« Bailey Brothers Building and Loan | Main | Ziff-lation »

When I hear the word "sensitivity"....

By Michael J. Smith on Monday October 5, 2009 09:27 PM

... I go for my revolver, or would if I had one.

A few days ago I mentioned that my lefty mailing lists were consumed with parsing and re-parsing the Roman Polanski business.

It was, of course, inevitable, that sooner or later, someone would clear her throat emphatically and begin a contribution with the phrase, "As a woman...."

Was it Rosie O'Donnell who had a schtick about this? "As a lesbian, I'd just like to say ... pass the salt."

Ms As-A-Woman -- let's call her Laura Abbott -- went on rather predictably to suggest that the mostly male membership of the list was perhaps a bit "insensitive" to "women's issues."

Now the Polanski conversation, silly as it often was, actually covered a lot of ground. The question of moral panic was raised. The social construction of childhood -- innocent childhood! -- and adulthood, came in for some rather heavy-handed discussion. But at least somebody pointed out that these notions are in fact socially constructed. The grandstanding judge's political ambitions were mentioned. You got a sense that this story had some depth and complexity, and that more than one kind of "issue" was involved.

Of course, the Prosecutor's Friends were much in the majority. Call the cops! Extradite him! Throw the book at him! 'Nuff said!

It always surprises me when folks who think of themselves as Lefties show such a zeal for the bourgeois cops, and the bourgeois DA, and the bourgeois judge, and the bourgeois rules of engagement (a judge, one lawyerly contributor pointed out, is not obliged to abide by a plea bargain made by the DA. So there, you filthy pervert!)

But it happens all the time. In fact one of the most characteristic tics of the moralizing left is a display of indignation when some rich guy escapes the toils of the law, where a poor guy would have been immured deeper than Aida. One gets the impression that the escape is perhaps even more the casus irae than the inequality -- as if what we wanted was for the "justice system" to behave like it's "supposed to". As if we wanted a lie to become true.

All of which leads back to the depressing insight that many or most American lefties are just recovering liberals at best -- if they're even recovering at all.

Let's return to Ms Abbott, though. It wasn't enough to have most of the Trotskyite scribes and Pharisees on her side. She was furious, absolutely furious, that anybody might raise a doubt.

Here's Laura:

Does anybody care that this is pretty much a male only forum? Yes? No? This is a group of men discussing rape. Perhaps I was wrong to assume that because this list is called Marxist, a woman's perspective on women's issues would be welcome.
Kinda strange line of reasoning there, about what you might expect of a "Marxist list". Would old Dr Marx himself have been interested in a "woman's perspective on women's issues"? It was my impression that he wasn't much interested in anybody's perspective but his own -- which as it turns out was a pretty insightful one, and one we keep going back to.

But of course the nub of the matter is the idea that the Polanski case falls under the rubric of "women's issues."

This is kind of a hard knot to untie. Who owns what "issue"? If Polanski had been interested in young boys rather than girls -- would it be a "gay issue"? Or a "men's issue"? Or a "children's issue"? Does the woman-ness or gay-ness or man-ness of the "issue" trump the interest some of us feel in the bloated condition of the enforcement state, the Pecksniffery of self-appointed advocates for supposedly innocent children, the sanctimonious hysteria of the media, and yes, the need that so many lefty Tartuffes feel to show themselves as righteous as the Right?

I guess this is one reason, among others, why I so dislike what we have come to call "identity politics" -- it's the turf-protection element, the idea that your discourse is privileged over mine because you're speaking "as a" woman, or "as a" lesbian, or "as a" whatever, and we own this topic -- it's a whatever's issue.

I think different. I think history and the social world and the res publica are the common property of us all. We all come to it with different histories and different perspectives, of course, and you'd be a fool not to listen attentively to what people with some immediate knowledge of a given matter have to say. But we all have to think for ourselves, and more to the point, no topic is ever just a whatever's issue.

We all have to deal with the cops. And they are not your friend -- even if you're a woman.

Or a child.

Comments (28)

op:


"Trotskyite Pecksniffery "
father you're giving poor Pecksniff
that massively audacious charlatan
a bad turn here ... joining him to
one of clio's most brittle
snot lashed and ill bred clans

not one of
the living acolytes of herr bronstein
has a factious bone in his chicken boned body


a btw question father ...one you might
be able to answer as papal nuncio
to this marxlist from planet broad style;

i know there are no trotskyites
with a confident pot belly
but
are there any.... Ms trotskyites ???

MJS:

Point taken, Owen. I have revised the post accordingly.

As for Ms Trotskyites, there certainly are such, though I don't know of any on my various lists. If they're there, they mostly lurk.

That's what I mostly do too, though in an uncharacteristic display of barroom bellicosity, I went to the mats, against practically the whole left armed cap-a-pie with Universal Values, for my man Ahmadinejad last summer.

Okay, so all "lefties" are Marxists and if your a Marxist you can't be against child molestation because of, uh, the cops. Or something.

