BAsics Bus Tour hits NYC -- AND I'm protesting 50 Shades of Grey tonight!

I am absolutely thrilled that the BAsics Bus Tour is kicking off officially today here in NYC.  This time there are two full 30 foot RV's and two dozen volunteers from around the country.  They are impressive and they are taking out the most liberating and inspiring and practical solution to the problems of the world: all the way communist revolution as re-envisioned by Bob Avakian.  Even more specifically, they are promoting BAsics from Bob Avakian and other work of his.  I know from the last leg of the Tour, which went down South, as well as from my broader experience in and knowledge of the movement for revolution that this opens up tremendous enthusiasm, hopes, profound questions and contributions from many kinds of people.  Stay in touch with the blog: basicsbustour.tumblr.com to stay up to the minute on how this Tour is going.

Also, tonight I will be hitting the streets with a small crew of folks from the movement to End Pornography & Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women to protest an event that is celebrating 50 Shades of Grey.  It is called, "50 Shades of Seduction" sponsored by Sidebar in Manhattan.  They are offering drink specials (50% of Grey-tinis) and a class on S&M.  We will be outside passing out fliers and holding signs which read:

50 Shades of Grey: Bad for Women, Bad for Sex!

As we put it in our announcement for this protest:

We'll be calling on people to reject the view of women and of sex that is promoted in the book, not to imitate and celebrate those views.

50 Shades of Grey glamorizes the story of a powerful man hurting a woman who cares for him using riding whips, chains, paddles and violently degrading sex. This is not 'just fantasy.' This does harm.

Every day millions of women around the world are hurt through the real-world acts of rape, battery, sexual slavery, pornography and sexual abuse.   Women should be fighting to end their oppression and degradation, not celebrating it or seeking to get 'in on' their own objectification, commodification and degradation.

50 Shades of Grey is also bad for sex.  More space needs to be opened up for people to imagine and experience the full richness of sex between mutually respectful and equal partners. Instead, this book pushes people to get over their discomfort and wallow in degradation and enslavement.

Why I Will Be Marching Against Religious Patriarchs and Woman-Hating Pornographers This Saturday – And Why You Should Join Me

It is no longer deniable by anyone paying attention, that we are living through an all out war on women's lives, women's rights, and women's futures. This is not a minor matter; women are half of humanity. Defeating this war is everybody's responsibility.

This is why this Saturday at noon I will be out in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City with a rowdy band of others screaming at the top of my lungs. This is the home of Timothy Dolan who spearheaded the recent attacks on birth control, which come on top of decades of attacks on abortion. Nearly 90% of counties now lack an abortion provider.

From there, we will march to the porn stores in Times Square and once again scream at the tops of our lungs. We will protest these stores because pornography has become more violent, more humiliating, and more cruel towards women – even as it has become more mainstream.

In reality, there is no meaningful difference between the Bible's view of women and pornography's view of women. Both reduce women to “things” to be controlled by men. The church reduces women to breeders. Porn reduces women to sex objects to be brutalized and degraded. We are neither. Women are human beings. On Saturday, we are shaking off any remnants of our own passivity and launching a new movement that will not stop until the full humanity of all women is recognized throughout society and throughout the world.

By taking to the streets in protest, we are not appealing to those in power, neither to the politicians who are either outright attacking women's lives nor with those who are “just” seeking “common ground” with and conciliating to those attacks. We are calling out the millions of people who are horrified by this relentlessness but who are sitting paralyzed on the sidelines. We are also calling out to those who have become so acclimated to the unceasing violence and disrespect of women that they aren't even angry.

Our message: IF WE WANT THINGS TO CHANGE – WE MUST ACT! We must rely on ourselves. We must do more than click an online petition or send money to some politician, we must get out in the streets, we must make our voices heard, we must confront the woman-haters and we must create through this protest a taste of the future we want.

For too long, those who attack women have felt free to do so at the tops of their lungs and with the backing of the state. Rush Limbaugh can call a thirty year old woman who uses birth control a “slut” and monopolize headlines for days. Timothy Dolan can revolt against birth control and get a personal phone call trying to appease him from President Obama. Porn producers can speak openly, as Bill Margold does here, about their desire to portray violence against women, “I'd like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women... The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that because they get even with the women they can't have."

Meanwhile, women tell us the stories of their rapes, the obstacles and shame they've encountered seeking abortions, the humiliation they've experienced from boyfriends who take their cues from pornography in whispers and through tears.

