them in to unclog their pipes, or jailing organic farmers or the people who buy their organic tomatoes, I think a lot of observers would reasonably conclude that said movement had contempt for plumbers or for organic farmers, regardless of the rhetoric that movement used to justify its position.

As for radfem shaming of women who are into BDSM, you should take a look at the section of Sheila Jeffreys' book (who is also a vicious transphobe, of course) The Lesbian Heresy, where she talks about some of the work she did as an anti-BDSM activist in the 1980s. Look at page 124 specifically. She discusses how radical lesbian feminists attempted to ban BDSM practitioners from meeting at the London Lesbian and Gay Centre. The radfems complained that the mere presence of the kinksters would warp the minds of children. Jeffreys' also draws an analogy between BDSM and other things that created "difficulties" for lesbian radfems at the time such as "transsexualism, bissexuality, and pedophilia." I think this is pretty clear. In what universe would conflating something with pedophilia NOT constitute shaming?

One thing I would like to clear up, though, is the idea that I think political lesbianism as an identity is fundamentally illegitimate. I don't actually think that, and I apologize for creating that impression. I believe that the scientific evidence is fairly clear that sexual orientation is mostly innate and set at birth, but at the same time sexuality obviously can be fluid, too, and it changes over time for many people. If some people feel they are choosing to be lesbians to stand in political solidarity with other women, I have no problem with that at all. I do have a problem, though, if they take a step further and say that all women should chose to be lesbian. I don't support this sort of prescriptive, judgmental approach to sexuality whether it comes from the Right or the Left.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I believe that the scientific evidence is fairly clear that sexual orientation is mostly innate and set at birth

Hmm is this actually true? I was more under the impression that genetics strongly influences one's sexual orientation, but that environment plays a factor as well. Because there are some identical twins that have different sexual orientations IIRC

[DancingEmma]

Hmm is this actually true? I was more under the impression that genetics strongly influences one's sexual orientation, but that environment plays a factor as well. Because there are some identical twins that have different sexual orientations IIRC

That's what I meant to say actually. . .only you phrased it better. As far as I'm aware, sexual orientation is a similar to something like height. The strongest influence on both is genetics (and perhaps also prenatal hormones in the case of sexual orientation), but subsequent environmental factors also play a role. For example, nutrition in childhood plays a big role in how tall people become. I'm sure there's also environmental influences on sexual orientation. Still, it wouldn't really be accurate to say people can, in general, "choose" their sexual orientation any more than it would be accurate to say they can "choose" their height. That's the point I was trying to make.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

As for radfem shaming of women who are into BDSM
Shaming, and telling a woman what she can and can't consent to where her body is concerned. Both are essentially conservative positions.


Jeffreys' also draws an analogy between BDSM and other things that created "difficulties" for lesbian radfems at the time such as "transsexualism, bissexuality, and pedophilia." I think this is pretty clear. In what universe would conflating something with pedophilia NOT constitute shaming?
Exactly. Not to mention, once again, they want to control the sexuality of other women if those women are bisexual or heterosexual.

[Luís Henrique]

I realize this caricature has become quite accepted in this thread by now, but I'm going to have to request some kind of substantiation for these charges. Who are all these radfems who so "often display contempt" for some of the worst victims of patriarchal coercion and abuse?

Well, the caricature, if a caricature it is, has been drawn from RadFem blogs and papers; so perhaps it would be necessary to substantiate the opposite: point to the books, papers, blogs, websites that stand for "Radical Feminism" but don't advocate persecution of prostitutes, don't demean transexual people (of both kinds, ie, MtF and FtM), dismiss the idea that sex between two women using sexual toys is not real lesbianism, and clearly stand for the right of women to date and have sex with men, either exclusively or not? Quoting those, and showing that they are an integral part of the movement (and not a marginal minority always under suspicion and subject to dismissal as not actually RadFem from the mainstream current) would do wonders to dispell the "caricature" - or at least much more than merely stating that it is a caricature.


Apart from the clumsy and misleading rhetoric inevitably involved, why is political lesbianism as an identity so fundamentally illegitimate and deserving of scorn?

It depends on what you call "political lesbianism". If it is merely the defence of civil and politic rights of lesbians (but then I guess it wouldn't be an "identity"), then absolutely nothing - and on the contrary, it is something we should encourage all people, cis or trans, male or female, homo, bi, or hetero, to defend and join. If it is the strange idea that one should go against their own inner inclinations just to make political points, then very little - you would be harming yourself, which is your own problem, and perhaps a few other people you take as partners, which is the problem of a very small set of people, not really a social issue. If it is the idea that every woman should become strictly homosexual (or, perhaps, that they actually are so, and are just "brainwashed" into thinking and behaving as something else), then it is just authoritarian and intrusive, and the only thing that prevents it from being a real and serious problem is the fact that it has no actual power.

Really, politicisation of sex - of any kind - seems to me a very bad idea. What people do in bed is, or should be, their problem.


It very much seems to me that you're not so much taking issue with radical feminism as you are with the usual bundle of cliches.

As above... it should be easy to show RadFem is something else than such bundle of cliches. If, of course, it really isn't.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I don't think many sex workers view radfem advocacy to criminalize their customers (the touted Swedish model) as helpful or standing in solidarity,

Indeed. Every organised movement of prostitutes that I know - and yes, they aren't too many - upholds complete legalisation and regulation of the profession (maybe they are wrong? I consider them movements of working people, and so, in principle, I stand in solidarity with them). The Swedish model, regardless of the good intentions that pave the way to hell, does little else than pushing the trade underground, where it is more easily exploited by pimps (and where it helps organised crime to dislodge individual pimps), thus degrading the situation of prostitutes even further.


As for radfem shaming of women who are into BDSM, you should take a look at the section of Sheila Jeffreys' book (who is also a vicious transphobe, of course) The Lesbian Heresy, where she talks about some of the work she did as an anti-BDSM activist in the 1980s. Look at page 124 specifically. She discusses how radical lesbian feminists attempted to ban BDSM practitioners from meeting at the London Lesbian and Gay Centre. The radfems complained that the mere presence of the kinksters would warp the minds of children.

Disgusting, indeed (and I have to wonder how many of those absexual idiots are closet kinksters). Was there any organised resistance from the people they were trying to exclude, or by others that weren't under threat of exclusion but stood in solidarity? Was such resistance successful?


Jeffreys' also draws an analogy between BDSM and other things that created "difficulties" for lesbian radfems at the time such as "transsexualism, bissexuality, and pedophilia." I think this is pretty clear. In what universe would conflating something with pedophilia NOT constitute shaming?

In a universe where pedophilia is acceptable, perhaps. It is interesting how these people cannot see that such positions indirectly undermine the stand for homosexual people having custody of their children, or adopting.

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

In terms of sex workers, it's pretty clear from my perspective that the abolitionists as a movement (if not necessarily every abolitionist as an individual) have contempt for them. I don't think many sex workers view radfem advocacy to criminalize their customers (the touted Swedish model) as helpful or standing in solidarity, and many radfems take it a step further and support the continuation of police harassment of sex workers themselves. If a political movement, say, supported jailing plumbers or the people who call them in to unclog their pipes, or jailing organic farmers or the people who buy their organic tomatoes, I think a lot of observers would reasonably conclude that said movement had contempt for plumbers or for organic farmers, regardless of the rhetoric that movement used to justify its position.
A response. (http://ssy.org.uk/2010/09/prostitution-the-abolition-of-the-victim-and-post-modernisms-defence-of-the-status-quo/)
A second response. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scOlrYokdJM)

[DancingEmma]

Disgusting, indeed (and I have to wonder how many of those absexual idiots are closet kinksters). Was there any organised resistance from the people they were trying to exclude, or by others that weren't under threat of exclusion but stood in solidarity? Was such resistance successful?

Unfortunately, not having been an adult at the time, and not being British, incidents of this nature and from this era are not something I was aware of until much after the fact. It's hard to track down many primary sources about them. My main source of knowledge is Jeffrey's book, which of course is ridiculously biased to the radfem side and doesn't talk much of the perspective or resistance of the kinky people. According to Jeffreys', the radfems failed in their attempt to exclude the BDSM practitioners from the Centre, and in fact, the radfems were going up against overwhelming odds in their heroic efforts to exclude them, but I have to doubt the objectivity and accuracy of this account. It's still a valuable source, though, for explaining Jeffrey's opinions on the issue, which are typical for her political tendency.

I can sketch the bigger picture for you, though, if you are interested, although a lot of this you may already know. Many lesbians started becoming more open in the 1980s about their sexual preferences--practicing BDSM, using sex toys, engaging in butch/femme dynamics. Lesbians had been doing all these things for a while; they had just felt the need to hide it. Now they were openly talking about it. This development was strongly resisted by the radfems at the time, who denounced such forms of sexuality as being violent and patriarchal and stemming from "false consciousness." And since the radfems were still ascendant in the 80s, they were successful for a while in marginalizing these folks in lesbian communities. The largest lesbian music festival in the US, for example, the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (which still excludes trans women by the way) didn't allow any expression of kink on its premises. This was despite the fact that public nudity and more politically correct forms of sexuality were openly allowed and celebrated, so it was a clear double standard.

But this is mainly all just of historical interest. Unfortunately for the radfems, a new generation of lesbians failed to embrace their perspective on sex, and their opinions on BDSM, political lesbianism, and whole range of other issues have pretty much been completely discredited over the past 20 years. In terms of their classic hangups, the radfems seem to be holding on the strongest over the issues of trans women and of sex work, where they still have some influence on popular opinion. Their views on BDSM, though, are generally regarded as a joke among any dyke under 45 years old or so--where I live, at least.

[Luís Henrique]

A response. (http://ssy.org.uk/2010/09/prostitution-the-abolition-of-the-victim-and-post-modernisms-defence-of-the-status-quo/)
A second response. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scOlrYokdJM)

Such responses only show that Dancing Emma is exactly correct in her charges:


it's pretty clear from my perspective that the abolitionists as a movement (if not necessarily every abolitionist as an individual) have contempt for them. I don't think many sex workers view radfem advocacy to criminalize their customers (the touted Swedish model) as helpful or standing in solidarity

Luís Henrique

[DancingEmma]

Majakovskij, I read the review you linked of Kajsa Ekis Ekman's book about "prostitution." The book sounds thoroughly disgusting and prejudiced. Most of it isn't even "a response" to me, as it is not arguing against anything I even think, but I will reply to it anyway.

I'm a feminist and a revolutionary anti-capitalist. As such, I have no problem acknowledging that women who are sex workers are victims of oppression. First, like all women, they are horribly oppressed by patriarchy. Second, like all workers, they are horribly oppressed by capitalism. Third, they are specifically sex workers and as such are horribly oppressed by a state that has made their form of employment illegal as well as by Ekman and other bigots who contribute to the social prejudice that exists against them--the same form of prejudice animating the minds of the police officers who arrest them, the men who too often abuse and rape them, and the pimps who too often swindle them of their wages.

Ultimately, along with Ekman and similar abolitionists, I do desire the "abolition" of sex work, in the same sense that I desire the "abolition" of all work: I want to see all people's human needs freely provided for by society on an equal basis, which will render money and the "work" used to obtain it obsolete. What I do not support is discrimination against and state harassment of sex workers in the meantime; here I diverge from Ekman. The path to liberation for sex workers lies in the legalization and unionization of their profession and in their participation in broader political struggles to abolish patriarchy, capitalism, and the state--and in standing up to the sort of prejudice against sex workers articulated by people like Ekman.

Finally, Ekman's conflation of sex workers and women who are sexually trafficked against their will, and of sex workers and children who are sexually abused, is reprehensible and typical of radfems. It showcases Ekman's fundamental incomprehension of and disdain for the idea of consent. Being forced to do something against your will via violence is not the same thing as choosing to do something because of shitty economic circumstances or benign personal preference, and it's pretty fucked up that Ekman can't recognize that.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

^The above is still a seriously contentious issue in Quebec, with the distinction often drawn along racial and linguistic lines. I think there are some things that need to be problematized in your post, though I generally agree with you.
One, I strongly dislike the use of "victim" - in the sense that one would not generally label proletarians "victims" and its use vis- sex work is deeply gendered. I also think the distinctions you make between "violence" and "economic circumstances" to be less than stable, since the two are intertwined very deeply. At the same time, I recognize that equating trafficking and sex work generally is a trope brought out by misogynist conservatives as part as a broader "protect-women-by-criminalizing-them" discourse. I think it's worth noting, in context, that the greatest quantity of human trafficking is for agricultural labour, and home-labour, not sex work. Where are the radfem agricultural labour abolitionists?!

[DancingEmma]

Virgin, I actually agree with you about using the word "victim" in this case. While it may or may not be technically applicable to sex workers, I prefer to use words like "oppressed person," as I do with other workers. Talking repeatedly about "victims," I think, brings up ideas of pity and individual misfortune, whereas talking about "oppression" encourages a more political and structural way of looking at things, while still acknowledging the wrongness of what is occurring.

I also see what you are saying about the instability of my distinction between "violence" and "economic circumstances." Certainly, capitalism itself (and the unjust economic circumstances that accompany it) is ultimately upheld by the violence of the capitalist state. Individual consent is still a vital thing to consider in the context of individual sexual relations, however. Sex workers may not be consenting to the unjust economic circumstances that lead them to have to work for wages in the first place, but they are consenting to the sex they have with particular customers. To erase this distinction is to erase the distinction between sex and rape, which is generally something that reactionary, patriarchal defenders of rape culture do, and it always shocks me when I see it also coming from feminists like Ekman who ostensibly oppose rape culture.

[Luís Henrique]

I think it's worth noting, in context, that the greatest quantity of human trafficking is for agricultural labour, and home-labour, not sex work.

How dare you, to bring facts into an ideological discussion!

What are you, some kind of communist?


Where are the radfem agricultural labour abolitionists?!

Do they realise that the cabbages at their table have to be actually planted by someone else?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Ultimately, along with Ekman and similar abolitionists, I do desire the "abolition" of sex work, in the same sense that I desire the "abolition" of all work: I want to see all people's human needs freely provided for by society on an equal basis, which will render money and the "work" used to obtain it obsolete. What I do not support is discrimination against and state harassment of sex workers in the meantime; here I diverge from Ekman.

