Wendy McElroy: “pornography is liberatory.”

From Anti-Porn Feminists.

Libertarian Wendy McElroy, who is a so-called “individualist feminist” and a cheerleader for pornography, has written two books defending pornography against radical analysis. She has written an article summarizing her arguments against the radfem position (which she calls “gender feminism,” a rather bizarre moniker since feminists are against gender):

1. Feminism is no longer a stronghold of freedom of speech;
2. Women’s unacceptable sexual choices are now under new attack;
3. It involves rejecting the principle “a woman’s body, a woman’s right.”

So basically McElroy’s strategy consists of the same old attempt to reduce systemic arguments to an attack against individuals. Of course, as an “individualist feminist,” she believes that “feminism should no longer be about communal solutions to communal problems but individual solutions to individual problems.” I guess feminism has won, our societies are perfectly egalitarian, and all the problems that remain are individual problems (hmmmmm… nope).

McElroy is quite aware of the fact that her Libertarian individualist “feminist” position is aberrant:

The dominant school, however, is still ‘gender’ feminism which is politically correct and far-left leaning. They consider the free market to be one of the twin pillars of the patriarchal system that is, in turn, the oppressor of women. They also approach politics almost exclusively on the basis of class analysis and class interests. Predictably, an individualist feminist who touts the free market and reduces politics to individual rights is usually dismissed, accused of being a shill for male power, or otherwise treated with contempt. It can become a mite unpleasant.

Although it is an obvious lie for her to state that radfem is “dominant,” and is probably meant for her to assume the position of victim, she is correct that her Libertarian position is harmonious with the exploitation and oppression of women, and that she is a shill for male power. It may be somewhat harder for her to deny this charge given the fact that she also happens to write for FOX News. I’m glad that her propaganda work is making her life “a mite unpleasant,” although I wish it was a great deal more unpleasant, because she is bringing actual physical harm to women by her actions (but I still wouldn’t wish her a fraction of the harm women go through in prostitution or pornography).

So McElroy’s agenda, as an individualist, is to hide institutional exploitation and oppression, and to blame individuals for their own bad life situations. Because she believes there is only individual action, she must attribute this same ideology to her opponents. Therefore, radfem arguments are “actually” about blaming individual women for their choices, not about systemic analysis at all. Dizzying nonsense, but that’s what individualist feminists actually believe. Here is McElroy’s analysis of radfem arguments:

Moreover, consider how contemptuously radical feminism is treating the “unacceptable” choices of these adult women. If a woman enjoys consuming pornography, it is not because she comes from another background, has a different psychological makeup, different goals in life or an unusual perspective. No: it is because she is mentally incompetent. Like any three-year-old, she is unable to give informed consent regarding her own body.

To anyone who actually reads radfem materials, it’s hard to see this characterization of radfem arguments as anything but dishonest. I don’t know a group of women who are more compassionate towards other women, but most importantly, radfem says absolutely nothing about individual choice, except that it takes place within a patriarchal context. Radfem is a systemic analysis (which McElroy rejects out of hand) which opposes pornography as an institution, not as a set of individual choices.

So to answer McElroy from a radfem perspective: no, the choices of adult women who consume pornography are not “unacceptable.” Women who consume pornography are not “mentally incompetent” (who seriously believes this? what a blatant straw man). There are many reasons why women consume pornography, and pornography as an institution being good or bad has relatively little to do with pornography consumption being good or bad. In the same way, capitalism is evil but people participate in capitalism for all sorts of reasons, mostly by necessity. Being forced to participate does not make one evil: in the absence of consent, blame cannot be given.

I mention consent because, to McElroy, the issue revolves around consent. This is fair enough, as radfem also agrees that consent is at the center of the issue. So we have to address McElroy’s beliefs about consent head-on. She first explains the radfem position (that in a Patriarchy there can be no such thing as meaningful consent) and then qualifies it in a weird way:

Women who thought they agreed were so damaged by male society that they were not able to give true consent.
(bold mine)

McElroy is again trying to smuggle in her false premise that radfems believe women who participate to the Patriarchy are somehow defective and worthy of scorn. These women are not “damaged.” Again, women who participates to the Patriarchy in some way do so for a variety of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with them being “damaged” and more to do with them coping with living in a society that devalues and exploit their gender.

She continues:

In over a decade of defending pornography against such attacks, I have avoided First Amendment arguments and preferred to challenge the anti-porn zealots on their own terms. The key questions became: Are women coerced into pornography? and How does porn relate to general societal violence against women? A secondary – but essential – question was whether pornography provided any benefit to women.

Regarding the first question, I appealed directly to women who were involved in the production of hard-core pornography such as S/M, where it seemed most likely that violence would occur. In the hundreds of such adult women I spoke with, every single one said they had not been coerced into performing pornography, nor did they know of a woman who had been. I decided to take the articulate voices of these adult women seriously and not dismiss them, as anti-porn feminists were doing.

First of all, it’s a known fact that prostitutes are coerced into producing pornography, so we have a fundamental factual problem here. McElroy considers only the voices of the most privileged pornography and dismisses the voices of prostituted women. Radfem women are not dismissing the voice of pornographic actresses who consider themselves well-served by their job, they just listen to the privileged and to the dispossessed. Some women are in pornography and are not being coerced, but most women are. The fact that McElroy listens only to the first category of women is more indicative of her class bias than of any fact.

To such evidence, radical feminists routinely answer that no “healthy” woman would consent to pornography. Therefore, such women were damaged by a male culture and incapable of rendering consent. The Minneapolis ordinance had argued that women, like children, needed special protection under the law…

I find it interesting that McElroy quotes no radfem saying that “no healthy woman would consent to pornography.” It is obvious that such women do, all the time (it is also obvious that many “damaged” women, to borrow McElroy’s derogative term, consent to pornography too). I would be keen to know her sources on that.

As for the association of women with children, I think she is projecting there. She probably does think of prostituted women as “damaged” and “child-like,” which would explain why she ignores their voices. At least that would be consistent with the individualist approach to prostitution, which holds that prostitutes are not being exploited and raped, they’re just dumb.

So what argument does McElroy have to demonstrate that consent to pornography is meaningful? Here is the only one I can see in the article:

As to whether cultural pressure has influenced the decisions of porn actresses – of course it has. Our culture has some impact on every choice we make, including the choice to become a feminist. To say that women who participate in pornography cannot make a choice because of cultural pressure, however, is to eliminate the possibility of choice in any situation.

How ironic that she does not realize the consequences of what she states. Of course “the possibility of choice” is eliminated: there is no such thing as choice in the literal sense. Anyone who has any commitment to science must come to that conclusion. Of course, this is an unacceptable conclusion to a Libertarian individualist, so she must ignore any scientific challenge to the concept of “choice”; but this places McElroy squarely in the camp of pseudo-science.

Porn advocates can crow all they like about the ‘industry’ being a celebration of the choices that the women involved make, but it takes only a little bit of education for the illusion of ‘choice’ to erode away. Financial coercion, substance abuse, deception – these things are the backbone of these ‘choices,’ creating a world wherein ‘no’ means little, and ‘yes’ means little more than that.