Why should a woman feel she has to whisper to us about birth control and then add, “I hope no one hearing this gets offended”? Why should a woman be embarrassed to tell us how humiliated she has been because, “Every guy I have ever dated has begged me to let him ejaculate in my face”? Why should a woman break down in tears not because she feels guilty about having had an abortion but because she had gone her whole life without anyone ever saying to her that it is okay to feel good about her abortion?

It is time for women to stop choking on their anger and pain, to stop turning it inward. And it's time for the men who want no part of this to stop going along.

We know that the body count of battered women – three to four women killed every day – never makes the front page. We know it's easier not to consider the crushed spirits and ravaged bodies of the trafficked women who are locked inside the "massage parlors" we walk past. We know it's degrading to consider how many of the men we interact with get off on depictions of women being "throat-fucked" til they gag. We know its a lot of energy to respond every time a religious fascist insists women "keep their legs closed" and be forced to bear children against their will. We know it is painful to confront that most people—including most progressive people —have learned to accept and to live with this escalating hatred of women.

But we also know that this is not the only way the world can be. We know there is a reservoir of people, women and men, young and old, who hate this relentless assault on women's lives, rights and futures. We know that there are millions more who can be won to see that all this is intolerable. We know that not all men hate women. We know that women are not innately weak and passive and destined to lay down for this shit. We know – and we have already seen in our work building up for this protest – that, when people come together to confront the woman-haters and speak up defiantly in an uncompromising voice, tears and whispers can transform into righteous anger and defiant political action.

By standing up together, by confronting the institutions that concentrate the war against women, we can shake off our own passivity. We can plant a pole that challenges and changes what other people feel they just have to accept. We can create a situation where the anger that is simmering, often stuffed very deep down in women everywhere, can be brought to the surface and unleashed to fuel powerful thinking and action. We can give inspiration and backing to people of all genders who everywhere who want to be part of bringing a better future into being. We can forge a vehicle, a new movement, that changes the terms throughout society and gives people a meaningful way to act.

On Saturday, our protest is not symbolic. It is a beginning. It is a declaration. From now, until we win the full liberation of women, this war on women will be resisted with conscience, anger, imagination, massive mobilization, and relentless determination to turn the tide.

End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!

Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!

Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!

http://stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com/march10

Saturday, March 10th 
12:00 NOON
ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL:

Fifth Ave. btw 50-51st. Streets

 

"I Had Never Thought About It That Way Before" Talking about Pornography and Patriarchy at a High School

http://revcom.us/a/262/correspondence-from-high-school-en.html

Revolution received the following letter from a high school student:

During my lunch break at school, I announced to my fellow high school peers—many of them had bought IWD shirts last year from me—that International Women's Day was approaching once again and I began to describe what was being done in response to that. I had briefly mentioned the critical issue in defending abortion and all reproductive rights. My friends all seemed to agree wholeheartedly on the importance to have such access. However, what sparked the most interest and what really got the discussion going was the idea of having a demonstration at strip clubs in the city where we live. Some of my friends were surprised or curious at what that meant. I made it clear that we were not going against the women in these institutions but the institutions themselves. One of my friends couldn't grapple with such an idea. Such a thing had never been introduced to us before! It was then that I realized how normal, how accepting, how prevalent this issue is but rarely questioned. She argued about the individual's right to choose and if women were willing to do it, then it's okay. In response, I gave a small anecdote of a woman I knew who either had to choose between being on the streets or stripping for the money. In the Revolution newspaper #261, Bob Avakian's quote really states it true: people don't choose what their choices are. After I said that, I noticed that a big majority were listening. Some of them didn't know what to think. Others agreed and were ready to hear more. Some were hesitant.

I began further describing the extreme pornification of the world we live in and A LOT of people had something to say about that. The conversation drifted toward the issue of the sexualization of women to sell commodities. My hesitant friend from earlier definitely agreed on that. She slammed American Apparel and described it as "full porn." My other friend jumped in and started talking about the "sex sells" philosophy that followed that kind of advertising. We had talked so much we hadn't even noticed the bell had rung for class. My friend expressed her thanks for such a discussion and told me, "I had never thought about it that way before. We definitely need to talk about the porn more!" The overall experience was quite a lesson. If anything, this conversation shows how normalized the sexual subordination of women is and how urgent it is to bring this movement to the front of this society. "End Pornography and Patriarchy!!"

