[The following August 19 2005 thread is filling in some common omissions in discussion of gender line. Often we hear criticisms of MIM line but not an explicit alternative line. The failure to make an explicit line plays into Liberal lifestyle politics on good sex and bad sex. For those who are unaware, it is the practice of most other organizations calling themselves "Marxist" in the imperialist countries to support a Liberal Freudian line on sex, and when they do mention people calling themselves feminists, they support only those pseudo-feminists on the Freudian side of the spectrum. Here mim3@mim.org criticized two parties calling themselves Marxist in the U$a for upholding the Freudian line. It's also not an accident that the RąP=u$A gives such prominent and positive coverage to a CIA agent who spied on communists named Gloria Steinem. RąP=u$A is also tailing after some of the most prominent gender bureaucrat lawyers defending pornography in court. ] The words "MacKinnon" or "Dworkin" do not appear on the RąP=u$A or Workers World website. Honestly, I think we're making more headway over there at PLP: "Feminism takes up important issues, but in a counterproductive way. Anti- pornography feminists like Catherine (sic.) MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, for example, legitimately point out how pornography degrades women and fosters violence against them, but they build the illusion that capitalist governments can pass laws that will safeguard women--even though, as we have pointed out, violence against women is one of capitalism's most important safety valves for channeling and controlling working- and middle-class men's alienation. Moreover, some anti-pornography feminists--e. g. , Dworkin--demonize all male desire for women and treat all heterosexual intercourse as rape. Pro-choice feminists, while legitimately resisting the fundamentalist religious right's attack on abortion, treat the issue of abortion in individualistic and middle-class terms as a woman's 'right to control her own body.'" http://www.plp.org/comm03/8sexism.html The sad part is that MacKinnon is so narrow she includes no data from TW wimmin in her analyses and Dworkin was an out-and-out Zionist, but they addressed Marx and even the Black Panthers. Yet, opportunists of the gender question simply can't risk saying anything at all--leaving us wondering who is really more narrow--MacKinnon or them. Then some of them have the nerve to come here and dump on MIM. Meanwhile, the RąP=u$A DOES mention Gloria Steinem, the product of Time Magazine 15 times, mostly positively. Even Workers World has a more critical outlook on her borrowed from MIM. Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 74 Re: MacKinnon and Dworkin: what other parties say « Reply #1 on Aug 20, 2005, 2:18pm » I should have said, that's 15 positive mentions for a former Playboy bunny and 15 positive mentions for a CIA agent--and you know that already if you read MT2/3. Way to go, RąP=u$A, how's that for really encouraging the emergence of serious theoreticians for wimmin's liberation. Play up Gloria Steinem who said men will "f*ck better than ever" and play down Catharine MacKinnon. This is just a reminder of how MIM sees it's principal task. It is not to build a lifestyle movement. It is not to build a persynal guru lifestyle cult. So for all the lifestyle nihilists and others running down MIM to benefit other organizations, two points: 1) you aren't fighting a winnable battle. You need state power to change the economy to win lifestyle questions. 2) you aren't doing your job on creation of public opinion through agitation and theory propagation. Once we compare what MIM is doing on gender with what our critics are doing, it becomes clear that our critics almost never draw out comparisons. On the other hand, here at IRTR, we have people who are quite, quite capable. If they decide to take gender theory in another direction, they might also have some practice worth looking at and comparing. How often we have said to people: don't just piss, support another line. Don't just piss, build another party. If you are pissing on MIM on gender, you are making a mistake, because the etext.org/Politics/MIM line is not surpassed. It's all fine and good to wish for something better, purer and more militant, but making it happen is another question. « Last Edit: Aug 20, 2005, 3:50pm by mim3 » IP: Logged mim3 member ***** member is offline Joined: Aug 2005 Posts: 74 Re: MacKinnon and Dworkin: what other parties say « Reply #2 on Aug 24, 2005, 4:11pm » Another example of why it is difficult to oppose MIM without falling into sexual Liberalism--RąP=u$A has no mention of Dworkin or MacKinnon and directly no mention of the FACT organization's legal work defending pornography. However, 3 out of 11 advisory board members of Feminists for Free Expression (FFE) that does the FACT type legal work filing briefs in court for pornography DO get mention in the RąP=u$A website. (I'm not saying their giving FFE people props is conscious, but their ignoring MacKinnon is obviously intentional.) There are people coming here to this board putting in a lot of effort guising themselves in order to support RąP=u$A, because like classic revisionists and state infiltrators, that's all they know how to do competently. It's a lot easier to have time to do such things when you don't have a line (only guises), which is de facto sexual Liberalism itself. On the one hand, MIM agrees that a ban on porn is not going to work within imperialism. It will just mean corruption, and higher porn profits for those who bribe officials more. That's supply and demand. But if these FFE, ACLU, NLG types go to court, why can't we also cover the other side, the MacKinnons and Dworkins and say that there is something about the socialist future in what they are saying? That's what MIM does in PRACTICE. No other self-described socialist or communist organization does that in practice--and yes, practice is connected to the principal task, not recruiting people to a cult. Public opinion building and cult building are not the same thing. Again, I laugh at those people saying some vague practice of other organizations is better than MIM's. If there are all these people carrying out "practice" led by another supposed vanguard party, then why is the Alexa traffic for them so far behind MIM's (and has been for over 10 years)? (BTW, RąP=u$A just fell out of the top 10 again in the socialist category on Alexa, despite MIM's best efforts to talk about them every month.) If there were all these people out there in "practice" and not just a bunch of white Liberals reading the NYT one day and MIM competitors another day, then why does it not show up in the stats? Maybe people should shut up about "practice" in large countries where people don't know each other and it's hard to discern what is going on and start thinking hard about "per comrade" requirements of political activity. Being friends with some white Liberal lawyer who files briefs for pornography is not some great "mass practice" and does not really even count against MIM politically, not to mention failing to show up in the stats on public opinion.