I think I like the original better

Racist? Slut-shaming? How about not even original?

Contrast this radfem-favorite cartoon by Elena Steier with Charles Crumb's infamous "Famous Artists Talent Test" entry (background here (forward to 1:35:45)):

Seven Songs for Summer

Tagged by God-Emperor of Rome, Renegade Evolution.

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring and summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

Probably leaning more toward pop and rock than usual, but as always, an eclectic mix:

Deeper and Deeper – Madonna:



(Had to feature the video on this one. Have I ever mentioned I really want to be Udo Kier when I grow up?)

Babooshka – Kate Bush

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey – Paul McCartney

Life Begins at the Hop – XTC

Call of the West – Wall of Voodoo

iNight – The Units

Well, All Right – Buddy Holly

Its late and I can't immediately thing of a full list of seven people who haven't been tagged already. I'll add this tomorrow.

But what about the johns? Some thoughts on a non-argument

Figleaf wrote a post earlier this week about the feminist debate on the ethics of sex work. While I'm sure he was trying to carve out some kind of feminist middle ground, I really think his argument here falls flat in a couple of places. The first, which is what I want to address here, is that he frames the ethics about commercial sex in terms of attitudes toward women that men who buy sex may or may not have. The second is that I think he comes up with a very clumsy "middle ground" feminism, which just doesn't hold together in terms of real world politics or logical consistency – that's worth another post in itself, and I'll address it separately.

First, I want to point to Snowdrop Explodes response to the "what about the johns?" argument at play in Figleaf's argument. I strongly agree with the points that SE makes, and, in fact this post started out as a reply I was going to post there. I found that I had enough to say about the topic that I wanted to post about it on my own blog.

First, in response to Figleaf's point about those of us on the pro sex-worker/sex positive side ignoring the argument made by the other side – actually, I recognize that the anti-"pornstitution" side centers a lot of their argument against prostitution and, especially, pornography around the theme of, "this is what it makes men think/do". I also happen to think its the most foolish set of arguments in the radfem arsenal and a big reason why I happen to disagree with that side of the aisle, and not a point I would wish to casually concede in the name of a false "moderation".

I think that the primary argument about whether or not its ethical to purchase sex is directly related to the agency of the seller. If the person selling whatever sexual service (anything from direct prostitution to acting in porn) is doing so of their own free will, and is fully conscious and able to consent to what they're doing, then I don't see any problem with buying sex (or sexual images) of that person. If that person is coerced in some way, or is otherwise in a situation where they're not able to give consent to what they're doing, then buying sex from them is definitely not OK. And obviously, this being the real world, there are some real grey areas between these two poles. Its really just a subset of the larger ethics of sexual consent, with the caveat that the consent given in a commercial sex transaction is conditional on monetary or other payment. (And actually, that hardly makes it any different from other situations of sexual consent, which usually is in some sense conditional, for example, preconditioned on truthful disclosure of one's STD status, whether one is sexually active with another party, future relationship intentions with that person, etc. Which is why many legal codes make it a crime to lie about STD status or commit outright fraud in order to gain sexual consent.)

Where Figleaf takes a wrong turn is with this argument:

Whereas some of the clients she scheduled escorts for may have been paragons of progressive pro-feminist enlightenment... the ones who've been outed, anyway, have been utter, thuggish, women-hating, woman-denigrating, woman-punishing, woman-curtailing, woman-as-commodity-purchasing, anti-feminist, skin to bone bastards who depended on the discretion of Palfrey and her employees to maintain their public positions as virtuous paragons advocating policies of chastity before marriage, fidelity within marriage, home-binding of wives, lower pay for women so they'd be obliged to *become* bound as wives, anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-HIV-treatment, and abstinence-only-promotion as the cure for all social and medical ills. So *if* one was inclined to be sympathetic towards the anti-prostitution position Palfrey's agency would be a pretty good argument for that position.

So some (maybe even many or most) clients/johns/porn viewers are outright hypocrites, and probably most fall pretty far short of what might be considered good pro-feminist allies. So what! How does this change anything about the overall ethics of sex work? Did buying sex turn Randall Tobias and the like into assholes, or were they that way already? I think the latter, quite clearly. (I also might also point out here that back before they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar, Randall Tobias and Elliot Spitzer were political allies of the prostitution abolitionist movement, something I see precious little acknowledgement of, for all the finger-pointing that's coming from that side of the aisle.)

What are men's motivations for going to prostitutes? There are a lot of reasons. Probably a big one is the chance to have sex with someone "out of your league", basically, someone younger and/or prettier than you might be able to hook up with otherwise in the non-commercial "sexual marketplace" (this was clearly Elliot Spitzer's motivation), or otherwise be able to hook up with a "type" of partner that might not travel in your social circles. Related to this, the desire to have a sexual experience that's outside one's regular orientation, such as a same-sex or BDSM experience. Other motivations would be to have truly anonymous sex, one where there's no relationship implicit after the paid encounter is over, or the desire to have sex right now, without even dealing with the rituals of finding a partner for casual sex. There's probably a bunch of other things I could add that I'm not thinking of at the moment (and I certainly could add a bunch more if I wanted to go into why men watch porn).