Watch & Spread this Talk -- STOP THE WAR ON WOMEN!!!!

Here is the footage of the talk I gave yesterday at Revolution Books in New York City (thank you to RB to getting this online so quickly!) called:


From the Expanding Porn Industry to the Aggressive Religious Patriarchs -- End the Enslavement and Degradation of Women!

Watch it... Spread it... Get out in the streets on Saturday!!!


Sunsara Taylor, 3/4/2012 from Revolution Books on Vimeo.

"Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world..."

Revolutionary Communism and the Liberation of Women -- WE NEED TOTAL REVOLUTION!    

#5

"Look at all these beautiful children who are female in the world. And in addition to all the other outrages which I have referred to, in terms of children throughout the slums and shantytowns of the Third World, in addition to all the horrors that will be heaped on them—the actual living in garbage and human waste in the hundreds of millions as their fate, laid out before them, yes, even before they are born—there is, on top of this, for those children who are born female, the horror of everything that this will bring simply because they are female in a world of male domination. And this is true not only in the Third World. In "modern" countries like the U.S. as well, the statistics barely capture it: the millions who will be raped; the millions more who will be routinely demeaned, deceived, degraded, and all too often brutalized by those who are supposed to be their most intimate lovers; the way in which so many women will be shamed, hounded and harassed if they seek to exercise reproductive rights through abortion, or even birth control; the many who will be forced into prostitution and pornography; and all those who—if they do not have that particular fate, and even if they achieve some success in this "new world" where supposedly there are no barriers for women—will be surrounded on every side, and insulted at every moment, by a society and a culture which degrades women, on the streets, in the schools and workplaces, in the home, on a daily basis and in countless ways."

Bob Avakian 

Chairman of the

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

BAsics 1:10

Do You Want to Live in This World? Lets Fucking Change It!!!

Someone just sent me this pic of a billboard in Midtown Manhattan.  Do you want to live in this fucking world?  How is this acceptable?  Escorts are somehow the standards of what is really good to consume, but "hookers" are cheap and less desirable.  The spectrum then being that women are to be paid for and consumed and this is the premise of the analogy being made to whether the vodka being advertized is "high quality" and "well priced."

Please, someone, ask me again: "What are you so angry about?"

Wake up people -- this shit is getting worse.  If you aren't standing up against this, getting out in the streets against it, refusing to continue your daily routine and refusing to let others continue to act like all this just "not that big a deal" then you are accepting this.  Join me in the streets on March 10th for International Women's Day!!

http://stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com/march10

12:00 Noon  Protest and March against sites of women’s oppression!
Begin at St. Patrick's Cathedral (5th Avenue between 50 and 51st streets in Manhattan)

Contribute money here to make this protest powerful!

Report On Taking Out Our Amazing "War on Women" Display and Building for the Intenrational Women's Day Protest March 10th

Over and over again a group of us who have been working to mobilize people to stand up for International Women's Day, have marveled at how little people know about the war on women. We've been very struck by how deeply people react and share their visceral feelings of upset, distress and righteous anger over the conditions facing women broadly and themselves personally. Mostly, these are people who seemed surprised themselves how strongly they reacted, but once they heard the whole war on women called out in its entirety, once they heard such sober truth telling and certitude, this drew out their own convictions. At the same time, largely because we recognize how deeply this connects with people who weren't already “looking for” this effort to End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women which we are launching, we've struggled with how to get people who aren't already thinking about the attacks on women be open enough to engage what we are saying and doing.

So, during a meeting a couple weeks ago we spent some time and we put ourselves to this. Through many hair-brain permutations and brainstorms along the way, what we came up with was the following. We got enormous paper (about 12 feet by 6 feet) and laid it out on the ground. On it we drew a couple of chalk outlines of women's bodies, the kind that the police do after someone has been murdered. Over the bodies of these women we placed big boot prints with various words which concentrate the hatred and enslavement of women: patriarchy, pornography, sex slavery, burkha, “beauty” standards, church, etc. Then, around that whole display we placed a collection of stunning facts about the level of hatred and violence against women. Different people volunteered to pull together different parts of the display and we assembled the whole thing on the spot the first time we took it out.

Read more »

Out of Denial and Into the Streets – International Women's Day 2012

Women the world-over are facing a growing assault on their lives, their rights, and even their recognition as full human beings.


