A conversation with an 'Anarcho-capitalist'

[Organic Revolution]

Reads from bottom to top.

No, not exactly. Capitalism while being a system of commerce, is also a system of exploitation. Capitalism is inherently economically exploitative, so who's to say its not sexually and gender exploitative. Yes, it is people who decide what they like, but you have to remember the bombardment during everyday life of advertisements, and after years and years (or months and months) of this constant bombardment of half naked women, you can begin to view women as a magazine ad, seeing them as only an object that is here to serve men hand and foot, and ready to have sex whenever they want.

One percent of teen girls in the us fall victim to anorexia nervosa, which by factual information is brought on by media standards of beauty, and the pursuit of body perfection set forth by advertisers, which find there incentive from capitalism, and consumer society.

So, capitalism is to blame, because this means exchange has turned into a way of life, and this way of life is detrimental to all but the select few upper class.


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No Capitalism is a system of a commerce. The actions of people inside the system of capitalism is just that. The actions of people. Perhaps people objectify women, but people have ALWAYS objectified women. That's not something that's been strictly capitalistic. Do I see pictures of lustful, unreal women? Of course I do. But even if capitalism didn't exist, people would still doubtlessly try to create these images, because they're pleasing to look at. Perhaps there are marketing agents out there who employ these images to try to sell a product, but that's because it gets peoples attention. People clearly WANT to see half naked women, or else no one would use that marketing strategy. You can't go blaming one businessman for every man's sins.


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Well, look into it. Capitalism is a system of the so-called 'free market'. advertisements by these giant corporations objectify women, thereby being a second, or first party to the commodifaction of women. Or are you not bombarded with images of half naked women staring at you with 'lustful' eyes everyday when you look around the city, or on the TV or in a magazine?

----------------- Original Message -----------------
From: Removed
Date: Jun 4, 2007 6:41 PM


What? I don't really understand what capitalism as a system has to do with objectifying women. It's just a system. It has no sovereign power outside of the actions of the individuals within it. It's not like capitalism can rape anyone. That's like saying day dreams can rape people.

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Removed
Date: Jun 4, 2007 10:01 PM


We are in danger of losing our selves, if we haven't already. The commodification of women in the capitalist economy has affected us to such an extent where raping a woman is a common place in our society. Everyday we are bombarded with messages of standards of physical beauty standards that are so impossible to achieve the some people turn to anorexia and other eating disorders. Take back your life, smash capitalism.

[LSD]

We are in danger of losing our selves, if we haven't already. The commodification of women in the capitalist economy has affected us to such an extent where raping a woman is a common place in our society.

I'm sorry but that's just patently false. Rape is far less common now than at almost any other point in human history. Certainly popular understanding of rape and issues of sexual consent has never been higher.

Indeed if anything, capitalism has brought with it a marked decrease in the oppression of women, sexually and otherwise. That's not because capitalism is "good", mind you, but merely because the liberal individualistic political paradigm on which it is founded lends itself towards "equality before the law" irrespective of gender.

It's also, of course, because industrialization has, to a large extent, shaken up the traditional patriarchal family structure and pushed more and more women into the work force, giving them their own economic powerbase and, for the first time, a real socioeconomic position outside of the private sphere of the secluded home.

That's not the end of the story, of course, and there is undoubtable much more work to be done before patriarchal oppression is eliminated entirely. But it is simply wrong to assert that capitalism introduced sexism or sexual objectification whole cloth; both preceded the bourgeois era by millenia.


you have to remember the bombardment during everyday life of advertisements, and after years and years (or months and months) of this constant bombardment of half naked women, you can begin to view women as a magazine ad, seeing them as only an object that is here to serve men hand and foot, and ready to have sex whenever they want.

And your alternative is what? Sexual repression?

Yeah, capitalism commodifies sex, capitalism commodifies everything. But advertisers only use sexually charged imagery because people already have a natural attraction to them.