No, we don’t really make choices. We are the product of societal influences, our education, our genetics, and so on. This means that any attempt at blaming people for their “choices” is misguided, no matter how much McElroy tries to argue that this is what radfem is about. Granted, I don’t think all radfem are determinists, although I think they are at least sympathetic to the notion, like all radicals are by nature (there is no point in examining the institutions in our society if those institutions have no part, or only a minor part, in who we are or what we do).

So if this is her only reply to the consent argument, then it falls flat on its face. She has not demonstrated that sexual consent is possible in a patriarchal society.

In another article, she tries to provide an argument:

The pivotal difference between individualist feminists and radical feminists lies in the concepts of coercion and consent. For individualist feminists, these concepts rest on the principle of self-ownership: that is, every woman’s inalienable right to her own body. If a woman says ‘yes’ — or if her behavior clearly implies ‘yes’ — then consent is present. If a woman says ‘no’ — or clearly implies it — then coercion is present.

As I have already pointed out here and here, the principle of self-ownership is nonsense both logically and biologically, therefore her whole argument is null and void. If McElroy is correct in saying that “individualist feminism” is based on self-ownership, then “individualist feminism” is fundamentally false.

This error leads her to the equally nonsensical conclusion that agreement equals consent. But we know that necessity can generate agreement, and that someone acting under necessity is not consenting. If I need to submit to a capitalist work contract in order to have a place to live and food to eat, I am not consenting to capitalism by doing so. There was no alternative there in the first place.

In previous entries, I have listed a number of criteria that make an action non-consensual:

1. The absence of a viable signal of refusal. If there is no signal that one or the other party would accept as a refusal (i.e. there is no actual alternative to agreement), then there is no consent.
2. Any signal given under a threat of force is the product of duress, and is therefore not consent.
3. A signal given where there is a credible alternative but said alternative is not viable due to pre-existing conditions is as invalid as one given without actual alternatives.
4. In a situation where there is no possibility of consent, one should never infer consent (this may seem painfully obvious, but a lot of people believe the exact opposite).
5. If consent cannot be given prospectively, then there is no possibility of consent.

Principles 1, 2, 3 and 5 prove clearly that agreement does not equal consent. If a person gives agreement but had no viable way to refuse, there is no consent. If a person gives agreement under threat of force, there is no consent. If a person gives agreement because pre-existing conditions prevent them from taking alternatives, there is no consent. If a person gives agreement in a context where it cannot be given prospectively, there is no consent. And if there is no consent, there is coercion. So no, just because someone says “yes” does not mean they are consenting. That’s not a proper foundation for any ideology.

If women actively choose pornographic, prostituted sex, can we consider that sex as harmless because it is chosen? These questions collapse the experience of harm into the act of consent, rendering invisible the harm of the prostitution exchange, dissociating it from the fullness of lived experience, and locating it only in human will. This is a variant of liberal ideology, which drives economic markets by elevating individual choice in order to maximize consumerism. In this way, the sex of prostitution is reduced from being a class condition of women to a personal choice of the individual.
Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality, p69

Anyway, McElroy then summarizes (what she thinks is) the radfem argument:

The radical feminist argument runs: Pornography leads directly to violence against women, especially rape. Thus, every woman is a victim because every woman is in danger.

There is a great deal of debate on how much pornography affects violence against women. I will leave that to the social scientists, since it is a pragmatic issue. My position is that pornography is wrong, and that pragmatic issues are not relevant to this fact. So I am not interested in this part of McElroy’s article.

I am however interested in her supposed benefits of pornography, where we find this spit-take-inducing proposition:

Pornography and feminism have much in common. Both deal with women as valid sexual beings.

Of all her statements, this has to be the most ridiculous of all. It’s hard to imagine anything that has less to do with actual female sexuality as pornography! If McElroy seriously believes that female sexuality is expressed by verbal and physical abuse, which is what most top-selling pornography is about, then she has a lower opinion of women than even MRAs (let alone radfems). It’s hard to believe she wrote such an absurd statement without sarcasm or irony.

On the other hand, she is correct in saying that feminism deal with women as valid sexual beings, but it deals with women as more than sexual beings. Pornography, on the other hand, deals with women as sexual objects and nothing more. Radical feminists don’t even portray men nearly as depraved as pornography portrays them. So what could they possibly have in common?

On the other hand, it’s easy to see what “individualist feminism” and pornography have in common: they both treat women like shit, especially women who are dispossessed. It’s also easy to see what “individualist feminism” and the rape culture have in common: they both blame women for their “choices.” McElroy doesn’t want to talk about women who make “bad choices,” but if she believes some women make “good choices,” then there must be women who make “bad choices” as well. They never talk about the flip side, of course, because telling people they should blame themselves for their problems never sells… and to a free market fanatic like McElroy, not selling is the greatest sin of all.

PIV as the center of the web…

PIV is not really something I want to write about, because I know that even for a radical blog such as this one, it’s not a topic that will win me any friends. But once you starting seeing the connections, there’s really no way to escape it.

* PIV is at the core of natalism, since one cannot have children naturally without it. Therefore any defense of natalism has to be a defense of PIV, and public natalist policies cannot survive a debunking of PIV. And since the family system is set up to preserve the ownership claim over children, PIV is also at the core of the family system. Since the capital-democratic also partially depends on natalism, it is also indirectly dependent on PIV and hiding its deleterious effects (contraception works! really!).

* PIV is at the center of what the abortion debate seeks to obscure. The fact that a third of children in Europe and half of children in the United States are unwanted indicates an unbelievably gigantic PIV problem, but we ignore it by blaming the victims (who are all women) and refusing them abortions or indoctrinating them to believe that abortions are evil.

* The Patriarchy is centered around the man’s ownership claim over his wife and her sexuality. PIV is a necessary function that a wife must provide in order to satisfy her man’s “biological urges,” and is a necessary part of the ownership claim of marriage. And because most religions are patriarchal in nature, belief in PIV is also part and parcel of religion (as the praise or indifference given to male rapists, including uxorial rape, in the Bible and the Quran testify).

* Liberalism and funfem, on the other hand, contend that a woman should not be owned by one man but that she should rather be sexually available to all men, that she should be owned by men as a class. They are very concerned with fulfilling fuckability mandates and how “empowering” they are, as well as supporting the sexual exploitation of women; since to them sex means PIV, a lot of what they do has to do with supporting PIV.

That’s a lot of different hierarchies and ideologies connected to PIV in some fundamental way. It is intricately connected to gender politics, egalitarianism and the very structure of society itself.

There is a paradox here in that PIV is labeled as a private act, but at the same time has such a profound political function. I believe this plays a powerful role in deflecting criticism. One is told that criticizing PIV is unacceptable because it is a private act and therefore entirely personal. This means that all the societal and political pressures imposed on the act can remain unexamined. After all, women “choose” to have PIV.

This is the bog standard voluntaryist argument, which leads us to the bizarre funfem conclusion that to attack every pressure imposed on women without their consent to follow fuckability mandates, perform PIV and have children is exactly the same thing as attacking all women personally. Being against woman-hating is exactly the same as woman-hating, and the only way to not be a woman hater is to agree with the women haters. That’s how they get you.

