Questions About "Feminist Porn," the Nature of Truth, "Sex Work," and Socialism Encountered on a Liberal Arts College Campus
By Sunsara Taylor | February 21, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
As part of building for this year's International Women's Day protests and celebrations with the movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women and as part of having all this contribute to actually making revolution, I have been part of a team that is going regularly out to an elite liberal arts college campus.
What follows are some of the questions that came up from students this past week and a few brief answers to them. While there was also a lot of more positive response, I highlight these objections and questions because they reflect broader patterns in people's thinking that stand in the way of people acting in the ways needed to defeat the truly unrelenting and deadly war on women and overall changing the world. I hope these responses will spur others to get out and argue these things out with students and others. I also welcome readers to send in their "toughest questions" to us at Revolution newspaper by using the link at the end of this article.
How can you be against all porn? I know some porn is very degrading, but what about women's right to use porn and be in porn? Why aren't you for reclaiming porn, making feminist and queer porn?
This question comes up almost immediately from students and professors in Gender Studies and is answered more thoroughly in "Slavery by Another Name: Sex Work and the 'Empowerment' Charade in Gender Studies," "On the Idea & Promotion of 'Feminist Porn'," "How can you be FOR abortion but AGAINST porn?" and "'Sex-Positive' Feminism and Sasha Grey; No Defense for Porn," but I will speak to it briefly now. Pornography is not simply the portrayal of sex, it is the portrayal of sexualized degradation, of eroticized objectification and humiliation, and overwhelmingly in pornography it is women who are objectified and humiliated. It is very revealing that rape, ruthless misogynist insults hurled at women, spitting in women's faces, forceful "throat-fucking" and all sorts of other shit that I am not going to describe are all mainstream within porn.
While it is extremely important to fight against the stigma and shame that is placed on women for enjoying sex or wanting to have sex outside of marriage, promoting porn or trying to "reclaim" porn is NOT the way to do this. The point is NOT for women, or LGBT people, to be able to be "equally represented" within a genre that is based on enslavement, dehumanization, and degradation. The point is to put an END to all forms of enslavement and degradation, including in sexual relations. As StopPatriarchy.org has said for a long time, "If you can't imagine sex without porn, you're fucked." We need to be fighting for a world where domination and objectification are not eroticized, where women are not viewed as objects to be humiliated and degraded for men's sexual pleasure, where men are not socialized to be turned on by that, where LGBT people are not demonized and forced into the margins throughout society, and where oppression and degradation in all its forms are dug up and overcome.
“Isn't it kind of wrong to have an event about China and Japan without having a single Chinese or Japanese person on the panel?”
No, it is not.
While this comment/question was not directed at the work we were doing (but rather, it was a comment made by a radical-minded student about an event being advertised for on campus), I feel it is important to respond to because it reflects the widespread relativism and identity politics that dominates most of the liberal campuses and beyond. This relativism is wrong and extremely harmful. By relativism I mean the view that what is true cannot be objectively determined but depends on who is speaking, and that “truth” differs according to different people's experiences.
In reality, truth is that which corresponds to objective reality; truth is not contingent on the identity of who is speaking. If it is raining outside in Manhattan, it is raining whether a white person, a Black person, a South Asian person or no one at all comments on it. If two different people disagree on whether or not it is raining, the way to sort that out is to go outside and observe the concrete evidence—not to examine the "identity" of the people speaking. The same thing applies to understanding any other objective phenomenon, including the relations between China and Japan. If a white person, for example, has something to say about this, it should be evaluated based on whether or not it corresponds to objective reality. If it does, it should be accepted as true. If it does not, or if the views put forward by a white person in the course of discussing China or Japan, are racist or infused with American chauvinism, then the content of what they have to say should be exposed and criticized because of how it reflects and reinforces objective systems of oppression—not because of the "identity" of the speaker. And the same criteria applies to anyone—of whatever nationality—who has something to say.
Failing to proceed from what actually corresponds to reality and instead attempting to determine what is "true" based on the identity of who is saying it, means that one will not be able to develop an accurate understanding of the world. What, for instance, to make of the huge numbers of women who proclaim and deeply believe that "abortion is murder"? Does the fact that women are saying this mean that abortion really is murder? Hell no! This just means that there are a lot of women who have been influenced by the outlook and thinking of the very patriarchal system and patriarchal ideologues that they are oppressed by. The objective fact is that fetuses are NOT babies and abortion is NOT murder. It is also an objective fact that forcing women to have children against their will is a form of enslavement and this is why it is objectively against the interests of women to take away the right to abortion. The only way to get to this truth, though, is to examine reality, not to look at the "identity" of the people promoting an idea.
People who take up the relativist approach end up paralyzed and unable to act decisively when the "narrative" of one oppressed grouping conflicts with the "narrative" of another oppressed group, or when resisting the objective crimes of the capitalist-imperialist system we live under requires struggling with how others think. In fact, many who take up this approach very openly proclaim that the point is not to act, but instead to just elevate "marginalized narratives." Meanwhile, the very real and objective forces of exploitation and oppression continue to grind on and on, taking a terrible toll on the planet itself and all of its people.
Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, speaks in BAsics 4:10 to the tremendous need for people to break out of this kind of relativism if we are ever to get beyond a world where those with the most power are able to forcefully impose their views on others:
"For humanity to advance beyond a state in which 'might makes right'—and where things ultimately come down to raw power relations—will require, as a fundamental element in this advance, an approach to understanding things (an epistemology) which recognizes that reality and truth are objective and do not vary in accordance with, nor depend on, different 'narratives' and how much 'authority' an idea (or 'narrative') may have behind it, or how much power and force can be wielded on behalf of any particular idea or 'narrative,' at any given point."