If we didn't like looking at half-naked pictures in the first place, no one would be using them to try and sell us crap.

You're looking at this whole issue backwards, and you're making a moral issue out of something that really shouldn't be a political problem.

People have been objectifying each other for as long as we've been people. And far from being a catalyst to sexual violence or anything else, the reality is that its in those cultures where sexuality is repressed that women tend to have the fewest rights.

I mean do you really think it's a coincidence that the explosion of open capitalist "objectification" coincides exactly with the era of the women's rights movement?

[Organic Revolution]

I'm sorry but that's just patently false. Rape is far less common now than at almost any other point in human history. Certainly popular understanding of rape and issues of sexual consent has never been higher.

* Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.
* One in six American women are victims of sexual assault, and one in 33 men.
* In 2004-2005, there were an average annual 200,780 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.
* About 44% of rape victims are under age 18, and 80% are under age 30.
* Since 1993, rape/sexual assault has fallen by over 69%.

But with that steady decline we look at this graph, http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q174/bakunin1/reportedchart05.gif

Rape isn't necessarily uncommon, its not reported because it is frowned upon in our society.


Indeed if anything, capitalism has brought with it a marked decrease in the oppression of women, sexually and otherwise. That's not because capitalism is "good", mind you, but merely because the liberal individualistic political paradigm on which it is founded lends itself towards "equality before the law" irrespective of gender.

Wrong again I'm sorry to say. Capitalism has created a large increase of the oppression of women however hidden it may be. Women are aloud to be overly sexual, but nothing else.

[BobKKKindle$]

I do find myself agreeing with the Capitalist, sorry. The idea that women can only be valued in terms of their potential to satisfy the sexual desires of men is part of the broader female gender role, and whilst Capitalists may use this role in advertising to try and assign an emotional and sexual desire to their commodities, it is unfair to say that Capitalism, as an economic system, is responsible for creating these gender roles - as LSD said, the objectification of women has existed for a long time.

Your comments are also centered on the western world - the exact character of womens' opression differs depending on culture and tradition - it is wrong, for example, to assume that women only have a sexual role in Islamic countries where womens' social function is often defined in terms of religion.


Wrong again I'm sorry to say. Capitalism has created a large increase of the oppression of women however hidden it may be. Women are aloud to be overly sexual, but nothing else.

I think this is a very generalised and ignorant comment because you have treated 'women' as a single group within which there is no social or economic variation. We should always evaluate secondary antagonisms such as sex and 'race' within the framework of a class-based analysis. Working class women are exploited and repressed to a far greater extent than richer women and only the former are of real concern for us, as the latter are still subject to their class interests.

[LSD]

Rape isn't necessarily uncommon, its not reported because it is frowned upon in our society.

Without question, but consider much more frowned upon it was prior to capitalism. Consider how much more socially ruinous reporting a rape was.

Your pie chart -- which I'm taking on faith here -- contends that almost half of all rapes are presently reported. And while that is a miserably low figure, I would point out that that it almost certainly the highest that figure has ever been.

Your problem is that you have no conception of just how bad things used to be and so you're fantasizing about a "golden age" prior to the "corruption" of capitalism.

Sorry, but the real world just doesn't work like that.


Wrong again I'm sorry to say. Capitalism has created a large increase of the oppression of women however hidden it may be.

And yet you and I are discussing the issue right now, just like it's discussed routinely in television programs, newspapers, and universities all around the world.

And with, I'd wager, not much effort on your part, you were able to dig up all kinds of statiscs on the effects and manifestations of sexism. You were even able to find a nice shiny pie chart (in colour too!) which shows just how tragically unreported sexual assault is.

How long do you suppose it would have taken you to find that same chart fifty years ago? How about a hundred? How about five hundred?

No need guessing, I can tell you the answer right now, you wouldn't have.