Speaking as an androgynous extra-terrestrial eggplant, I gotta say, that's fucked up.

op:

smithee

a couple of leaps in that chain of reasoning eh??

as a fellow egg plant i could give a shit
but spillin guts to cops relying on cops for "justice"
well in the few cases i have personal involvement
keeping the cops out made sense on several levels

gendarme of community sex standards ???

that might well be near the bottom
of my choice of actions

'take it to the authorities' algorithm
ranks u in my book
with rats not reds

as far as lefties => marxists
where in the text at hand
did that inference come from??

i for one
might wish it be true
but alas.... t'ain't

stras:

Um, I'm with Alan. Dude drugged and fucked a thirteen-year-old while she was asking him to stop. I don't see what that has to do with police, Marxism, or anything, really. I'm allowed to be a leftist and still dislike child rape, right?

stras:

Um, I'm with Alan. Dude drugged and fucked a thirteen-year-old while she was asking him to stop. I don't see what that has to do with police, Marxism, or anything, really. I'm allowed to be a leftist and still dislike child rape, right?

stras:

And to the extent that this has anything to do with Marx, it's this: rich famous white guy drugs and rapes a kid, runs off to continue his plush, comfortable existence for thirty years while (rich, famous, white) members of his class defend his right to do so; elsewhere, nameless black kid tossed in jail forever for drug possession.

op:

stras

now we go beyond sensitivity training
to
lessons in social awareness ???


"I'm allowed to be a leftist and still dislike child rape"


good for you champ

stras:

Op, I'll bother to decipher your comments when you learn to use the shift key.

bk:

I'm with Stras.

Also: While I lack faith in "the system" and "the cops" as perfect moral authorities, I read Mr. Smith's version of libertarianism as basically and ultimately meaning "justice" can only come via personal vendettas...or perhaps The Union will enforce justice in the perfect, non-cop world. Or the Workforce Organizing Committee? Or, the tribal elders? Or maybe we can devolve into a world of clan warfare...heaven forbid the police be brought in, let's just have the girl's father and brothers slaughter the whole offending Polanski family???

I mean, come on, it's not pecksniffian to find drugging and raping a 13 year old a little bit reprehensible, borgeoise sensitivities and all?

op:

"let's just have the girl's father and brothers slaughter the whole offending Polanski family???"
exactly
like manson familly slaughtered his wife et al

op:

stras

no one around here seems too worried about my affectations
so stick to substance or better get to the substance

honestly do u think you can provide insight
by a display of lingo-ed up
superior moral indignation
at this
sordid "affair de coeur"

to me its as i said ...mere posturing

bk
at least suggests comic alternatives
that need little consideration


the only reason i dip in to this ultra silly
morality duel
is precisely to suggest
leave it to "borgeoise sensitivities "

exercising one's raised conciousness
in public
is obnoxious secular holy joe-ing

op:

btw
don't blame father for my psycho take on this shit

the word rape to me is itself a product of the double standard
assault seems to suffice eh ??

or is the female body in an age of the pill
still a sacred temple

check your high hat in the girls shower

Eh. It's hard to gin up all that much sympathy for poor Roman. He's suffered enough. The evidence adduced: he's been forced to live in France (the horror), and not been able to visit LA, and more specifically attend the Academy Awards.

California could certainly solve its prison overcrowding with that kind of creative sentencing. Steal a car, and you can't see the Dodgers for a year. Exile to Cleveland (but you can't visit Merced).

Holy shit, I just saw where you equate rape and assault. That's awesome! Cause people are emotionally traumatized from forced sex as infrequently as they are from simple assault! You're goddamn brilliant OP!

Tell me, which would you rather I do; stick a finger up your ass or punch you in the face?

Al Schumann:

Unless I've missed something, MJS was primarily objecting to proprietary outrage and the assertion of superior rights to outrage. The secondary objection was to the assertion that justice can win out in the midst of a patently staged moral panic. He wasn't defending molestation.

Moral panic and superiority of outrage are right wing tropes. When society is caught up in the throes of them, the victims of crime are sympathetic only proportion to their utility for authoritarian crackdowns. In such things a criminal can be punished, certainly, but not in any way that does any social good.


op:

stick a finger up my ass
would you ?? how louche

sounds like fun though

wait a second... ky-ed or dry ??

btw
i've been punched in the face more times then i care to recall
never by a cop however...to my shame
not altogether fun
i wish i'd given as good as i got
but lost em all
once the line was crossed
between
the pastoral settings
of mere verbal assault
into
the harrows of fist city ...was i having fun?
not so much

------

"emotionally traumatized"
yes true but why ???

have you known many female rape victims??
i've known more then a few actually
and quite a few fistic assault recipients
better known as wife/domestic partner batterings

assault

expostulations along these lines
by genteel male white knights bore me

i much prefer the wit and wisdom
of the marvelous one off
DBA
jonny lunquist

op:

if i had to sup with either dear roman
or the ringo starr of persian menace
father smiff's
favorite shield of shia
i'd take ringo 9/10
i suspect he'd serve up
some corking good
raison d'etat
i hadn't cooked quite right myself
besides
my pal
ex-deep y
would choke with green envy

op:

"The secondary objection was to the assertion that justice can win out in the midst of a patently staged moral panic."

precisely

"He wasn't defending molestation"

outside the sacristy

Jane:

Unless I've missed something, MJS was primarily objecting to proprietary outrage and the assertion of superior rights to outrage.

