But even with the incentive to mix monies, it would be much less likely that a few companies could infect every system of currency.

How many feminists do you know?

Now, you may counter that NOW (or whoever) is not an example of “radical feminism” or that their views on porn are different from those of true radicals like MacKinnon or Brownmiller. While that may be true, it’s not really relevant, because it presumes a level of sophistication with regards to different strands of feminism that most of the mainstream left simply does not possess, at least in my experience.

For example, a guy like Keith Olbermann probably has no more appreciation for the differences between the different strands and sub-strands of feminism than he does for the differences between Randian Objectivism and Rothbardian anarchocapitalism. He just knows that feminists are generally opposed to porn and is very reluctant to pick a fight with them over what he probably considers a minor issue to begin with. Again, I’m not saying he’s right to feel this way, but most members of the mainstream media (both left and right) are motivated much more often by concerns of political expediency than by some lofty ideological principles.

Libertarians may keep making and excuses and shrugging, but most independent-minded people facing non-state oppression- people who in a better world should have been libertarians- are going to follow their interests and self-respect and hook up with someone else, namely the Left.

The revived sex workers rights movement has massively made precisely this choice. And come on guys, sex workers really ought to be natural libertarians- it’s a rare prostitute or porn star who doesn’t believe in free speech and sex and drug liberalisation (basically the whole ‘social’ axis of the Nolan Chart)… and I read somewhere that we’re not immovably opposed to commerce and the free markets. But sex workers put up with an imperfect Left because it does create a social sphere within within which sex workers can reliably expect the institutional respect and fairness which are prerequisites for any functional public activity.

One cannot judge a movement solely by its official political positions or its formal rules and structures. Real social movements don’t succeed primarily by rewriting the formal rules (that’s a later step) but instead by expanding the kernel of their internal cultures until this changes the nature of daily human relations. Libertarianism tells us what society it would truly create by the operation of its internal polity- and I don’t want that society. The exclusive focus of formal political positions merely stacks the deck in favour of conservatives who defend traditional social relations of power and who present anyone who won’t stand quietly in the face of second class citizenship as a PC troublemaker. The Left by contrast usually responds when one demands they live up to their promises of equal opportunity.

Huh?

1. Antipornography radical feminists generally oppose, and have repeatedly come out against, the kind of nasty remarks and polemical abuse that’s directed against women in pornography from people (mainly men) on the political Left and Right. Whether you think we are right about pornography or not, I don’t think this is an accurate understanding of the position towards women in the pornography industry.

2. I can find no evidence at all that much of anybody in the mainstream Left is particularly afraid of alienating antipornography radical feminists, or really cares what radical feminists in general think (whether they are antipornography or not). Do you really think that someone like Catharine MacKinnon or Susan Brownmiller has very much influence over what people in common liberal or Leftist discourse, outside of specifically feminist political spaces, think it is or is not acceptable to say?

The idea that people on the male Left really want to object to nasty remarks about the women in pornography, but fear of radical feminist backlash is somehow holding them back, strikes me as bizarre.

I think that’s true, but I don’t think it’s funny. (Neither ha-ha, nor particularly strange.)

It’s entirely ordinary for women to be treated like crap by both the official Right and the official Left simultaneously, and especially women who are perceived as being defined by their roles in the system of sex-class (e.g. sex workers and other publicly sexualized women).

There are very few rules when it comes to the girls, and especially not girls who aren’t seen as “nice” according to prevailing male standards. Or I should say that there are a lot of rules: just not rules of courtesy or common decency, but rather rules of Patriarchal Correctness, which are themselves quite rigid in their expectations of who has the right to act like a dickhead, or even has a positive obligation to act like a dickhead, and who ought to be kept in their place.