We observe this in every area where funfems and radfems disagree, including pornography, prostitution, the fuckability mandate, women’s spaces, etc. I described this in my entry “Voluntaryism: it’s not just about capitalism…”. Any criticism of the pressures imposed on women is interpreted as woman-hatred. Under such conditions, it is strictly impossible for any radical analysis of sexuality, no matter how superficial, to flourish.

Pornography, prostitution and the rape culture are the most direct results of the support for PIV. It’s hard to imagine pornography without PIV (or its pseudo-lesbian substitute, SOIV), especially since sex itself is equated to PIV. Prostitution and the rape culture are justified by men’s supposedly innate and uncontrollable desire for PIV.

This desire for PIV is linked to abuse and rape, not just in prostitutes but for women in general. Most women do not experience orgasm from PIV, and women live in fear of the consequences of PIV, including sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy (which can result in death). The fuckability mandate can also be harmful (high heels, for example, cause foot deformities in a majority of women who wear them, as well as legs and back problems; also, many cosmetics contain cancerogens).

PIV is the nexus between private and public, between self-interest and the perpetuation of society, between egalitarianism and gender domination, between beauty and obscenity (not only sexual obscenity but the obscenity of nature as well). The ways in which we have sex are constructed by pornography and the mass media.

PIV is all-important to the growing teenager who forges eir worth on eir sexual appeal to others. Being a virgin is a mark of shame and having sex is a mark of maturity. This is reflected in adult beliefs about sexuality (see for instance “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”). For it to be said that one does not have a sexual partner (by which is meant, someone with whom one has PIV) is basically an insult and a slight on that person’s intelligence.

No wonder, then, that people take attacks against PIV personally. For women, attacks against PIV are attacks against a sensitive issue: even though most women know they derive no pleasure and some degree of anxiety from PIV, they believe they must accept it as a fact of life and that their love life depends on it. For men, attacks against PIV represents an attack against their most personal privilege, and what they’ve been indoctrinated to believe in: dominating and taking ownership of a woman.

If you ask a man about it, he’s unlikely to give you that answer. Rather, he’ll tell you that it “feels good.” Sure it feels good: the combination of biological pleasure and indoctrination is very hard to resist. No one’s gonna disagree with that, but the point is that what gives us pleasure is not always what’s just. I’m sure slave owners got ego boosts and hard-ons out of whipping their slaves. I’m not making a direct comparison here but I hope my general point that hedonism is not a sound guide to public policy is well taken.

And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Debunking more MRA “statistics”…

UPDATE: Due to this entry having been posted on Reddit/Mensrights, I am shutting down the comments section. Also, hi MRAs! Go fuck yourselves!
***

I want to analyze this list of claims from MRAs, in order to debunk it and expose the further lies of the MRA bigots.

I have already examined some MRA “statistics” that were actually rubbish; see this entry for the points that appeared there. For the sake of space, I will not repeat the same objections here.

I added “secondary gains” as a response. Secondary gains, as defined by Patrick Colm Hogan in The Culture of Conformism (p50-51), are forms of gratification given to people who belongs to a subordinate group in order for them to accept their condition. Likewise, many things which MRAs claim are disadvantages to being a man are actually used by the Patriarchy as signals of male nature, and therefore of superiority (e.g. military service, not being charged with child care, and esthetic considerations such as short hair and long pants).

***

1. Women are treated better in all aspects of the legal system. For instance, women receive lighter sentences and a higher chance of acquittal, simply for being women.

Secondary gain. Studies prove that women are given lighter sentences because judges ignore rules of gender equality and personally take it unto themselves to “protect” women. Women are “protected” because they are seen as inferior to men.

2. Men are significantly more likely to be the victims of violent crime (of which rape is included) than women.

Irrelevant. See my previous entry, point 5.

3. Despite domestic violence being equally committed by women, for the most part only male perpetrators are arrested.

False. Again, see previous entry, points 10 and 11.

4. The feminist definition of domestic violence has skewed arrest and prosecution philosophies, resulting in having mostly male batterers criminally pursued, and female batterers left alone.

Too vague. How would you even prove such a statement? The US Code does not define domestic violence in a “feminist” way, whatever that’s supposed to mean:

“The term ‘domestic violence’ includes felony or misdemeanor crimes of violence committed by a current or former spouse of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabitating with or has cohabitated with the victim as a spouse, by a person similarly situated to a spouse of the victim under the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction receiving grant monies, or by any other person against an adult or youth victim who is protected from that person’s acts under the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction.”

5. It is legal to circumcise male babies against their will. In some places, laws have been passed which forbid any attempts to make male circumcision illegal. Meanwhile, female circumcision is completely illegal, even though some types of female circumcision are equivalent in harm to male circumcision, and other types (a symbolic prick to draw blood) are non-harmful.

Technically true. It is fucked up. However, female circumcision has only been illegal since 1997, and the medical establishment is trying to slowly bring it back.

6. Men comprise 95% of workplace deaths.

Slightly exaggerated, and misleading. See previous entry, point 4.

7. Men commit suicide at over triple the rate that women do.

Correct, but misleading. Suicide attempts are three times more common in women than in men. Men succeed more often because they use more violent means.

8. The vast majority of prisoners are men.

Irrelevant. This is the same general point as point 2. Men are prisoners because they use violence on other men.

9. Men are doing worse in all aspects of the educational system, from kindergarten to university.

Irrelevant. How is this an example of male oppression?

10. Men who are falsely accused of rape can have their names published and their lives ruined even if they are not convicted or charged – their accuser is protected and is likely to face no punishment, or a light one.

Irrelevant. The unjust rules against sexual offenders apply to men and women alike. This is not oppression against men.

11. Reproductive rights. Men have none. Simply read this story.

Ridiculous. Men have all their reproductive rights, but they do not have the right to dictate to women what their rights should be or should not be. This is a source of endless frustration for these MRA faggots.

12. Parental rights. Men have virtually none. See below.

A woman can name any man she likes as the father, he gets a letter in the mail, if he does not prove he isn’t the father within 30 days—(suppose the letter gets lost by the USPS?)—he is now the father and must pay. He cannot contest it.

A boy who is the victim of statutory rape must pay child support to his rapist.

A man who is raped while unconscious must likewise pay child support.

A man who fathers a child and wishes to take custody may have his child adopted out against his will and essentially kidnapped

Some are irrelevant, others I have no idea. I have no idea if all this nonsense is true or not. I could not find independent sources for most of these claims, and no evidence for it is presented. But child support is supposed to be for the child’s welfare, not the woman’s.

13. The majority of homeless are men.

True, in the United States. This is highly culture-dependent. In Australia, for example, women are the majority.

14. Despite men’s need being arguably greater than women, government spending to help women is 10 to 100 times greater than that to help men. That figure is unrelated to medical spending.

Absurd. Does anyone seriously believe this shit? This is almost as bad as the “reproductive rights” point. Most government spending helps men more than it helps women.