Back to the specific example of a program being held about China and Japan without any Chinese or Japanese people being part of it, there is another element of reality that should be brought into the picture—but with a far different approach than that of relativism.
One of the big problems in this country—both historically and today—is the tremendous racism, white supremacy and American chauvinism. This is part of objective reality that everyone—regardless of their "race" or nationality—must recognize and be part of fighting to end. This fight to end racism and national oppression must include breaking down the barriers that prevent people of oppressed nationalities or non-European countries from being able to fully participate in academia, politics, the arts, and every other sphere of society. But fighting for the inclusion of oppressed nationalities, people from other countries, and women on an equal basis in all spheres of society is very different than proclaiming that people who are not of those particular groups have no right to speak about and can offer no truthful understanding about those cultures and peoples. Such a fight should not be waged on the basis of insisting that only Chinese people should be able to speak about China, only women should be able to speak about "women's issues," etc. This fight must—and can only most thoroughly be waged and won—on the basis of exposing and opposing the objective structures of racism in this country and the culture and ideology that reflects and reinforces them. And, again, everyone has a responsibility to wage this fight and to bring to bear what they understand to be true regardless of their personal "identity"!
But aren't "sex workers" just workers like any other, shouldn't you be trying to fight for them to have better conditions? Isn't that what socialism is about, the rights of workers?
To explain how this question comes up a bit further: Some feminists and some so-called "socialists" defend pornography and "sex work" by seizing on the fact that ruthlessly exploitative conditions exist for workers in many arenas—from the sweatshops and fruit fields to the mines and meatpacking—to argue that this really is no different than the conditions faced by women in the most brutal rungs of the sex industry. "Just as other forms of labor are exploitative under capitalism," they argue, so is "sex work." And, their logic continues, "Just as we must fight for better conditions for all workers, so too must we fight for better conditions—and unions—for sex workers."
This argument has two major problems in it.
First, being in pornography or prostitution is NOT just like "any other form of work." There will always be a need to produce the material requirements of life (food, clothing, shelter, etc.); the point is to bring about a system where that can be done without exploitation. On the other hand, there is no such permanent "need" for men to purchase women's sexual subservience; the point is to get to a world where that is no longer desired by anyone or possible to enact.
Second, real socialism is NOT about "better conditions for the workers" within this system, but requires a REVOLUTION to get rid of this system, to abolish the wage system, and to bring about the emancipation of all humanity!
Let me explain a little further.
It is definitely true that there are many jobs in this world which are truly degrading and highly exploitative. This is a big part of why we need a revolution; it is utterly insane and unnecessary for so many people's lives to be squandered in this way.
But when people are exploited in the mines of South Africa or the sweatshops of China or the fields of southern California or in the millions of other demeaning, dangerous, and poorly paid jobs around this planet, the interest of the capitalist in doing this is to produce commodities as cheaply as possible in order to accumulate the greatest profit possible when these commodities are eventually sold. The workers are generally paid only enough to keep coming back to work the next day, but through their labor they produce a greater value than that; this is where the capitalists derive their profits. At the same time, capitalists are forced to compete with each other—to expand and beat each other out, or be driven under—so they are driven to more and more ruthlessly exploit those they employ. All this makes revolution necessary and urgent; to shatter the grip of the capitalists over humanity's resources and bring into being an economic and social system where human needs can be met without exploitation or antagonistic social divisions.
On the other hand, when a man purchases a woman or very young girl in prostitution or pornography, it is not her ability to produce value through labor that is being purchased. It is her sexual enslavement and degradation that is being purchased. A man is purchasing the ability to treat a woman as a thing, to have access to her body while violating her humanity. He is paying for the experience of being able to disrespect, violate, beat, insult, and humiliate a woman. In this situation women's bodies and women's subjugation and humiliation are turned into commodities.
It is only because we live in a world still dominated by patriarchy—that is, the all-round subjugation of women by men—that there is a "market" for this. Under patriarchy, men and boys are socialized from a very young age to see women as objects to be used, conquered, controlled, and degraded for sexual pleasure. At the same time, millions of women—owing to their overall oppressed condition—are left desperate and vulnerable to be used and abused in this way.
The revolution we need is one that breaks down and completely overcomes all forms of patriarchy, that moves humanity beyond a world where half of humanity is subjugated and enslaved to the other half. We need to radically remake society in both its economic foundations and its culture so that no woman is ever again forced or coerced or tricked or beaten or kidnaped or sold or shamed into selling her body and where men everywhere marvel in horror at the idea that men used to get off on seeing women humiliated and degraded. How this can be done, and how this can only be done through a genuine communist revolution as it has been re-envisioned by Bob Avakian, is gone into in many places, including A Declaration: For the Liberation of Women and the Emancipation of Humanity.
Finally, to come back to the point about the "conditions of the workers," it is very important to uphold the struggle of those who are exploited and oppressed against their immediate conditions, but even more important not to mistake that struggle for the revolution we need. Genuine socialism is NOT the fight for better conditions of the workers within the system of capitalism. Socialism is the new economic and social system brought into being through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism during which the very division of society into a small class of capitalists who own the means of production (the factories, land, etc.) and a huge class of people who own nothing but their ability to work (which they are then forced to sell to a capitalist in order to survive) is dug up and overcome. The goal of this revolution is communism. As Marx himself pointed out, the demand of genuine communist revolutionaries must not be "A fair day's work for a fair day's pay," but instead, "Abolish the wage system!" Bob Avakian has taken this understanding much further, emphasizing the critical difference—in goal, in method, and in political program—between the communist revolution to emancipate all humanity and the "labor movement." One incredible place to get into this is in his talk, "Communism: The Emancipation of All Humanity—NOT "The Last Shall Be First, and The First Shall Be Last.'"
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