I do think that motivations like I've mentioned are a great deal more common than the one hypothesized by many feminists – that men buy sex simply to have absolute power over a woman and do things that no non-sex worker would reasonably consent to. (This being backed up by the basically laughable assertion that, apparently, any man can get casual sex easily if they treat women halfway decently, hence only really fucked-up men pay for sex.) There is a subset of sadistic johns who's motivation is to be able to treat a woman badly, and in some cases even do outright violence. Unlike many feminists, I do not think these psychopaths are anywhere near a majority of men who buy sex.

So, generally speaking, men who buy sex do so for reasons that aren't exactly noble, but aren't exactly harmful, either. And this is precisely why the issue about men's motivations are so secondary – if a woman is freely consenting to sell sex, why is that consent in any sense negated just because the buyer has less-than-noble motives? Conversely, if a sex worker isn't freely consenting, I don't think there's anything so redeeming about being able to buy sex one normally wouldn't have access to that would justify that lack of consent. This seems to me to be basic and I can't believe how much ink can be spilled on this topic and for this point to be missed so completely.

Figleaf further argues:

Unlike too many other people, though, I *also* have a problem with participation in a system that so directly reinforces the "no-sex" class paradigm that says *all* heterosexual sex is asymmetrical: women want only money, men want only sex, and everything else is just haggling over the price. Which is bullshit, of course, which is why the dominant paradigm itself is bullshit.

This, to me, is not that far off of the standard anti-porn argument that porn is harmful because it reinforces a harmful paradigm about gender, and may actually predispose men to sexual violence as a result. And, certainly, there are many radical feminists and prostitution abolitionists who extend that argument to say that the mere existence of prostitution does the same thing.

Now coming from Figleaf, this argument is a bit contradictory, since he's been known to argue, vehemently and often, that men are smarter than a horny squirrel, and are responsible for their behavior toward women. The above statement comes damn close to a "blame the sex industry" argument for men's bad behavior, responsibility for which should thoroughly be laid at the feet of the individual men exhibiting that behavior. Any man with half a brain who's not an outright sociopath should be able to figure out that just because there are women who are selling their charms, or giving it away, does not mean that one automatically can "get" sex from Random Woman X. If somebody thinks that, that's their own bullshit that they need to be called on, not the fault of some evil hidden message implicit in commercial sex. (And I say this even as somebody who thinks that humans are pretty animalistic when it comes to many things, sex especially.)

If there's any point I would concede to the anti-sex work side of the argument, it is that certainly there is a dark side to sex work, that sex work is not inherently "empowering" (whatever that means), and that abuse and coercion exist in that incredibly broad and non-monolithic entity known as "the sex industry". But what am I conceding by that argument? The idea that just because one supports consensual sex work, one therefore supports or excuses coercion is simply a straw argument. I can't think of any sex-poz writer who says everything in the sex industry is just rosy or that abuse or coercion in the sex industry is in any way acceptable.

But any point to concede on the utterly stupid "what does this do to men's attitudes toward women?!" line of argument – I don't think there's any "point" there to concede to.

Well, as a matter of fact, there is a such thing as "sex negative"

I just wanted to thank Lina for putting together this blog carnival and for inviting me to be part of it. On the general theme of sex positivity and its relationship to feminism, I have several, hopefully not-too-disconnected thoughts on the theme.

The term "sex-positive" itself has been the source of some rather unproductive debates lately. Overall, I like the fact that Lina chose the title "Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy", as its much more inclusive and speaks more to core values than "Carnival of Sex-Positive Feminists". At the same time, rejection of the phrase "sex-positive" because it "gets a lot of people's backs up" kind of gets my back up a bit. Not because I want everybody to embrace that label, or embrace labels at all, but because I really think that any movement has an inherent right to define its terms and present itself in whatever way its members wish to. Whether other people accept that framing is up to them.

The general argument against the term is that "sex-positive" and "pro-sex" axiomatically means the opposite of "sex-negative" and "anti-sex", and hence those who use such terms are being really big meanies by implying that the other party in the debate, most typically radical feminists, are anti-sex or sex-negative. Well, true, the term does frame the debate that way. However, this is true of many other political movements – in the abortion debate, the terms "pro-choice" and "pro-life" also have connotations about the other side and also manage to get people's backs up, but generally speaking, I don't see a lot of ink being spilled by either side of the abortion debate demanding that the other side cease and desist in using its self-designation because the other side is offended by it. Both self-designations are generally accepted by now and a more substantive (if still intractable) debate moves on.

The thing is, I don't feel that this is a particularly good reason to drop the term "sex positive", because there really is a such thing as sex-negativity. It is something that has deep roots in Western culture, and quite a few non-Western cultures as well, and continues to manifest itself in religious systems, political ideologies, and in other dominant institutions like law and medicine. And, yes, one of the places sex-negativity comes up is in feminism.

Natalia Antonova posted a rather interesting example of this, showing some rather similar-sounding sex-negative rhetoric from radfem blogger Twisty Faster and Russian Orthodox fundamentalist Dmitri Artemyev. The point is not, as some have taken Natalia's post, that there's some kind of weird collusion between radical feminist bloggers and the Russian far right, but rather that there are some deep-seated memes in the larger culture that express themselves in some decidedly different milieus.