The unbridgeable difference between your position and Ekman's is whether the "abolition" of prostitution can take place in a capitalist society. You know it is not possible, she thinks that it is - and therefore offers her help to the bourgeois State to the end of suppressing it. That is because, of course, of a complete lack of anything remotely resembling a Marxist analysis (other than by generously borrowing (and mangling) verbiage).

Of, course, she would say that she is not in favour of repressing prostitutes. As another absexualist comments to the article Majakovskij posted, she "seeks a repeal of all legislation aimed at the sellers of sexual services while criminalising the purchasers". Which only underlines the shortsightedness: apparently she can't realise criminalising their costumers only forces those people to accept other shitty jobs, at best, and at worst it makes impossible for them to work without the handy "protection" of some kind of mafia (which will, of course, know how to obtain cooperation from the police of that same State for its illegal activities).

Luís Henrique

[black magick hustla]

Ehhh. . .I suppose they've articulated some useful ideas, like the analysis that rape is often a patriarchal form of terrorism that serves to keep women as a whole in line. I don't place a lot of stock in their overall structural approach, however. Basically, they seem to be saying that all social problems are derived from men as a class oppressing women as a class, which frankly, I think is complete bullshit.
Of course it's bullshit. However radfem is not marxism, so it's kinda strange to compare it to the same standard imho.




I have similar problems with the insistence of doctrinaire Marxists that all social problems ultimately boil down to the hegemony of the capitalist class. Social reality is complex and multi-faceted. I don't think all oppression has a single root cause. Things like white supremacy, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, and ageism can't simply be reduced to being byproducts of some other structure.
Not all "social problems" are of the same category. So it's hard to compare them. However, I think it's reasonable to argue that ageism, ableism, and sexism in capitalism are very related to the valorization of capital. Pregnancy affects women performance at the job, and thus their ability to create value (doesn't mean they do less, because domestic/child rearing is necessary for capital valorization), disabilities and age does affect one performance etc.

Ultimately though, it seems that women social problems are very related to the fact that they get pregnant, and this is why women oppression seems to have been universal even before global capitalism, and it organically emerged from distinct, isolated cultures. this is probably because class society is very deeply related to the division of labor, which pregnancy helped to mould.

At the end though, it seems a lot of this social problems form a manifold with class and are deeply interrelated, making it hard to "separate" them in analysis. Race, gender, and class problems sometimes just mend into one specific structural object.There's been marxist writers that have tackled the gender question as that, something deeply interrelated to class, and in modern civilization, to the valorization of capital. So sometimes, what some more doctrinaire marxists would do is create some strange hieararchy of issues, with class at the top. But it seems to me sometimes class and gender are two ways of looking at the same problem imho, cuz they didn't emerge separately, but interwined.

The problem with not having a somewhat structural approach to this things is that you end up with a "bag of opinions and feelings". And this has practical consequences. For example, people in activist circles guiltripping each other over who is more privileged etc.





And a lot of the radfems' "crazy" positions are logical extrapolations from their dogmatic and flawed original premises.

I am not a radfem (I am a very masculine dude lol) so I don't really follow all their premises.

[Luís Henrique]

However radfem is not marxism, so it's kinda strange to compare it to the same standard imho.

Well, that is the problem, or the root of the problem: such people are no Marxists (and no anarchists, and not at all committed to the liberation of the working class in any other manner).

But some people, and even organisations, seem to not understand that, this being the reason the Scottish Socialist Youth hails with great praise a quite reactionary book.

You can compare their article with this quite sensible piece by Helen Ward (http://www.permanentrevolution.net/entry/1556), that someone posted in the comments section there, and that clearly shows the difference between Marxism and reactionarism in "socialist, anarchist and feminist" dressings.

Luís Henrique

[DancingEmma]

Which only underlines the shortsightedness: apparently she can't realise criminalising their costumers only forces those people to accept other shitty jobs, at best.

Precisely! I wish the radfems would more often consider what exactly happens to sex workers after they leave the sex trade? Are most women in our patriarchal, capitalist society simply swimming in opportunities for meaningful employment that allow one to live in dignity or support a family? I have never been a sex worker, but I am a woman, and while radfem theorists were enjoying their cushy university jobs, I was having the time of my life working as a waitress, or a telemarketer, or a home health care aide--you know. . .being underpaid, getting a sore feet and back, being ordered around and patronized to, having all my intellectual abilities squandered, and being sexually harassed. All work is degrading to all workers in our society and especially to female workers. I wish more radfems would get this through their thick skulls, or if they already fully understand it, why not try talking about it sometime? You really don't need to rant about transsexuals and prostitutes all day, do you?

I can't help but feel that many of radfem's negative descriptions of sex work are partially built upon their frequent disconnection from many of the realities that most women workers face, both in the sex industry and outside it. I recognize that sex workers are targeted for specific forms of oppression and stand in solidarity with them in resisting that, but also, we as women need to fight for all of us having access to a more dignified way of meeting our needs. . .rather than nitpicking about the ways other women choose to navigate the oppressive maze we all find ourselves in.

[Ostrinski]

i dont really have any opinions about the trans experience because i don't really understand it and it's pretty hard for me to wrap my head around it. so i don't really have "beliefs" about it. i just know it must be extremely distressing to not identify with your own body and feel like there is something really alien about it. some kind of hell that i can see is a hell but it's hard to really intuit about itHere's a good place to start: don't give legitimacy to political groups and movements that not only advocate, call for, and cheer on violence towards them, but also hold nothing but hatred, contempt, and bigotry toward them when they are already one of the most maligned, marginalized, and discriminated against social classifications in the world.

[Crux]

Majakovskij, I read the review you linked of Kajsa Ekis Ekman's book about "prostitution." The book sounds thoroughly disgusting and prejudiced. Most of it isn't even "a response" to me, as it is not arguing against anything I even think, but I will reply to it anyway.

I'm a feminist and a revolutionary anti-capitalist. As such, I have no problem acknowledging that women who are sex workers are victims of oppression. First, like all women, they are horribly oppressed by patriarchy. Second, like all workers, they are horribly oppressed by capitalism. Third, they are specifically sex workers and as such are horribly oppressed by a state that has made their form of employment illegal as well as by Ekman and other bigots who contribute to the social prejudice that exists against them--the same form of prejudice animating the minds of the police officers who arrest them, the men who too often abuse and rape them, and the pimps who too often swindle them of their wages.

Ultimately, along with Ekman and similar abolitionists, I do desire the "abolition" of sex work, in the same sense that I desire the "abolition" of all work: I want to see all people's human needs freely provided for by society on an equal basis, which will render money and the "work" used to obtain it obsolete. What I do not support is discrimination against and state harassment of sex workers in the meantime; here I diverge from Ekman. The path to liberation for sex workers lies in the legalization and unionization of their profession and in their participation in broader political struggles to abolish patriarchy, capitalism, and the state--and in standing up to the sort of prejudice against sex workers articulated by people like Ekman.

Finally, Ekman's conflation of sex workers and women who are sexually trafficked against their will, and of sex workers and children who are sexually abused, is reprehensible and typical of radfems. It showcases Ekman's fundamental incomprehension of and disdain for the idea of consent. Being forced to do something against your will via violence is not the same thing as choosing to do something because of shitty economic circumstances or benign personal preference, and it's pretty fucked up that Ekman can't recognize that.
The problem being of course that Ekman is not ripping things out of thin air but using facts and experience. And it's not she who is conflating, it is the sex industry itself.

I didn't post it just for you and Luís to dismiss it out of hand as "bigoted" and therefore beneath engaging with. And I am well aware her primary target is rightwingers and liberals, so certainly all of the arguments do not apply to you, but I think you are quite simply not addressing what she's saying.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Precisely! I wish the radfems would more often consider what exactly happens to sex workers after they leave the sex trade? Are most women in our patriarchal, capitalist society simply swimming in opportunities for meaningful employment that allow one to live in dignity or support a family?
Radfems tend to be petit-bourgeois, so I think they can be clueless about things like that.

[blake 3:17]

Radfems tend to be petit-bourgeois, so I think they can be clueless about things like that.


Who are or where are these radfems?

And in defense of radical feminism, it was very very important in challenging domestic and sexual violence.

[DancingEmma]

I didn't post it just for you and Luís to dismiss it out of hand as "bigoted" and therefore beneath engaging with. And I am well aware her primary target is rightwingers and liberals, so certainly all of the arguments do not apply to you, but I think you are quite simply not addressing what she's saying.

I feel like I made a pretty comprehensive reply to you given that you just reposted some link. Did you expect to post links and have me go through and respond to every line? Why should I do all the work while you merely post links? I view my time as no less valuable than you view yours, thanks.

In any event, I did attempt to refute the thrust of her overall argument; I believe you just don't agree with my counterargument. But perhaps I could be clearer, so allow me to phrase things again in another way. The horrible conditions that beset most sex workers are caused by three things in my view. 1. They are workers, and all workers face controlling bosses and economic deprivation under capitalism. 2. They are generally women, and as such face heightened rates of physical abuse, sexual assault, and general disregard, as all women do under patriarchy. 3. They are sex workers, and as such are stigmatized and hated by people in society due to social prejudices (held by radfems, among others) and criminalized by the government. As a result, they have to deal with the effects of working in a marginal, black-market sector of the economy, and trying to better their conditions in the face of a general public, welfare state, and legal system that is generally either indifferent or outright hostile to them. And violent, misogynistic men who are prone to abuse women are even more likely to abuse sex workers because sex workers are seen as the lowliest of women (again, partially thanks to radfems and their neo-Victorian moralism), and these violent pimps and johns know that they will be able to get away with their abuse without consequences.

There. Does this qualify as a satisfactory response, sir?

[Crux]

I feel like I made a pretty comprehensive reply to you given that you just reposted some link. Did you expect to post links and have me go through and respond to every line? Why should I do all the work while you merely post links? I view my time as no less valuable than you view yours, thanks.

In any event, I did attempt to refute the thrust of her overall argument; I believe you just don't agree with my counterargument. But perhaps I could be clearer, so allow me to phrase things again in another way. The horrible conditions that beset most sex workers are caused by three things in my view. 1. They are workers, and all workers face controlling bosses and economic deprivation under capitalism. 2. They are generally women, and as such face heightened rates of physical abuse, sexual assault, and general disregard, as all women do under patriarchy. 3. They are sex workers, and as such are stigmatized and hated by people in society due to social prejudices (held by radfems, among others) and criminalized by the government. As a result, they have to deal with the effects of working in a marginal, black-market sector of the economy, and trying to better their conditions in the face of a general public, welfare state, and legal system that is generally either indifferent or outright hostile to them. And violent, misogynistic men who are prone to abuse women are even more likely to abuse sex workers because sex workers are seen as the lowliest of women (again, partially thanks to radfems and their neo-Victorian moralism), and these violent pimps and johns know that they will be able to get away with their abuse without consequences.

There. Does this qualify as a satisfactory response, sir?
Ah. I think the part where "men sexually abuse prostitutes because of radfems" is where you lost me, Emma. Also I think saying "well all wageslavery is bad", even if we were to look only on the black labour market, is excessively reductive and ignores well, the following:

* 71% of women in prostitution have been subjected to physical violence
* 63% have been raped while in prostitution
* 89% want to leave and would do so if they could
* 68% show signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
* Women in prostitution have a death rate 40 times higher than the average
* Women in prostitution are 16 times more likely to be murdered


Now, we all hate wage slavery etc etc, but if we are going to be honest here, those 89%, while I am sure they'd might be happy with the sudden abolishment of all wage slavery, are in fact looking for another way to sustain themselves.


Also you were the one bringing up Swedish legislation to begin with. So let me, again, quote from the link I provided:

Swedish prostitution debate



Finally another thing I found interesting in the book was her discussion of the development of the prostitution debate in Sweden in recent decades. Her opponents such as Petra Östergren and Laura Agustin have long accused Sweden’s sexköpslagen (law against buying sex) as being a result of a complete absence of Sweden listening to the views and interests of those in prostitution. Yet as Ekman shows the government’s prostitutionsutredningen (prostitution investigation) of 1977, which shaped the Swedish prostitution debate for decades to come, was revolutionary in its focus on the views and experiences of prostituted women themselves and the questions it asked about the men who used them.


The centre-right politician Inger Nilsson who had been put in charge of the investigation had initially tried to suppress the women’s accounts after having met with several sex club owners, publishing instead a vastly trimmed-down version of the report with the personal testimonies excluded. When this emerged though there was a storm of outrage from feminists and the government was forced to release the 800 page investigation in full, which came out in book form. According to Ekman:

“It went down like a bomb. It was a landmark which changed society’s view of prostitution. It came to alter the direction of prostitution research in the whole of Scandinavia. Prostitution, just like rape, had become political … For prostitution research it meant going back to the beginning. Of the 19th century research – where the causes of prostitution were looked for in a woman’s personality and in disease – much was repudiated. Instead there began the building of new knowledge where the reasons were looked for in the relations between the genders and in society. And where would the researchers find the basis for this new knowledge? Yes, in the prostituted people’s own accounts.”

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

* 71% of women in prostitution have been subjected to physical violence
* 63% have been raped while in prostitution
* 68% show signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
* Women in prostitution have a death rate 40 times higher than the average
* Women in prostitution are 16 times more likely to be murdered
How much of that is due to prostitution being an illegal service with no legal protections for those who engage in it?

[blake 3:17]

Just to point out where we seem to agree -- prostitutes shouldn't be criminalized.

It doesn't appear at all clear that the laws in Sweden accomplish much. Criminalizing a purchase is only a few degrees from criminalizing a sale. From the statistics I found, there appeared to a decrease in prostitution, but not a decrease in prostitution related violence.

In Canada, there is no ban on prostitution involving consenting adults. What has been criminalized is solicitation, "keeping a bawdy house" ie a brothel (which is the safest environment to hook in), and "living off the avails", intended as an anti-pimping law, but could anyone who might benefit economically from someone else's sex work.

The laws are currently up in the air. What have been the only legal forms of prostitution are the most dangerous -- street hooking, getting into strangers' cars, going to someone's place without anyone else knowing.

Anyways...

