File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9803, message 912


Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 11:30:07 -0500 (EST)
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: To Mark Jones


Mark, you wrote a while ago:

> What I would be interested to hear is concrete analysis of the 
> position of women. What I should like to know is how we should 
> struggle for women's rights including abortion rights, and how 
> we campaign to stop the sale, enslavement and prostitution of 
> women, and how we CLOSE DOWN brothels and STOP prostitution. How
> we are supposed to respond to the demeaning of men and women thru 
> pornography.

You say you want to hear "concrete analysis of the position of women".
I would like to suggest to you that if you do, you must first learn to _hear_.
In particular, you have to learn to hear when women try to speak to you across
the sexual divide; when they express their "positon" in terms which you might
find to be very much against your grain.  You have to learn to admit the 
possibility that this very grain of yours is nourished at the cost of certain 
"rights" on the part of women, rights which you are not prepared to recognize, 
because this recognition would endanger your self-definition.

You say that I "attribute to you things you have not said and do not think, 
and values you do not hold."  I don't actually think that I have done this.
The only thing I attributed to you was a conflation of what Yoshie called
"the ideology of romatic love" with the notion of "romantic" as in "romantic
involvement".  You say:

> Perhaps we shd define terms. Is there some other kind of romantic
> love than sexual love? And do you have in mind the possibility of
> a sexcual love which is not romantic love? If so, then you are
> attributing to me a conflation of two non-coterminous terms, which
> however is not my thinking. 

I don't understand this passage.  Me, I would answer YES to the question
"do you have in mind a possibility of a sexual love which is not romantic love".
But I don't understand what conflation I am thereby incorrectly attributing 
to you.  Do you, too, have in mind such a possibility, or not?

So to return to my initial exhortation.  I don't think I have attributed
anything to you before, but I will now.  I submit to you that the reason
you pick these particular "rights" as worthy of struggle -- you want to
"CLOSE DOWN brothels", "STOP prostitution", "respond to the demeaning of 
men and women thru pornography" is because you have a particular image of
women and how they should want men to relate to them, and it is against this 
image in you that pornography and prostitution commit an outrage.  What I would 
like you to hear and consider, if possible, is that although these things may or 
may not be perceived by women themselves as a violation of their rights, 
the image in the name of which you want to struggle for women's rights may
_also_ be part of the oppression -- and it is for women, not you, to determine 
this and tell you about it.  You are as little in a position to meaningfully 
tell women what aspects of their situation are worthy of attention as a capitalist 
is in a position to tell this to workers.  And yes, this is an unbalanced piece 
of rhetoric.  It is partly false, and also partly true.  Can you train your ear
and your mind to hear its truth?

Are you familiar with Gogol's story "Nevskiy Prospect"?  An excellent satire on
the notion of "romantic love", that.  Shall we discuss it?


-m


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