While Twisty calls herself a "sex neutral feminist" who describes the sexual act as "on par with sneezing", there are some decidedly far more sex-negative strains out there. Foremost, of course, is Sheila Jeffreys, who really does seem to embody what many feminists dismiss as a non-existent caricature – she is unmitigatingly against any heterosexual sex as an "eroticization of power differences", but also has an extremely low opinion of lesbianism, autoeroticism, and orgasm itself, if such pleasure is derived from anything that remotely resembles heterosexual or power roles, or even the fantasy of such. In her book, The Spinster and her Enemies, Jeffreys proudly traces her intellectual heritage to the Victorian social purity movements of the first wave feminism. Lest you think Jeffreys is just obscure some bitter crank, she's actually a rather popular radical feminist author, not just in the radical feminist blogosphere, but in the mainstream press.

I could cite numerous other examples from the feminist blogosphere showing this mentality (well, OK, this one is pretty glaring), but I think the above will suffice. And while I think Jeffreys and her followers are an extreme and glaring example, I do think that there's more than a hint of this kind of sex-negativity even among liberal and "moderate" feminist bloggers who go into full-bore moralism mode when it comes to issues around prostitution and pornography.

My point here is not to pick on feminism as being a worse example of sex-negativity than the larger society. For all of the much-vaunted "permissiveness" of modern society, there is also a strong streak of sex-negativity still very much permeating it – its in the air we breathe, figuratively speaking, and its not terribly surprising that it emerges full force in some strains of feminism. A favorite theme of radical feminists is that we must "examine" how the larger society has influenced us. But, then, why should feminism itself be exempt from such examination and critique?

This, to me, is the reason why sex positivity, sexual freedom, sexual autonomy, or whatever you want to label it or not label it is so terribly necessary.

A Political Correctness FAQ

There's been a few debates that have come up in the feminist blogosphere lately that have come down to offense over the terminology that's being used and about knee-jerk reactions to that terminology. The two big offenders seem to be "politically correct" and, more, surprisingly, "sex-positive". Apparently, use of these terms in feminist discourse marks is a marker that one is anti-feminist or at least insufficiently respectful of the more easily-offended branches of feminism. (Although it should be pointed out that these easily-offended radfems are themselves merely setting up "strawsexpozzes" to knock down.)

I've been finding it useful to go back to the early literature to see what the debate was originally all about. This comes up in my discussion over on Trinity's blog in response to a very good post she made about sex-positivity.

On the topic of political correctness, I found a really great little essay in the 1984 sex-positive anthology Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality called "Politically Correct? Politically Incorrect?" by Muriel Dimen. The essay starts contains a Q/A about political correctness (what these days would be called a FAQ) that really gets to the root of the matter, without the accumulated baggage that later started piling up around the term. I think its a very useful read.

Question 1: How do you define politically correct?

Answer: Politically correct is an idea that emerges from the well-meaning attempt in social movements to bring the unsatisfactory present into line with the utopian future, in fact, to make the "revolution" happen. Although ideas about what is acceptable behavior develop in any political organization, left or right, the express phrase, politically correct, seems to be associated with the left. The phrase is charged, because the left, in its conception of itself, stands for freedom, yet finds itself in a contradictory situation: in order to realize its goal, it finds itself telling people how to behave and therefore interfering with their freedom.

Politically correct behavior, including invisible language and ideas as well as observable action, is that which adheres to a movement's morality and hastens its goals. The idea of politically correct grows naturally from moral judgments (which any political ideology or philosophy contains) that deem certain aspects of the present way of living bad. It is this moral evaluation that fuels visions of better ways of living and energizes attempts to realize them. In the light of the resulting politico-moral principles, certain behaviors and attitudes can come to seem not only "bad," because they are harmful to society or to people, but "wrong," because they hinder social transformation.

Question 2: What is politically correct?

Answer: I don't know: anything, including seeming opposites, can be correct in different groups, movements, or societies. The Talmud requires intercourse; the Shakers prohibited sexual activity; Marx, Engels and Freud celebrated (but did not practice) monogamy; Bohemianism advocates promiscuity and multiple sexualities, but disdains fidelity.

The ideology of political correctness emerges in all sorts of movements, applying to behavior, social institutions, and systems of thought and value. For example, various socialist and utopian movements have identified the nuclear family as a breeding ground for a socially destructive individualism, and propose communal living because it would promote a collectivist spirit. At various periods in Western history, then, social movements have instituted communes as a desirable first step in creating the good society they envisioned for the future. In the 1960s (which spilled into the 1970s), certain sectors of the left found the nuclear family and its bedrock, monogamous heterosexual marriage, to be both bad and wrong, i.e., politically incorrect, while communes and non-monogamy (for which no positive term ever developed) came to seem good and right, that is, "left," in other words, politically correct.

The appearance of political correctness in feminism creates a contradiction. One of feminism's tenets is an individualism (sometimes bourgeois, sometimes anarchistic) that proclaims self-determination for women, translating into "every woman for herself." However, feminism is also a mass movement based on collective struggles against the state in such areas as reproductive rights and the workplace. Such a political movement can be successful only if it is founded on shared moral and political principles. In some sense, it is this movement that constitutes the social context which makes feminism's individualistic principles possible. It is not feasible, however, for both these tendencies, one towards the individual, the other towards the social web, to be simultaneous guides to politically correct behavior.