[black magick hustla]

Here's a good place to start: don't give legitimacy to political groups and movements that not only advocate, call for, and cheer on violence towards them, but also hold nothing but hatred, contempt, and bigotry toward them when they are already one of the most maligned, marginalized, and discriminated against social classifications in the world.

except i am not legitimizing anything. i simply said some of the things radfem said were interesting to me (like on pregnancy). i don't care about radfem as a movement and you would probably not find me in a 50 mile radius near any one of them. i don't really care/approve of whatever they say about trans people. can we have an honest debate about things rather than making people "partisans" about something? who are you to talk me like that anyway. jesus leftists suck

[DancingEmma]

Majakovskij, again, I have told you what I think; you just don't agree. I know what the statistics are regarding sex workers' deplorable working conditions. I have told you what I believe is the cause of these conditions. You don't agree. Oh well.

The fact is, most sex workers having horrible conditions does nothing to vindicate the abolitionist perspective, since abolitionist advocacy is part of what is causing those conditions, as I've already explained. It's a relatively small part of the cause, but it's still a significant part. You may laugh this off, but it's true, and I doubt there are many current sex workers who appreciate a single thing abolitionists are supposedly doing on their behalf. It's actually kind of sick that radfems use statistics about the oppression of sex workers to push their own program to further add to that oppression.

And that quote about the Swedish laws! Wow! Radfems are listening more closely to sex workers than a right-wing male politician did in the 1970s! What a fucking accomplishment! I'm glad radfems are holding themselves to such high standards.

You know. . .I don't have to read about what an investigation led by a right-wing politician 35 years ago uncovered about sex workers to know the right way to treat sex workers. I'm listening to what present-day, living, breathing sex workers are saying right now about the best way to stand in solidarity with them. Listening to the people you want to help?! Shocking but true! Radfems should try it sometime.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Just to point out where we seem to agree -- prostitutes shouldn't be criminalized.

It doesn't appear at all clear that the laws in Sweden accomplish much. Criminalizing a purchase is only a few degrees from criminalizing a sale. From the statistics I found, there appeared to a decrease in prostitution, but not a decrease in prostitution related violence.


Yeah I agree. I'm not sure what the logic is regarding criminalizing the purchasing of something, yet not criminalizing the supplier of that thing (who knowingly facilitates a criminal transaction). Abusing prostitutes should of course not be tolerated. But I don't think that criminalizing "johns" really helps matters in that regard.

[Ostrinski]

except i am not legitimizing anything. i simply said some of the things radfem said were interesting to me (like on pregnancy). i don't care about radfem as a movement and you would probably not find me in a 50 mile radius near any one of them. i don't really care/approve of whatever they say about trans people. can we have an honest debate about things rather than making people "partisans" about something? who are you to talk me like that anyway. jesus leftists suckYeah sorry. My first impression at the beginning of this thread was that you were defending radical feminism from its naysayers but I see upon second look that your position is more nuanced. I still don't agree with you, however, and I think you are mistaken when you say that people on this board only reject radical feminism because of it offends their sensibilities (though, how could it not, with its explicit transphobia and sporadic misogyny and homophobia) and generally agree with what Luis Henrique and DancingEmma have said in the thread regarding the matter.

I was wrong to accuse you of legitimizing radical feminism, though.

[DancingEmma]

*Women in prostitution are 16 times more likely to be murdered

You know. . .I was just re-reading this thread and this bit jumped out at me. You know why? I happen to know of another very popular group of people who are 16 times more likely to be murdered than the general population. They are another one of radfems' best friends: trans people! Weird, huh? It's almost as if radfems have patronizingly decided to fixate on and "help" the most marginalized, unpopular groups in society who happen to suffer from the highest murder rates. And their solution? Make it impossible for them to make a living! Criminalize them or their customers! Make sure the government denies them medical care and discriminates against them! Call them "prostituted women" or "transsexual males"! Hey, we're just being technical, right? None of this feel-good, postmodern crap about listening to what oppressed people actually want and need or referring to them using their preferred terminology! We have PhDs in Sociology and English!! Trust us in our quest to set straight these poor deviants who get murdered all the time!

[DancingEmma]

One more thing and I'm gonna go to bed. While I personally may be skeptical that the criminal justice system can ever do any good, radfem abolitionists clearly believe state legal interventions can sometimes be effective at addressing social problems. And we all agree that sex workers get murdered 16 times more than the general population. OK.

Now. When was the last time you heard a radfem abolitionist calling for more money to be spent on investigating WHO exactly is killing all these sex workers? Presumably the murderers are not just some amorphous blob of male patriarchs; surely there must be individual culprits who presumably could be caught and imprisoned. But have you heard any radfem ever advocate for this in your entire life? I hear a lot about johns or pimps, in some general sense, being horrible and therefore worthy of hatred and punishment. But have you EVER, in your entire life, heard a radfem propose that more tax dollars should be spent on police investigations, trials, and imprisonment for the specific individuals who are actually killing all these fucking prostitutes?

No, not really. That's kinda weird, isn't it? It's kinda weird that radfems seem very concerned about getting sex workers to clean up their act, but fairly blase about all these male murderers wandering around scot free. I guess it's up to the prostitutes to just stop being prostitutes, and then they wouldn't be getting murdered in the first place, would they? We wouldn't want to actually advocate for cracking down on people who murder prostitutes, because that would be "harm reduction" and would distract from us blathering on about how we should crack down on prostitutes themselves (er. . .sorry. . .I meant prostitution itself).

[Luís Henrique]

Precisely! I wish the radfems would more often consider what exactly happens to sex workers after they leave the sex trade? Are most women in our patriarchal, capitalist society simply swimming in opportunities for meaningful employment that allow one to live in dignity or support a family?

Well, as black magic hustla points out, RadFems are not Marxist. So they most probably don't understand what proletarianisation means, and probably actually think that yeah, once sex workers are removed from prostitution, all is going to be well.

So much for their "structural approach".


I have never been a sex worker, but I am a woman, and while radfem theorists were enjoying their cushy university jobs, I was having the time of my life working as a waitress, or a telemarketer, or a home health care aide--you know. . .being underpaid, getting a sore feet and back, being ordered around and patronized to, having all my intellectual abilities squandered, and being sexually harassed. All work is degrading to all workers in our society and especially to female workers.

Indeed. They only have to look at a good mirror (aka Marxist theory) to see that they themselves are prostitutes, as all workers are. We all "sell our bodies", after all. But they want their own work to be "dignified work" (without changing it), and go to the extent of becoming full-blown bigots to defend such dellusion:


When the sex war is won prostitutes should be shot as collaborators for their terrible betrayal of all women, for the moral tarring and feathering they give indigenous women who have had the bad luck to live in what they make their humping ground.

(emphasys mine)

So let's not delude ourselves either: such people are not only bigots, but Nachaevist bigots with weird bloody fantasies of revenge against innocent people. Nay, people they themselves consider "victims". Victims should be shot - that's how it sums up.


I wish more radfems would get this through their thick skulls, or if they already fully understand it, why not try talking about it sometime? You really don't need to rant about transsexuals and prostitutes all day, do you?

I think they need, too, and for the same reason they need to rile bdsm practioners, bisexual women, lesbians who don't follow their "RadFem missionary position" handbook, and all heterosexual people and all men. They have learned from their experience in the Stalinist left (from where they also take their paredón fantasies) that if you can control your followers sexual life, you have almost unlimited control on them. Wilhelm Reich explains, perhaps.


I can't help but feel that many of radfem's negative descriptions of sex work are partially built upon their frequent disconnection from many of the realities that most women workers face, both in the sex industry and outside it. I recognize that sex workers are targeted for specific forms of oppression and stand in solidarity with them in resisting that, but also, we as women need to fight for all of us having access to a more dignified way of meeting our needs. . .rather than nitpicking about the ways other women choose to navigate the oppressive maze we all find ourselves in.

So it is, but the difference is that you stand for working class women; RadFems do not. I am not sure indeed if they understand the concept. To them, a waitress has more in common with a female executive officer at McDonalds than with the waiter working next to her: the female EO would never rape her, while the waiter, who knows. And since the only form of oppression they seem to recognise is rape...

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Who are or where are these radfems?

Several of them have been quoted in this thread. What I haven't yet had the pleasure of reading - exception made of our fellow revlefter A Sovereign Womb - are the other RadFems, those who oppose transphobia, do not think heterosexual women are deluded traitors, and don't want to make the live of prostitutes worse than it already is.


And in defense of radical feminism, it was very very important in challenging domestic and sexual violence.

Is this something specific, that liberal or socialist feminists have not and would never have fought against, if it wasn't for RadFems' contributions?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Ah. I think the part where "men sexually abuse prostitutes because of radfems" is where you lost me, Emma.

Where did she say that? Or is that more of your debating technique that translates "adultery, promiscuity, STDs and unwed pregnancies do still carry a lot of stigma" into "women who are promiscuous lie about being raped"?


Also I think saying "well all wageslavery is bad", even if we were to look only on the black labour market, is excessively reductive and ignores well, the following:

* 71% of women in prostitution have been subjected to physical violence
* 63% have been raped while in prostitution
* 89% want to leave and would do so if they could
* 68% show signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
* Women in prostitution have a death rate 40 times higher than the average
* Women in prostitution are 16 times more likely to be murderedAnd the source for this is...?

Ah, I see. The four first figures come from Melissa Farley's researches on prostitution. But Farley is a RadFem herself, and clearly researches with the pre-determined end to back her previous positions.

Her research, in any case, also points out that 57% of these people had been raped in childhood. I suppose we want now to "abolish childhood" too?

These people live in difficult conditions and dangerous places, and the cause of these difficulties and dangers is capitalist explotation. I wonder how many of people living in similar environments but not working as prostitutes are victims of violence? Probably no much lesser; after all, 25% of college students are raped.

As Danielle asked, how much of this is a direct consequence of illegality or semilegality, and would be avoided if prostitutes could simply call the police when they are illegally harassed, robbed or assaulted by pimps or johns?

How dreadful would be the situation of grocery owners if the selling, or buying, of vegetables, was made illegal, and they could not call the police when someone steals their commodities?

(The two last figures come from "No Humans Involved" by Chris Grussendorf, but I can't find either the person nor the work in the internet.)


Now, we all hate wage slavery etc etc, but if we are going to be honest here, those 89%, while I am sure they'd might be happy with the sudden abolishment of all wage slavery, are in fact looking for another way to sustain themselves.What percent of agricultural workers, miners, garbage collectors, or bank tellers do you think would quit their professions "if they could"? What "if they could" even means? If a millionaire married them? Or if they were offered a job as cleaning ladies, earning each month what they earn each night in prostitution?


Also you were the one bringing up Swedish legislation to begin with. So let me, again, quote from the link I provided:


Swedish prostitution debate

Finally another thing I found interesting in the book was her discussion of the development of the prostitution debate in Sweden in recent decades. Her opponents such as Petra Östergren and Laura Agustin have long accused Sweden’s sexköpslagen (law against buying sex) as being a result of a complete absence of Sweden listening to the views and interests of those in prostitution. Yet as Ekman shows the government’s prostitutionsutredningen (prostitution investigation) of 1977, which shaped the Swedish prostitution debate for decades to come, was revolutionary in its focus on the views and experiences of prostituted women themselves and the questions it asked about the men who used them.

The centre-right politician Inger Nilsson who had been put in charge of the investigation had initially tried to suppress the women’s accounts after having met with several sex club owners, publishing instead a vastly trimmed-down version of the report with the personal testimonies excluded. When this emerged though there was a storm of outrage from feminists and the government was forced to release the 800 page investigation in full, which came out in book form. According to Ekman:

“It went down like a bomb. It was a landmark which changed society’s view of prostitution. It came to alter the direction of prostitution research in the whole of Scandinavia. Prostitution, just like rape, had become political … For prostitution research it meant going back to the beginning. Of the 19th century research – where the causes of prostitution were looked for in a woman’s personality and in disease – much was repudiated. Instead there began the building of new knowledge where the reasons were looked for in the relations between the genders and in society. And where would the researchers find the basis for this new knowledge? Yes, in the prostituted people’s own accounts.”So basically there was a scandal when the government's investigation showed that the room was filthy; the immediate and stern response was the revolutionary decision to pick the brooms and wipe all the dirt... under the carpet, where it cannot be seen, and where it is acumulating - probably in the form of a huge expansion of ilegal and murderous nets of pimping and soliciting. Congratulations! The Swedish State has decided to repeat the huge mistake of the American State 80 years ago (prohibition, remember it? and how it ended, prompting the establishment of a huge clandestine network of bootlegers, which naturally further expanded its business into illegal gambling, racketeering, union busting, drug dealing, etc?)

So, what great results has the Swedish law brought, in the completely chymaeric attempt to end prostitution without removing what causes prostitution first place?

Luís Henrique

[DancingEmma]

Thank you very much for your contributions on this thread, Luis. I really appreciate them! I especially want to thank you for your latest post critiquing those statistics. I have heard of Farley and her biased research before. I didn't feel up to examining the statistics in that article, though, because I felt like my hands were full just addressing everything else in it, and the statistics, even if true, still do nothing to support the abolitionists' case. But I know enough about Farley to know her methods were very flawed and unscientific. Knowing now that those statistics come from her makes me think that they are basically worthless.

[blake 3:17]

Is this something specific, that liberal or socialist feminists have not and would never have fought against, if it wasn't for RadFems' contributions?


It's not a question of who is more enlightened intellectually -- in English North America, it was radical feminists who founded a lot of organizations, including most importantly, shelter systems for abused women that were not tied to church or state.

[Luís Henrique]

It's not a question of who is more enlightened intellectually -- in English North America, it was radical feminists who founded a lot of organizations, including most importantly, shelter systems for abused women that were not tied to church or state.

No, it is not about who is more enlightened. Feminism as a whole has been important in such work, not a specific segment of it. Maybe in the United States, with its long puritan anti-sexual tradition, Radical Feminism has been numerically more important than the other feminist currents. But there is nothing specific about Radical Feminism that makes it the political tendency that has brought domestic and sexual violence into public discussion.

