sex

July 8, 2014

A Presumptious Dilettante’s Five Belated Eggs

Jack Graham capitalism, gender, LGBTQIA+, marxism, sex, sexism, sherry wolf, silvia federici, the left, women's oppression 0

The more I think about it, the more I think a humble, sympathetic, non-domineering, non-entryist engagement with the anti-oppression movements springing up around issues of gender identity (i.e. Trans issues) is going to be absolutely crucial for the Left in the coming years.

This isn’t just a moral imperative. Sure, the Left must stand with the oppressed. Always. By definition. Otherwise why bother being on the Left? Otherwise, what does ‘The Left’ mean? But it’s also a tactical imperative. The system must be attacked at its weakest points. The righteous and rightful rage felt by many on the axis of Trans oppression is absolutely one of the system’s weakest points. It hits people where they live: in their bodies. Bodies are oppressed, disciplined, punished, curtailed, invaded, wounded and even dissected by capitalism… and it behoves the Left to realise that this happens in arenas outside the sites of direct capitalist production. This is one of those things that everyone formally ‘gets’ and then puts to one side. That’s not good enough. Capitalist oppression is total, hegemonic, far-reaching and omnipresent. It is intimately and demonstrably bound up with oppression along lines of personal identity, bodily autonomy, bodily identity, sexual identity, gender, sexuality, and race. This is why intersectionality is a crucial concept that’s only going to get more crucial. The task will be to relate all these issues to class. Not so that they can be subsumed, assimilated and/or digested, but so the analysis wielded by the Left can be enlarged, educated, made stronger and more inclusive. That is an end in itself – if we know what our ultimate goal really is.

The good news is that class is as intimately bound up with these things as the Left thinks it is. The bad news is that we have to stress the importance of class without playing ‘issue trumps’ (i.e. our preferred axis of oppression is more crucial or ‘primary’ or ‘causal’ than yours… and, by the way, how dare you stress the issues that hit you where you live before the issues that we think of as theoretically more important???).

But there is more good news. We can stress how capitalism, and thus class exploitation along lines of work and wage exploitation (which is basically just another way of saying ‘capitalism’), generates and exacerbates such oppression… for the simple reason that it bloody does; it’s the currently regnant form of class society, and we can adduce powerful facts to show how the structure of class society generates sexism, female oppression, gender essentialism, the reduction of people to categories, the reification of socially constructed categories into hegemonic ‘facts of life’, etc.

That’s why this is so good. There isn’t anything in there that constitutes new and startling revelation, but it’s a great little summary/primer/starting-point, from the perspective of a totally ‘on-side’ Marxism. I found it so anyway – speaking as someone who personally embraces the elderly Goya’s maxim “I’m still learning”.

One (related) crucial issue to remember… and here I’d proffer the great work of Silvia Federici… is that the oppression of women is not an optional extra with capitalism, nor is it a by-product of capitalism. …

October 25, 2013

Love & People

Jack Graham abuse, disability, fans, love & monsters, sex, tory scum 6

This paving slab thing really seems to bother some people.

Some of it seems to be just good, old-fashioned prudery. Personally, I don’t have a problem with kids hearing an oblique fellatio joke. Think about the dreadful things we’re happy for them to watch (they were still watching Hannah Montana when ‘Love & Monsters’ aired, for example). By contrast, a mild joke about consensual sex between people who love each other seems quite nice. Besides, we turn off the TV in disgust because there’s a joke about sex and then the kids go to school and spend all day giggling about bottoms and willies. I know I did.

If she really is stuck in the slab (and we can’t be sure of this, given that Elton is an unreliable narrator and we never see Ursula’s slab-embedded face from the POV of his video camera), there’s no reason to suppose that the Doctor didn’t ask her if it was what she wanted. Why assume that he’d force it on her?

There is something potentially disturbing about a woman being so utterly in a man’s power… but Elton doesn’t read like an abuser. Of course, the problem is that he can abuse her if he wants because of her extreme physical vulnerability. This seems at least as pertinent as the gender issues in this episode.

There is, of course, no reason why a ‘disabled’ person can’t have a happy, fulfilling life. They can and do… at least when they’re not reliant on ATOS for access to basic human dignity.