Feminists have made judgments about political correctness particularly in the area of sexual behavior. This is because of the special cultural tension between sexuality and feminism: desire, of which sexuality is one very privileged instance, pushes and pulls at all people. Yet because it is in the domain of the subjective, desire tends to be associated with things female in the patriarchy of the twentieth-century nation-state where women, subjectivity, and sexuality share the same symbolic space. This shared symbolic space creates a second contradiction for feminists. On the one hand, since women have been traditionally defined as sex objects, feminism demands that society no longer focus on their erotic attributes, which, in turn, feminism downplays. In this way it becomes politically correct not to engage in any stereotypically feminine behavior, such as putting on make-up, wearing high heels, shaving legs and arms, or coming on to men. On the other hand, because women have been traditionally defined as being uninterested in sex, they have been deprived of pleasure and a sense of autonomous at-one-ness, both of which are necessary to self-esteem. Feminism therefore demands sexual freedom for women. In this way it becomes politically correct for women to be sexual explorers, visiting, if not settling down in, homosexuality or polysexuality; experimenting with cock-sucking or anal intercourse or tantric sex; trying out orgies or, perhaps, even celibacy. In consequence, these judgments about the correct path are as contradictory as the situation which gave rise to the feminist critique in the first place.

Question 3: Why do people want to say and do politically correct things?

Answer: Politically correct ideology and behavior are attractive, because they proceed from acute and visionary perceptions of political oppression. If people create visions of what is good, it seems sensible and self-respectful to try to live them out. Politically correct ideology and behavior attempt to escape the manifestly harmful, and to avoid things that damage, even if they feel good. In addition to these rational reasons, there are irrational forces which motivate political correctness, springing, for example, from the fear of separateness that makes conformity compelling. Conformism, present in any social group, can have an important role in making members of out-groups feel self-righteously stronger.

Question 4: What is good about politically correct ideology and behavior?

Answer: It is empowering; by psychological and ideological means, it creates the space for people to organize politically. It becomes a basis for organization and communication between people so that political structure may thrive. It also disrupts the identification with the aggressor, dispelling an individual and collective sense of victimization and providing a shared vision that guides behavior. Finally, it taps into a deeply rooted wish to belong to a collectivity in which what one desires to be is also moral to be.

Question 5: What is bad about politically correct ideology and behavior?

Answer: When the radical becomes correct, it becomes conservative. The politically correct comes to resemble what it tries to change. For it plays on the seductiveness of accustomed ways of living, the attractiveness of orthodoxy. Its social armoring can lead the person away from self-knowing authenticity and the group towards totalitarian control. It makes a misleadingly clean cut between personal experience and old, but still powerful, social practices, and draws a misleadingly neat circle around experience and a new set of supposedly completely acceptable practices.

The application of politically correct ideology and behavior to sexuality therefore founders on a double contradiction, the first in the relation between person and society, and the second in the relation between conscious and unconscious forces. The discovery/creation of sexual pleasure is very much an individual journey, even as your craft pushes off from received notions of gender, and is sped on or becalmed by concurrently developing notions of what is possible and permissible. No matter how carefully charted by conscious intentionality, the journey's course is determined finally by a complex mix of conscious and unconscious, rational and irrational currents that represent a swirling together of personal desire and cultural force.

Fanmail from a flounder

Ah, nothing like being the target of a smear campaign.

Still, can't help but get a laugh out of some of the sentiments:

"And he's a consort of sex pozes."

A new title!

"He's a pro porn, prostitute using john with an Asian fetish and God only knows what else."

Hey, at least get my fetishes right.

Because I'm feeling snarky....

(From Anarchy Comics #2, a primary work in my political education.)

Update

I'm now one of the co-bloggers at the newly established Blog of Pro-Porn Activism. I've been directing my blogging efforts there lately and will probably reserve this blog for occasional stuff that's less directly topical there.

BPPA has turned out to be a very worthwhile project and has been the subject of some controversy in the feminist blogosphere. But, hey, any publicity is good publicity.

Random Facts Meme

Renegade Evolution tagged me with this meme:

1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

OK, some odd/random facts about me:

1. I call the San Francisco Bay Area home. The farthest points I've ever traveled to are New York City, Los Angeles, Kona, Hawaii, and Vancouver, BC. The latter is the only time I've ever left the United States.


2. I have been to the gravesite of Stan Laurel.


3. I am a terrible housekeeper (a fact I'm less than proud of).


4. In 1969, my mom took me to Altamont.


5. In the early 80s, I was a punk, in the late 80s, I considered myself a "goth". Now I consider myself too old for subcultures.


6. I am now a graduate student and was once high school dropout.


7. I learned how to operate a scanning electron microscope before I learned how to drive a car.


8. I wrote this five years ago. I can no longer understand it.

And on to –

Trinity
Omar (of Bellezza Video) (board requires registration)
Audacia Ray
Jill Brenneman
Antiprincess
Anthony Kennerson
Pretty Lady
And (being ambitious here, but why not) – Susie Bright

Kink.com: "A Disciplined Business"

There was a good article about Kink.com in today's New York Times Magazine called "A Disciplined Business". In case you haven't been following the issue for the past several months, Kink.com is a San Francisco-based internet porn company and one of the major players in the BDSM porn world. They've gotten a lot of attention recently, since about six months back, they purchased the historic San Francisco Armory, leading to minor political kafuffle here in SF. (Full disclosure: the Wikipedia article on that I've just linked to is largely written by me.) The issues involved are more complex than I have time to go into here (hopefully, I'll have time to post on it in more depth soon), but basically it has to do with the fact that the San Francisco Armory has been a political football in the larger issue of gentrification and development of San Francisco's Mission District. Combine that with a lot of misunderstanding about both BDSM and porn production, add some utterly inflammatory and stupid rhetoric from Melissa Farley, and you've got the latest manifestation of politics-as-theater San Francisco-style.