Anyway, they (or at least some of them) don't seem that eager to stop violence against prostitutes - one of them, indeed, seems to actually want to initiate a whole new round of violence against them, once the "sex war" is won - but even the less crazed seem unable to understand that prohibition of the buying of a commodity necessarily implies the prohibition of the selling to - yes, they say they don't want prostitutes to go to jail, but this merely means they would be satisfied by having these people taking other shitty and even less paid jobs.

I don't doubt they have been progressive in the past and in other issues, but in this one the are just straight out reactionary.

Luís Henrique

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Maybe in the United States, with its long puritan anti-sexual tradition, Radical Feminism has been numerically more important than the other feminist currents.
Except it hasn't. Even in the US in the 1970s, radical feminism was not in the majority or mainstream of feminism. I was struck by that recently when talking to a friend who has been a feminist activist since about 1970, and she'd never even heard of the most prominent rad fems back then.

[DancingEmma]

Not to totally disagree with my comrades Luis and Danielle, but I do actually want to say a word "in favor of" Radical Feminism. Its anti-sex worker views, its transmisogyny, and its racism have always been a problem and have been longstanding. I do think that, historically, it was still in some ways a progressive force in the 1970s, however, at least in the United States. The United States, unfortunately, does not have nearly as strong of a socialist tradition as most of the world does. Also, because of our puritanism, queer women have been especially oppressed in our culture. So in the 1970s United States, radical feminism provided a home for a lot women who had revolutionary ideas or were lesbian and felt marginalized. The bad aspects of the ideology were still there and still very destructive. But radical feminists accomplished a lot that liberal feminists, in their love of the government and of capitalism and desire to accommodate men, simply weren't able to. It's a fact that in the United States, it was mainly radical feminists who were setting up the domestic violence shelters, rape crisis lines, women's bookstores, and lesbian cultural spaces, and all this had a positive impact on the world. It would have been better if such organizing could have happened around socialist feminist ideas. And it still definitely wasn't OK how radfems excluded trans women and women of color. But in my opinion, it was better than nothing, and unfortunately, this is how it happened. One final point: most liberal feminists and even many socialist feminists of the era were also super transphobic and racist, they just were that way more habitually and unthinkingly, rather than having an ideological justification for it.

This thread has focused on the many, many horrible flaws of radical feminism. But liberal feminism is also horribly flawed in its own ways. In the United States, these were really the only two widely influential tendencies, especially in the 1970s. And the socialist feminist tendency is still underdeveloped here in the US. I personally am trying hard to change that though. I am also trying to make sure that feminism going forward no longer excludes and fails to represent the most vulnerable women. When female sex workers and women of color and working class women and disabled women and bisexual women and trans women needed feminism the most, more often than not feminism turned its back on them (or us. . .as I belong to a couple of those categories). That's starting to change a bit recently, but it needs to completely change. Feminism needs to stand for ALL women.

[Crux]

You know. . .I was just re-reading this thread and this bit jumped out at me. You know why? I happen to know of another very popular group of people who are 16 times more likely to be murdered than the general population. They are another one of radfems' best friends: trans people! Weird, huh? It's almost as if radfems have patronizingly decided to fixate on and "help" the most marginalized, unpopular groups in society who happen to suffer from the highest murder rates. And their solution? Make it impossible for them to make a living! Criminalize them or their customers! Make sure the government denies them medical care and discriminates against them! Call them "prostituted women" or "transsexual males"! Hey, we're just being technical, right? None of this feel-good, postmodern crap about listening to what oppressed people actually want and need or referring to them using their preferred terminology! We have PhDs in Sociology and English!! Trust us in our quest to set straight these poor deviants who get murdered all the time!
That's a brilliant argument...against a position neither I nor Ekman holds. I am not a radfem and I am pretty sure she isn't either. So again you claim that indirectly the violence against prostitutes is because of radical feminism and specifically criminalizing johns and pimps. Now if that is the case one would assume there would be some great drop in statistics for countries like the Netherlands and Germany. As far as I know this is not the case at all. Oh but I am sorry, I see you were busy conflating me with transphobes. And obviously, not "having to read" which makes actually debating with you a bit difficult, Emma.
Oh yeah, and Inger Nilsson is a woman. Just a side note there. But of course if the facts don't fit your pre-conceived idea, why not twist them around a little so as to make "take actual prostitutes opinions into account" into "Radfems are listening more closely to sex workers than a right-wing male politician did in the 1970s! What a fucking accomplishment! I'm glad radfems are holding themselves to such high standards.".
That's not an argument in any way, shape or form. That's like me saying "Yeah, right, you are to the left...of Hitler.". A factually true statement formulated as a simple insult and trying to be passed off as an argument.

But it seems you didn't actually read the text to begin with anyway. So if you're so set against discussing the Swedish legislation, why did you bring it up in the first place?

As for Luís Henrique and sources the debate he alludes to is that he believed statistics about rape in colleges were fabricated and used that lovely little hate magazine A Voice For Men (among other things) to try and back his argument up. He's usually not that bad, but sometimes he does go off the rails.


And if I need to clarify myself further: no I carry no fucking brief for transphobes, radfems or otherwise. Anyone who's read what I've posted on this can attest to that. In fact I have taken active part in getting transphobes off this forum. Emma, that weak attempt at guilt by association is incidentally also a non-argument.

[DancingEmma]

Majakovskij, I hold no particular ill will toward you. I'm not arguing with you in bad faith, nor do I think you're a transphobe. I had no way to know previously whether you were a transphobe or not, but I fully take you at your word that you're not and have, in fact, stood up to transphobes on this forum before.

My comment about the murder rate of sex workers and trans people was not even directed specifically at you; it was directed at the whole forum. This is a thread about radical feminists. I was commenting about radical feminists and how they are usually opposed to justice for both sex workers and trans people and exploring some of what might be behind that for them psychologically. If this doesn't apply to you or Ekman, then it doesn't apply to you or Ekman. I don't think I ever said I thought you were a radical feminist, or that you were prejudiced against trans people, or that you were even prejudiced against sex workers (although I have said Ekman was prejudiced against sex workers, and I stand by that).

I did read the text. I'm not against discussing the Swedish legislation, and I have discussed the Swedish legislation. I don't think that criminalizing sex workers' customers is helpful to sex workers, and I have yet to see any evidence of how it DOES help them.

I apologize for saying Inger Nilsson was a man when she's not. I will explain the point I was trying to make there without the extraneous snark. I believe that to understand what sex workers want you to do to help them, you should directly listen to them and communicate with them as equals. You don't need to commission a government study and research them. You don't need to merely "take their opinions into account." Their opinions aren't merely one variable that you must account for; they are all that matters. You need to listen to what they want you to do to stand in solidarity with them, and then do it. That's my approach. From what I can tell, abolitionists seem far more prone to theorize about sex workers and research sex workers than actually communicate with them in an open, egalitarian way.

[Luís Henrique]

I am not a radfem and I am pretty sure [Ekman] isn't either.

I don't think you are a RadFem; I think you are a Trotskyist. I don't think you are able to give a proper criticism of Radical Feminism though, and I think you are excessively lenient towards such tendency, refusing to see their "statistics" and researches as flawed, and mistaking some of their reactionary positions - such as the one on prostitution - as progressive ones.

Perhaps we need a neologism here: pornophobe. So while you are not a Radical Feminist, you are a pornophobe, as is Ekman. And Radical Feminists (as well as many if not most conservatives) are pornophobes too.


So again you claim that indirectly the violence against prostitutes is because of radical feminism and specifically criminalizing johns and pimps. And you are again arguing dishonestly. What she said is that violence against prostitutes stems from three different sources: 1) their condition as members of the working class, a class which is always under violent attacks by capital and its operatives; 2) their condition as females (which they mostly are) in a patriarchal society were all women are disproportionately targeted by violence; and 3) their specific condition as prostitutes, that makes them particularly vulnerable to all kinds of attack, classist, sexist, racist, and, yes, even the random attacks of psychopaths. Only that third point has any relation to Radical Feminism, and even there they are certainly very far from being the main cause of it, or even a cause at all - they are merely instrumental to much more powerful forces - conservatives, real state entrepreneurs, corrupt policemen and politicians - that actually profit from the persecution of prostitutes.


Now if that is the case one would assume there would be some great drop in statistics for countries like the Netherlands and Germany.See, the LaRouchites are antisemitic, and as such a "cause" of violence against Jews. So there should be a great drop in statistics of violence against Jews in France or Russia, where they are insignificant as political actors. But there isn't such drop; should we conclude that no, the LaRouchites are not a "cause" of violence against Jews and consequently aren't antisemitic?


As far as I know this is not the case at all. Oh but I am sorry, I see you were busy conflating me with transphobes.You are not, as far as I know, a transphobe. Never saw anything by you that could lead to such a conclusion. I don't think Dancing Emma was accusing you of such either. You are only refusing to see a transphobic group for what they are; you seem to think to criticise RadFems is out of bounds, and systematically support their misuse and manipulation of statistics as revealed truth. This of course doesn't make you a transphobe, and I very much doubt that you were even aware of the transphobic aspect of Radical Feminism - that lack of awareness probably being partially responsible for your acritical posture towards them.


But it seems you didn't actually read the text to begin with anyway. So if you're so set against discussing the Swedish legislation, why did you bring it up in the first place?I don't know about Dancing Emma, but I will debate Swedish legislation about prostitution with you whenever you please. It is a piece of reactionary legislation, that drives prostitution into the underground, where it is more easily controled by organised crime and corrupt policemen.


As for Luís Henrique and sources the debate he alludes to is that he believed statistics about rape in colleges were fabricated and used that lovely little hate magazine A Voice For Men (among other things) to try and back his argument up.Such statistics are fabricated; they are attained by moving the goal posts so that many things that are not legally defined as rape, and/or are not seen as rape by the victims themselves, are counted as rape. It is more or less as counting all physical attacks as "attempted homicide" and then conclude that 99% of mankind has at one point or other been victim of attempted murder.

As for A Voice for Men, I don't even know what it is, nor how you have come to the conclusion that I used it to back my argument. You are probably referring to a paper by Edward Greer, which was originally published by the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review (http://www.anonym.to/?http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol33/iss3/).


He's usually not that bad, but sometimes he does go off the rails.You also don't seem unable to understand other people's posts, unless the subject involves Radical Feminism in a way or other.


And if I need to clarify myself further: no I carry no fucking brief for transphobes, radfems or otherwise. Anyone who's read what I've posted on this can attest to that. In fact I have taken active part in getting transphobes off this forum. Emma, that weak attempt at guilt by association is incidentally also a non-argument.Speaking of guilt by association... have you ever met Mr. Kettle?

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

Majakovskij, I hold no particular ill will toward you. I'm not arguing with you in bad faith, nor do I think you're a transphobe. I had no way to know previously whether you were a transphobe or not, but I fully take you at your word that you're not and have, in fact, stood up to transphobes on this forum before.

My comment about the murder rate of sex workers and trans people was not even directed specifically at you; it was directed at the whole forum. This is a thread about radical feminists. I was commenting about radical feminists and how they are usually opposed to justice for both sex workers and trans people and exploring some of what might be behind that for them psychologically. If this doesn't apply to you or Ekman, then it doesn't apply to you or Ekman. I don't think I ever said I thought you were a radical feminist, or that you were prejudiced against trans people, or that you were even prejudiced against sex workers (although I have said Ekman was prejudiced against sex workers, and I stand by that).

I did read the text. I'm not against discussing the Swedish legislation, and I have discussed the Swedish legislation. I don't think that criminalizing sex workers' customers is helpful to sex workers, and I have yet to see any evidence of how it DOES help them.

I apologize for saying Inger Nilsson was a man when she's not. I will explain the point I was trying to make there without the extraneous snark. I believe that to understand what sex workers want you to do to help them, you should directly listen to them and communicate with them as equals. You don't need to commission a government study and research them. You don't need to merely "take their opinions into account." Their opinions aren't merely one variable that you must account for; they are all that matters. You need to listen to what they want you to do to stand in solidarity with them, and then do it. That's my approach. From what I can tell, abolitionists seem far more prone to theorize about sex workers and research sex workers than actually communicate with them in an open, egalitarian way.
Fair enough. What I feel though is that we are talking over each other a bit here. My issue is I think you are working with way too much preconceived opinions of what the effects or the cause of the Swedish legislation is. I try to keep an open mind myself, but I also recognize that the majority of the swedish feminist movement defend the legislation, not just the pseudo-conservative group that would make up some hardcore fringe of the RadFem movement. That was my entire point with posting the article and the video in the first place.

From what I've read and from what I have heard the situation in Germany, for instance, is worse than in Sweden. But this also depends on what our priorities are, I see legalization as increasing prositution and increasing the many bad effects of prostitution and also, and I think this is vindicated in the situation in Germany and the Netherlands, human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution. That doesn't mean I think a piece of legislation makes the problem go away, far from it. There also needs to be community organizations capable of helping sex workers get out of the sex trade. That's not saying the rest of capitalism is that much better, but I don't think it is wrong in principle to oppose certain forms of labour as is, even under capitalism.


Luís allges I am a "pornophobe", I don't really see the meaning of this at all. I am certainly aware of the transphobia and other discriminatory attitudes in certain parts of the Rad Fem movement, as well as having a certain disagreement with their view of what the fundamental contradictions of society are. I was meaning to make a thread on transphoba I've seen from a certain group of U.S radfems but ultimately being a cis-gendered male I worry of not being able to do a thread on that with enough insight into the complexities involved. I've called out transphobia when I've seen it, but I worry about making too sweeping generalizations or missing nuances simply due to me having non of the lived experience of either group.

I have no doubt that similar conservative patterns of thought might be repeated by the same or similar rad fem's re pornography and prostitution, but I find the division of pro/anti porn/prostitution to be unhelpful in understanding the actual issue at the core of this. I have to point out that I also don't buy Luís allegation that there would be a significant Rad Fem skewing in the world of statistics.

[Luís Henrique]

Not to totally disagree with my comrades Luis and Danielle, but I do actually want to say a word "in favor of" Radical Feminism. Its anti-sex worker views, its transmisogyny, and its racism have always been a problem and have been longstanding. I do think that, historically, it was still in some ways a progressive force in the 1970s, however, at least in the United States.

Yes, I don't doubt they have been progressive in the past, and not even that they still may be so in other issues.