In the U.S., Catholic Bishops have turned women's basic right to birth control into a national controversy. At least twenty percent of U.S. female soldiers are sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. Every moment we are bombarded by images of women's bodies, half naked and half starved. And strip clubs, which serve up the subordination of women to men in the living flesh, have become so mainstream that annually men spend an estimated $16 billion dollars on them (as compared to the $4 billion they spend on baseball).


In the Congo, tens of thousands of women have been so brutally raped they can no longer hold their bladders or bowels. From Moldova to Thailand and beyond, millions of girls and women are sold as sex slaves. Throughout the world, fueled by the massive dislocations caused by imperialist development as well as imperialist wars, Islamic fundamentalism is rising with its “honor” killings, forced veiling, and hatred of women. And from China to Honduras to Silicon Valley, the near-slave labor – and sometimes outright slave-labor – of women and girls has disproportionately fueled the growth in cheap manufacturing.


These are not “just a bunch of different bad things happening to women."  These are but a few of the many fronts in an all-out war on women. While the forms this takes may appear different – or even unrelated – a common rope is tightening around nearly every dimension of the public, social, political, and intimate lives of women.

Read more »

Making Sexual Violence Against Women "Cool"... This Time from PETA

 was happy to see that Maura Judkis over at the Washington Post blogs picked up on my commentary on the Liquid Plumr Double Impact ad the other day.  I was significantly less happy, however, when she brought to my attention this ad from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) which makes light of violence against women and sexual violence:



This woman is clearly very injured.  She is in a neck brace, for Christ's sake.  Plus, the ad intentionally features her stumbling and seeming to wince from pain between her legs as she tries to climb the stairs.

Her injuries are supposed to have been caused by "TFWVAKTBOOM."  That is, "Boyfriend went vegan and knocked the bottom out of me."  As the ad goes on to say, her boyfriend "went vegan" and all of a sudden was able to "bring it like a tantric porn star."  Then, we see footage of her being banged violently against the wall (later he is seen patching the wall up with plaster).

The "capper" to the whole ad is that she seems to have stumbled through the streets, wincing painfully all the way, wearing her neckbrace and almost nothing else (why would she bother to get dressed, it would delay the sexual aggression she is portrayed as clearly craving) to go out and purchase some raw veggies for her newly vegan boyfriend.  All, as is spelled out with no room for subtlety or guessing, because she is so eager to be near-raped and battered again.

News Flash:

Women DON'T like being battered and beaten.  No one should want to have sex like a porn star -- porn is about dehumanizing and degrading, about getting off on the enslavement of others.  And if you want to make a case for "going vegan" -- especially if you claim to be doing so out of a desire to be "ethical to animals" -- then make a fucking argument for why that is ethical, don't do so based on appealing to ugly misogyny and machismo or by trivializing sexual assault and violent battery.

It is time this shit be opposed and called out for the woman-hating it concentrates and normalizes.  This is NOT something people should just laugh off or get used to.  The normalizing of violence and sexual assault against women is growing.  It will not stop if it is not publicly and massively resisted and challenged.  This is why one of the stops on our March 10th protest for International Women's Day is Times Square, where we will protest the objectification and degradation of women which saturates American culture.  We'll protest the way that women's bodies are displayed -- half naked and half starved -- and used to sell everything from cars to clothes to "American culture" to the world.

This is part of a larger march connecting up the many sites of the degradation and enslavement of women.  We'll be starting at St. Patrick's Cathedral, the biggest Catholic institution in New York for their role in the assault on birth control and abortion.  We'll protest the US Military Recruiting Center for the way it concentrates violence against women.  We'll protest one of the anti-abortion "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" and several of the strip clubs in the area.  JOIN US!


http://stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com/march10

March 10th -- for International Women's Day
Protest and March against sites of women’s oppression!


12 noon: GATHER NEAR ST. PATRICK’S CATHEDRAL in New York City!

Liquid Plumr Porn Spoof: Making Female Degradation "Cute" and Normalized

Check out this new ad for “Liquid Plumr Double Impact.” As you will quickly recognize it is a spoof on a cliché in porn: the plumber shows up and really the housewife wants nothing more than to be sexually ravaged by him and all his muscular, musky masculinity. Further, this ad includes “double penetration,” (get it, “double impact”?). That is, the woman gets penetrated by two men at once (and indeed, two plumbers show up at her door promising to “snake your drain” and to “flush your pipe.”) During all this, the narrator (in the cliché porn voice) brags about how this “double impact” includes “a long snake to grab deep clogs... and a powerful gel to finish off the rest, baby.”