15. In 2009/2010 it was $1,516,460 toward men and $57,562,373 toward women. In 2010/2011 it was $3,740,800 toward men and $48,331,443 toward women. In 2008/2009 the province dedicated $561,360 toward men’s resources and $98,983,236 toward women’s resources. (figures are for British Columbia, Canada, but representative of Western society).

Same point as above.

16. Female-owned businesses get free government money for literally no reason other than being a woman (i.e. all other factors are equal, same size of business, same income, etc. etc. but the owner’s gender is different = money or no money.

I couldn’t find any evidence to confirm or debunk this point. No evidence was presented.

17. On some airlines, men were banned from sitting next to kids on airplanes, simply because they were men. Why? Because men are pedophiles, obviously. This ban remains on some airlines, such as Air New Zealand.

Irrelevant. This is male entitlement at work and actually has nothing to do with gender.

18. Under a recent federal directive, men are convicted of rape in university campuses if the investigating board finds that the chances they committed the rape are at 50.00001% or greater.

Irrelevant. Since this is the same rule we use in other justice systems, how does this reflect any offense against men?

19. The DOE policy in practice: Caleb Warner was accused of rape and expelled from the University of North Dakota, then his accuser was charged with filing a false report. He remains expelled as of June 2011.

Same point as above.

20. Selective service. Enough said.

Secondary gain. Women were “protected” from warfare because they are “the weaker sex.”

***

So here is the final count:

True: 2
Correct but misleading: 1
Secondary gains: 2
Misleading: 2
Irrelevant: 7
False: 1
Complete bullshit: 3
For a total of 18 ratings.

That makes a total of 17% of technically correct points, 61% of misleading points, and 22% of plainly false points. The previous entry had a truth record of 33%, and in both cases this is a terrible record. The list gives the appearance of a plethora of arguments for the oppression of men when there are actually very few such arguments here, let alone valid ones.

Again it is demonstrated that MRAs are all about lying their ass off to pursue their ideological agenda of woman-hating.

Liberals have a hard-on for pornography.

From Sinfest.

The new pornography industry is held, by leftist males, to be inherently radical. Sex is claimed by the Left as a leftist phenomenon; the trade in women is most of sex. The politics of liberation are claimed as indigenous to the Left by the Left; central to the politics of liberation is the mass-marketing of material that depicts women being used as whores. The pimps of pornography are hailed by leftists as saviors and savants…

On the Left, the sexually liberated woman is the woman of pornography. Free male sexuality wants, has a right to, produces, and consumes pornography because pornography is pleasure. Leftist sensibility promotes and protects pornography because pornography is freedom.
Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women

Liberals have a hard-on for pornography, prostitution, and most other forms of sexual exploitation of women. At the same time, they claim that they “love women” (much like those abusers who come on TV to say that they actually “love women”), while enacting policies that exploit women. Liberal feminists are not much better, although they are more likely to be against rape, if the rape happens to a “good person.”

They don’t like it when you throw this in their face, because part of the joy of being a liberal is to believe you’re smarter and more radical than everyone else. If you’re an actual radical, you’re just spoiling their fun.

[Liberals] feel that the subordination of human beings is wrong. They believe that massive corporations do not have the right to exploit people in the name of global capitalism… unless those corporations are part of the pornography industry.

Leftist sensibility promotes and protects pornography because pornography is freedom… Capitalism is not wicked or cruel when the commodity is the whore; profit is not wicked or cruel when the alienated worker is a female piece of meat; corporate bloodsucking is not wicked or cruel when the corporations in question, organized crime syndicates, sell cunt; racism is not wicked or cruel when the black cunt or yellow cunt or red cunt or Hispanic cunt or Jewish cunt has her legs splayed for any man’s pleasure; poverty is not wicked or cruel when it is the poverty of dispossessed women who have only themselves to sell; violence by the powerful against the powerless is not wicked or cruel when it is called sex; slavery is not wicked or cruel when it is sexual slavery; torture is not wicked or cruel when the tormented are women, whores, cunts. The new pornography is left-wing; and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die.

To liberals, pornography is a non-issue, as it’s just another part of our inalienable freedom of speech. Anyone who has problems with pornography has a psychological problem, not an intellectual disagreement; either they are sissies (for men) or future spinsters (for women). And of course anyone who opposes pornography is labeled as backwards, because they are “progressives” and everyone who opposes them is backwards by definition.

Christians are against pornography too: not because they support women, but because they seek total control over human sexuality for their faggot agenda. Therefore associating radfem with Christianity is particularly absurd, because Christianity is founded on, and has survived because of, women-hatred. It’s probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that Christianity would be moribund everywhere, not just in Europe, if it did not push woman-hatred (and by extension hatred of anything seen as womanizing, such as male homosexuality) as a major part of its agenda.

Libertarianism comes from the same classical tradition as liberalism, and both engender similar attitudes towards pornography. Libertarian “individualist feminist” Wendy McElroy participates in this confusion:

There is great irony in radical feminists aligning with their two greatest ideological enemies: conservatives and the patriarchal state. They now appeal to this state as a protector. There is a sadness to the irony: it has been state regulation, not free speech, that has oppressed women.

McElroy thinks that because radfems superficially agree with conservatives on one point, albeit for completely opposite reasons, that must mean that radfems are rabid statists who appeal to the State for their salvation. This is as idiotic as saying that atheists must be Christians since both agree that murder is wrong, and that this must mean that atheists are turning to God and his Church (whichever one is the right one, I guess) to punish murderers. The only “irony” here is that McElroy pretends to be a feminist while claiming that the depiction of women getting verbally and physically abused is liberatory (???).

Let me repeat the facts so I am quite understood on this subject: radfem are against pornography because they are pro-women, conservatives are against pornography because they want to control sexuality, especially female sexuality. Radfem justify themselves by appealing to fundamental social values such as preventing exploitation and harm, conservatives justify themselves by appealing to misogynistic religious myths. Radfem arguments are value-based, conservatives’ arguments are faith-based. Radfem do not claim to be allies of conservatives, because they are not.

This is connected to the bizarre belief that radfem are anti-sex, again because of the association with conservatives, who actually are anti-sex. As I’ve quoted before, radical feminists are no more anti-sex for wanting to abolish pornography than opponents of McDonalds are anti-food for wanting to abolish McDonalds. Sure, at its very best and most honest, pornography does have something to tell us about sexuality, but it is only a tiny sliver of what sexuality is all about.

[T]he arguments of pro-sex industry advocates and proponents have a common theme: the industry springs from a liberal mindset and frees women and men, sexually, politically, and spiritually. Part of this logic is that sexuality — particularly women’s sexuality — has been oppressed historically and that the sex industry offers women and men the liberating possibility of unbridled sexual expression. This logic ignores the fact that the use of women in prostitution as well as other forms of sexual commodification has existed for as least as long as there has been an historical record. Thus, if sexual commodification were freeing, then sexual oppression would be uncommon or, more likely, exist only as some curious historical fact. This logic also ignores the reality that the sex industry thrives where the political, social, and religious milieu is fundamentally conservative. It thrives where beliefs about women and children and their roles are the most traditional…
Sherry Lee Short, Not For Sale, p309

To a radfem ally, the liberal pro-pornography agenda is exemplified by the Sinfest comic I posted at the beginning of this entry: pseudo-feminist misogyny on the cutting edge of bigotry.

