[Marxism] re: raunch culture

[Debordagoria <phantasmagorias@xxxxxxxxx>]

Katha Pollitt writes eloquently about these issues,
such as in this recent column.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/pollitt

--- "M. Junaid Alam" <alam1@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> "I tried to get with the programme, but I could
> never make the argument
> add up in my head. How is resurrecting every
> stereotype of female
> sexuality that feminism endeavoured to banish good
> for women? Why is
> labouring to look like Paris Hilton empowering? And
> how is imitating a
> stripper or a porn star - a woman whose job is to
> imitate arousal in the
> first place - going to render us sexually
> liberated?"
>
> That's what I've been wondering since I started
> thinking about the topic
> a couple years ago.  On the one hand you can say
> that, because female
> sexual liberation is extremely new and even
> revolutionary from a
> historical viewpoint, maybe there will be a period
> of "overreaction" in
> which an overt and blatant flaunting of sexuality is
> necessary,
> cathartic. It's also possible that the hyper-sexual
> commercialized twist
> on feminism is a real-life analogy to what Marx said
> would happen in
> socialist society, that it would be almost subsumed
> by the flaws of
> capitalist society when it first emerges (maybe
> "birth pangs" was the
> term?)
>
> But on the other hand, when Levy talks about  the
> female fascination
> with being strippers, running around eager to excite
> male viewers on
> 'Girls Gone Wild', with women themselves calling the
> shots to increase
> this trend, perhaps this reflects the the perversion
> of feminist values,
> which originally had a more radical flavor, that is
> inevitable under a
> capitalist paradigm. Maybe this is the natural
> direction of feminist
> values under capitalism, to become a joke on itself.
>
> I think this question of culture and women and
> social values is
> important. I think the left is way too careless and
> carefree when it
> comes to looking at what it means.
CLIP


                
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