Today's NYT Magazine article has some really good in-depth coverage of the issue, and the article has some interesting things to say about the mainstreaming of both SM and porn. The Times covered the issue a few months back during the height of the controversy, and as Violet Blue so well points out, their coverage was a hell of a lot better than our hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle. Exhibit #1000 of the Chronicle's inadequacy for its role as newspaper-of-record for a major metropolitan area, I guess.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy

One more thing before stepping away from my blog. I haven't seen anything about this on the porn or feminist blogosphere, but apparantly, Girls Gone Wild boss and certified asshole Joe Francis has just been arrested. Can't say he didn't have it coming:

Stories here:

Francis awaits Thursday hearing, Panama City Herald, April 10, 2007.
'Girls Gone Wild' founder surrenders to Feds, LA Times, April 10, 2007.
'Girls Gone Wild' founder Francis ordered to jail, LA Times, April 6, 2007.

Background here:

Joe Francis: 'Baby, give me a kiss' by Claire Hoffman, LA Times, August 6, 2006
Wikipedia: Joe Francis

Hopefully, he'll stay out of circulation for awhile.

Update, July 2010: Looks like GGW is up to the same old shit, and actually won a court case against a woman who said she did not consent to have her bared breasts in one of their videos. And, ironically, the very same week, Joe Francis' lawyers were in court slapping a lawsuit against a former employee who wrote a tell-all book about him. (We wouldn't want to violate Francis' privacy, now would we?) The whole thing, like the manufactured outrage about "sexting", cries out for better laws concerning intellectual property rights around one's body and one's image. But that will be the subject of a longer post.

Hello again

I haven't posted in a while. I haven't been actively blogging as of late, because I've been busy attempting to do what I'm supposed to be doing with my time, namely, actively trying to complete my Master's Thesis this semester. Which means by this summer, hopefully leaving my eternal grad student status behind and actually getting on with my life. I hope to actively start blogging again this summer, though I may bring my blog back on Wordpress. I'll announce the move here, in any event.

I'm still on the post-punk kick I was on as of my last blog entry. I found a totally excellent book on the subject Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984 by Simon Reynolds. Its the definitive source for this often-overlooked and profoundly innovative period of pop music history. And with that, I'll leave you with some videos of PIL, doing some of my favorite pieces of early-80s art damage:

Something old and different

I took part in a discussion last week on Antiprincess' blog about the musical legacy of Yoko Ono and the different roots and strands of avant-garde music since the 1960s.

It got me reading about some post-punk and No Wave music I hadn't listened to in over 20 years, especially some of the "girl" bands of the time. It turns out a lot of this obscure, long out-of-print stuff is now circulating around on MP3 and some of it is quite excellent.

Some highlights – the Bush Tetras, who's "Snake's Crawl" and "Too Many Creeps" are sheer angsty avant-funk excellence. Or the lovely pop minimalism of the Young Marble Giants.

And of course, there's the almost-forgotten Inflatable Boy Clams, best known for "I'm Sorry". Not a song exactly, but one of the best comic dialogues ever:

MP3: I'm Sorry

Another silly meme, but what the hell....

I've seen this book meme going around recently, notably on Anthony Kennerson and Belledame's site. Using a series of Google Blog searches, the meme seems to have arisen on Livejournal about 2 years ago. Anyway, here goes, with some tweaks of my own:

1) Pick up the book that you are nearest to with 123 or more pages. (According to early versions: Don't search around and look for the "coolest" book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.)
2) Turn to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth full sentence in that page.
4) Copy that and the next two sentences that follow.
5) Tag three more bloggers to do the same.

I get:

Gills usually adnate but sometimes adnexed or slightly decurrent, close to crowded (120-150 reaching the stalk), soft, slightly waxy; white at first but soon flushed pink and developing purple-red to vinaceous stains in age. Stalk 3-10 cm long, 1.5-3.5 cm thick, usually rather stout; solid, dry, smooth, equal or tapered below; white, soon stained or streaked pink to reddish or vinaceous. Veil absent.

(Description of Hygrophorus russula from "Mushrooms Demystified" by David Arora.)

OK, so not very elegant. I'll cheat and throw in the book right underneath:

It was all tiny houses, miniture chapels over each grave. Sabina could not understand why the dead would want to have imitation palaces built over them. The cemetary was vanity transmogrified into stone.

(From "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera. Which reminds me that I need to take it back to the library.)

For my three tags, I pick Audacia Ray, Amber Rhea, and Greta Christina. But consider the tagging "open", just leave a link in the comments box if you've self-tagged after reading this.

