Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 08:59:59 +0000
From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Sexual liberation and male chauvinism


Doug, One of the reasons (I know you think it's me being stuffy) I don't waste my
time on Thaxis is because I don't want narcissistic self-regarding little
conversations. I don't know most of the people you mention below. I do not like
porn, from soft to hard. A good thing about the USSR was its absence. Thus, despite
the unreconstructed primitivism of most Russian men, women were not objectively
humiliated by seeing perverse images of themselves all day long. It was much
healthier and ersatz socialism tho it was, I preferred it. Your weasel words ('I
like some porn, what I don't like doesn't mater to ME') are unworthy of you. Sorry,
I know you hate this.

I spent two days recently going thru yr book Wall ST, which I like very much, but
the more I dug into the figures the less I believed. I ended up comparing yr
historical stuff with Pollard, Develepoment of the British Economy 1914-1967 and
Mathias, Making of the First Industrial Nation, two text books I used when I used
to teach undergrad economics at City University 25 years ago and which by some
miracle I still have. I might write to you separately about this since I've been to
the trouible of doing the thinking. You may think, this is tergiverous and not
apropos but it is: the underpinnings of yr relative complacency about porn, the
social cosncription of women etc, is the sense of intellectual unassailability you
contrive based on a hard statistical view of the world. Therefore if you unpick the
one you watch the other topple over like an old oil derrick (the specific point was
yr comparison in Wall St pp 108-109 of Britain on the Gold Standard pre-1914 with
the modern Wall St of levereaged buy-ouits etc whjich you fashionably despise. You
claim that the UK enjoyed an AVERAGE paymenbts surplus of 4.5%, which is so
misleading as to prove that there are lies, damned lies and stats).

Since I know you will already be relishing this abuse I am not going to go on. You
are a nice guy, with a good heart, a clever head and a comfortable but not
licentious idea of the good life. You will always be on the right side of the
barricades and always hope never to see them: thus your constantly-expressed
longing to see the downfal of Wall St is the same kind of vicarious frisson which
people indeed get when consulting pornographic images. They like the idea but have
no intention of actually being present.
Mark
PS Surely Zeynep is around -- is she not now at Austin studying the 3rd world from
a safe distance, as we always said she would? So much for her.

Doug Henwood wrote:

> Mark Jones wrote:
>
> >Androgyny and 3rd-sexing are presented as desirable stereotypes by
> >particularly
> >pervasive, manipulative, psychologically-deep (therefore menacing) pomo-cap
> >imagery whose purpose is to redefine the worker as object of production and,
> >secondarily, as pacified consumer.
>
> I don't see the connection at all. Calvin Klein is very skilled at turning
> androgyny into money, but as any Baffler reader knows, capital thrives on
> commodifying all transgressive images. Consumption emerged as highly sexed,
> and highly pitched towards the nuclear family living in a detaached house;
> why does it know serve consumption's purposes to break all that down.
>
> C'mon, Mark, don't you think Leo DiCaprio's just a little cute?
>
> >As for pornography, until you tell us what kinds you like, there isn't much to
> >talk about.
>
> I think Pat Califia is inspired.
>
> >The idea that capitalism is a liberatory force is one whose time has been and
> >gone.
>
> Too bad Zeynep is no longer around to disagree with you.
>
> I also had in mind, aside from Zeynep's tales from Turkey, evidence from
> Mexico written up by Debbie Nathan in the Nation and the sociologist Leslie
> Salzinger. Maquliadora women that both interviewed saw their move into the
> factory as partly liberating. I've never claimed it's a wholly liberating
> force, which is why I'm anti-capitalist after all.
>
> Doug
>
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