What is wrong with this ad?

It is further normalizing, and making “cute,” the notion that “everyone is into porn.” In fact, a lot of people are deeply offended by porn – and more people ought to be. It is very damaging to the way that all of society is trained to view the female half of the human race – as well as how people are coarsened and trained to view sex as conquest and domination. But this ad further alienates and silences those who might raise a critique of porn; already many are afraid to do so because they will be called “uptight” or lacking in a sense of humor.

It is portraying this “fantasy” of being “double penetrated” as being the secret fantasy of women. In reality, this is a “fantasy” that was almost wholly created by the porn industry itself. Further, this “fantasy” has nothing to do with actual human intimacy or mutual respect or closeness and pleasure (and I guarantee this is NOT the “fantasy” that is occurring to most women when they are stuck with a backed up sewage system!) – instead, this “fantasy” is all about sexualizing the impersonal ganging up on and overpowering by multiple men of a woman who is reduced to a thing.

All this reinforces the notion – which is the dominant message in pornography as a whole as well as the broader cultural portrayal of women in general – that all women at all times exist to be (and long to be) sexually available to all men. When a woman calls a plumber, she doesn't really need help with her plumbing, she is really harboring a secret fantasy to be sexually ravaged. When a woman walks down the street, she is not really just trying to go from “place a” to “place b,” nor is she enjoying the sun or the atmosphere of the city, she is really seeking to be hit on and objectified by men. All this feeds the notion that any woman who rejects the sexual advances of men is really denying him something he is entitled to, thereby justifying his rage or violence in the service of reclaiming what is “rightfully his.”

Finally, a word to all those who are thinking, “Lighten up, its just a spoof.” Don't be stupid. I don't accept that you can possibly be that dense. The only reason this ad “works” is because it is very closely playing off the typical forms of porn that are very well known and has very broad meaning and impact in the world. I am not “stretching” to link this ad up up with the meaning – and the broad impact – of the very industry (porn) which it is closely mimicking and playing off of.

And let there be no unclarity here: that industry, pornography, is becoming more and more violent, more and more degrading, even as it is becoming more and more mainstream. The normalization of “double penetration” (and even “triple penetration” and more) as well as the mainstreaming of this into the broader public culture (which is exactly what this ad does) is very much a part of this. In the real world, this is having devastating and long-lasting impact on the lives of real women (as well as men). It has created and contributes to reinforcing and bolstering the fact that women cannot go through the world without being constantly reminded that they are viewed – by a very large percentage of men as well as other women and their own views of themselves – as nothing more than a physical object, valued and valuable only so long as it is sexually attractive to and available to men. That is a fucked up and enslaving culture. Rather the opposite of a funny, hah-hah, joke.

Protest & March for International Women's Day -- March 10th NOON

End Pornography and Patriarchy: The Enslavement and Degradation of Women!   Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!   Fight for the Emancipation of Women All Over the World!

Saturday, March 10th Celebrate International Women's Day 12:00 Noon  Protest and March against sites of women's oppression!   Gather near St. Patrick's Cathedral (near Rockefeller Center, exact location TBA):   ►The Catholic Church's approach to women, gender, science and sexuality - like that of many religions - is a Dark Ages disaster! The Pope has condemned condoms (causing millions of HIV/AIDs deaths). The Church condemns homosexuality and insists that "divorce is a sin" (contributing to women staying in abusive marriages). Recently, Catholic Bishops urged "non-compliance" with new regulations requiring health insurance to cover birth control! MARCH to TIMES SQUARE: ►Protest the objectification of women! Women's near-naked and rail-thin bodies are displayed, often in subservient poses, and used to sell everything from clothes  to cars to "American culture" to the entire world. ►Protest the U.S. Military Recruiting Center!  The U.S. Military concentrates violence against women!  This includes its quasi-official reliance on brothels as a "perk" to male soldiers; the role of military forces in trafficking women and girls; and the epidemic of rape, harassment and violence against female soldiers.    MARCH to and PROTEST STRIP CLUBS (TBA) in the area! ►U.S. men spend an estimated $15 billion annually on strip clubs, as compared to $4 billion on baseball. Strip clubs have always objectified and degraded women. But with women entering - and fighting for increasing respect in - the public sphere, strip clubs have become the new "all male preserve" and an enclave for male chauvinism and entitlement towards women's bodies. Further, strip clubs prey upon the desperation, abuse and addiction of many women, including women who've been kidnapped and trafficked. ALONG THE WAY: Protest "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" & Celebrate Abortion Provider Appreciation Day: ►Crisis Pregnancy Centers are fake "clinics" that knowingly prey on women for whom being pregnant is a crisis. However, they are driven by an anti-abortion agenda. They often have no clinical staff, spread lies, guilt-trip women, and enormously delay and complicate women's ability to access abortion.  ►In contrast, we'll celebrate abortion providers because March 10th is Abortion Provider Appreciation Day!