One final point: most liberal feminists and even many socialist feminists of the era were also super transphobic and racist, they just were that way more habitually and unthinkingly, rather than having an ideological justification for it.That was a time when everybody and his cousin were extremely transphobic and homophobic, sure. Socialists and liberals, in general - and I don't doubt there are exceptions - moved away from that, because it was not an integral part of their respective ideologies. Radfems seem to be stuck at it, though.


This thread has focused on the many, many horrible flaws of radical feminism. But liberal feminism is also horribly flawed in its own ways.No doubt and there are probably issues in which liberals are by far worse than RadFems. But most people here in revleft are usually able to see liberalism for what it is - even liberal feminism. Radical Feminism is more able to trick leftists into supporting their bullshit.


In the United States, these were really the only two widely influential tendencies, especially in the 1970s. And the socialist feminist tendency is still underdeveloped here in the US. I personally am trying hard to change that though. I am also trying to make sure that feminism going forward no longer excludes and fails to represent the most vulnerable women.That's quite an endeavour; if a small amount of that can be done, it will be a remarkable accomplishment.


When female sex workers and women of color and working class women and disabled women and bisexual women and trans women needed feminism the most, more often than not feminism turned its back on them (or us. . .as I belong to a couple of those categories). That's starting to change a bit recently, but it needs to completely change. Feminism needs to stand for ALL women.We really need for feminism to stand for us men, too; the golden bars of our "gender" under patriarchy are golden enough to stop us from getting organised to destroy them, but solid enough to significantly limit us as human beings.

Luís Henrique

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

We really need for feminism to stand for us men, too; the golden bars of our "gender" under patriarchy are golden enough to stop us from getting organised to destroy them, but solid enough to significantly limit us as human beings.


A point on that - feminism doesn't have to stand for men - it has to stand against men as class (or in relation to class, if you want to quibble over definitions). To draw an analogy, anticolonial struggles aren't for settlers, though certainly, in the broad scope of an emancipatory communist project, settlers stand to benefit as humans.
The fact remains that, in the short term, men (albeit not a fixed category) stand to lose, materially, as men, by the destruction of patriarchy.

[Luís Henrique]

From what I've read and from what I have heard the situation in Germany, for instance, is worse than in Sweden.

A few years ago, the Brazilian State started implementing Woman Rights specialised Police Departments. Soon we were reading statistics that showed that the situtation of women regarding domestic aggressions was worse in São Paulo than in Northeastern capitals such as Teresina or João Pessoa. The inverse is the case, of course: since the situation of women in São Paulo is somewhat better, they have less problems in reporting aggressions to the police; women in Teresina are in a worse situation, and fear reporting husbands/partners/lovers to police.

So the situation in Germany and the Netherlands may be worse. Or, conversely, the German and Dutch prostitutes can trust the police more than Swedish prostitutes can. Without knowing exactly what is going on, we can badly misread statistics, and take them for meaning exactly the opposite of what they represent.


But this also depends on what our priorities are, I see legalization as increasing prositution and increasing the many bad effects of prostitution

Well, I see legalisation, or rather decriminalisation, as helpful to deflect some of the bad effects of prostitution. Which one of us is right?


and also, and I think this is vindicated in the situation in Germany and the Netherlands, human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution.

Trafficking has probably more to do with immigration laws than prostitution laws. But to the extent that it has to do with prostitution laws, yes, it is obvious that it is easier to convince women to move abroad to a place where prostitution is legal or semilegal than to a place where it is illegal. But really, this again boils down to a problem of boundaries, and how they are useful for capital, in keeping different jurisdictions with different legislations, that make some capital operations better performed in some places than in others. So for the capital invested in prostitution, it is probably convenient to keep prostitution forbidden in Russia, where they recruit young women to work as prostitutes abroad, and legal in Germany, where they take them to be exploited.


That doesn't mean I think a piece of legislation makes the problem go away, far from it.

Evidently. But while legislation certainly cannot solve the problem, which is rooted much deeper in the structure of our societies, it can of course make the problem worse.


There also needs to be community organizations capable of helping sex workers get out of the sex trade.

I have met a few prostitutes in my life. I don't remember a single one who wanted to "get out of the sex trade" if it meant working wiping floors, baby sitting, or collecting garbage for the wages normally paid for such activities in Brazil. Sure they all wanted to "get out of the sex trade" - to marry a middle class john, to go to college (to which end prostitution was often a mean), etc. So, comrade, the only real way to get these people out of prostitution would be waaay better wages in other jobs. But forcibly impeaching people from selling sexual services, in principle, makes competition for those other jobs even harsher - and consequently wages even lower. So it is absolutely self-defeating.

This, not even taking into consideration that Sweden still has one of the better welfare systems of the world: you can imagine what the prohibition would do in a country where the idea of "communities" helping people is completely outlandish because competition for jobs forces everybody under the waterline.


That's not saying the rest of capitalism is that much better, but I don't think it is wrong in principle to oppose certain forms of labour as is, even under capitalism.

But prostitution doesn't refer to a "form" of labour; it refers to a precise "substance" of labour. Some prostitutes are wage slaves, like most bakers; some prostitutes are actual semi-slaves (especially, of course, where the activity is forbidden), as are so many rural workers; probably most are self-employed, as are most street vendors. So what "form" do you want to oppose? Or, if what you want is to oppose the specific content of prostitute labour - sexual services - what other specific contents of labour would you oppose?


Luís allges I am a "pornophobe", I don't really see the meaning of this at all.

Form Greek "pornos", prostitute, and "phobia", irrational fear, revamped as a synonym to hate, as in xenophobia.


I am certainly aware of the transphobia and other discriminatory attitudes in certain parts of the Rad Fem movement, as well as having a certain disagreement with their view of what the fundamental contradictions of society are.

And what that "certain disagreement" would be, pray tell?


I was meaning to make a thread on transphoba I've seen from a certain group of U.S radfems but ultimately being a cis-gendered male I worry of not being able to do a thread on that with enough insight into the complexities involved.

First, you are not supposed to "do" a thread; you start it, other people will contribute, and, hopefully, the friction of ideas will produce a little bit of light, among certainly a huge amount of heath. Second, really... I don't need to be a welder to discuss the work conditions of welders, or a little boy to discuss the problems of school bullying. Some reading, some empathy, some socialising with people who actually face those problems, perhaps being in organisations that include those people... that should allow us to understand the issues, and even to defend such particular interests. What, of course, we can't do is to oppose specific organisations of bakers, coffe planters, computer programs... or prostitutes, out of no actual experience in their matters.

So I don't think being a cis male should stop you from starting a thread on transphobia, no more than being a Swedish white urban man should stop you from starting a thread on the problems of Black Sudanese rural workers. Unless, of course, you were going to use that thread to explicitly counter the demands of the Sudanese rural workers organisations, in which case you would pretty much be doing what you are doing in this thread concerning prostitutes.


I've called out transphobia when I've seen it, but I worry about making too sweeping generalizations or missing nuances simply due to me having non of the lived experience of either group.

On the other hand, you seem to have no problem in telling prostitutes that making their lives impossible as prostitutes is a great idea, never mind the obvious fact that you don't have any actual experience of the problems faced by prostitutes...


I have no doubt that similar conservative patterns of thought might be repeated by the same or similar rad fem's re pornography and prostitution, but I find the division of pro/anti porn/prostitution to be unhelpful in understanding the actual issue at the core of this.

Maybe, but the problem is that there isn't any real ground for cooperation between prohibitionists and abolitionists in one hand, and defenders of legalisation or decriminalisation on the other - except, of course, for the purposes of merely debating the issue.

But the actual issue at the core we already know: it is the monopoly of means of production in the hands of a very small minority of the population, and the transformation of these means of production into the exploitative entity called capital. I don't see how putting a further element of separation between people and the means of production - in the case, their own bodies as means of production of sexual services - can do for the their liberation or the liberation of the working class, or even less for the liberation of women.

Under capitalism, tactically accepting that we are living under it for some time yet, and that we do have to make life a little less horrible even so, if for no other reason so that we can have a bit more time and disposition and health to fight against capital - then I would say, complete decriminalisation, making the property rights of prostitutes enforceable against johns, their labour rights enforceabel against pimps, working against the stigma of prostitution - so that no kid gets shamed in school if his mother is a "whore" - making prostitutes visible, so that it doesn't happen that serial killers find them fair game anymore, etc, etc, etc, seems to me the only valid approach. Attempts to criminalise, repress, suppress, jail, shame, etc, can only result in more prejudice, more difficulties, more deaths, more disease, more obscenity.

And it is very, very sad to see earnest leftists upholding such reactionary positions.


I have to point out that I also don't buy Luís allegation that there would be a significant Rad Fem skewing in the world of statistics.

When I was a teenager, there was a "statistic" going around that said that 200,000 women died each year as a consequence of back alley abortions in Brazil. Oh wait, the figures weren't that fixed. It was sometimes 300,000, 400,000, and one time even a congressman mentioned 600,000 deaths from abortion. One day something "clicked" and I decided to pick a pencil (hard times, those before Excel or even Lotus 123) and make some calculations. It turned out, of course, that it would be impossible to such numbers of women to die from abortion without making it the single most important cause of death among the whole population (no, not among women only!), and to it be true without the life expectancy for women being significantly (I mean, wildly) shorter than that of men. Indeed, not even if all those supposed deaths-from-abortion happened to women at 49 years old it would be possible that the life expectancy of women were, as it actually was, significantly longer than that of men...!

Now, such absurd urban legend was put into circulation by progressives, people who intended to shock the public opinion into the idea that legalising abortion would be an absolute necessity lest we wanted hundreds of thousands of young women dying in a completely avoidable way. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I earnestly realised that "my side" could lie also, that dishonesty wasn't a privilege of reactionaries and supporters of the dictatorship.

From since I have learned to take statistics with a grain of salt, especially if they seem counter-intuitive, if they haven't good sources, and if they are object of political dispute (especially if involving NGOs). This is the case of the statistics provided by "RadFems" (both on rape and on prostitution), in all three scores: they seem quite obviously impossible in both mathematical and demographic ways, their source are biased papers with a very obvious political (when not even economic) interest behind them, and they are used as political weapons in political debates. They also have a further problem: they are inconsistent and self-contradictory.

So, of course, we live in a free-market economy, you are perfectly free to buy, or not to buy, my allegations. But let me say you, they are quite good allegations, fresh and new, not unsophisticated forgeries like the ones you are buying. And if you don't buy them, I assure you there are lots of other costumers interested...

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

A few years ago, the Brazilian State started implementing Woman Rights specialised Police Departments. Soon we were reading statistics that showed that the situtation of women regarding domestic aggressions was worse in São Paulo than in Northeastern capitals such as Teresina or João Pessoa. The inverse is the case, of course: since the situation of women in São Paulo is somewhat better, they have less problems in reporting aggressions to the police; women in Teresina are in a worse situation, and fear reporting husbands/partners/lovers to police.

So the situation in Germany and the Netherlands may be worse. Or, conversely, the German and Dutch prostitutes can trust the police more than Swedish prostitutes can. Without knowing exactly what is going on, we can badly misread statistics, and take them for meaning exactly the opposite of what they represent.
I doubt this for two main reasons, the general attitude courts and law enforcement take to rape, sexual abuse and violent abuse against women and secondly the general situation for people working in precarious jobs.


Well, I see legalisation, or rather decriminalisation, as helpful to deflect some of the bad effects of prostitution. Which one of us is right? I'm not in favour of criminalizing prostitutes and I think there is clear distinction between that position and my own, that is criminalizing johns and pimps.



Trafficking has probably more to do with immigration laws than prostitution laws. But to the extent that it has to do with prostitution laws, yes, it is obvious that it is easier to convince women to move abroad to a place where prostitution is legal or semilegal than to a place where it is illegal. But really, this again boils down to a problem of boundaries, and how they are useful for capital, in keeping different jurisdictions with different legislations, that make some capital operations better performed in some places than in others. So for the capital invested in prostitution, it is probably convenient to keep prostitution forbidden in Russia, where they recruit young women to work as prostitutes abroad, and legal in Germany, where they take them to be exploited.
Sure they are connected, but I think, and the stastics back me on this, where there is an legal market the illegal market grows, in this case where there is legal prostitution human trafficking for sex work purposes increase.



Evidently. But while legislation certainly cannot solve the problem, which is rooted much deeper in the structure of our societies, it can of course make the problem worse.
I agree, obviously, even if I disagree on what makes the situation better or worse.




I have met a few prostitutes in my life. I don't remember a single one who wanted to "get out of the sex trade" if it meant working wiping floors, baby sitting, or collecting garbage for the wages normally paid for such activities in Brazil. Sure they all wanted to "get out of the sex trade" - to marry a middle class john, to go to college (to which end prostitution was often a mean), etc. So, comrade, the only real way to get these people out of prostitution would be waaay better wages in other jobs. But forcibly impeaching people from selling sexual services, in principle, makes competition for those other jobs even harsher - and consequently wages even lower. So it is absolutely self-defeating.
Yes, prostitution is hardly an isolated problem in itself but with very clear socio-economic causes. Again, selling sexual services is not illegal in sweden nor do I think it should be.


This, not even taking into consideration that Sweden still has one of the better welfare systems of the world: you can imagine what the prohibition would do in a country where the idea of "communities" helping people is completely outlandish because competition for jobs forces everybody under the waterline.
I can. Which is why I am a socialist. And I do not think instituting prostitution as a permanent legal industry is the way forward on this issue.


But prostitution doesn't refer to a "form" of labour; it refers to a precise "substance" of labour. Some prostitutes are wage slaves, like most bakers; some prostitutes are actual semi-slaves (especially, of course, where the activity is forbidden), as are so many rural workers; probably most are self-employed, as are most street vendors. So what "form" do you want to oppose? Or, if what you want is to oppose the specific content of prostitute labour - sexual services - what other specific contents of labour would you oppose?
I think prostitution by and large constitutes itself as a specific work condition in itself.



Form Greek "pornos", prostitute, and "phobia", irrational fear, revamped as a synonym to hate, as in xenophobia.
Well then you would be wrong.


And what that "certain disagreement" would be, pray tell?
Putting gender relations as the overall dichotomy of our society. Which would be the fundamental part of Radical Feminism is.




