Excerpted from "A Declaration: for the Liberation of Women and the Emancipation of Humanity"
from Revolution Newspaper
http://www.revcom.us/a/158/Declaration-en.html
4 THERE IS NOTHING LIBERATING ABOUT “CHOOSING” TO BE A SEX OBJECT
One of the great things about the struggles of the 1960s and ’70s was the way that they challenged the stigma and shame that hung over women’s sexuality. The “sexual revolution,” as it has been called, had many positive aspects—fostering healthy openness about women’s sexuality, women’s bodies, homosexuality, and even the right for women to openly enjoy sex and explore one’s sexuality without being demeaned for it.
At the same time, this was taking place in a larger context of patriarchy and capitalist commodification of everything, including sexuality. As a result, much of this was twisted and contorted into slightly dressed up forms of age-old male supremacy. Pornography became rampant and took on a new air of “respectability,” even as it became more violent, demeaning and sadistic. Instead of fighting to get rid of sexual objectification and intimate relations of use and abuse altogether, some fought for women’s “right” to get in on this as well. Those who opposed this were deemed “uptight,” “prudish” and “puritanical.”
Today, guys from elite colleges to urban junior high schools openly proclaim the code of “bros before ho’s.” Girls learn early that if they don’t want to be sidelined from their peers they have to find their place in a landscape of casual hook-ups and “meaningless” blow-jobs (always onhis terms). Never far beneath the surface is the reality that women who do not “voluntarily” participate frequently find themselves being coerced or outright forced to do so, often discovering degrading pictures or videos of themselves being circulated and laughed over on camera phones and Facebook.
While boys who participate in this are slapped on the back, or at least excused (“You know, boys will be boys”), girls are shamed, isolated and made to feel worthless. This shame is viciously fueled, and then preyed upon, by Christian fundamentalists who preach that girls’ value is reducible to their virginity and insist that fathers be even more strictly controlling and watchful.
Then there is the seemingly more sophisticated, but very confused, “post-feminist” generation, reared on Sex in the City-style “female accomplishment” and female bonding. But the idea that buying obscenely expensive shoes, fucking big-time financial charlatans, and obsessing endlessly about it with your so-called “girlfriends” is somehow “empowering women” would just be frankly embarrassing—if it weren’t so poisonous. All this is doing is setting young women’s sights on being empty and narrow, self-absorbed and essentially complacent with the world as it is, not the least of which is their own subordinated position as women.
Even those who—for a time—are able to convince themselves that this “choice” is somehow empowering can only do so by accepting the terms that demean themselves and other women in a male-supremacist set-up. And even deeper, you don’t get the “right to be sexy” or to be the “owner of your own body as a sexual commodity” without a world that gives rise to the notion that women should be evaluated by their bodies and sexual attractiveness—and that world thrives on and mandates the shipment of women in droves across borders as human chattel, into brothels and “comfort stations” for U.S. troops, and as mail-order brides. No one should want to make peace with, or find their way in, that.
Along with these debased notions of “empowerment,” the illusion is widely promoted that, in countries like the U.S., women—and in particular women who are white and middle class—now have “no limits and no restrictions” on what they can become, when in reality their prospects, as well as their aspirations, are conditioned and ultimately confined within the prevailing relations of this society. For the women—and there are more than a few, especially among young women—who get caught up in such illusions, in many, many cases this leads once again to disillusionment, demoralization and depression, when their aspirations and “dreams” cannot be realized...or when, in any case, their hopes and dreams run up against the reality that the U.S. remains a society marked by patriarchy and male domination, and by the many ways in which women, as well as others, are “devalued” and degraded in a society like this...all of which surrounds women—not only the poorest but even more privileged women—on every side and penetrates into their most personal and intimate relations.
read more at: http://www.revcom.us/a/158/Declaration-en.html
from Revolution Newspaper
http://www.revcom.us/a/158/Declaration-en.html
4 THERE IS NOTHING LIBERATING ABOUT “CHOOSING” TO BE A SEX OBJECT
One of the great things about the struggles of the 1960s and ’70s was the way that they challenged the stigma and shame that hung over women’s sexuality. The “sexual revolution,” as it has been called, had many positive aspects—fostering healthy openness about women’s sexuality, women’s bodies, homosexuality, and even the right for women to openly enjoy sex and explore one’s sexuality without being demeaned for it.
At the same time, this was taking place in a larger context of patriarchy and capitalist commodification of everything, including sexuality. As a result, much of this was twisted and contorted into slightly dressed up forms of age-old male supremacy. Pornography became rampant and took on a new air of “respectability,” even as it became more violent, demeaning and sadistic. Instead of fighting to get rid of sexual objectification and intimate relations of use and abuse altogether, some fought for women’s “right” to get in on this as well. Those who opposed this were deemed “uptight,” “prudish” and “puritanical.”
Today, guys from elite colleges to urban junior high schools openly proclaim the code of “bros before ho’s.” Girls learn early that if they don’t want to be sidelined from their peers they have to find their place in a landscape of casual hook-ups and “meaningless” blow-jobs (always onhis terms). Never far beneath the surface is the reality that women who do not “voluntarily” participate frequently find themselves being coerced or outright forced to do so, often discovering degrading pictures or videos of themselves being circulated and laughed over on camera phones and Facebook.
While boys who participate in this are slapped on the back, or at least excused (“You know, boys will be boys”), girls are shamed, isolated and made to feel worthless. This shame is viciously fueled, and then preyed upon, by Christian fundamentalists who preach that girls’ value is reducible to their virginity and insist that fathers be even more strictly controlling and watchful.
Then there is the seemingly more sophisticated, but very confused, “post-feminist” generation, reared on Sex in the City-style “female accomplishment” and female bonding. But the idea that buying obscenely expensive shoes, fucking big-time financial charlatans, and obsessing endlessly about it with your so-called “girlfriends” is somehow “empowering women” would just be frankly embarrassing—if it weren’t so poisonous. All this is doing is setting young women’s sights on being empty and narrow, self-absorbed and essentially complacent with the world as it is, not the least of which is their own subordinated position as women.
Even those who—for a time—are able to convince themselves that this “choice” is somehow empowering can only do so by accepting the terms that demean themselves and other women in a male-supremacist set-up. And even deeper, you don’t get the “right to be sexy” or to be the “owner of your own body as a sexual commodity” without a world that gives rise to the notion that women should be evaluated by their bodies and sexual attractiveness—and that world thrives on and mandates the shipment of women in droves across borders as human chattel, into brothels and “comfort stations” for U.S. troops, and as mail-order brides. No one should want to make peace with, or find their way in, that.
Along with these debased notions of “empowerment,” the illusion is widely promoted that, in countries like the U.S., women—and in particular women who are white and middle class—now have “no limits and no restrictions” on what they can become, when in reality their prospects, as well as their aspirations, are conditioned and ultimately confined within the prevailing relations of this society. For the women—and there are more than a few, especially among young women—who get caught up in such illusions, in many, many cases this leads once again to disillusionment, demoralization and depression, when their aspirations and “dreams” cannot be realized...or when, in any case, their hopes and dreams run up against the reality that the U.S. remains a society marked by patriarchy and male domination, and by the many ways in which women, as well as others, are “devalued” and degraded in a society like this...all of which surrounds women—not only the poorest but even more privileged women—on every side and penetrates into their most personal and intimate relations.
read more at: http://www.revcom.us/a/158/Declaration-en.html