PLANNING/MOBILIZING MEETINGS - THURSDAYS @ 7 PM   If anything in this call resonated with you... If you care about the conditions of women... If you want to do something that can really make a huge difference - not only for yourself, but for women (and all people) worldwide and for future generations... CONTACT US! stoppatriarchy@gmail.com

3 things you can do right away: 1. Invite us into your class, club or dorm. 2. Spread this on FB and Twitter. 3. Spread this announcement for IWD everywhere

Call to END PORNOGRAPHY AND PATRIARCHY:

THE ENSLAVEMENT AND DEGRADATION OF WOMEN!

We are told that "equality for women has been won" and that "there are no limits to what girls can achieve." BULLSHIT!

Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten. Every day three to four women are killed by their partners. One out of four female college students will be raped or sexually assaulted while in college.

In recent years, pornography has become increasingly violent, cruel, degrading towards women; women are referred to as "cumdumpsters" and "fuckbuckets"; the "money shot" (ejaculation in a woman's face) is standard; humiliating cruelty-like violent "ass-to-mouth" penetration-is normalized, and racist bigotry is sexualized. Meanwhile, the broader culture has been pornified: pole dancing is taught at gyms, "sexting" is a national phenomenon among teens, and the strip club is the accepted backdrop to "male bonding." All this is tied in with, and reinforces, the trafficking of millions of women and girls as literal chattel in the international sex industry.

This is NOT society becoming more comfortable with sex. This is society becoming saturated with the sexualized degradation of women. If you can't imagine sex without porn, you're fucked.

At the same time, a Christian fundamentalist-driven assault is imperiling abortion, birth control, real sex education and women's lives. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people who do not conform to traditional patriarchal gender and sexual norms are demonized and threatened. Abortion doctors are killed. Women who seek abortions-or even birth control-are stigmatized. 2011 saw the largest spate of legal restrictions on abortion since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

ALL THIS MUST BE STOPPED!

Fetuses are not babies. Women are not incubators. Abortion is not murder.

Women are not objects. Women are not things to be used for the sexual pleasure of men NOR are they breeders of children. WOMEN ARE HUMAN BEINGS CAPABLE OF FULL EQUALITY IN EVERY REALM!

 

It is long past time that this new generation stand up, reject, and RESIST this culture of rape and pornography; this culture that labels women "selfish" if they choose not to become mothers; this culture that reduces women and girls to sexualized objects while denying their full multi-dimensional humanity (including their right-as one essential part of this-to explore their sexuality without shame or stigma); this culture that demonizes and bullies LGBT people. 

Our purpose is NOT to lobby for new legislation to ban pornography ("decency laws" have always served to further repress homosexuality, boundary-challenging art, and scientific sex education). We oppose the criminalization of women in the sex industry. Our mission is to challenge the new generation in particular to reject this culture of rape and pornography, to resist the shaming of women who have sex and/or abortions, to wage fierce cultural and political resistance to wake others up, and to bring forward a liberating culture that celebrates the full equality and liberation of women.

 contact: stoppatriarchy@gmail.com

"Sex-Positive" Feminism and Sasha Grey; No Defense for Porn

Re-posted [originally published 9/27/11]

Recently, two college students (young women) insisted to me that it was wrong to oppose pornography because we should be "sex-positive." They also insisted that many women choose to go into pornography out of their own ambitions and that ought to be respected as a means of "empowerment."

This is bullshit on so many levels. First, the vast majority of women and girls in pornography and prostitution (and the lines do blur) would get out of it if they could. Second, even where women choose for themselves to be in porn despite the availability of other options, this does not mean that choice is a good one. For them, or even more significantly for society and women as a whole. The view of women that is concentrated and perpetuated in porn hurts all women way beyond those who "choose" to take part in it. Every woman at every hour of every day -- whether on the street, in her home, at her job, in school, or on a battlefield -- is affected by, diminished by, and endangered by living in a world where millions upon millions of men get off of watching women reduced to objects to be tortured, humiliated and brutalized for their sexual arousal.