First, you are not supposed to "do" a thread; you start it, other people will contribute, and, hopefully, the friction of ideas will produce a little bit of light, among certainly a huge amount of heath. Second, really... I don't need to be a welder to discuss the work conditions of welders, or a little boy to discuss the problems of school bullying. Some reading, some empathy, some socialising with people who actually face those problems, perhaps being in organisations that include those people... that should allow us to understand the issues, and even to defend such particular interests. What, of course, we can't do is to oppose specific organisations of bakers, coffe planters, computer programs... or prostitutes, out of no actual experience in their matters.

So I don't think being a cis male should stop you from starting a thread on transphobia, no more than being a Swedish white urban man should stop you from starting a thread on the problems of Black Sudanese rural workers. Unless, of course, you were going to use that thread to explicitly counter the demands of the Sudanese rural workers organisations, in which case you would pretty much be doing what you are doing in this thread concerning prostitutes.
I know you are extremely sure of yourself, one might even say self-entitled, when it comes to these issues.



On the other hand, you seem to have no problem in telling prostitutes that making their lives impossible as prostitutes is a great idea, never mind the obvious fact that you don't have any actual experience of the problems faced by prostitutes...
No, you see, what I have no problem is is attempting counter sweeping generalizations, undercut with the idea of prostitution as a necessarily ill, against the current swedish legislation.


Maybe, but the problem is that there isn't any real ground for cooperation between prohibitionists and abolitionists in one hand, and defenders of legalisation or decriminalisation on the other - except, of course, for the purposes of merely debating the issue.
I am not in favour of illegalizing prostitution. I am in favour of building a civil society capable of pushing back the sex trade industry, yes, even under capitalism.


But the actual issue at the core we already know: it is the monopoly of means of production in the hands of a very small minority of the population, and the transformation of these means of production into the exploitative entity called capital. I don't see how putting a further element of separation between people and the means of production - in the case, their own bodies as means of production of sexual services - can do for the their liberation or the liberation of the working class, or even less for the liberation of women.

Under capitalism, tactically accepting that we are living under it for some time yet, and that we do have to make life a little less horrible even so, if for no other reason so that we can have a bit more time and disposition and health to fight against capital - then I would say, complete decriminalisation, making the property rights of prostitutes enforceable against johns, their labour rights enforceabel against pimps, working against the stigma of prostitution - so that no kid gets shamed in school if his mother is a "whore" - making prostitutes visible, so that it doesn't happen that serial killers find them fair game anymore, etc, etc, etc, seems to me the only valid approach. Attempts to criminalise, repress, suppress, jail, shame, etc, can only result in more prejudice, more difficulties, more deaths, more disease, more obscenity.

And it is very, very sad to see earnest leftists upholding such reactionary positions.
It would be, but I am not. What I am, on the other hand, is for fighting against your suggestion that we should work for prostitution to be an integrated part in the labour market. And indeed what effects this has on gender relations, where a woman's body quite literally is accepted as a commodity for men to buy and sell. I think your idea of legal prostitution in the manner you are describing seems incredibly utopian if we were to look at other sectors of the legal labour market.


When I was a teenager, there was a "statistic" going around that said that 200,000 women died each year as a consequence of back alley abortions in Brazil. Oh wait, the figures weren't that fixed. It was sometimes 300,000, 400,000, and one time even a congressman mentioned 600,000 deaths from abortion. One day something "clicked" and I decided to pick a pencil (hard times, those before Excel or even Lotus 123) and make some calculations. It turned out, of course, that it would be impossible to such numbers of women to die from abortion without making it the single most important cause of death among the whole population (no, not among women only!), and to it be true without the life expectancy for women being significantly (I mean, wildly) shorter than that of men. Indeed, not even if all those supposed deaths-from-abortion happened to women at 49 years old it would be possible that the life expectancy of women were, as it actually was, significantly longer than that of men...!

Now, such absurd urban legend was put into circulation by progressives, people who intended to shock the public opinion into the idea that legalising abortion would be an absolute necessity lest we wanted hundreds of thousands of young women dying in a completely avoidable way. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I earnestly realised that "my side" could lie also, that dishonesty wasn't a privilege of reactionaries and supporters of the dictatorship.

From since I have learned to take statistics with a grain of salt, especially if they seem counter-intuitive, if they haven't good sources, and if they are object of political dispute (especially if involving NGOs). This is the case of the statistics provided by "RadFems" (both on rape and on prostitution), in all three scores: they seem quite obviously impossible in both mathematical and demographic ways, their source are biased papers with a very obvious political (when not even economic) interest behind them, and they are used as political weapons in political debates. They also have a further problem: they are inconsistent and self-contradictory.

So, of course, we live in a free-market economy, you are perfectly free to buy, or not to buy, my allegations. But let me say you, they are quite good allegations, fresh and new, not unsophisticated forgeries like the ones you are buying. And if you don't buy them, I assure you there are lots of other costumers interested...

Luís Henrique
And you'll excuse me if I give more credence to actual statistics rather than your fuzzy math and intuition.

[Luís Henrique]

I doubt this for two main reasons, the general attitude courts and law enforcement take to rape, sexual abuse and violent abuse against women and secondly the general situation for people working in precarious jobs.

As stated before, Sweden still has one of the best welfare systems in the world.


I'm not in favour of criminalizing prostitutes and I think there is clear distinction between that position and my own, that is criminalizing johns and pimps.

I think the difference is mostly rhetoric. In the fundamental, both positions drive prostitution further into the underground.


Sure they are connected, but I think, and the stastics back me on this, where there is an legal market the illegal market grows, in this case where there is legal prostitution human trafficking for sex work purposes increase.

Yes, the growth of a legal market prompts the growth of an illegal one; that's what boundaries are for, for creating different legal environment in which different things are legal or illegal, allowing capital to make superprofits in both sides of the boundary.


Yes, prostitution is hardly an isolated problem in itself but with very clear socio-economic causes. Again, selling sexual services is not illegal in sweden nor do I think it should be.

Well, it evidently is illegal. A sale is the other side of the same coin as a purchase; if it is illegal to buy, evidently it is illegal to sell. The only difference is about who goes to jail. But even if they do not go to jail, Swedish prostitutes are either forced into other activities - legal or illegal - to survive (in times of great worldwide retraction of job opportunities), or to accept even more draconian conditions from pimps to be able to continue in the trade.

All in all, it sums up as less jobs for the same number of people, which evidently can only result in lower jobs for everyone. Oh, of course, except for those few people who are employed by abolitionist NGO's.


I think prostitution by and large constitutes itself as a specific work condition in itself.

Come on. The diversity of this precise market is enormous, perhaps bigger than any other specific trade.


Putting gender relations as the overall dichotomy of our society. Which would be the fundamental part of Radical Feminism is.

And you think they are wrong? Why?

If they really put gender relations as the overall dichotomy of our society, they would be much closer to us than they actually are. But, of course, their "abolition of gender" sums up to instating a different gender dichotomy (all women should be lesbians, and all men should be asexual).


I know you are extremely sure of yourself, one might even say self-entitled, when it comes to these issues.

And you do have a problem with that?

There is a basic line every socialist should follow. We stand with the workers movents, even if we think they are wrong. We may be critical of their positions, but we must support their demands. We don't ally with the bourgeois State to "correct" the positions of fellow workers. Most of the landless movement in Brazil stands for a land reform that breaks the latifundia into small properties. I would much prefer that they stood for socialisation of the land. But it is their stand, and while I may go to their meetings and discuss the issue with them, I don't support State repression against them because they aren't "perfect" socialists. Every organised movement of prostitutes that I know support decriminalisation; if you want to go to their meetings and discuss the issue and try to explain to them why they are wrong, the more power to you. Supporting the bourgeois State and even more bourgeois NGOs in the repression against them is, in my opinion, completely off bounds.


No, you see, what I have no problem is is attempting counter sweeping generalizations, undercut with the idea of prostitution as a necessarily ill, against the current swedish legislation.

Prostitution is not a necessary evil - but it is one that cannot be "abolished" within a capitalist society.


It would be, but I am not. What I am, on the other hand, is for fighting against your suggestion that we should work for prostitution to be an integrated part in the labour market. And indeed what effects this has on gender relations, where a woman's body quite literally is accepted as a commodity for men to buy and sell. I think your idea of legal prostitution in the manner you are describing seems incredibly utopian if we were to look at other sectors of the legal labour market.

Yeah, it would be horrible if a woman's body was accepted as a commodity for men (and other women) to buy and sell. But this is mere conservative rhetorics. Prostitutes do not sell their bodies; the john goes away and does not carry her body home as people do when they buy a commodity.

What they sell are sexual services; they sell their time, exactly as every other worker does, the main difference being that most workers sell their time to capital, which uses it to build commodities and then sell those in the markets, while many prostitutes sell their time directly to the final consumer. And, as the European nobility once proclaimed, nulle terre sans seigneur, no land without a lord, capital nowadays proclaims, no purchase without capital, no labour without capital, no worker without a boss!


And you'll excuse me if I give more credence to actual statistics rather than your fuzzy math and intuition.

Do you really don't see any problem with "statistics" that claim that prostitutes are 18 times more likely to be murdered than other women - but 40 times more likely to die of all causes? What other causes, in your unfuzzy opinion, are killing prostitutes at a rate more than 40 times than they kill other women?

Think, man.

Luís Henrique

[A Sovereign Womb]

In terms of sex workers, it's pretty clear from my perspective that the abolitionists as a movement (if not necessarily every abolitionist as an individual) have contempt for them. I don't think many sex workers view radfem advocacy to criminalize their customers (the touted Swedish model) as helpful or standing in solidarity, and many radfems take it a step further and support the continuation of police harassment of sex workers themselves. If a political movement, say, supported jailing plumbers or the people who call them in to unclog their pipes, or jailing organic farmers or the people who buy their organic tomatoes, I think a lot of observers would reasonably conclude that said movement had contempt for plumbers or for organic farmers, regardless of the rhetoric that movement used to justify its position.
Well, I would certainly agree with you if that were indeed the case.

I've skimmed through your posts in this thread and I do not believe that we have any fundamental disagreement on this issue. You just appear to instantly identify any so-called "abolitionist" as a radfem. Allow me to verify something fairly simple: anyone advocating any form of terrorism against any woman is no kind of feminist. They are the enemy and need to be recognized as such. To my knowledge, the position of radical feminism has always remained unambiguous on this matter. Again, I'd be very interested in knowing who these people are, calling themselves "radical feminists" while endorsing state harassment of women.


As for radfem shaming of women who are into BDSM, you should take a look at the section of Sheila Jeffreys' book (who is also a vicious transphobe, of course) The Lesbian Heresy, where she talks about some of the work she did as an anti-BDSM activist in the 1980s. Look at page 124 specifically. She discusses how radical lesbian feminists attempted to ban BDSM practitioners from meeting at the London Lesbian and Gay Centre. The radfems complained that the mere presence of the kinksters would warp the minds of children. Jeffreys' also draws an analogy between BDSM and other things that created "difficulties" for lesbian radfems at the time such as "transsexualism, bissexuality, and pedophilia." I think this is pretty clear. In what universe would conflating something with pedophilia NOT constitute shaming?
I have mixed feelings on Sheila Jeffreys, but you really are grossly misrepresenting her in this instance.

First of all, it's made perfectly clear that it was the expression of sado-masochistic fetishism within the center that was being opposed - how exactly do you think the BDSM practitioners were to be otherwise identified?

Also, I don't believe for a second that even you think Jeffreys was suggesting those issues to be equivalent. They were listed together because they each apparently represented significant points of contention in that discussion. They are not depicted as being any more analogous than that.


One thing I would like to clear up, though, is the idea that I think political lesbianism as an identity is fundamentally illegitimate. I don't actually think that, and I apologize for creating that impression. I believe that the scientific evidence is fairly clear that sexual orientation is mostly innate and set at birth, but at the same time sexuality obviously can be fluid, too, and it changes over time for many people. If some people feel they are choosing to be lesbians to stand in political solidarity with other women, I have no problem with that at all. I do have a problem, though, if they take a step further and say that all women should chose to be lesbian. I don't support this sort of prescriptive, judgmental approach to sexuality whether it comes from the Right or the Left.
I appreciate your response, but I still maintain that you were indulging prejudice.

There are huge problems within radical feminism that need to be seriously addressed. Much of it has to do with misunderstanding and that is something that plagues the women's movement in general. Feminists of other tendencies, attempting to achieve wider acceptance, will perpetuate and pass off the most negative perceptions onto us. "Radical Feminism" has become the designated dumping ground for stereotypical straw positions: we're the crazies who ruin feminism for the rest of you, basically. In many respects (as in the case of the transphobia) there is valid criticism. I don't view the haughty and dishonest means of dismissal to be particularly helpful though. Whether we consider each other to be misguided or not, we're sisters first.

[DancingEmma]

I've skimmed through your posts in this thread and I do not believe that we have any fundamental disagreement on this issue. You just appear to instantly identify any so-called "abolitionist" as a radfem. Allow me to verify something fairly simple: anyone advocating any form of terrorism against any woman is no kind of feminist. They are the enemy and need to be recognized as such. To my knowledge, the position of radical feminism has always remained unambiguous on this matter. Again, I'd be very interested in knowing who these people are, calling themselves "radical feminists" while endorsing state harassment of women.

I'm opposed to the Swedish model, which tries it make it impossible for sex workers to earn a living by criminalizing their customers, although it stops short of actually sending the sex workers to jail themselves. I consider criminalizing the customers of a sex worker to be a form of state harassment of them. I'm unclear whether you support the Swedish model or not, but you should understand that supporting it IS an extremely common position among abolitionists of prostitution, many of whom also identify as radical feminists.

Here is Julie Bindel advocating for the Swedish model in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/10/women.socialexclusion

Melissa Farley is widely described as a radical feminist, including by those sympathetic to her positions. She says she supports the Swedish model in order to "motivate prostitutes to seek help to leave their way of life" Source: Wikipedia

Etc.