Ellen Willis "Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life"

With the unfortunate and hopefully temporary demise of Bitch|Lab's blog, I figure I'll take one of her blogging traditions, namely posting pieces of important theoretical works for perusal and discussion. I'm posting Ellen Willis' 1979 essay "Classical and Baroque Sex in Everyday Life". I reread this after Susie Bright read an excerpt on a recent episode of her Audible podcast memorializing Ellen Willis. The essay is written half in jest, but nonetheless really gets to the heart of what so much of what is at issue in the "Sex Wars" (both conservative vs liberal/radical and sex-poz vs radfem). Its not so much an issue of pro-sex vs anti-sex (though there are some extremist conservatives and radfems who could earn the latter tag), but a conflict over different modes of sexuality. More on this in later posts; in the meantime, Ellen Willis at her finest:

There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque. Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine. Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine. The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relationship ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration). Lovemaking cannot be totally classical unless it is also totally baroque, since you can't abandon all restraints without being willing to try anything. Similarly, it is impossible to be truly baroque without allowing oneself to abandon all restraints and so attain a classical intensity. In practice, however, most people are more inclined to one mode than to the other. A very classical person will be incompatible with a very baroque person unless each can bring out the other's latent opposite side. Two people who are very one-sided in the same direction can be extremely compatible but risk missing a whole dimension of experience unless they get so deeply into one mode that it becomes the other.

Freud, the father of the sexual revolution, was a committed classicist who regarded most baroque impulses as infantile and perverse. Nevertheless, the sexual revolution, as it is usually defined, has been almost exclusively concerned with liberating those impulses from the confines of an exaggeratedly classical puritanism. The result, to my mind, has been an equally distorting cultural obsession with the baroque. Consider, for example, that quintessential expression of baroque angst (a contradiction in terms, the product of Jewish guilt; Christian guilt is classical all the way), Lenny Bruce's notorious monologue about fucking a chicken. Or, come to think of it (puns are baroque), Portnoy's adventures with liver. I mean seriously (classically, that is), is fucking chickens and livers what sex is all about?

Curiously, contemporary sexual "experts" never mention this crucial polarity. This is because they have a vested interest in what might be called establishment or middlebrow baroque-really an attempt to compromise with proclassical traditionalists who insist that sex should be somehow worthwhile, not just fun. Thus the basic axiom of establishment baroque is that consensual sex in any form is wholesome and good for you; a subsidiary premise is that good sex depends on technical skill and is therefore an achievement. Kinsey, with his matter-of-fact statistical approach to his subject, was a pioneer of establishment baroque. Masters and Johnson belong in this category, as do all behavior therapists. The apotheosis of multiple orgasm is an establishment baroque substitute for the old-fashioned classical ideal of coming together, Real baroque sex has no ideals. Much as I hate to admit it, what I have in mind here is a sort of middlebrow baroque projectto report on the two kinds of sex in everyday life.

Time: Night is classical; so are sunrise and sunset. High noon and half an hour before dinner (or during dinner) are baroque.

Location: Outdoors is classical, except for crowded nude beaches. The back seat of a car is classical if you're a teenager, baroque otherwise. The shower is classical; the bathtub is baroque.

Number: Two is classical. One or three or more is baroque.

Lighting: Total darkness is ultraclassical except when it's a baroque variation. Dim lights and candlelight are classical. Floodlights and fluorescent lights are definitely baroque.

Clothing: The only truly classical outfit is nothing. Clothing evokes fantasy and fantasies are baroque. Black lace underwear is of course the classic baroque outfit. Red is baroque, as is anything see-through. Frilly white nightgowns are a baroque impulse with classical content.

Food: Eating in bed is baroque, although artichoke hearts and sour cream are more classical than potato chips and pizza. Tongues, tastes, and flavors are inherently baroque. Comparing sex with food is usually middlebrow baroque, except when a classicist, quarreling with the baroque idea that getting off is getting off no matter how you do it, points out that "Steak and hamburger may both be protein but they still taste different." Putting food anywhere but in your mouth is superbaroque.

Drugs: Wine and marijuana are classical. Cocaine and quaaludes are baroque.

Music: Comparisons between sex and music are classical even if the music itself is baroque. Rock-and-roll is a good mixture of both sensibilities. My favorite classical sex song is Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the Night"; my favorite baroque sex song is "Starfucker." Rock-and-roll is usually more classical than disco.

Pornography: Porn is basically a baroque phenomenon. Much of it (Hustler, most X-rated movies) is belligerently anticlassical and therefore a form of inverted puritanism. Some of it (Playboy) is pure middlebrow baroque. Many porn classics (like Fanny Hill) have a fairly large classical element. The larger the classical element, the likelier that a piece of pornography will be judged to have redeeming social value. If it is classical enough, it stops being porn altogether and becomes art, but this is a very subjective and relative matter. Lady Chatterley's Lover was once considered pornographic because it used certain baroque words, but by contemporary standards it is cornball classical. (Actually, Lawrence seems to have intended a classical celebration of the joy of the baroque, and he might have pulled it off if it weren't for all that solemn phallic worship and particularly those ridiculous flowers. One thing he did accomplish, though: he made "fuck" into a classical word without sacrificing its baroque connotations.) Pornography also becomes art when it is so baroque it is classical, like The Story of O.