'Cause that graph? And all the millions of statistics and articles and studies? They didn't exist prior to the capitalist "exploitation" you so lament.

There was no "women's studies" in pre-capitalist societies, there certainly was no feminist movement to speak of. And when the occasional women dared to challenge their overwhelming subjugation, they were more than likely beaten for their trouble.

No one is denying that sexism persists, well almost no one, but to assert that capitalism has made it worse is simply not true.

There's a lot that you can blame capitalism for, but aggrevating patriarchy just isn't on that list. 'Cause whatever your thoughts on the liberal political paradigm, it is undeniably individualistic.

Again, do you really think that it is a coincidence that around the world, female empowerment correlates so strongly with economic development? Or that the women's rights movement only started in earnest after the advent of industrial capitalism?

Women have been oppressed on this planet for thousands of years, and yet it wasn't until the nineteenth century, until the introduction of liberal enlightenment politics and industrial production and mass communication that women started to really fight back.

You claim that women are only "aloud (sic) to be overtly sexual, and nothing else"; I would suggest that you try telling that to the millions of female activists and authors and journalists and professors who spend their time studying exactly this issue.

See how they react to the proposal that they are "sexual and nothing else", or that they'd be better off living a thousand years ago, before the notion of civil equality for women was even imagined.

Seriously, go ahead. I'll wait.

It might just do you some good to see how ruinously wrong you are on this issue.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

LSD, I do not believe that anyone suggested that just because capitalism is bad, previous modes of production must have been better. It is the same thing with women's social roles as it is with everything else. Marx himself talked extensively about the progressive role of the bourgeoisie in smashing feudal institutions, developing the forces of production, and so on. Yes, of course capitalism is better than feudalism, both in the amount of wealth it produces and the social roles it ascribes to women.

But "better than feudalism" isn't good enough. The working class is still impoverished and exploited, and women are still degraded and objectified. Capitalism did not invent sexism, of course, but it perpetuates sexism.

You are sounding dangerously similar to capitalists who say that we should shut up about the exploitation of workers because at least they don't have to work 12 hour shifts any more. When you are enslaved, the fact that your situation is slowly improving does not change the fact that you are still enslaved. Only social democrats feel satisfied with the crumbs that fall from the capitalist table.

[LSD]

But "better than feudalism" isn't good enough.

No one suggested that it is, but OR did more than claim that capitalism is flawed or insufficient, he claimed that it is responsible for sexism and that sexism is caused by capitalism.

Specifically he asserted that,

Originally posted by Organic Revolution+--> (Organic Revolution)The commodification of women in the capitalist economy has affected us to such an extent where raping a woman is a common place in our society.[/b]

Orgnic Revolution
So, capitalism is to blame [for the exploitation for women]

Again, there is a great many things about capitalism which can and should be condemned. But "causing sexism" is not one of them!

[Organic Revolution]

Again, there is a great many things about capitalism which can and should be condemned. But "causing sexism" is not one of them!

I never said that capitalism created sexism, I'm not a brain dead moron, but to assert that capitalism doesn't cause sexism is an outright falsity. Ask a women what they think about rap videos glorifying only the body of a women, or about advertisers turning women into a sex object. Of course capitalism is better on the exploitation and demeaning of women, but it is not good, Its still not ok, and its not something we should say is ok, or non-existent.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I think we're saying the same things with different words here. Like I said, capitalism did not create sexism, but capitalism perpetuates sexism.

[LSD]

but to assert that capitalism doesn't cause sexism is an outright falsity.

Except it doesn't.

Oh, sure capitalism exploits sexism to make a buck just like it exploits racism and homophobia and religion and all manner of superstition and prejudice.

But "cause sexism? No. Again, capitalism is by it's nature gender-neutral, the only exploitation that capitalism requires is the exploitation of the worker. Everything else is ...flexible.

And as for rap videos and the like, again, they may not be pretty, but they're a hell of a lot better than anything that's come before. And if you're contending that absent other social changes, a post-capitalist society would not produce similar imagery, you're just deluding yourself.