I say cutting edge because, in order to have your form of bigotry accepted nowadays, you can’t come out and say you hate this or that group of people any more. Instead, you have to put a positive spin to it. You’re not racist, you just love your own race. You’re not anti-poor, you just prefer people who make the “right choices” in life. You’re not anti-immigration, you’re just concerned about brown people “stealing jobs” from legal citizens. You’re not a sexist, you’re just concerned about fulfilling men’s needs.

Liberals get a hard-on for the terms “empowerment” and “agency.” Like all good voluntaryists (a category which includes liberals, on social issues at least), they demand that we analyze people’s actions in a vacuum, detached from any context. Sure, if you ignore everything that happens before and after the consumption of pornography, as well as ignoring its role in the commodification and molding of sexuality, then you have plunged yourself into a position of sufficient denial to be able to come to the conclusion that there’s nothing wrong with pornography (imagine a liberal trying to argue that people choose to become homeless- and yet that’s exactly what they are doing with pornography and prostitution).

It also helps to buy into the porno-fied account that the mass media presents of the production of pornography, which tells us that pornography is a job like any other, and perhaps even more fun than other jobs, and that porn actresses are acting entirely consensually.

Of course, liberals have spread the myth that we live in a time of gender equality, and anyone who believes that will never be able to understand the exploitation of women on such a massive scale. Because of this pretend gender equality, they believe that anything that happens to a woman is her own fault.

It is disingenuous to talk about pornography without talking about prostitution: half (49%) of prostitutes report having been made to participate in pornographic videos (Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries, Farley, Cotton et al). It’s hard to say how much of this hits the pornography market, but all that means is that any user of pornography may or may not be watching women in the process of being raped. Given how violent pornography can get, how could you even tell the difference?

Pornography is also heavily involved in prostitution, for the same reason that pornography is heavily involved in people’s sexuality: men imitate and emulate what they see in pornography. Half (47%) of prostitutes report being upset by johns or pimps trying to reproduce pornographic acts. Pornography tells men what they can or should do to women.

The division between pornography and prostitution (let alone the spurious division between trafficking and prostitution) is an ultimately arbitrary one. Their legal distinction is that producing pornography does not serve the purpose of arousing the actors or the director (hah!) and that producing pornography is a form of protected speech, like any other movie. As I already discussed, I support the free speech defense in the case of individuals expressing themselves, but not in the case of corporations, since corporations are not actually people (legal myths notwithstanding) and do not have the “right” to control what we believe.

Pornography is an extension of prostitution and both partake of the same principles, and people who believe there is a significant difference are deluding themselves into accepting that pornography is okay while prostitution is not, just like the old white men of the Supreme Court did.

Although liberals do not share the faith in the free market that Libertarians and conservatives have, they still believe in its principles. So it’s also relevant to point out that pornography and prostitution, with their commodification of sexuality, are perfectly inscribed within free market logic. Pornography and prostitution share all the properties of other markets, such as hierarchies, competition, money exchanges, their own internal logic, and so on. Indeed, as SuperFreakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner opine:

But for elite prostitutes like Allie, the circumstances are completely different: high wages, flexible hours and relatively little risk of violence or arrest. So the real puzzle isn’t why someone like Allie becomes a prostitute, but rather why more women don’t choose this career.

To which a reply might be, why isn’t Levitt sucking dick for a living instead of being a mere economist? He’d be contributing a lot more to society as a dick-sucker than as an economist, anyway.

But to be fair to our two morons, it’s not hard to understand why they’d come to such a conclusion, since they see a job as an entity that exists in a vacuum. It’s really the only way to make sense of such blatant stupidity.

As for internal logic, pornographic businesses, like all other businesses, pursue profit, and in order to pursue profit they must appeal to what sells, and what sells depends on what consumers have been conditioned to buy. This may seem obvious, but many people believe that there can be such a thing as “feminist porn.” Actually, even seemingly women-friendly pornographic producers know that they can only sell pornography by exploiting women.

Heretosexual pornography (around 90% of total) is based on the exploitation of women for men’s benefit. Virtually all top-selling pornography (more than 88%) is violent in nature. Given this, what could “feminist porn” consist of? The “Feminist Porn Awards” for 2012 give us a nice selection, including a movie described as such:

rough sex, double penetration, anal sex, pussy eating, blow jobs, strap ons, finger banging, squirting, POV, masturbation, doggy style

Another:

No foreplay, no bullshit, just hard core fucking with some of the most vicious bitches in the biz!

Another tries to be original by making women dominant instead of men. Yet another claims that it will “change the way you view adult film – forever,” and it’s basically a succession of fucking with the man on top. Does any of this sound “feminist” to you?

This image is from the movie that will change how you view adult films forever:

Now you see, this is clearly feminist because she’s not on her knees. Women love giving blowjobs as long as they can lie down while doing it. I’m learning so much from feminist porn (incidentally, in case you’re wondering, I got the picture from the movie’s web site, I didn’t watch the damn thing- if I want to see this stuff I can just go on any web site ever).

Look, I know I am being glib about this. I am not going to watch these movies so I can’t make an educated statement about their content. I’m sure these movies contain few or no scenes with violence or verbal abuse (well, I hope they don’t, anyway). Rather, this goes to the issue of what “feminism” means.

“Feminism” does not mean “believing that women shouldn’t be treated like shit.” That’s called “being a decent human being,” not “being a feminist.” To be a feminist entails a lot more beyond that; it entails wanting the elimination of gender roles, wanting to end the exploitation of women, and recognizing Patriarchy in our daily lives. A pornographic movie that doesn’t treat women like shit is not a “feminist porn,” it’s just a movie that was made by decent human beings. That’s nice, but not feminist. Calling anyone or anything “feminist” because they exhibit the most basic human decency is profoundly insulting to, well, pretty much everyone, including feminists.

Likewise, you wouldn’t call someone a “communist” because they believe workers should be treated like human beings. Again, that’s nice, but not communist. Communism, like feminism, designates a framework used to understand how human societies work. If you don’t agree with that framework, then you’re not a feminist or a communist, no matter how nice you are or how much you believe you “deserve” the label or how hard you believe in imposing your feminist/communist self-identification on others (“well, I call myself a feminist and you have no business telling me what I am or am not!”).

Pornography based on the premise that gender roles are bad would never survive on the market. You can deny this all you want but that’s just a plain fact. And feminists have no interest or incentive in making pornography for themselves because they oppose it on principle. So how would such “feminist porn” come to exist?

Pornography objectifies women as sexual objects to be used by men. It creates in the viewer’s mind the unconscious or conscious impulse to look at women as sexual objects. It makes honest and open relationships with other people more and more difficult. It leads to agreement with the objectification already in progress all around us in our supposedly class-less societies. It leads to people retreating into fantasy lives because they cannot confront their real lives. For men especially, the idea of a world where women exist solely to cater to men’s needs is seductive.

