"Pro-sex feminism" as a paradigm for a left-populist moral consensus.

Girldrive
An article in the Chicago Reader discusses a new book that offers a fresh approach to understanding salient commonalities and contradictions in contemporary American feminism. Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism is a travelogue that compiles the testimony and experiences of feminists (not necessarily self-identified as such) across the 'lower 48' states of varying racial, cultural and socioeconomic profiles. Kind of an interesting idea in itself. But what interests me most about the project is the identity of one of its young co-authors and the overarching political project that is implicit in much of her work.

It should be said that the story of the book's creation -- at once inspiring and tragic -- is as complicated and worthy of attention as its content. I won't dwell on it here except to mention that what's tragic is that co-author Emma Bee Bernstein took her own life before the book was completed and that more can be learned about this by reading the article in the Reader.

Aronowitz: Nona Willis and father Stanley
The other co-author is Nona Willis Aronowitz, who is the daughter of two intellectuals, both of whom were prominent figures in the American Left in the 60s and 70s. For many years, I have admired the scholarship of her father, the sociologist Stanley Aronowitz, particularly for his politically engaged work in the sociology of education and his pioneering inquiries into the sociology of the workplace.

Since, in my limited understanding, issues of economic disparities and social class have played so central a role in Aronowitz's scholarship (as opposed to stuff like identity politics), it was with some surprise that I discovered that he was married to the late Ellen Willis, the feminist writer and critic. Willis was opposed to the puritanical stances that sometimes emanate from feminist circles, and is associated with what has been called "pro-sex feminism."

Ellen Willis and "pro-sex feminism"
The meaning of "pro-sex feminism" can be discerned through the following quotation from an article that Willis contributed to the Village Voice in 1981 (titled "Lust Horizons: Is the Woman's Movement Pro-Sex?"):

While liberals appeared to be safely in power, feminists could perhaps afford the luxury of defining Larry Flynt or Roman Polanski as Enemy Number One. Now that we have to cope with Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms, a rethinking of priorities seems in order. [...]

My god, that observation was prescient. I bet feminists in 1981 could not in their wildest dreams have imagined the ascendancy of theocracy under Bush and Cheney; even today the courting of religionists is common practice among politicians of every political stripe. And despite the fact that "feminism" is no longer the salient assignation that it was in the early eighties, the din of anti-(hetero)sexuality/anti-sex rhetoric can still be detected in a percentage of feminism's present-day manifestations. Willis categorized the practitioners within the feminist tendency of what she called "sexual conservatism" into two groups: (1) the monogamists and (2) the separatists:

These apparently opposed perspectives meet on the common ground of sexual conservatism. The monogamists uphold the traditional wife's "official" values: emotional commitment is inseparable from a legal/moral obligation to permanence and fidelity; men are always trying to escape these duties; it's in our interest to make them shape up. The separatists tap into the underside of traditional femininity – the bitter, self-righteous fury that propels the indictment of men as lustful beasts ravaging their chaste victims. These are the two faces of feminine ideology in a patriarchal culture: they induce women to accept a spurious moral superiority as a substitute for sexual pleasure, and curbs on men's sexual freedom as a substitute for real power. [...]

I don't care who you are and what your attitude toward feminism is (if you're like me, you support feminism and might even be a feminist, but you basically almost never think about it and tend to devote more attention to certain sets of systemic injustices that are preventing human and political emancipation along lines of socioeconomic class, race and ethnicity), the above passage is really well written and thought-provoking and makes you wonder: why aren't people writing stuff like that these days? Is it partly because "alternative weeklies" like the Village Voice and the Chicago Reader are now owned by evil, corpora-financial interests?

A de facto feminism that is already out there, waiting to be described
Anyway, it's encouraging to see that Ellen Willis's corpus of feminist writings, including especially her "pro-sex" stance, have informed the work in the burgeoning career of her daughter. Nona Willis Aronowitz is still (very, for a journalist about whom I'm bothering so much as to blog) young, and the jury's still out on whether she'll become a writer of the talent and insight of her mother.