I have mixed feelings on Sheila Jeffreys, but you really are grossly misrepresenting her in this instance. First of all, it's made perfectly clear that it was the expression of sado-masochistic fetishism within the center that was being opposed - how exactly do you think the BDSM practitioners were to be otherwise identified? Also, I don't believe for a second that even you think Jeffreys was suggesting those issues to be equivalent. They were listed together because they each apparently represented significant points of contention in that discussion. They are not depicted as being any more analogous than that.

I don't think I'm misrepresenting Jeffreys, at all. Jeffreys was opposed to BDSM practitioners having group meetings at the center. I consider that fucked up and discriminatory. I doubt she would've had a problem with a group of lesbians meeting who say, were particularly into having oral sex or who were particularly into having sex in the woods. She didn't want these particular lesbians to meet at the center simply because she had a problem with their particular sexual preferences, and I think that's shitty and puritanical. And I think Jeffreys most likely does view BDSM, transsexualism, bisexuality, and pedophilia as similar. She probably regards all of them as undesirable phenomena that are manifestations of the patriarchal oppression of women.



Whether we consider each other to be misguided or not, we're sisters first.

Yes, and I would stand by you or any other woman if she were raped, or sexually harassed, or not paid fair wages in the workplace, or called a "b**ch" or a "c**t," or denied an abortion that she wanted, or in any other way subjected to sexist oppression--regardless of what I thought of her political views. But just as I'm opposed to the oppression of women, so to am I opposed to the oppression of trans people and kinky people and sex workers and bisexuals. To the extent that a radical feminist may advocate the oppression of any of these groups (and many of them have), they will be my political opponent in some significant ways.

[Luís Henrique]

And you'll excuse me if I give more credence to actual statistics rather than your fuzzy math and intuition.

Here are actual statistics - not inventions of scholars with an ax to grind:

Mortality in the United States (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf) (US Census Bureau)
Crime in the United States (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/persons-arrested) (FBI)

The total mortality rate for women in the US is 787 per 100,000 per year - or 0.787%. 40 times that is 31.48%. So, according to your "actual statistics", that you refuse to think about, almost one in each three prostitutes would die each year in the United States. To compare, the estimate rate for chattel slaves in agricultural labour was one in seven: the situation of modern prostitutes would be more than twice worse than that of 19th century slaves.

And how would a trade that loses 31.48% of its members each year (and that just to death, not counting people who just leave it) reproduce itself? By your "actual statistics", ie, "statistics" attributed to one Chris Grussendorf that is impossible to actually find in the internet, prostitution would end by itself, by sheer lack of prostitutes, in a decade or so.

Those "statistics" are fabrications, and not even sophisticated ones. And one should understand what a given set of "statistical data" actually means, before blindly believing them. Not to talk about quoting them in public.

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

As stated before, Sweden still has one of the best welfare systems in the world.
Which is relevant to what I said, how?


I think the difference is mostly rhetoric. In the fundamental, both positions drive prostitution further into the underground.
Yes, I am aware you can't tell the difference. So let me repeat. It is not illegal to sell sex in Sweden. This isn't a rhetorical difference. What *is* illegal is running a brothel, pimping and being a john. In that order.



Yes, the growth of a legal market prompts the growth of an illegal one; that's what boundaries are for, for creating different legal environment in which different things are legal or illegal, allowing capital to make superprofits in both sides of the boundary.
So then we agree that legalizing pimping will increase human trafficking? Ok.



Well, it evidently is illegal. A sale is the other side of the same coin as a purchase; if it is illegal to buy, evidently it is illegal to sell. The only difference is about who goes to jail. But even if they do not go to jail, Swedish prostitutes are either forced into other activities - legal or illegal - to survive (in times of great worldwide retraction of job opportunities), or to accept even more draconian conditions from pimps to be able to continue in the trade.
Nope, nothing evidently about it. If a woman were to sell sex and there were no middle man involved that in itself would not be illegal. Sure it would be illegal for her customers so it's up to them whether they want to commit a crime or not.


All in all, it sums up as less jobs for the same number of people, which evidently can only result in lower jobs for everyone. Oh, of course, except for those few people who are employed by abolitionist NGO's. Yes, the sex trade becomes less lucrative for the big networks that usually run them. This is a bad thing?



Come on. The diversity of this precise market is enormous, perhaps bigger than any other specific trade.
That diversity has little to say about the general situation for women in the sex trade.




And you think they are wrong? Why?

If they really put gender relations as the overall dichotomy of our society, they would be much closer to us than they actually are. But, of course, their "abolition of gender" sums up to instating a different gender dichotomy (all women should be lesbians, and all men should be asexual).
I think they are wrong because it tends to ignore the importance of the economic system. And as for what problems I have with the pseudo-conservative fringes of rad. fem. I think that is a question that answers itself.




And you do have a problem with that?
Yes, because time and again it prevents you from seeing the full picture.


There is a basic line every socialist should follow. We stand with the workers movents, even if we think they are wrong. We may be critical of their positions, but we must support their demands. We don't ally with the bourgeois State to "correct" the positions of fellow workers. Most of the landless movement in Brazil stands for a land reform that breaks the latifundia into small properties. I would much prefer that they stood for socialisation of the land. But it is their stand, and while I may go to their meetings and discuss the issue with them, I don't support State repression against them because they aren't "perfect" socialists. Every organised movement of prostitutes that I know support decriminalisation; if you want to go to their meetings and discuss the issue and try to explain to them why they are wrong, the more power to you. Supporting the bourgeois State and even more bourgeois NGOs in the repression against them is, in my opinion, completely off bounds.
As Ekman notes this is also the position of the "trade unions" in germany and the netherlands. The problem? these are per definition yellow organization that 1) organizes very few prostitutes 2) organizes brothels owners and pimps in the same organization.
Again you are conflating my position with one you merely imagine I have (see your "pronophobia" quip).


Prostitution is not a necessary evil - but it is one that cannot be "abolished" within a capitalist society.
No, fundamentally prostitution grows out of the material conditions of capitalist society. This is true, that however is not the same thing as saying "therefore it should be integrated into the legal capitalist market". I think I've already made my case for why this would be a very bad idea, you on the other hand rely on theory alone.


Yeah, it would be horrible if a woman's body was accepted as a commodity for men (and other women) to buy and sell. But this is mere conservative rhetorics. Prostitutes do not sell their bodies; the john goes away and does not carry her body home as people do when they buy a commodity. And speaking of theory...a service is also a commodity. This is marxism ABC. The commodification of labour.


What they sell are sexual services; they sell their time, exactly as every other worker does, the main difference being that most workers sell their time to capital, which uses it to build commodities and then sell those in the markets, while many prostitutes sell their time directly to the final consumer. And, as the European nobility once proclaimed, nulle terre sans seigneur, no land without a lord, capital nowadays proclaims, no purchase without capital, no labour without capital, no worker without a boss!
Again your model seems to suddenly be the self-employed prostitute, this skews your perception.


Do you really don't see any problem with "statistics" that claim that prostitutes are 18 times more likely to be murdered than other women - but 40 times more likely to die of all causes? What other causes, in your unfuzzy opinion, are killing prostitutes at a rate more than 40 times than they kill other women?

Plenty. Diseases, suicides, overdoses. Or are you saying being murdered is now suddenly the only way to die?


Think, man.

Luís Henrique
Likewise.

[Crux]

Here are actual statistics - not inventions of scholars with an ax to grind:

Mortality in the United States (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf) (US Census Bureau)
Crime in the United States (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/persons-arrested) (FBI)

The total mortality rate for women in the US is 787 per 100,000 per year - or 0.787%. 40 times that is 31.48%. So, according to your "actual statistics", that you refuse to think about, almost one in each three prostitutes would die each year in the United States. To compare, the estimate rate for chattel slaves in agricultural labour was one in seven: the situation of modern prostitutes would be more than twice worse than that of 19th century slaves.

And how would a trade that loses 31.48% of its members each year (and that just to death, not counting people who just leave it) reproduce itself? By your "actual statistics", ie, "statistics" attributed to one Chris Grussendorf that is impossible to actually find in the internet, prostitution would end by itself, by sheer lack of prostitutes, in a decade or so.

Those "statistics" are fabrications, and not even sophisticated ones. And one should understand what a given set of "statistical data" actually means, before blindly believing them. Not to talk about quoting them in public.

Luís Henrique
Right. As usual you have problem with the statistics says therefore it must be fabricated. Hilarious.
I am still trying to locate the exact original piece but it comes from, which incidentally holds other pieces that should interest you, or at least interest you to dismiss out of hand since they don't conform to your "intuition": http://www.catwinternational.org/Resources/Research

As well as being widely cited by other organizations that, unlike your intuition, actually work with prostitutes.

The stats they cite incidentally also shows why I am completely opposed to illegalization of prostitutes themselves. But of course in your world it's still basically the same.

[Luís Henrique]

Right. As usual you have problem with the statistics says therefore it must be fabricated. Hilarious.

Hilarious is a "statistic" that implies that 30 % of a given group of humans die each year.

Seriously, can't you put your brains to work, and realise it is physically impossible?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Plenty. Diseases, suicides, overdoses. Or are you saying being murdered is now suddenly the only way to die?

OK, genius.

The most important cause of death among women in the United States is major cardiovascular disease; it has to do with 32.09% of deaths of women. Are you saying that prostitutes are 40 times more prone to die of major cardiovascular disease than other women? And why?

The second most important cause of death among women in the US is malignant neoplasy. Maybe prostitutes are more prone to cancer of ovaries or uterus, but why would they be so to other kinds of cancer? Malignant neoplasms, uterus and ovarius excluded, are responsible for 19.97% of deaths of women. Are you saying that prostitutes die of cancer 40 times more than other women?

The third most important cause of death is a residual category, "all other diseases" (12.97%). The fourth is chronic lower respiratory diseases (5,87%). As with the two first, there is absolutely no reason to think they affect prostitutes more than other women, unless you believe in prudish and revengeful God who is punishing them for being prostitutes.

The fifth most common cause of death in women is Alzheimer (4,70%) - and here the opposite must be true: Alzheimer is a disease of old people, so it must affect prostitutes - at least if your Holy Statistics hold true - much less than other women.

The sixth most important cause of death among women are accidents (3.64%). Any reason prostitutes should suffer more accidents than other women? The seventh most common cause of death is diabetes mellitus (2.72%). How would prostitution increase the chance of anyone dying of diabetes? The eight is influenza and pneumonia (2.14%) - that may marginally affect prostitutes, especially street prostitutes, with all that time they spend in the open, more than other women. But 40 times more?

The ninth is nephritis (2.07%); the tenth, another residual category (1.80%); the eleventh, septicemia (1.52%). Up to here, it is absolutely unreasonable to believe prostitutes die 40 times more than other women of any of those causes. And all of them, summed up, make more than 89% of the total deaths of women in the United States.

All other categories of death are responsible for quite small percents of deaths of women. Of them, I can see ovary and uterus malignant neoplasms (2.18%), drug induced deaths (1.3%), suicide (0.65%), alcohol induced deaths (0,54%), conditions originating from the perinatal period (0.43%), homicide (0.28%), viral hepatitis (0.20%), HIV (0.18%), malnutrition (0.14%), pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium (0.07%), inflammatory diseases of female pelvic organs (0,01%), other nutritional deficiencies (0,01%), legal execution, and syphillis (less than 0.01% each), as probably affecting prostitutes than other women. Or as being easily constructed as affecting prostitutes more than other women. But we have ruled out homicide, which, in your fantastic "statistics" affects prostitutes 16 - and so much less that 40 - times than other women, and all the others sum up 6.08% of all deaths of women; they are relatively infrequent causes of death.

So, these relatively infrequent causes of death would have to affect prostitutes much more than 40 times more than other women - hundreds, perhaps thousands, times more. So how do you explain that, genius? By bringing up more fake, completely unreliable "statistics"?

Seriously, sit down and put your brains to work, see if you can make the supposed 'data' match any reasonable explanation of how, why, and how much prostitutes and women in general die.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Found actual research about mortality of prostitutes:

Mortality in a Long-term Open Cohort of Prostitute Women (http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/159/8/778.full)

It is a study in Colorado Springs, so it may not be representative of the situation of prostitutes in the United States as a whole, or of prostitutes worldwide. It confirms the murder rate you gave (SMR 17.7, which means prostitutes (in Colorado Springs) are 17.7 times more likely to be murdered than other women).

The SMR for all causes of death, evidently, albeit very high, is much lower than 17.7, not to talk about 40. It is 5.9 for periods of active prostitution only, and 1.9 in general. So prostitutes are six - not forty - times more likely to die than other women when active in the trade. Indeed the study identifies violence and drugs as by far the main contributors to the difference in the mortality rates (prostitutes are six times more prone to dying than other women basically because they are eighteen times more prone to be murdered and also more prone to die of overdose).

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

I am still trying to locate the exact original piece but it comes from, which incidentally holds other pieces that should interest you, or at least interest you to dismiss out of hand since they don't conform to your "intuition": http://www.catwinternational.org/Resources/Research

It's a site with a long list of links, most of which seem to link to abolitionist propaganda. A few sound like actual research, and probably some link to good, sound scientific research. But, of course, even good sound scientific research can be misused for ends of propaganda, or interpreted in several different ways (for instance, prostitutes are 18 times more likely to be murdered than other women in the United States - and some will say this is because prostitution is inherently linked to violence, while others will argue that it is because of its illegal status in the US).

Don't tire yourself trying to find the source of the "40 times higher mortality" in the internet. This site (http://www.womenslaw.org/simple.php?sitemap_id=148) gives it as "No Humans Involved", by Chris Grussendorf. It even gives a link (http://www.catwinternational.org/factbook/usa2_prost.php) to it (not coincidentally, exactly from CAT international, the abolitionist network you have just linked to). The link is dead. There are no other links, functional or not, to "No Humans Involved", by Chris Grussendorf. "Chris Grussendorf" googles for a few personal sites, mostly Facebook, none of which seems to point to any abolitionist activist. "No Humans Involved" googles to questions about this infamous policiac slang, or to fictional works.

