Re: Sex

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

At 8:41 AM 4/11/96, hariette spierings wrote:

>Sex is not a part of the struggle for socialism.  Sex is a physiological
>anxiety, it is a life activity - it is not a life necessity either.

As a certain bearded old man once said, nothing human is alien to me.

This is painfully reductive, vulgar Marxism of the worst sort. "Sex" is an
important part of how our minds are constructed, and how individuals are
connected to the social world. If you hold a view like this, you can't be
taken seriously as an analyst of social life, and you have no hope of
speaking to a broad array of human beings.

For all his faults, Wilhelm Reich had a lot to say about sex and politics.
One crucial point he makes is that fascism is a highly sexed form of
politics - there's real erotic appeal to fascist ideology, and one can't
fight it with rationality alone. As Bob Fitch says, socialism has to be
social, and it can't be social taking this kind of celibate line. We can't
cede this ground to the fascists and/or Calvin Klein.

Doug

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