When a liberal man becomes a regular user or pornography, I assume that some kind of compartmentalisation takes place. Liberals pride themselves on their compassion and fair play, but these qualities are the exact opposite of those cultivated by pornography. He must deal with this discrepancy somehow, either by rejecting pornography (which in any patriarchal culture is unlikely) or by rejecting the idea that pornography is exploitative.

Because liberals and conservatives have a stranglehold on our culture, this agreement echoes throughout the mainstream media, the narratives we use, the margins of discourse, and so on. It becomes another part of the Patriarchy. But because liberals cannot see the Patriarchy, they cannot see the forest for the trees. Pornography cannot harm society because our society is class-less and genders are equal, you see. So it becomes this vicious circle of ignorance: the harms of pornography make it impossible to see the harms of pornography. It’s like how stupidity makes it harder for people to realize they’re stupid.

(Note: By targeting liberals in this entry, I am not implying that Anarchists are much better. Even though Anarchist organization demands gender equality in decision-making, which is an improvement over liberals, many Anarchists are anti-feminist and support some form of pornography. It is probably the case that most men will act like entitled assholes no matter what political ideology they follow.)

“But what about teh menz??”

From the MRA Marmoset.

The mechanisms of control I’ve described on this blog so far have been attempts to address dissent head-on (e.g. invalidation, blame) or by making dissent more difficult (e.g. thought-stopping, competition). I have not yet addressed misdirection. Magicians, and rogues in fantasy movies, know that the best way to keep someone from realizing something is by misdirecting their attention.

Mainstream media, serving the interests of the power elite in constantly setting the margins of discourse, diverting our attention, and omitting important facts, is the quintessential example of this. Noam Chomsky calls it the manufacture of consent; I would go further than that and call it the manufacture of entire worldviews. After all, television, movies, books and other narratives inform the vast majority of what we believe about other people and other times.

Misdirection also takes place at the personal level. The use of coded rhetoric, as politicians’ speeches are stereotyped, is one of them. Another is “what about teh menz??”. This is the name radfems have given to men who barge into feminist discussions demanding that men’s interests be made the center of discussion. This is especially egregious when men not only demand that they be made the center of discussion, but insist that they are the “real victims.”

As one person described it:

In any discussion focusing on women’s issues, the probability that someone will come around and say “men are [fill the blank], too!” approaches 1 the longer the discussion gets.

The “what about teh menz” argument does not only apply to radfem. One can easily observe it within pretty much any ideology. “What about the menz” complains run the gamut from the factually reasonable (“men get raped too”) to the extraordinarily bigoted (“but look at how many American soldiers have died from this war”) to the sublimely ridiculous (“Christians are the ones who are persecuted, because we’re not allowed to express our hatred of homosexuals”).

It’s obvious that part of this tactic is based on the “virtue of victimhood.” Based on the profound moral intuition, persecutors are always evil and victims are always good, members of a persecuting group will use any reasoning they can, no matter how absurd, to portray themselves as the “real victims.” The reason why this gets so absurd is because it implies that the victims are actually the persecutors. So neo-nazis fall back on Holocaust revisionism and anti-semitism, conservatives posit that “illegal immigrants” are ruining the economy, the police state portrays pot users and anarchists as dangerous criminals, and so on. This contributes to the marginalization of the real victims.

There is also a strong part of entitlement in this. The privileged feel that they are entitled to be seen as the “good guys” by virtue of being part of a privileged group. They also feel that they are entitled to the attention of the marginalized, that their issues are the only important issues. As Derailing for Dummies points out:

Privileged People® are accustomed, after all, to it being “all about them”. Not used to simply sitting back and listening to othered people‘s issues, Privileged People® like to be the centre of attention at all times. It reminds them that they are important. By doing this, you will feel good about yourself and send a crucial message to the Marginalised Person™ (yes you really can diminish their experience by making it all about you, all the time!).

Also related to trying to divert the topic is the attempt to have spaces reserved for the privileged. For instance, some men establish “men’s rights” groups, even though all rights are already men’s rights. Others want a White History Month, even though history is already about white people. This is merely a more elaborate and structured form of the same kind of misdirection. The ultimate result of such initiatives is to obscure the fact that the privileged are privileged.

They can also be based on voluntaryist analysis, which omits the context or history behind existing institutions and judges them purely on the basis of their present, isolated actions. This means that patterns of inequality are ignored. This can lead to a “you want to complain, then I get to complain too, so it’s fair” mindset. The problem is that this concept of fairness relies on a perspective completely divorced from reality. Fairness means to treat each other as equals, not to turn a blind eye to exploitation and deal with people as if every action exists independently of any other.

Lisa Wade says: let’s have a “balanced” discussion on child mutilation!

There are few health repercussions, so you really should have a more “balanced” view of this. It’s their culture, you know.

Sociological Images, a blog I used to follow until now, recently published an article by Lisa Wade called ‘A Balanced Look at Female Genital “Mutilation.”‘ (yes, with the scare quotes). Some other blogs have published criticism of this entry (see here and here). As it turns out, Lisa Wade is a tireless critic of people who are against FGM.

But you know, fair enough, let’s first see what this “balanced” discussion should be about. As it turns out, Wade’s thesis consists of seven facts:

1. Using the word “mutilation” is counterproductive.
2. Media coverage usually focuses on one of the more rare types of genital cutting: infibulation.
3. Research has shown that women with cutting are sexually responsive.
4. Health complications of genital cutting “represent the exception rather than the rule.”
5. Girls are not generally cut in response to the influence of cruel patriarchs.
6. FGCs are not an “African practice.”
7. Western-led efforts to eliminate FGCs are largely ineffective and sometimes backfire.

I will not go through each in turn, since the other critics have already done that. But one important fact she omitted to discuss was why we should care about any of this. Some of these facts may be true (there are very good reasons to reject at least some of them), but they do not provide a “balanced” view of FGM. As a contrast, imagine that the article was instead an attempt to provide a “balanced” view of child rape, and the following facts were presented:

1. Using the word “rape” is counterproductive.
2. Media coverage usually focuses on one of the more rare types of parental sex: girls who are imprisoned and inseminated by their fathers.
3. Research has shown that women who had parental sex in childhood are sexually responsive.
4. Health complications of parental sex are rare.
5. Girls are not generally involved in parental sex in response to the influence of cruel patriarchs.
6. Parental sex is not a “male practice.”
7. Efforts to eliminate parental sex are ineffective and sometimes backfire.

I hope the analogy is obvious. Neither of these sets of facts are relevant to the debate because they are also ethical debates, not merely factual debates. Any discussion of human practices (no matter how mundane or repulsive, or both) must necessarily integrate moral or ethical considerations, lest we completely omit human rights and human well-being. This seems to be Wade’s goal; she wants to treat FGM as a purely academic concern in which no human beings are involved. Given the fact that we don’t treat children as human beings, she might be right on that.

One point on which she is absolutely right is that FGM is not an African practice: it has been practiced in the United States until very recently, and may reemerge once again. The debate around FGM will accordingly take more prominence. And there will be plenty of people like Lisa Wade there to promote woman-hatred in the name of facts. I repudiate her and her blog. Fuck Lisa Wade for being on the side of the oppressors of women.

Taking socio-political critique as a personal attack.