Sexist imagery comes out of sexist culture, not the "market". The reason that we don't see black-face comedies anymore isn't that the "market" has changed but that the social context in which that "market" operates has.

Similarly, were our society no longer patriarchal, we would be seeing different sorts of music videos. But our economy would be no less capitalistic.


I never said that capitalism created sexism

Not in those exact words, but you did assert that "the commodification of women in the capitalist economy has affected us to such an extent where raping a woman is a common place in our society", the clear implication being that absent such "commodification", rape would be less common.

The reality, however, is that rates of rape have never been lower and consciousness of sexual assault has never been higher.

None of this is to say that capitalism does not routinely abuse sexist mores to pursue its own profit motive nor that we should not do all we can to fight both capitalism and sexism.

But ending capitalism will not end sexism and ending sexism will not end capitalism, and if we're going to wage this war effectively it is essential that we remember that,.

As this thread is begining to vear into questions of sexist manifesations under capitalism, I would refer you to this thread (http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=66600) which I think expands on this issue more thoroughly.

[People's Councillor]

Originally posted by Organic [email protected] 05, 2007 05:05 pm
Perhaps people objectify women, but people have ALWAYS objectified women.
Immediately, this person has lost all credibility. This sort of argument, invoking "nature" or "things have always been this way" is a tremendous cop-out. It frees the person saying it from trying to prove anything beyond the fact that people exist.

[Ultra-Violence]

Immediately, this person has lost all credibility. This sort of argument, invoking "nature" or "things have always been this way" is a tremendous cop-out. It frees the person saying it from trying to prove anything beyond the fact that people exist.

I hate these fucking arguements myself its a bunch of shit.......for example the indegiounos people of the americas had women in positions of power they were respected and seen as valuble amd important people and they didnt have to take abuse form men or stay in relationships in wich they didnt want to be in they could leave whenever they felt like it PRE-COLONIZATION time though

[bretty]

Agreed. There were matriarchal societies such as indigenous cultures in North America pre-colonization so i'd disagree with this quote:


Women have been oppressed on this planet for thousands of years, and yet it wasn't until the nineteenth century, until the introduction of liberal enlightenment politics and industrial production and mass communication that women started to really fight back.

There were feminists before the 19th century. Such as Mary Wollstonecraft who is very famous for being a feminist and married to an anarchist. Women have been oppressed yes, but I disagree with the part about them not fighting back until enlightenment politics and industrial production. There were actually feminists before even the 18th century if you research women's studies.

[People's Councillor]

Olympe de Gouges, anyone?

[Black Dagger]

Originally posted by bretty
Agreed. There were matriarchal societies such as indigenous cultures in North America pre-colonization so i'd disagree with this quote:

What prove of this is there? As far as i know, there is no historical evidence which proves that a matriarchy has ever existed.

The closest thing to 'matriarchy' in recorded history are matrilineal and matrifocal societies, but these are not examples of 'matriarchies,' they were not inversions of patriarchy where men were subordinated etc., indeed they were usually fairly egalitarian.

[bretty]

Originally posted by bleeding gums malatesta+June 14, 2007 02:49 pm--> (bleeding gums malatesta @ June 14, 2007 02:49 pm)
bretty
Agreed. There were matriarchal societies such as indigenous cultures in North America pre-colonization so i'd disagree with this quote:

What prove of this is there? As far as i know, there is no historical evidence which proves that a matriarchy has ever existed.

The closest thing to 'matriarchy' in recorded history are matrilineal and matrifocal societies, but these are not examples of 'matriarchies,' they were not inversions of patriarchy where men were subordinated etc., indeed they were usually fairly egalitarian. [/b]
Although there were parts of the indigenous culture that were matriarchal, you are right a better word for it is egalitarian or matrilineal/matrifocal.