Wanna read something disturbing? Stroppyblog has done a survey on the what lefties do in bed (part 1, part 2, part 3.) Okay, so most of it is just an excuse for a load of in jokes between the various sections of the British left, but there is some interesting information to be gleaned from it.
The clear majority of respondents (72%) were male. Around two-thirds of respondents use porn at least occasionally. A third of respondents think porn degrades women, with a lot of ‘not sure’ answers. A similar number (28%) think that porn should not exist under socialism; 23% think that sex work should not exist under socialism, with a lot of people answering ‘depends what type.’
So what does this tell us? Firstly that lefties, who tend to have a theory on pretty much everything, have no unified approach to sex. In my experience most left-wing bloggers, who are generally male, tend to avoid or fudge the subject. It does however come up quite regularly on Splintered Sunrise and A Very Public Sociologist, and Madam Miaow can be also very funny when she deals with the subject.
The survey also tells us that a lot of people- presumably men, as they are primary users of porn- are hypocrites, in that they use porn even though they think it degrades women. I also suspect that the ‘hmm, not sure’ response may be code for ‘yes, but I don’t want to admit it’. Now, this is interesting because we are running up against the biggest problem with socialist theory, namely that creating a world in which people are not exploited or degraded might not be compatible with human desires, in this case male desires. And human desires are not so easily circumnavigated, nor should they necessarily be. Sometimes ideology doesn’t translate well into real emotional life; lots of liberal minded people are totally in favour of free love, right up until the point when their partner sleeps with someone else.
Again my mind returns to Valerie Solanas and the SCUM manifesto. It almost seems to me that she has the right idea, but unless you seriously want to suggest the creation of a female only society, her conclusion does us no good. At the opposite end of the spectrum from the conservative feminists (who are usually anti-porn and indeed anti-men and anti-sex altogether) are the libertarian feminists, who produce porn for women and organise female centred, sexually uninhibited club nights. Although Female Chauvinist Pigs has it’s flaws, it does effectively tell the story of how these two branches of feminism diverged after the successes of the seventies, and the damaging this effect this had. So we get ultra-feminists working with the religious right to ban porn, and libertarian feminists working with the porn industry to attack sexual inhibition. Both approaches are far from satisfactory.
There’s an analogy to be made between the sex industry and the drugs industry. The progressive attitude towards drugs is much more clear cut- decriminalise, legalise, treat addicts. Here’s my own opinion- recreational drugs (cannabis, ecstasy, mushrooms etc) should be legalised and sold to adults in dedicated shops, which are either run by or heavily regulated by the state. Drugs are extremely cheap to produce, and the current market price reflects how much people are willing to pay rather than the cost of production. Prices could be maintained at current levels through taxation, the revenue from which could then ploughed into addiction treatment centres and other public services. Harder drugs (heroin, crack cocaine etc) should not be sold to the public but prescribed to recovering addicts in accordance with the wishes of their doctor, free of charge.
Why do I and other progressives make these arguments? Because you can’t stop people taking drugs. Drugs are fun. This is the simple, undeniable truth. Hence, you will never eliminate the consumption of drugs for pleasure. This begs another question- why would you want to? Is people taking drugs for pleasure so intolerable to society that it must be prevented at all costs?
I would argue that it’s not. The actual negative effects of drugs on people are usually no worse to that of alcohol, for example. Friends of mine who are much more into hard drugs than myself tell me that in their experience the drug which has the most potential to fuck you up is alcohol. This is probably true in the short term; in the long term, tobacco undoubtedly takes that title. Flipping through the free London Paper today, I read Babyshambles guitarist Drew McConnell arguing that alcohol and heroin are the ‘big two’ to be wary of, and he criticise anti-drugs campaigns for making an unnecessary distinction between legal and illegal drugs. I agree with him.
What is most undesirable about drugs is the industry that goes with it; pushing drugs to kids, gang wars for territory, dealers trying to hook recreational users onto more addictive drugs. Simply put, the worst thing about drugs is making the financial transaction, having to deal with the people you have to buy them off. These problems can be eliminated or at least reduced by legalisation and regulation; denial and criminalisation just works in favour of the gangster capitalists who run the drugs trade.
Now, back to porn and prostitution. The act of having sex is certainly not harmful or immoral in itself; if we can make the case that taking drugs for recreation is okay, then we can surely say the same about sex. What is harmful is the act of paying someone to have sex, whether it’s directly with the client or to be filmed in a movie. Simply legalising the sex industry does not work; despite operating legally the porn industry is extremely sexist and exploitative, and legalising prostitution does not necessarily provide an improvement in working conditions. If you’re in any doubt about that, read some reports about the conditions in legalised brothels in Nevada. The Netherlands take a much better approach, with a recognised sex worker’s union leading to much better working conditions, but it’s still hard to escape the conclusion that having sex for money is fundamentally degrading and should ideally be eliminated from society.