From Sinfest.

There is a peculiar phenomenon which exists in all critiques of social institutions, but especially in radfem: every time a radfem provides criticism of some social institution, many women will object on the grounds that their experiences are different or by communicating their Not My Nigel! syndrome. When talking about pornography, some women will say that the pornography they’re into is less exploitative; when talking about prostitution, some women will say that they know some privileged prostitutes who are not exploited or abused; when talking about the inequality of sex, some women will say that their Nigel is the bestest in all the world and that he would never ever ever abuse his privilege.

It must always be pointed out that radfem is not about the individual, but rather about the patriarchy, which is a universal system of privilege. Within this system, women have to decide how to “deal”: deciding where on the scale from complete submission to complete revolt they wish to position themselves. Whether a woman who voluntarily, and in full knowledge of what she is doing, positions herself at the end of complete submission (think Sarah Palin or Phyllis Schafly) should be blamed is an issue of contention. But it is widely agreed by radfem women that women who make compromises with the patriarchy are not to be blamed for those compromises.

These knee-jerk reactions to criticism apply to any socio-political issue, not just radfem. It can be pretty obviously transposed to other statements against institutionalized prejudice, such as racism or classism. Other ideologies may receive variants of the “my X is not that bad” rhetoric (“my religion is not that bad,” “my version of statism is not that bad,” “my parenting is not that bad,” and so on). These responses are as irrelevant as the “Not My Nigel!” responses.

In a variant of this, socio-political critique can also be explicitly used as a personal attack by people who oppose the critique. All the opponent has to do is “remind” you that your position is supported or exists only because of the mainstream. For instance, men may lament “but what about the menz??” or argue that men have made modern society possible for women (“we hunted the mammoth for you!”). Statists may argue that anarchists are hypocrites for using public roads and public libraries (or may even argue that such usage disproves anarchism). Atheists may be reminded that they were raised in a Judeo-Christian culture and should not stray from it, that science came from a Judeo-Christian culture, and so on.

Feeling personally attacked by a structural analysis is as bizarre as blaming one slat of a wooden floor for the fact that the house is in bad repair. But it makes sense when you keep in mind that we are taught that methodological individualism is the only serious way to approach any issue, and that methodological collectivism is mainly relegated to the dustbin of history.

This all may not be as obvious as I think, so let me clearly state my main argument:

1. We are indoctrinated to believe that our society is egalitarian and that therefore problems can only be solved at the individual level. (see atomistic individualism)

2. Victims of social institutions are held to be responsible for their own victimhood. (see cultivating hatred through personal responsibility)

3. Therefore non-radfem women see radfem criticism of social institutions as a personal attack against their own actions and as a statement that they are responsible for their own patriarchal exploitation, even though this is not the radfem intent and that it really makes no sense.

This reasoning is ingrained in our linear thinking, and the reaction by non-radfem women is instant and automatic, as any thread on some radfem conclusion reveals. No matter what the topic, women will pipe up and feel offended that the radfem is attacking their own lives, even though she is doing nothing of the kind.

The consequence for activism is what we observe with funfems and other forms of mainstream activism- their solutions are tailored to an individualistic, capitalistic, democratic society. They try to address collective problems at an individualistic level, a noble but ultimately pointless process. Obviously we do need people on the ground resolving individual problems, but to only address individual problems is to put oneself on an unending treadmill. As anarchists say, one needs to “strike at the root,” the systemic causes of the individual problems.

These mainstream activists, like funfems, liberals, pro-choicers, church-state separation advocates, and so on, are effective at helping individuals but are ineffective as agents of change because their actions are framed within the system that oppresses them. And they frame their actions in this way because the system is invisible to their methodologically individualistic ideologies.

What about “the personal is the political”? Aren’t all of our decisions political in nature? Sure, but there’s a step between evaluating actions in a political context and berating people for them. I believe we do bear collective responsibility for the harm caused by our social institutions. In the same way, men and women share a collective blame for the patriarchy, but no individual man or woman is directly responsible for the patriarchy and its effects on individual women (hence the word “collective”).

More importantly, “the personal is the political” also tells us that our actions must be analyzed within the larger context of the patriarchy’s vast influence. Personal decisions are made in response to the situation a person is in, and the situation a person is in reflects the political situation.

Maybe it isn’t all about you. Maybe the things that turn you on, make you feel hot, and give you orgasms aren’t *just* about your own personal, private, individual life. Maybe the things you do are shaped by outside forces like patriarchy. Maybe your actions have a larger impact. Maybe you didn’t spend your formative years deep asleep in a magical fairy cave only to awake from your slumber to suddenly and mysteriously have fantasies about hog-tying and raping women…

Just like I don’t care what specific kinds of porn you are into, just like I don’t care how much super awesome empowering fun stripping on stage for an audience is for you. You liking something doesn’t make it innately ‘good’. There is no protective bubble around things we think are fun.

As I said before, it’s hard to look at a Sarah Palin or a Phyllis Schafly and excuse their actions. That’s because we recognize at some level that there’s a difference between passively coping with the patriarchy and actively, voluntarily supporting the patriarchy. It’s the difference between a woman getting pepper spray to cope with rapists and a woman holding a rapist’s victims down so he won’t rape her instead. Both are coping mechanisms, but the latter is a crime, while the former is not.

But, and here’s the thing, we blame these actions for being criminal in nature, not because of a prior socio-political criticism. Radfem does not say “it’s wrong to hold down a woman so she can get raped” or “it’s wrong to speak against the equality of all individuals” because these things are basic ethical issues which should not even need to be stated. People may disagree on the punishment or restitution to be imposed on the accomplice, or on the kind of equality that one should advocate, but those are finer points.

If a woman calls the cop on a man who assaulted her, she is legitimizing the violence of the State (including the disproportionate violence directed against women), and putting herself and her assailant under an unjust amount of risk. But we can’t blame any woman who makes the calculation of risk and decides that calling the cops is better than not. It’s the system we need to blame, not the woman who feels she has no better choice.

But if a woman decides to become a cop, go through the schooling needed to do so, and threaten, assault and railroad innocent people as all cops do, then we have to blame that woman as a criminal element. But by and large, this is not the kind of woman we talk about. On the whole, we talk about normal women with an ethical compass struggling to cope with a patriarchal society, not sociopaths who love to degrade or hurt other women. It is to these women that we say, “it’s not about you/your Nigel.” It’s about the P.

I leave the final word to a IBTP commenter named “eb”:

For all I know, you can be the Holy Fucking Virgin Mary mother of God but you still don’t live in a vacuum. Just because you are a good person, doesn’t mean bad things don’t happen in your name or because of your choices.

Step outside the ‘I’.

The strange connection between pornstitutionists and lying.

Above: Image from RANCOM!. Click to enlarge.

Obviously I don’t like pornstitutionists (a term for people who oppose abolitionism in prostitution and pornography), so I don’t have a high esteem of their reasoning faculties to begin with. But the more I read their articles and entries, the more I realize that most of what pornstitutionists write are just plain lies and misrepresentations. These are not honest people.