I’m making the link between Slab-Ursula and ‘disability’ despite the fact that she connects with this complex social phenomenon in very broad, Fantasy terms. Aside from the origins of her ‘disability’, she represents near total immobility, which is not unheard-of in the real world but which is unrepresentative of the huge matrix of different ‘disabilities’. She could, if read too closely as ‘disabled’, be considered offensive as a representation because of her extreme helplessness. Taken that way, she could tie in with the perception of ‘disabled’ people as like objects lacking agency. Pity dehumanizes the pitied; that’s why common humanity and solidarity are infinitely preferable.

I think a major bit of the unease over this scene – and the joke in particular – is actually submerged anxiety about sex between ‘disabled’ and ‘able-bodied’ people. The conscious worry is perhaps over abuse… but abuse is not peculiar to relationships involving the ‘disabled’. Of course, there is a horribly high level of abuse of the disabled, but abuse is, by definition, not about consensual sex between loving partners. The idea that Elton and Slab-Ursula’s relations might be inherently abusive probably stems from that very perception of the ‘disabled’ as weak and helpless, semi-people, in need of protection. The object without agency, as above. Like kids. (Children in our society are too often seen as passive receptacles.) For an adult, there can be no such thing as consensual sex with a child (which is true). Ergo, for an ‘able-bodied’ person, there can be no such thing as consensual sex with a ‘disabled’ person (which is not true). …

December 7, 2010

Fang Rock, Class and the Tentacular Revolution

Jack Graham china mieville, class, first world war, horror of fang rock, louise jameson, morbius, octopus, propaganda, rutan, sex, tentacular revolution, terrance dicks, tom baker 0

If you ask me, ‘Horror of Fang Rock’ is one of the best ever; a thriller that focuses on characters who really interact while they’re trapped together, featuring Tom and Louise at their acme.

It investigates the nature of belief in an age of rising science and technology: Adelaide’s astrology fetish compares to the superstition of Vince and Reuben, with Vince’s terror as real as hers, and Reuben’s fear of monsters more a manifestation of melancholy stubbornness at the rise of unsympathetic forces he doesn’t understand (like electricity… which is also the weapon of the monster that kills and impersonates him). Meanwhile, Leela lectures Adelaide that consulting her “shaman” (despite Adelaide’s denial, that is the right word for people like Miss Nethercote) is a “waste of time”… but, with relishable irony, the semi-educated Leela simply believes in science because her mentor has told her to.

‘Fang Rock’ has a quiet undercurrent about sex too. Adelaide is understood by Harker to be Palmerdale’s “fancy woman” and Skinsale obviously envies this (though god knows why)… but he’s also clearly very taken with Leela. Paddy Russell gives us a whole shot simply to establish how much Skinsale digs Leela on sight. Vince is very flustered by Leela’s impromptu striptease (which she completely fails to understand) and pays attentions to Adelaide, which she simply treats with a patronising indulgence (to her he’s an instrumentum vocale, not a young man). And then we have the porn under Reuben’s bed. Mind you, I’m not a Freudian so I’m not saying anything about phallic symbolism. Sometimes, a lighthouse is just a lighthouse.

‘Fang Rock’ is also very interested in class and the way it was changing in the early 20th century. Palmerdale is loaded and is therefore a scumbag, obviously. Crude but very Whoish… and true enough in general terms. He seems dead posh to the keepers… but to Skinsale (a wonderfully apt name, considering the manner of his death) Palmerdale is a nouveu riche, arriviste, vulgar little money-grubber… and such things obviously matter to Palmerdale since he has evidently purchased his lordly title. He tries to buy everything. He even seems to be paying his mistress (albeit for being a secretary rather than a concubine). Skinsale, meanwhile, considers himself Palmerdale’s social superior, despite obviously being skint (old money, obviously… and with a reputation built on enforcing empire in India). Palmerdale gets loads of his sailors killed but makes sure that he escapes (there are lifeboats enough for the gentry, as with the Titanic disaster, but not for the commoners) after causing the crash because he’s anxious to use insider info to fleece the markets… and then views Harker’s recriminations as irrelevant impertinence, and the keepers as more servants.

It’s worth noticing that the Doctor treats the workers (other than the cloddish and xenophobic Reuben) with respect. He starts off calling Vince “Mr Hawkins” while the poshos automatically talk to him like he’s a footman.

Vince, upon realising that Palmerdale is dead, burns the cash that His Lordship gave him, instinctively understanding that if he’s found in possession of it, the society he lives in will simply assume that he murdered the venal, titled git for the money.…