What's most encouraging is that she already understands the tidbit of wisdom that I believe to be indispensable to a future for the American Left: it must get the hell out of American's self-styled, middle class-bohemian echo chamber and start giving a voice to the people who are getting screwed worst of all in this country: poor people, both whites and minorities and both from the inner-city and the Great Plains. Nona Willis Aronowitz is spot-on when it comes to the necessity of this outreach. Behold the following quote from the Reader article:

[...] "Feminism, [says Aronowitz] for me, is women owning up to realities of sexism—but feminism as identity is less important than realizing those things and having gendered consciousness [sic].

[...] "Some of the most badass feminists we met were raised in conservative families or oppressive communities. I couldn't believe the urgency of women working in Fargo and Louisiana, the Bible Belt and Austin—they were way more passionate than a lot of women in big cities with big feminist communities."

These subjects—clinic defenders, Chicana activists, community organizers, and other women helping women on the ground—inspired Aronowitz and Bernstein to change their tack. The book's initial outline had been somewhat autobiographical, but as they put more miles between them and Chicago, they realized the stories that needed to be told weren't necessarily their own. "These women don't have a chance to be heard," says Aronowitz. "It started to feel urgent to let them speak for themselves."

Toward a Left-populism
What I find most compelling about Aronowitz's characterization of the project of her book is that it stands as a paradigm for precisely the program of left-populist thought and activism that stands the best chance preserving the foundations of civil liberties, self-governance and checks-and-balances enshrined in the Constitution.

To my mind, a Left that is premised upon a project of democratic emancipation cannot sustain itself -- and if not in the United States, with its vital republican constitution and traditions, then where? -- without being willing and able to take the form of a no-bullshit, intelligent Left-populism.

It is way too easy for the Left to fall into the same habits of the past thirty or forty (or more) years -- among them: defeatism, self-pity, pedantry, the fetishization of 'expertise', the fetishization of credentials, excessive intellectual and moral balkanization, regionalism, etc. --, but to pursue such a course would mean ceding all of our political autonomy (not just existing, but potential) to the reigning plutocracy (and a succession of future real- and potential-plutocratic [re-]configurations).

A Left-populist moral consensus cannot be prudish, because real people aren't prudish
We have to start, just as Aronowitz and Bernstein did, with the people who are already out there doing it. Furthermore, we need to bear in mind that a Left-populist moral consensus can only emerge around themes that that everyday people really do care about. Not an imagined version of morally upright, pious, unselfconscious 'everyday people': that's bullshit and pandering and a lie.

It's easy to know what people care about, because even if they don't always come out and say what it is, they do, inevitably and frequently, talk about it.

Here's a perfect example: sex. It's really easy to tell that human beings care about and think about sex because they talk about it all the time.

Karl Rove wanted everybody to think that there's this unimaginably enormous population of far-Right Christian religionists that constituted the largest and most monolithic voting block in the history of the universe. And for a long time, he succeeded. But, before long, everyone came to realize that it was actually a bunch of smoke-and-mirrors. And eventually, that becomes replaced with another bunch of smoke-and-mirrors -- the birther-movement, the tea-bagger movement, the neo-Nazi resurgence, etc., etc.

Maybe what I'm trying to say here is this: I'm as put-off by the smoke-and-mirrors shows as anyone else. But the response of the Left should not be to call for bans on smoke-and-mirrors shows, to denounce entire red-state populations on the basis of such spectacles, or to mount opposing smoke-and-mirrors production numbers!

It should be to call it what it is, to say: what a bunch of fucking loonies and point out how they are a playing perfectly into an ongoing succession of time-wasting distractions that muddy political discourses in our current landscape of consolidated media and micro-commerce. If a Left-populist movement puts real effort into doing precisely this, if it insists continually upon exploding mythologies rather than perpetuating them, it will make friends, not enemies out in the American countryside as well as deep in the American cityscape.

What say you?

Miscellaneous Aphorisms & Observations

Dear Reader,

Below is a collection of twenty-four aphorisms and observations. This is a bit of a Crib From This tradition (albeit an extremely occasional one): It represents Our Blogger's attempt to resuscitate a dying form (or perhaps to deal it a final death-blow). Anyway, please enjoy: Comments are especially welcome (particularly if they are written while in a state of intoxication). Until next we meet, Dear Reader, I shall undertake to remain, as ever,

Your humblest and most obedient servant,
Crib From This

i.