So what do we do about this? I’m not in favour of legalising prostitution, but decriminalising those who work as prostitutes, and giving them the help they need to achieve a change in career. This problem is analogous to, and indeed crosses over with, the attempts to tackle drug addiction I expressed support for above. As for the ‘recreational drug’ of the sex industry- pornography- we need to take an approach similar to recreational drugs. Porn is already legal, and rightly so, but the production of porn should be regulated more heavily than it is at the moment to protect the rights of those who appear in porn. It should also be noted that there is an inverse correlation between the availability of porn society and the incident of sexual assault, as frustrated men can relieve their tensions without resorting to physical violence. Another argument against criminalising porn, then.
Finally, here’s a more radical solution to porn. Given that it is the exchange of money for sex and not sex itself which is the problem, why not eliminate the financial transaction from the equation? Place a ban on people paying others to be filmed having sex, and paying for material of people having sex, but not on the creation or dissemination of pornography itself. Thus the porn industry would become something done by amatures out of their own volition. If you don’t think that people would be willing to film themselves having sex and have that distributed on the internet for free, you probably haven’t been keeping track of trends in this area of commerce. Amature porn is fast catching up on professionally produced porn, and there’s more than a few people who get a thrill out of making home movies and having strangers watch the results. What this would result in is a reduction in the amount of porn featuring unrealistic models doing unrealistic things, but then that’s probably a good thing, and would make our perception of sex as a whole somewhat more realistic.
I can see a couple of problems with this approach. Firstly, if you’re not charging money for distributing something, you have no control over copyright. I can sympathise with someone who makes home movies but doesn’t want them ending up all over the internet. However, I’d say that the only way to avoid that is not to put material of yourself on the internet; given the nature of the beast, it’s best to assume that everything you put on the internet will be seen by everyone you know. (I remember a minor scandal a few years back, when it was discovered that ‘Friends Only’ Livejournal posts could be read by searching for them in Google.) Secondly, it’s possible that an underground industry dealing in the more violent and unpleasant aspects of pornography may spring up, out of the reach of state regulation. This could be dangerous; the only solution is vigilance against such activities. The government is already planning on passing a bill against ‘extreme pornography’, which covers the sort of things that people really would have to be paid to do rather than do out of their own free will.
So, that’s my two cents. Anyone wanna start a debate? While you’re chewing that over, here’s a huge phallic symbol to feast your eyes upon.
Insert joke about the thrust of British capital here…
Good stuff. One the survey one very big problem is the definition of “left wing”. As we all know, some people treat that as a very flexible term.
On the ol’ pr0nz I think a good starting point would be while drugs a relatively easy to quantify and control, and therefore turn into a commodity, sexuality is impossible to quantify. Genuinely free-love iais in contradiction to capitalism and the commodity.
One example, the lad mags: they frequently hype up photo collections of models by saying they’re the “sexiest ever photos”. Strictly speaking how on earth can that be anything other than false advertising?
BTW, the sidebar on the left is cutting into the comment box, and is very annoying.
Yeah, the survey does not seem very representative of what I would call left-wing opinion. Labour and the Greens get rather a lot of responses.
Surely the whole porn industry is an attempt to commodify sex. As sexuality is wildly complex, diverse and unquantifiable, the industry must create idealised images of women (and, for that matter, men) who then act as a standard the public is supposed to aspire to. So when a lad mag says that they have the “sexiest photos ever!” what they’re claiming is that the images are closest to this idealised standard of beauty.
Of course, this claim is false because the idealised standard of beauty is not universally accepted or sufficiently well defined. But the lad mags still sell because enough people do accept and aspire to this standard. One of the important effects of the LGBT movement has been to help break down these rigidly heterosexual, un-androgynous image of femininity and masculinity.
I kinda think the increasing prevalence of amature porn is part of this as well, and is to be welcomed. But then, I’m far too busy overthrowing capitalism to pay much attention to that sort of thing…
About this sidebar. The only sidebar on this site is on the right. It might be something to do with your browser, which one are you using? I’ve checked this site on IE and Firefox and it looks fine.
lEFT, rIGHT, meh!