Not quite:

We all have to deal with the cops. And they are not your friend -- even if you're a woman.

Or a child.

So, MJS, if the issue of rape is your "common property" too, what do you suggest be done with a rapist, since we can't go to the bad ole cops? Have a chat with him? Ignore him? Do you actually have a suggestion about what to do besides involving the hated "system"?

I keep getting this Cockburn-esque whiff of irritation from MJS (?"The social construction of childhood -- innocent childhood!") that anyone has a problem with Polanski's behavior at all.

Hell, Zizek, hardly a "recovering liberal" gets it. I don't see what your problem is.

hapa:

we can tell between sex and money, so we can defend consent in one context, and redistribute freely in the other.

StO:

Wow, this is the busiest thread since the glory days of VM and TKT.

op, an equation of rape and simple assault only makes sense completely removed from the context of human history. Psychologically and socially it's completely different, and birth control doesn't make that go away. The effect on the victim, conditioned by society and by biological factors too, determines the meaning and impact of the crime, not the amount of momentum transferred from one body to another or the extent of the bruising. Only if neither the victim's state of mind nor ultimately society itself matters is rape just another kind of assault.

Sexual activity isn't just an unusual form of extended bodily contact. Genitals aren't just another body part, not in terms of our minds.

Jenny:

Al: all right,but what did he mean by "supposedly innocent children"? This sounds like he's arguing the "Hey, she had had sex before so Polanski's actions are a-okay!" defense.

Al Schumann:

Jenny, I suppose the way it sounds depends on what meaning you attach to "innocence". My experience of "innocence", when I was a child, meant ignorance and inexperience. There was no purity to be sullied or romantic condition to be celebrated. I exited "innocence" as soon as I could -- due in no small part to a need for self-defense against the ghoulish sentimentalism of people who got their kicks exploiting ignorance and inexperience. I strongly suspect MJS wouldn't disagree. Why not ask him? Imputation and mind reading can only take a discussion so far.

I'm surprised that anyone in this forum could read a tender regard for diddlers into MJS's post. I'd expect that in wingnut moral panic circles, where imputation is constitutive of fact and outrage is competitive. But whatever. You live with the left you have — not the left you might want or wish to have at a later date.

op:

"op, an equation of rape and simple assault only makes sense completely removed from the context of human history. Psychologically and socially it's completely different, and birth control doesn't make that go away"

exactly correct
so what is to be done
i say we dissolve
--best we can--
the grotesque social constructs
that "specialize " sexual assault
in the case of women

13 year old girls ??

that requires even greater "soul "searching
and social reconstruction
that heterosexual rape
is a pecular form of assault and
personal violation
hardly suggests the solution
is spontaneously obvious to the victim gender
i'm not sure it even makes sense
to assume the unliberated female
correctly identifies
the social task required to resolve
"the gender terror"

but what the fuck does my viewcount for
clearly the task of liberation
is a task of the oppressed
not the oppressor

its agreed
euro supremacy is thrown off
by non euros eh ??
not scolded out of existence
shame as weapon of revolution ??
appeals to the oppressors' spontaneous
'better nature '
or existing value formations
hardly advances the liberation fight

triggering disgust revulsion etc
opportunistic agitation ???
maybe meliorative
but never reconstructive

op:

"Hey, she had had sex before so Polanski's actions are a-okay!"
that turn i think strikes at the core of the misplaced indignation

where the fuck is the "okay" in father smiff's
post ???

i suggest he's attacking
entitlement to privileged status
in a dialogue

inter gender dialogue ought to have fairly well defined conventionally reached bounds
not a mutual contest
of simple self ascriptions

if a gender socially determines itself
the ensemble of the other gender's
"takes" become
an objective social reality

the walls surrounding and segmentally protecting
that ensemble
must be stormed one by one

blowing the horns of shame
won't make them crumble

come up against
objectionable inter subjective discourse
either brush it aside
or
maybe if there's time and place for it
try struggle
not just pulling rank

op:

"My experience of "innocence", when I was a child, meant ignorance and inexperience. There was no purity to be sullied or romantic condition to be celebrated"

exactly
st augustine had a good first take
of course that take quickly ran afoul
the eve libel

ahh so many traps snares and panther pits

MJS:

Jenny:

What I meant by "supposedly innocent children" was not anything about the innocence or otherwise of the particular child in this case. I was alluding to what you might call the social construction of childhood and how we imagine it. But that's a topic for another post.

Post a comment

Note also that comments with three or more links may be held for "moderation" -- a strange term to apply to the ghost in this blog's machine. Seems to be a hard-coded limitation of the blog software, unfortunately.

About

This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on Monday October 5, 2009 09:27 PM.

The previous post in this blog was Bailey Brothers Building and Loan.

The next post in this blog is Ziff-lation.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

Creative Commons License

This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Powered by
Movable Type 3.31