These young college students then mentioned Sasha Grey as their perfect example of a woman who entered into porn on "her terms" and to "her own benefit and empowerment."

I described, among other things, some of what Sasha describes about herself in the video below -- how she invited a man to punch her in the stomach during oral sex as one of the ways that she won such favor in the porn industry, for instance. The young women hesitated for a moment, but then one of them insisted that if this was her choice we should respect it. "But, what of the content? What of the view of women and sex that is being promoted through this?" I asked them. At this point, they insisted they were out of time and had to go (interesting, as they had stopped on the street and talked at great length and with no seeming hurry for quite some time).

The fact is, most women do not like the acts they are forced to take part in as part of the porn industry. Many women comply with those acts out of fear, out of financial desperation, out of addiction, and other forms of extreme coercion. Often, women don't even consent to what is done to them in film but have no resources or rights to keep the film from being distributed anyway.

But for that fraction of women in the industry like Sasha Grey who choose to be demeaned, degraded, abused, and much more (including films that portray them as small girls, ass-to-mouth scenes, gang-bangs with up to fifteen guys on her at once, scenes where she licks a toilet bowl and worse), the critical question is NOT whether she chose to do those things or not. The key question is the social effect of those actions -- and of broadcasting those actions to millions of viewers.

When someone kills someone else, we don't ask the question, "Did they really feel it in their hearts? Was their choice 'authentic to them?'" We ask first, "What was the social effect?" And, if there is not a very good reason for them to have killed (ie: some situations of self-defense or in certain situations within the context of a just war) their behavior is condemned for its effect on society. Further, such behavior -- wherever possible -- is stopped.

This is an analogy. Killing someone is not the same as choosing to be in a porn film. But, the method involved must be the same. The effect of porn must be evaluated based on its societal effect -- not based on the individual intentions of the people who made it. Judged from its societal impact, porn is extremely harmful to women -- to the women involved in making it as well as to every woman walking the earth where there is an international demand for it. It trains men (and women themselves) to not regard women as human beings worthy of respect and equality, it sexualizes degradation and domination, it strips sex of the full range of human interaction, intimacy, vulnerability and caring it can potentially enable human beings to share, it concentrates some of the most unreconstructed racist bigotry and hatred, and it spreads this courseness of being able to view other people as "things" into other dimensions of this heartless world (it is no coincidence that soldiers fighting in unjust wars often get "pumped up" watching porn before going out killing).

Having walked through all that, take a look at this clip from Tyra Banks when she had Sasha Gray on as a guest. Someone has put some extremely important information throughout the clip which I hope you will also take the time to consider.

W e d n e s d a y ,   N o v.   2   7 : 0 0 p m R e v o l u t i o n   B o o k s p r e s e n t s   S U N S A R A   T A Y L O R O N  "The Woman-Hating Reality of Pornography and Why You Should Want No Part of It" This evening is the first in a series of talks by SUNSARA TAYLOR on Ending Pornography and Patriarchy; the Enslavement and Degradation of Women   Coming up:  Wednesday, November 16, 7:00pm "No More Defensiveness, Conciliation, or Reliance on the Democrats: Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!" *Wednesday, November 30, 7:00pm  "Why and How the Future Revolutionary Society Will End Pornography, Prostitution, and Patriarchy" This series of talks by Sunsara Taylor will be followed by Q&A, discussion, debate, and mobilization.  Sunsara is currently working with others to launch a new effort to:  End Pornography and Patriarchy; the Enslavement and Degradation of Women, which can be learned about at:  http://stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com/call   Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution newspaper, is on the Advisory Board of World Can't Wait, and is a co-host on "Equal Time for Freethought" on WBAI radio in NYC. Donation suggested: $5-10 Revolution Books / Libros Revolución 146 W. 26th Street (btwn 6th & 7th Aves) www.revolutionbooksnyc.org  212-691-3345   Keep Revolution Books on the scene now when it's needed more than ever.  Contribute. Become a Friend of Revolution Books.

Forward email

Pornography and the Military -- from a talk I gave at NYU

The following is a question and answer from a talk I gave at NYU a couple years ago titled, "From the Burkha to the Thong; Everything Must, and Can, Change -- WE NEED TOTAL REVOLUTION!"