Sex manuals: Love Without Fear is echt-classical. The Kama Sutra is baroque with classical trappings (all that religious overlay). The Joy of Sex, with its sections headed "Starters," "Main Courses," and "Sauces and Pickles," is middlebrow baroque except for its rather classical illustrations.

Devices: All technology is baroque, including contraceptives, vibrators, and air conditioning.

Sexism: Classical sexism is the mystique of yin and yang, masculine strength, feminine surrender, noble savage and earth mother, D.H. Lawrence, Norman Mailer. Baroque sexism is the objectification of women, black garter belts and six-inch heels, Larry Flynt, Helmut Newton.

Feminism: Classical feminism is a vision of total equality, the transcendence of artificial social roles, love and respect for one's partner as an individual. Baroque feminism asserts women's right to be baroque, traditionally a male prerogative; rejects preconceptions about what is natural and moral; insists that anything goes for either sex so long as it feels good.

National characters: The Italians are classical. So are the French, though they pretend otherwise. The Communist countries and Sweden are middlebrow baroque. As a rule, wildly baroque countries exist only in their conquerors' imagination. Americans have classical leanings, but the world headquarters of baroque is New York City. In Manhattan you can eat a chicken and the waiter won't even notice.

Sex Wars: The latest dispatches from the front

Yet more battles in the feminist blogosphere over whether particular sexual acts are inherently degrading to women or not. A few months back, there were the so-called "blowjob wars". More recently, there's been a "double penetration war" going on in several threads on Renegade Evolution's blog.

This started when RE criticized male radfem author Robert Jensen for his implication that no woman enjoys double penetration. (This was in the context of an argument that men specifically desire porn which feature sexual acts that men "know" women find degrading.) RE countered that this is just one more example of a man making some rather large assumptions about what women do and don't desire, this time in the guise of "feminism". (Something male radfems like John Stoltenberg and Dim Undercellar have been criticized for before.) In other words, whatever their concern for women's welfare, these guys are essentially paternalistic.

Much debate followed about whether the fact that some women enjoy DP validated it in feminist terms, and the argument was raised that no matter whether some women enjoyed it or not, men always saw it as degrading toward women and enjoyed it on that level.

That last argument makes some rather large and rather nasty assumptions about male sexuality that to me point out some of the problems with radical feminism. Many radfems (female and male) seem to think themselves experts on how men in general think and feel about sex. (Much the way Jensen can so blithely declare how women in general feel about DP.) From where I'm sitting, as a man with a pretty typical heteronormative male sexuality, their criticisms bear no resemblance to how I think or feel about sex, women, dominance and power, etc. Maybe radfems know my sexuality better than I do? Somehow, I doubt it.

Similarly, there have been a few mini-wars around various topics, like the one between me and LK in the comments of this thread on whether girl-girl porn is specifically anti-woman or not, or a recent discussion on Witchy-Woo's blog on whether dirty talk between partners is OK. And this is not to mention the "wars" going back decades on PIV intercourse, BDSM, etc.

This obsessive focus on specific sexual acts seems to be missing the point, IMO. What matters in issues of sexual exploitation, violence, etc. is whether or not the act is consensual – a gang-bang can perfectly consensual and a kiss on the cheek can be a sexual assault, all depending on the context. It has little to do with the specific act and everything to do with whether two or more partners freely consent to what they're doing. This is simply Sexual Ethics 101.

This brings up the old "Are radical feminists just a bunch of prudes?" argument, which apparently respectful sex-pozzes aren't supposed to go nowhere near. I'm not going to speculate on the sex lives of individual radfems, but I will say, the obsessive focus on which sexual acts are OK and which are "degrading" seems pretty prudish to me, speaking more to a sense of moral panic than a serious consideration of real issues around sexual power and consent.

Ellen Willis, 1941-2006

I just found out over on Bitch|Lab's blog that Ellen Willis has died of lung cancer. BL has several posts about Willis running currently on her blog.

A New York Times obit can be found here. The Wikipedia page about her (largely written by me) gives the basics about her ideas and includes a bibliography and a fairly thorough list of links to Willis' essays that are available online.

Ellen Willis was a huge influence on me politically, and not just on feminist/sex-positive topics, but on ideas about culture (and its relationship to politics), media, consumerism, free speech, war, and Israel/”The Jewish Question” as well. I think her instincts were some of the most consistently anti-authoritarian I’ve seen in any political writer – moreso than many anarchists, in fact. (About the only place I part company with her was in her devotion to Freudianism and Reichianism, which don’t disagree with on a philosophical level so much as I think scientifically they’re dated ideas about how the mind works.)

It could be pointed out that the sex-positive movement has a lot of good writers, but very few theorists. Willis was one of the few who did "theory", and did some in-depth essays on exactly why things sexual freedom and free speech are so important, and indeed, why they are (or at least should be) important radical values.

Its unfortunate that an untimely death (she was only 64) robbed the world of such an incisive and insightful thinker. She'll certainly be missed by me.

Addendum:

There's also a good obit on The Nation website titled "Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday". Very right-on quote:

Writing about feminist anti-porn crusades, she urged women not to "accept a spurious moral superiority as a substitute for sexual pleasure, and curbs on men's sexual freedom as a substitute for real power."

Nina Hartley speaks

I just heard about a Nina Hartley book tour. Most of the dates are already passed, but there are a few dates listed in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, in case any local readers are interested.