Citizens of capitalism are much more at ease with drugs than they are with sex, which is surely backwards. The alienation required to sell a specific sexual fantasty (essentially what porn is) is much more obvious. Hence, I think, good sense lies much closer to the surface. Hence most people if asked about pornography (or generally sexual imagery) would say there’s something wrong with it, or they’re not sure about it.
People are at ease with drugs, especially with alcohol (in Britain).
LGBT struggle is important, as you say. It’s an obvious way to break down dominant sexual categories. We can work to break down the idea that relationships must be sanctioned by religion or law to be legitimate. Institutions such as marriage can also provide comfort and security. The last, and most important step, will be to guarantee general, and in particular, child welfare.
It’s an argument for communal living, man. Dig it!
Ha! Um, no. I hate to refer to the Manifesto again, but she’s very good on this topic.
Ninuwe used to live in a commune, although not that sort of commune. At least, I don’t think so… anyway, from her experience it was pretty much hell. People came to live in a house with egalitarian principles but still maintained their competitive instincts, their capitalist mindset. Again, we’re coming up against the problem of how much greed and competition is a product of capitalism, and how much a problem of human nature. It’s one of the most common arguments against socialism.
The reason why people are more at ease with drugs than sex (which I agree is rather fucked up) is due to the relation of both to work. Sexual relationships are anti-work; people who are in love tend to want to lie around in bed and not do anything. Hence, the sort of sex promoted under capitalism is the one night stand, where there is no emotional commitment and you can leave in time for work the next morning.
Drugs on the other hand aid work, when used appropriately. Few of us are ready to start work in the morning without a caffeine boost. If we get stressed then cigarettes relieve the tension without preventing us from working. After work, a couple of beers in front of the TV prevent us from going crazy; at the weekends, binge drinking and recreational drug use helps us achieve oblivion from the stress of the week, so that we’re sufficiently numbed to start work again on Monday.
Well, that’s my life anyway.
Ah, I’ve figured the sidebar thing. As a work around, increase the size of your browser window, or if it’s already fullscreen then increase your screen resolution. If you can be bothered.
It’s just occurred to me that I have the material here for a series of Socialist Unity-style sensationalist headlines about you, Mr Roobin.
ROOBIN SAYS ‘MEH’ TO THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEFT AND RIGHT
ROOBIN SUPPORTS COMMUNALISM!
and so forth…
Sexual relationships are anti-work; people who are in love tend to want to lie around in bed and not do anything. Hence, the sort of sex promoted under capitalism is the one night stand, where there is no emotional commitment and you can leave in time for work the next morning.
I knew there was a good reason I hated capitalism.
Isn’t porn supposed to degrade? Otherwise it’s erotica — neither one damned thing or the other.
That and all the other reasons. Seriously, I do think that our sexual behaviour is largely determined by our work patterns. How can you conduct a meaningful relationship when you work ten/twelve hours a day and travel two to get there? Answer is, you can’t, so porn and casual weekend sex takes its place.
Not that such working hours are a new phenomenon, of course. But nowadays women are less likely to accept the role of stay-at-home wife in a stagnant relationship.
Is porn inherently degrading? I don’t know. That’s a good question, and as a straightish male I don’t think I can answer it with any sort of authority. But I do think it would be less degrading if those who featured in porn were not financially coerced into doing it in order to pay the rent.
“Ninuwe used to live in a commune, although not that sort of commune.”
You can’t have one without the other, otherwise you get the effect (the one good bit that you quoted):
“The `hippy’ is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect for free pussy — the main commodity to be shared”.
The commodity is the foundation of capitalism.
Let me get this straight. You seem to be saying that you can’t successfully have a commune based on economic cooperation- which is what Nimuwe partook in- without also dispensing with the standardised notions of sexual relations within the commune. To which I say, huh?
Can you suggest what sort of communal living arrangement you’d be in favour of?
“You seem to be saying that you can’t successfully have a commune based on economic cooperation- which is what Nimuwe partook in- without also dispensing with the standardised notions of sexual relations within the commune. To which I say, huh?”
No, the reverse. I take it the commune wasn’t a hermetically sealed and self-suffcient bubble. The Paris Commune was fantastic, but it wasn’t a hermetically sealed and self-sufficient bubble. Hence it was overrun after 72 days.
What I’m inferring from you is you’re arguing from the point of view of alternative spaces: autonomism. I would certainly think Nimuwe comrades were autonomists.
Okay, that makes more sense. Yes, I’m in favour of autonomism, but not the hippie-style free love communes that were experimented with for a while. Also it has to be recognised that an economic commune is unlikely to be successful unless it’s part of a revolutionary movement- you can’t just shut yourself of from the outside world, you’ll be overrun.