food for thought: feminist solidarity?

On Feminism and Sex Work, (excerpt from a personal academic paper):

While feminism ideally represents the rights of women, feminist reconciliation of sex work with women’s rights has been historically confused and divided over the issue of prostitution. Within feminist ideology, there is a strong movement for the abolition of all sex work. As Gail Pheterson notes, “strategies are typically geared to reform the whores, punish the pimps, and discourage the tricks.” (1) Furthermore, she argues, within this ideology, “[p]rostitution is perceived as the ultimate objectification of woman and the ultimate alienation of labor [. . .] Empowerment within prostitution is, according to such an analysis, an ideological contradiciton in terms.” (2)  Movements within feminism to abolish prostitution do not acknowledge the existence of voluntary prostitution. Instead, as Priscilla Alexander argues in “Feminism, Sex Workers, and Human Rights,” all prostitutes are defined as “passive, helpless, degraded victims.” (3) This ideology reinforces the whore stigma in its indication that all women are incapable of sexual and bodily agency and autonomy. Moreover, Pheterson suggests that a prostitute who asserts her agency in the presence of abolitionist feminists loses her ‘status.’ She notes, “[w]omen who claim self-determination as prostitutes lose victim status and ideological sympathy. In other words, a whore is viewed either as a casualty of the system or as a collaborator with the system.” (4) Thus the message maintained by abolitionist feminist ideology continues to subscribe to the notion of female dishonor: prostitutes are either victims or collaborators, reproducing the binary of honor/dishonor. Feminist ideology that is not explicitly abolitionist is often silent, participating in the perpetuation of the whore stigma and its implications, by not supporting sex worker rights through omission and inaction.

Where do we go from here?

When things have calmed down after I get back in July, I’m hoping to expand more upon this, and instead of just stating the problem, offer some thought.

And as a starting point, I’ll be using karly kirschner’s post on Bound, Not Gagged (which I was honored to be mentioned in), which should have been posted on every major feminist blog, but somehow, wasn’t.

 

---

 

 

 

1. Pheterson, Gail, “Whore Stigma: Female Dishonor and Male Unworthiness,” Social Text 37 (Winter 1993(: 57.

2.  Ibid, 57.

3. Alexander, Priscilla, “Feminism, Sex Workers, and Human Rights,” in Whore and Other Feminists, ed. Jill Nagle (New York: Routledge, 1997), 83.

4.  Pheterson, “Whore Stigma,” 58.

food for thought: germaine greer.

I found this article via 3quarksdaily. It is a commentary on the Miley Cyrus photograph, taken by Annie Liebotvitz, and I think provides relevant and critical analysis by a feminist icon.

“We Like Our Venuses Young” by Germaine Greer (excerpt)

“. . . . We train female children to be manipulative and to exploit their sex. From the time she is tiny, a girl in our society is taught to flirt. She is usually dressed like a mini-whore in pink and tinsel, short skirt, matching knickers, baby-doll pyjamas, long hair falling over her face. She learns to court attention and, when successful, to hide her face. If she’s lucky enough to get to be a big sister she might get over this sleazy conditioning, but very few daughters these days get to grow out of being “daddy’s girl”. When the time comes she is likely to reject approaching womanhood, desperate to keep her thighs skinny, and nearly as desperate to acquire hard, high breasts. The idea of growing into her own body is charmless, frightening. One thing we know about the Leibovitz photograph is that Cyrus saw nothing amiss in clutching a satin sheet to her apparently naked bosom, and looking at the camera over her shoulder. Girls are taught to look at the world in that sidelong fashion from the time they come to consciousness.

For her photograph of the teenage celebrity, Leibovitz chose a palette strongly redolent of the dirty postcards of yesteryear, sepia embittered with black, a suggestion of eye-blue and lip-red, as if retouched by hand, with never – thank our stars – a hint of pink. The light is centred on the child’s sallow, unformed cheek. Her eyes are shadowed and puffy, her lips slightly set, as if she is waiting out the slow shutter-click of an obsolete camera. Nobody has run a comb through her disordered mass of dark hair, which seems greasy and damp, as if with sweat. As one of her now ex-fans shrieked in his blog, “She looked like she is freshly f**ked in these photos!” The subject of Leibovitz’s photo could be a child prostitute from Casablanca, vintage 1900, the camera in the hands of a sex tourist who is about to toss a few coins to the doorkeeper. It is Disney, after all, that is merchandising this child, and the suggestion of pimping will cling to it. Leibovitz may be cynical, is obviously cynical. She is also, as usual, justified.

Now Disney accuses Vanity Fair of drumming up controversy and deliberately manipulating a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines, as if its own motives were not identical. The photo shoot for Vanity Fair was probably carried out weeks ago but the brouhaha has been timed for the very day the magazine appeared on the newsstands. Disney could have refused to make its star available for a shoot with Vanity Fair, or, if what it wanted was to protect its brand image, it could have demanded the right to vet the pictures. Cyrus was not undefended in the clutches of Leibovitz; her parents and minders were present and apparently saw nothing amiss in the offending photograph, which, in its original state, probably looked less like a dirty postcard than it does on the pages of Vanity Fair.