On the nature of outrage. Outrage can be induced only by design.

ii.

To acknowledge reality. To the extent to which we acknowledge reality, we control it.

iii.

On authoritarianism. The authoritarian impulse is produced through the coupling of egoism and moralism.

iv.

On the nature of megalomania. The megalomaniac lives in a universe in which he is necessary.

v.

Concerning the word "lazy." Be careful with the word "lazy," one of the most overused words in the English language.

vi.

On problem-solving and imagination. The central task of problem solving is to imagine a world in which the problem no longer needs solving.

vii.

A thought experiment. Try assuming you're wrong. And try assuming you don't know why you're wrong.

viii.

On declaratives. The substance of a declarative is located in the questions it implies.

ix.

On how people view consensus. Beware of those for whom consensus implies validity.

x.

On fashion. Fashion is a devil, and as such must be given its due.

xi.

On changing yourself. There is no changing yourself without falling out of comfort with who you are.

xii.

On cleverness. Cleverness can be a double-edged sword. Especially for a child.

xiii.

To render decisions arbitrarily. There can be no interesting thoughts without arbitrary decisions.

xiv.

On egotism. The egotist lives in a universe in which he is useful.

xv.

On the nature of "wish-fulfillment." "Wish-fulfillment" is an oxymoron.

xvi.

On fascism. The fascist impulse arises from the coupling of moralism and narcissism.

xvii.

On Sarah Palin. The worst of Sarah Palin is not located in the contemptible things that she says, nor is it located in the cynical causes that she represents: It is that she was tailor-made for us to hate and, sure enough, we cannot help but hate her.

xviii.

On the nature of human weakness. No one is aware of his weaknesses except in an abstract and imprecise way. Were he truly aware of his weaknesses, he wouldn't exhibit them, and they thus would not be weaknesses.

xix.

On Fake Christianity. To be a human being is to be blind: to one's pride, weaknesses, motives and subterfuge. This is precisely why Evangelical or "Born-Again" Christianity is the most cynical kind of unbelief (more cynical by far than atheism): the renunciation of humility and self-doubt.

xx.

Concerning first- and second-order hypocrisy. To the Evangelical/"Born-Again" Christian, we say: "You're a hypocrite, and the stewards of your system of purported 'belief' are the worst kinds of hypocrites in the world. How can you live with yourself?"

She responds: "Everyone's a hypocrite. You're a hypocrite too. How can you live with yourself? At least I, having recognized and renounced my own hypocrisy, am setting out to purge from this world that which is unclean, to put into place the conditions under which man will be worthy of salvation."

Here the conversation ends, because we realize that within her self-enforced ignorance (which she calls, grotesquely, her "faith") resides a second-order hypocrisy: The worship of death.

xxi.

On home-schooling. This is the inherent problem with home-schooling: It reproduces the limitations of the parent—his delusions, demons, psychoses, prejudices, vectors of self-hatred—by transmitting them, simply and baldly, to his child. Home-schooling has been called child abuse, but it's worse than that: It's incest.

xxii.

On the role of "working hard" in formal education. Anything but "work harder." If a bright kid's performance is inconsistent for any number or reasons—be they developmental, socioeconomic, biological or cultural—telling him, "work harder" does little more than restate the problem. It's not good enough.

xxiii.

Concerning the need for comfort. Everyone expends her energies working chiefly toward the end of preserving and maximizing her own comfort. Comfort and leisure are not one and the same: When they coexist, more often than not, they are placed in inverse proportion to one another. In fact, a person is comfortable only insofar as she is (1) a lackadaisical thinker and (2) possesses an incurious disposition.

xxiv.

On the nature of atheism. Atheism can't be defended any more than Christianity can be. Polemicists who frame discussions of their belief or non-belief in the form of a defense are in fact saying nothing at all about their identified subject. Rather, they are advancing a political cause, the nature of which either they are attempting to occlude from credulous readers or about which they, with their adolescent minds, are themselves entirely uncomprehending.