I also came across a flier at my uni, San Francisco State, for an appearance at SFSU that's not listed on Nina's website. Tuesday, November 14th at 2PM, in HSS 124. Not sure if that appearance is part of the book tour or something else, but I'll definitely be checking that out.

Interestingly the flyer for the SFSU even list Nina Hartley as "adult actress, sex educator, SFSU alumnus, radical feminist". I never thought of Nina as a "radical feminist", but if she wants to reclaim that label, more power to her. "Radical feminist" wasn't always synonymous with "anti-sex work", after all.

Addendum

I hope nobody actually went all the way over there based on this post. (I have no idea if I have local readership.) I was basing it on the fliers I saw last week and was wondering why the fliers were all taken down – they had the wrong date and room that's why. Anyway, Friday, November 17th at 2-4 PM, in HSS 154.

1st PornfilmfestivalBerlin

Over on Eon McKai's site, I just came across news about the 1st PornfilmfestivalBerlin that had just wrapped up. From looking at the schedule, they seem to be showing a range of films from Richard Kern's "Cinema of Transgression" work, to the more explicit end of queer cinema (by directors like Todd Verow and Maria Beatty), to straight-ahead alt-porn by Eon McKai, Benny Profane, and Octavio Winkytiki (including the premiere of McKai's "Kill Girl Kill").

The film festival is scheduled to follow a related Conference on Post-Porn Politics, as well as coinciding with a photo exhibit, "Achtung! FSK 18", featuring work by Nan Goldin, Charles Gatewood, and Richard Kern, among others.

There seems to be a definite theme at work about breaking down barriers between art and pornography, even adopting the logo "What is the difference between art and pornography? Art is more expensive!" My sentiments exactly.

There have been scholarly pro-porn conferences before, most notably the 1998 World Pornography Congress (which generated more than its fair share of bad press). Those conferences were more about academic discussion of porn, whereas the Berlin conference seems to balance the academic commentary with presentation of porn itself.

Its hard to say whether such a festival could have been pulled off on the US right now, in spite of our "pornified" culture. Even barring the inevitable political backlash, taking porn seriously generates all kinds of snarky commentary, and not just from the tabloid press.

"The Lusty Lady loses its innocence"

There was a really interesting article in this week's San Francisco Bay Guardian titled "The Lusty Lady loses its innocence". Its about the ongoing struggle of the Lusty Lady, a collectively-owned peep show business here in San Francisco, to try to live up to a sex-positive, but still strongly feminist ideal and still make a buck in the sex business. It seems like they haven't been doing too well, mainly because they've tried to implement the idea of non-discrimination based on appearance, only to find that customers aren't exactly coming in droves. (ha, ha) As a result, they're barely getting by financially.

Its also an object lesson in the kind of wars that sometimes take place within co-operative businesses, especially when you have one faction that's very idealistic and one that's more entrepreneurial. (And it somehow doesn't surprise me that one of the male support staff wrote such a less-than-diplomatic memo that started all of this, considering what surly bicycle messenger-type dudes they hire as support staff.) Its also a lesson in trying to do something different with the sex business, yet running up against the reality of the free market, issues that are touched on in Audacia Ray's recent post on the realities of shooting a porn movie.

The issues with the Lusty Lady are something I know very well, since I was a frequent customer of the LL when I lived in Seattle and am an occasional customer of the collectively-owned San Francisco one. (The two businesses used to be under the same ownership until the SF location was bought out by its union.) I used to go the Seattle one quite a bit and often spend more money there than my better judgment should allow for. Their stage show has the same kind of dynamic that drives SuicideGirls – super-cute somewhat alt-looking college-age girls (and some older dancers as well) getting naked, and often doing pseudo-lesbian stuff as well. Basically, something that's inherently hot for 95% of the straight male population and something that they'll part with their money in order to see.

Without picking on SF Lusty Lady too much, basically, the above description is not what you'll see there, and quite a few of their dancers are not exactly what you'd call attractive in the conventional sense. Hence, even though I think its great that they've collectivized and gotten control of their own business, I'm not a regular customer there (they did have a dancer there for a while I really liked, but she quit recently). Its the same reason I'm not a member of the website NoFauxx – its all very nice and idealistic, but there's nobody there who makes me want to part with my hard-earned money just to see them naked. (And being a brick-and-morter operation with a local customer base, the Lusty Lady is inherently more limited than an internet site in being able to make money catering to fringe tastes.)

Its an open question whether the SF Lusty Lady is ever going to find its niche and be able to make money in ways that the dancers find acceptable, or whether it will simply go under. Time will tell.

Update (October 2):

The Matier and Ross column in the San Francisco Chronicle has another take on the story, this time with details that weren't mentioned in the Bay Guardian story. It seems like the impetus for this was a 'Big Beautiful Women' strip night, that sounds like it might have been unannounced. This resulted in a mass customer walkout. It really sounds like some of the dancer/owners from the Lusty Lady feel that if they can beat people over the head with decidedly non-standard ideas about beauty, viewers will rethink their ideas about beauty. Instead, it just resulted in a bad scene for the customers, staff, and the big women on stage.

Also, a couple of discussions (link, link) about this are up at SFRedbook, the San Francisco "johns" board.