Before Leibovitz, Cyrus was regularly photographed on red carpets dressed as a 35-year-old in sequins and chiffon with heavy makeup, hair extensions, fuck-me shoes, and occasionally a segment of baby breast escaping at an ill-cut armhole. Otherwise she dresses as a schoolgirl in long socks, very short skirts and the same hanks of rather gluey-looking hair. These publicity shots are far cheaper and far nastier in implication than the Leibovitz image, which has class. Meanwhile, in a series of candid snapshots apparently of Cyrus that have found their way on to the internet, Cyrus the professional virgin is apparently happy to show herself nipples akimbo in jersey underwear, pulling down a vest to display a green bra, and disporting a bare belly on a bed with a boyfriend. All tacky, all in circulation, and all displaying the usual knowingness. . .”

Read the entire article at the guardian, here.

food for thought – hannah wilke.

“Visual prejudice has caused world wars, mutilation, hostility, and alienation generated by fear of ‘the other.’ Self-hatred is an economic necessity, a capitalistic, totalitarian, religious invention used to control the masses through the denial of the importance of a body language, which is replaced by a work ethic devised to establish a slavery of the mind burdened by that awful albatross – the body . . . . The pride, power and pleasure of one’s own sexual being threatens cultural achievement, unless it can be made into a commodity that has economic and social utility.” (emphasis added)

-Hannah Wilke

In the 1970s and early ’80s, Hannah Wilke produced performance tapes that examine sex and sexuality, feminism and femininity, the body and its representation. Wilke explores gesture in relation to gender and power, using her own image to confront the erotic representation of the female body in art history and popular culture. (source)

unconventional feminisms: or, postmodern narcissism in the third-wave.

I think we’ve all read the newspaper reports that (negatively) call this generation the most selfish, the most apathetic, the most self-entitled. And also think that most feminist bloggers would agree that nothing could be further from the truth. But I have to admit, I am fascinated by the concept of narcissism – which I do think is increasing. The difference is that when I use the term narcissism, and especially when I use it in a postmodern context, I don’t utilize the negative connotation that perhaps older generations are incinuating. We are living in a world that is unstable, dangerous, and uncertain. Former structures of stability are gone, future structures of stability are uncertain. Narcissism has become a necessity in this world. Furthermore, The third-wave has been influenced by postmodernism narcissism. This is my attempt to explore how. 

This paper explores the blogosphere through a lens of postmodernism. The reason I wanted to write this paper, and the reason that I’m posting it here, is because I’m really very interesed in postmodernism, narcissism, and their relationships to the third-wave. The concept for this paper was almost exclusively inspired by Sean Conroy’s article, “The Nightmare of Clever Children: Civilization, Postmodernity, and the Birth of the Anxious Body.”

I would L-O-V-E feedback on this. If you take the time to read, thank you – please let me know your thoughts. And yes, my abstract overlaps a bit with the introduction.

Abstract:

Using unconventional language and technological spaces, American third-wave feminism is forging new ground. Increases in the number of women’s studies programs nationally, as well as increases in nonacademic feminist discourses through the blogosphere, have produced a multidimensional brand of young third-wave feminism. However, the postmodern situation has created unchartered ground for feminism. Acknowledging the deconstruction of normative frameworks of stability, the death of god, and the implications of identity formation without structure or security, I will explore how postmodernity and inevitable postmodern narcissism are influencing the third-wave. Included in this discussion will be the third-wave’s distinction from second-wave feminism and academia, choosing instead to construct a plural and dialectical feminism which rejects former icons and dismisses overarching hegemonies. Specifically, this creation of feminist plurality will be discussed through the tool of the internet blogosphere, a space of self-creation and reimagination that has irrevocably revolutionized third-wave feminist identity formation. I will discuss the blogosphere as a space of modern consciousness-raising, as well as a space of postmodern identity construction and a new embodiment of individualistic feminist ideology. Ultimately, I will ask whether the influence of postmodern narcissism has strengthened feminism by allowing it fluidity and plurality, or if instead it has divided feminism and lost definition.

food for thought: camille paglia.

Excerpted from Sex, Art, and American Culture by Camille Paglia, 1992, pgs. 50-53. Emphasis added.

In our cities, on our campuses far from home, young women are vulnerable and defenseless. Feminism has not prepared them for this. Feminism keeps saying the sexes are the same. It keeps telling women they can do anything, go anywhere, say anything, wear anything. No, they can’t. Women will always be in sexual danger.

blogging for choice.

     

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Around the blogosphere, bloggers are posting in order to raise awareness regarding reproductive rights. If you’re interested in checking out everyone involved in Blogging for Choice, you can find the list of blogs here.

Roe v. Wade is in serious jeopardy. Most of our republican candidates support overturning Roe v. Wade if they were to make into office. And even out of our democratic candidates, Barack Obama has been the only one (so far) to come forward on this anniversary and speak out about the significance of of this anniversary, compounded by the stakes of the upcoming election:

“Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade, it’s never been more important to protect a woman’s right to choose. Last year, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 5-4 to uphold the Federal Abortion Ban, and in doing so undermined an important principle of Roe v. Wade: that we must always protect women’s health. With one more vacancy on the Supreme Court, we could be looking at a majority hostile to a women’s fundamental right to choose for the first time since Roe v. Wade. The next president may be asked to nominate that Supreme Court justice. That is what is at stake in this election. . .

ally 101.

Please come over and join the ally 101 thread that Theriomorh has begun over at CRN.