The origin of this "40 times" meme (yes, there are occasions even Richard Dawkins seems to get something right) is probably this blog, Alas, a Blog (http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2012/05/12/prostitutes-in-the-us-are-42-times-as-likely-to-be-murdered-as-the-average-american/). Here is its "reasoning":


In early 2009, the FBI announced the Highway Serial Killings Initiative, focused on killers who choose their victims and dump their bodies along highways. Some of the victims are hitchhikers and stranded motorists, but most are truck stop prostitutes. In the 1980s, the FBI was accused of inflating the numbers of serial homicides, fomenting a serial killer “panic,” so they are careful not to overstate their case today. But recent studies suggest that the numbers of serial murder victims have continually been underestimated—even during the serial murder “panic.” The undercounting is because the vast majority of victims have always been prostitutes—as many as 75% according to one scholar. Research into prostitute mortality suggests that the homicide rate for prostitutes is 229 out of every 100,000. The U.S. national average is five.

(Emphasys in the original)

And so it divides 229 by five and arrives at forty-something. But the blogger has had to recognise that this is false:


UPDATE: I definitely can’t stand by the statistic I quoted in this post; it’s way too high, it seems. See the discussion in the comments for details.

Which shows that 43.71% of the people who end with their foot in their mouth do it by fundamentally misreading statistics. And that 25,43% of viral memes in the internet are based on sexy numbers. And that 72.32% of leftists have poor reading comprehension abilities. And that 100% of people can just make up figures, call them "statistics", post them in the internet, and get "OMG that's awful, someone do something!" responses from 93.56% of readers.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

And speaking of theory...a service is also a commodity. This is marxism ABC. The commodification of labour.

Mkay, the next time I hire a lawyer I want him packed in fancy wrapping paper, please.

Or should we make hiring a lawyer illegal because it commodifies the poor thing?

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

Oh you found a blog. *clapclapclap* Meanwhile: http://web.archive.org/web/20120625153934/http://www.catwinternational.org/factbook/usa2_prost.php

There's plenty of other statistics that might complicate your own position a fair bit. No doubt you'll be interested in denying them as well, on the basis of being unable to locate "No Humans Involved". Furthermore conservative estimates put the number of heroin or cocaine addicts at around 40%, some putting the number as high as 75% of all prostitutes in the U.S. But never mind all that eh? You've obviously made up your mind long before this anyway.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I know several sex workers pretty well - none of them have hard drug problems. None of them are in favour of criminalization. Food for thought.

[I <3 short shorts]

We dearly need feminism, I mean women can marry you have a child, divorce you not having worked a day in her life, take half your shit and get custody of child, you then have to pay her a huge percentage of your wage until she remarries based on what you were making at the time, so if you get a lower paying job have fun living on the breadline paying your ex wife while she, your kid you never see and her boyfriend, whom she won't marry because she will lose the paychecks sleep in house you pay rent for.

SAVE TEH FEMALEZ... SOMEBODY SAVE TEH FEMALEZ!!!!


Seriously the fact people feel cowed into saying them support feminism is so funny, half the people on here spouting liberal nonsense only do it for fear of the overly vocal i will ahve my opinion rammed down your throat student women shanking them via interwebs.

[TheOneWhoKnocks]

We dearly need feminism, I mean women can marry you have a child, divorce you not having worked a day in her life, take half your shit and get custody of child, you then have to pay her a huge percentage of your wage until she remarries based on what you were making at the time, so if you get a lower paying job have fun living on the breadline paying your ex wife while she, your kid you never see and her boyfriend, whom she won't marry because she will lose the paychecks sleep in house you pay rent for.

SAVE TEH FEMALEZ... SOMEBODY SAVE TEH FEMALEZ!!!!


Seriously the fact people feel cowed into saying them support feminism is so funny, half the people on here spouting liberal nonsense only do it for fear of the overly vocal i will ahve my opinion rammed down your throat student women shanking them via interwebs.
How is this idiot not banned?

[I <3 short shorts]

Wow someone disagrees with feminism. BAN THEM.

YAAAAAAY SOCIALISTS.


Seriously is this how you act in real life. just never let anyone have a differing opinion. You seem like you just read a load of stuff and now never even let opposing ideas in your head. Basically you never think for yourself and if some disagrees shut them up.

Tell me, how can i join the movement and when will we ban stand up comedy, jazz and miniskirts?

[I <3 short shorts]

How is this idiot not banned?

So what I said above does not happen? Or it does but it does not support your copy and paste style outrage?

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Misogyny is not "An opinion" - it's violently reactionary ideology. And, to be totally clear, antifeminism is misogyny. Further, given the global proletariat is disproportionately women and children, antifeminism is antiworking class, and anticommunist.

Augh. Typing on a phone. The worst.

[DancingEmma]

Seriously is this how you act in real life. just never let anyone have a differing opinion. You seem like you just read a load of stuff and now never even let opposing ideas in your head. Basically you never think for yourself and if some disagrees shut them up.

I think anti-feminists are obnoxious and full of shit. I have no big problem with them having different opinions than me and I don't try to shut them up. Basically, in real life, I just let them think as they will and personally avoid being around them, since they give me the creeps, and I don't enjoy their company.

[I <3 short shorts]

how is what I said mysogeny, you can't just label someone mysogenist to win by default. Also yes it is. Anything you believe is your opinion. unless you believe in censorship for those you disagree with.

Also marx, bakunin, engels were mysogenist, were they not communists/anarchists? Stop the hyperbole because its sad.

Also the thing i posted happens all the time and women are ridiculously over represented in divorce and child custody and are hardly second class citizens. Unless we are talking about the third world female population, you know who in 2001 and 2003 the first world feminist groups nearly all abandoned and used to justify imperialism.

I am against feminism. I am respectful and loving to my partner. Anti bullshit political ideology does not mean i hate women. How much are those doll strawmen you are selling, do you make lots of them?

[DancingEmma]

Also the thing i posted happens all the time and women are ridiculously over represented in divorce and child custody and are hardly second class citizens

I guess that's why women earn less money than men, experience higher levels of poverty, are less represented in high-level government and corporate positions, are more likely to be raped, are more likely to be depressed, are more likely to have suicidal thoughts and behavior, aren't allowed power over our own bodies due to restrictive abortion laws, and so on. Clearly we are already 100% equal to men in the West and have probably become even more privileged than them.

[#FF0000]

Wow someone disagrees with feminism. BAN THEM.

You didn't say anything of substance tho. You just made up a hypothetical situation and insisted "this happens and if you're a feminist you think this is good". There's nothing to disagree with -- only air.


Also the thing i posted happens all the time and women are ridiculously over represented in divorce and child custody and are hardly second class citizens.

Custody is decided outside of court in a little more of 50% of cases, between the two parties and often without a mediator.


Unless we are talking about the third world female population, you know who in 2001 and 2003 the first world feminist groups nearly all abandoned and used to justify imperialism.

There's more to feminism than liberal feminism.

((Posted for the benefit of dummies who come into this in the future))

[Luís Henrique]

Oh you found a blog. *clapclapclap* Meanwhile: http://web.archive.org/web/20120625153934/http://www.catwinternational.org/factbook/usa2_prost.php

Where is there even any difference between this link and the ones you posted before? I mean, besides the ridiculous hailing of Ms. Clinton?

You don't need to post more of those "statistics"; you need to explain us how do they work, and how are they compatible with reality.

And, oh, that's not even "more of the same"; it is actually only the same CATW site, now in new layout. Aren't you even paying attention to what you are doing any more?

As I have shown, and you cannot even dispute anymore, the ridiculous figure of prostitutes having a mortality rate 40 times higher than women in general is false. It is six times higher than the mortality rate of women on their own age groups. (It's about half the mortality rate of women in general, because prostitutes are broadly speaking concentrated in the younger groups of the population.)

But, yes, I found a blog, and made an assertive that is quite probably false - that that blog is the origin of the "forty times higher rate of mortality" ridiculous myth. It is more likely that it is rooted in a Canadian report of 1985 on the need to change the laws on prostitution. However, that figure, which was quite certainly as false then in Canada as now everywhere else, is used by the "expert" that brought it to the commission (and isn't actually cited anywhere in the conclusions) to exactly... argue for the decriminalisation of prostitution.


There's plenty of other statistics that might complicate your own position a fair bit. No doubt you'll be interested in denying them as well, on the basis of being unable to locate "No Humans Involved". Furthermore conservative estimates put the number of heroin or cocaine addicts at around 40%, some putting the number as high as 75% of all prostitutes in the U.S. But never mind all that eh? You've obviously made up your mind long before this anyway.

Well...

Here in Brazil the percent of prostitutes addicted to heroin is probably zero. Know why? Because heroin is a quite rare drug here.

But to the substance. Of course, there is a huge problem with "statistics" that cannot decide between 40% and 75%. If it is anything around 75%, the methodology of a survey that finds 40% is deeply flawed. And conversely. Though it is quite more probable that both are deeply flawed. Where do they find such data? In police files, probably. If so, even ignoring the deep prejudice policemen nurture for prostitutes, and their well know habit of setting up people on drug issues, such statistics would tell us that x % of prostitutes that were arrested by police are drug addicts. And as the police targets drug addicts as much, or almost as much, as prostitutes, then this strongly biases the "statistics". After all, some 80,000 women are arrested each year as prostitutes in the US. But it is estimated that there are 1,000,000 prostitutes in the US. And the prostitutes that get systematically arrested (and otherwise bullied and harrassed by the police) are the most fragile of all.

But let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that your fabricated and flawed "statistics" were true. Well, in that case you would have demonstrated a correlation between drug addiction and prostitution. But what does that mean? That prostitution causes drug addiction? That drug addiction causes prostitution? That they both have a common cause (poverty, perhaps, or alienation, or pre-extant psychological disorders)? Or that prostitution merely co-occurs with other factors (illegality, most obviously) that are the actual cause of drug addiction? Statistics cannot answer such questions (indeed, statistics rarely answer any questions, especially if you don't know what questions to ask). And so you cannot really base an abolitionist position on such "statistics". If the causal chain is that drug addiction leads to prostitution (which seems way more logical, as a drug addiction imposes heavy financial burdens on people who have not the means to bear them, or lose such means due to the drug addiction, and prostitution allows people a level of income that bears little relation to their skills, talents, or education) then the problem is drug addiction, not prostitution, and you might like to change your position from abolition of prostitution to abolition of drug consumption. Or do you think a drug addiction can be cured by leaving prostitution? If the causal chain is that poverty leads both to prostitution and drug addiction, then you might prefer to stand for the eradication of poverty - or do you really believe that people will get out of poverty if they just quit prostitution?

So, yes. Never mind what figures you bring up concerning how many prostitutes in the US are drug addicts, you won't impress me. Indeed, the higher the figure, the less impressed I will be, for its stench of fabrication or bias will be proportionally - or more than proportionally, perhaps - more intense. If you want to impress me - or rather any people whose intellectual abilities are above the "OMG that's awful" level - you need arguments, not statistics, and precisely arguments that show how prostitution is the cause, not the consequence - of drug abuse, of misery, of lack of access to basic human rights, of whatever else your "statistics" correlate to prostitution.

And it is, I think, very difficult to find arguments of that kind that can sway people, and especially people who have even a basic notion of Marxism, because the intrinsic logic of Marxism is that epiphenomena such as prostitution are quite superficial symptoms of much deeper problems, rooted in the way wealth is produced and distributed in a capitalist society, and in the way the work force is reproduced in a society dominated by patriarchy. Especially if you labour from the standpoint that staring at "statistics" should suppress our critical capabilities. Most especially when you indeed suppress your critical capabilities when staring at statistics to the point you can't realise something like "a mortality rate 40 times higher than that of the general population" smells outdated fish when referring to professional groups.

So bring me some actual arguments, not fishy "statistics" that cannot be sourced, or when sourced, reveal their bias. What kind of logic leads you into the absurd belief that prostitution is anything more profound than a mere symptom of actual problems?

Meanwhile, here are the opinions of the victims of the policies you support:

Address by Rosinha Sambo to the Taipei Sex Worker Conference 2001 on the Situation of Sex Workers in Sweden (http://www.bayswan.org/swed/rosswed.html)

Sexworkers Critique of Swedish Prostitution policy (http://www.petraostergren.com/pages.aspx?r_id=40716)

A Swedish sexworker on the criminalization of clients (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D7nOh57-I8&feature=player_embedded)

They especially put the lie to the idea that the Swedish law does not criminalise prostitutes as such. The Swedish law criminalises owners of locations where prostitution takes place as pimps. And so, if the owner of an apartment comes to know that the person who hires his apartment is a prostitute, s/he is compelled to evict her, on the penalty of becoming a target for prosecution as an exploiter of prostitution him or herself. And so a direct effect of the Swedish law is that they target prostitutes for eviction (no wonder that by your "statistics" 483.17% of prostitutes are homeless, is it?) The only difference between this and criminalisation is that it doesn't even require due process of law and the bothersome need to listen to a prostitute's lawyer in court.

That's the wonder you support, you, and now, apparently, Hillary Clinton.

Luís Henrique

[Crux]

The idea that Petra Östergren (working with a sample group of 20), or indeed those other two people you've quoted represent sex worker's in general is of course false. Pye Jacobsson , surprise surprise, is a co-owner of a strip club. Or was until last year when it got into the papers.

I don't feel compelled to respond to your straw men arguments. Sorry.

[Luís Henrique]

The idea that Petra Östergren (working with a sample group of 20), or indeed those other two people you've quoted represent sex worker's in general is of course false. Pye Jacobsson , surprise surprise, is a co-owner of a strip club. Or was until last year when it got into the papers.

Well, your "statistics" are forged by people who don't work with any prostitutes at all, much less 20, or take their figures from the police or shelters and don't bother to qualify the figures for the fact that they are dealing with the most vulnerable lot of prostitutes. It's like pretending to calculate the rate of alcoholism among sailors by looking on statistics of detox clinics or police files on public disturbance.

If Pye Jacobsson is indeed a co-owner of a strip club, then this means that you don't know how to counter the arguments of a strip club owner other than by pointing the fact that she is a strip club owner.


I don't feel compelled to respond to your straw men arguments. Sorry.

And, of course, if you are not able to counter the arguments of a strip club owner, it is quite unlikely that you can't counter the arguments of anyone with a passable knowledge of Marxist theory, which is what you mean by the quote above.

But enough. I can't be swayed by forged or decontextualised statistics, you cannot be swayed by rational arguments, so let's move elsewhere, for this apparently can only be a dialogue between deaf people.

Luís Henrique