A good example of this is Sex, Lies, and Abolitionists, by Matthias Lehmann, a German researcher who traveled to Korea to “advocate for [prostituted women's] rights.” The angle given to the abolitionist position is all lies, but I think many people who aren’t versed in the debate would read his entry and come out of it with a sense of rage against the evil abolitionists who hate prostitutes. Because that is exactly what Lehmann wants you to imagine. Let me begin:

Rather than replying in the comment section only, I chose to respond more publicly in this post, to highlight the defamation that proponents of sex workers’ rights frequently have to endure.

Yes, of course. It’s much more important to address the defamation that privileged male advocates of pornstitution endure than the defamation inflicted on ex-prostituted women or on prostituted women. This is not really an argument, but I thought it was a nice place-setter for the nonsense that follows. Once again, it’s always about men and the supposed male sexual needs that they defend.

Since the author mentions her view about which groups dominate the prostitution discourse, how about we take a look at the spectrum of prostitution abolitionists? In my view, those are predominantly radical feminists or members of faith-based organisations.

From this point, he refers to both groups as “they.” Lehmann here is leaning on the common lie that radfems and fundamentalists are ideologically allied in the fight for abolition, when in fact both groups are completely opposite in values and aims. He wants you to associate radfems, who are against all exploitation of women and against gender, with fundamentalists, who support the exploitation of women’s sexuality in a traditional gender-based hierarchy.

They are the ones who ignore the realities of sex workers, since their opinions often rest on their own concepts of morality and disproven research.

When I asked Lehmann to provide me evidence that disproves the study I presented, all I got was papers that propagate more lies about abolitionism and personal attacks against one of the authors (Melissa Farley, who they particularly object to). He’s got nothing to disprove at least some of the research presented.

The term „prostituted“ supports the notion that sex workers lack agency and aren’t able to make informed decisions.

As I’ve argued before, there is no such thing as “choice” and no such thing as “agency” because there is no such thing as contracausal free will, so on that basis I reject this argument. No one makes “informed decisions” because human beings are entirely moved by non-intelligent, non-informed deterministic causes. What this has to do with the term “prostituted,” I have no idea; there is nothing in the definition of prostitution that implies some kind of human capacity that exists beyond the realm of causality. Being prostituted is no more or less a sign of (non-existing) “agency” than not being prostituted.

I defy any pornstitutionist who objects to my reasoning to demonstrate to me the existence of “agency” by pointing to an entirely uncaused, self-generated “choice.” There ain’t no such animal.

“to be prostituted” is a passive term that supports the notion that one cannot actively choose to work as sex worker. Is a construction worker “constructed” then?

I don’t know why Lehmann thinks he’s made some kind of witty point with this. Of course the concept of “construction worker” is just as socially constructed as any other form of work. Why would he think otherwise? Anyhow, people no more choose to be a construction worker or a prostitute than people choose anything.

I suppose the pornstitutionists might accuse me of missing the point here, that this is not really about agency but about labeling prostituted women as if they are children or otherwise incapable. I don’t see how the term “prostituted” or “to be prostituted” treats people as children. Rather, it is a rational acknowledgement of the lack of options and lack of privileges of the vast majority of prostituted women, something which also exists in actual jobs, mainly jobs which do not offer good working conditions and fulfilling work.

I, on the other hand, am tired that forced prostitution and pornography are conflated time and again, and that those who oppose the criminalisation of sex work are branded as proponents of sexual exploitation.

There are a lot of lies packed in that one little sentence. First, the most egregious: radfem abolitionists are against the criminalization of prostitution, only of pimps and johns. Prostitution is not the crime, the demand for prostitution is the crime. Because Lehmann has already associated abolitionists with fundamentalist Christians, the reader will easily believe this new lie.

It also doesn’t speak well of Lehmann’s researching abilities that he can’t figure out the connection between prostitution and pornography, especially since half of prostitutes report having been used for the purposes of producing pornography. Both prostitution and pornography are about exploiting women’s bodies for profit, and this is made possible by gender roles. It’s really not rocket science. We call pornstitutionists “proponents of sexual exploitation” because they are… advocates of institutions which aim to exploit women’s sexuality. The fact that he balks at this is more a reflection of his own inner contradictions than of some error of evaluation on our part.

Rather, prostitution abolitionists frequently dominate the discourse and silence any dissenters.

A not too subtle attempt to bolster his side with a victimhood complex, trying to portray himself as a good guy. Again, this is not an argument, but a distraction; as a researcher well versed in the terms of the debate, he knows very well this is a lie; but because he’s already conflated abolitionism with fundamentalist intolerance, he makes the lie seem believable.

If you don’t agree with them, prostitution abolitionists will denounce you as pimp, punter, torturer or – here – will-less parrot.

Actually, this is a bizarre example of misrepresenting a quote that he gives right there in his entry. How can he misread someone this badly? What he quoted was:

Much of the poison-speech by the Left is the language of pimps and punters – men who are not pimps and punters parrots their words without questioning.

So clearly the quote is not about how every pornstitutionist is a pimp or a john, but rather that people who are not pimps and johns adopt the language of pimp and punter advocacy groups to talk about pornstitution. How can Lehmann believe he can get away with lying about a quote he himself included right there in his entry?

The interests of sex workers are best represented by sex workers themselves. Those include fighting forced prostitution and violence, by the way. But for as long as prostitution abolitionists fight against sex work itself, a collaboration with sex workers is hardly in the cards. Sex work is work. Forced prostitution is forced sexual labour.

Lehmann here gets the first part right. We should fight forced prostitution and violence. This makes no sense given his (implicit, as a pornstitutionist) support for pimps and johns, but at least he’s not outright lying here. But he gets the last part wrong: prostitution is not work or labor. This is clearly an attempt to portray prostitution as “just another job” or “just another choice.” Prostitution is rape. To make the claim that abolitionists should just give up and stop fighting against rape is eye-rollingly ludicrous.

Most of the rest of the entry is about prostituted women’s unions. I don’t really see the relevance of unionizing rape (or bringing prostituted women indoors, as if that’s not already what pimps and johns do), so I will refrain from commenting further. Again, it is merely a red herring designed to reframe prostitution as a job like any other job, a “choice” like any other “choice.” We must clearly reject this reframing and put an emphasis on the conditions that make women turn to prostitution.

As for the conclusion:

Please question your views if they undermine the rights of sex workers. Failing to safeguard sex workers’ rights, will prevent fighting forced prostitution and violence in sex work effectively.

The abolitionist view does not undermine the rights of sex workers, but rather enforces those rights. It will not prevent fighting forced prostitution or violence, rather the opposite. Abolitionism is not the final solution, but it is preferable to the pornstitutionist policy of supporting the (mostly male) criminals. The real final solution is to end gender roles, and people like Lehmann, because they explicitly support the exploitation of women based on gender roles (just not “forced” exploitation), are not part of that solution. The “research” they do, no matter how well intentioned, always starts from patriarchal premises and cannot escape this circularity. They are, figuratively and literally, circle jerks.

PS: After this entry was posted, Lehmann commented on his own entry to object to… my denial of free will (no, he did not acknowledge any other part of my critique!). When I asked him for counter-evidence, he just mocked me. What a useless asshole.