I blog at Male Submission Art, host Kink On Tap, and support KinkForAll as much as I can, among more things.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm censored in some places. Make of that what you will. Follow me on Twitter.
Posts tagged: classism
Earlier today, I got into a bit of a tiff in the comments at The Edge of Vanilla, which is the inimitable Tom Allen’s blog. What began as a calling out of some of the racist, sexist, and classist replies to Tracy Clark-Flory’s fantastic interview with anthropology professor Margot Weiss turned into a disagreement with Tom himself. It was at first distressing to me because Tom is one of the smartest and most diplomatic bloggers I know, so I was supremely disappointed when I encountered such straight-up bullshit in his comments, and I didn’t see him calling that out for what it was.
Further, I was really disappointed in Tom for apparently missing some very basic knowledge about ignorance—such as its dictionary definition—that I was almost certain he was already quite well-versed in. Thankfully, Tom’s diplomatic skill re-centered the discussion on the issues Weiss raises, which got me thinking about how to explain my own understanding of her work.
What follows is an excerpted cross-post of one of my comments in the thread:
[M]uch of Weiss’s work unpacks the effects of late-capitalist consumerism on BDSM sexuality; that’s among her work’s main themes. One of her articles I linked to earlier was expressly about this. In it, she writes that “marketers have tapped into the allure and exoticism of SM sexuality to sell an ever-widening array of products,” and this critique is, of course, relevant to most if not all subcultures that exist in societies employing late-capitalist economic models—most of the world, in other words.
I think the tech industry is arguably one of the most salient and illustrative examples of this. Its ever-increasing speed of innovation is a natural companion to the capitalistic impetus behind planned obsolescence.
The important take-away seems to me to be that mainstays of capitalistic practice have obvious parallels to The Scene, precisely because of the public BDSM Scene’s emphasis on things like “toys” and physical skill based classes. On that note, Weiss elaborates in her 2006 article, Working at Play. There, she writes:
As BDSM has become more mainstream, more organizationally focussed and more middle-class, practitioners work on their SM in self-conscious ways, mobilizing American discourses of self-improvement, actualization and education.
[…]
Thus, as I have been describing, the time, money and energy practitioners spend on their SM practice is a form of sociality. Combining consumption, community and pleasure, contemporary BDSM sexualities are a form of working at play[…].
What’s left unsaid in this excerpt but that the Salon.com article touches on is the way such socioeconomic divides segment the population; those who can and those who can not access such social work-play. That’s the very definition of classism and The BDSM Scene doesn’t just mirror that behavior, it actually intentionally amplifies that very trait in order to function as it desires—and that’s classist.
I find Weiss’s critique even deeper than this, though, because that same blockading of access to (“alternative,” or “BDSM”) sexuality helps maintain the oppressive “man box” for men of color. The constant barrage of cultural obstacles barricading a self-actualized expression of one’s sexuality is doubly true and—speaking as a white submissive man—I suspect unfathomably more painful for submissive men of color. From this angle, the support structures for both racism and sexism can be seen more clearly: classism and specifically capitalism doesn’t just inform, but actually intentionally supports both racism and sexism. As you, yourself, said:
The people who run the scene clubs don’t have a lot of motivation to change things because if the elitist, money-spending sceners are uncomfortable, then they might go elsewhere, and all of that cool dungeon equipment and play space will sit unused and empty, and more importantly, won’t put any money into the club owner’s pockets.
It is precisely this kyriarchical structure that Weiss pinpoints when she critiques the whiteness of the Scene. That’s why it’s no surprise that self-identified “privileged white women” would not enjoy being reminded of their unflattering participation in such an oppressive system. In fact, at the party I was at last weekend, I piped up about this fact and one white woman plainly said, “Yeah…I’ve been trying not to think about all that stuff this weekend.” So I was honest with her when I replied, “I like to make it difficult for people to forget about all that.”
Sometimes that means I make it difficult for people to uncritically enjoy the sex they have. I am more than okay with that. It is, in fact, an integral piece of my goal. Or, in my own crass language, many of these people are Puny Kings of their own Petty Hills; they behave like privileged shits.
Moreover, the monetary expense required to participate in the (semi-)public BDSM Scene in a way that is legitimized by The Scene’s “Powers That Be” is, as mentioned, one reason why it remains overwhelmingly white, but also a reason why The Scene remains overwhelmingly adultist. For more about that, I recommend reading Tynan Fox’s poignant piece at Leatherati.com called The Price of Admission.
I suspect that if you’re looking to make a difference, then you’ve got to approach things the way that generally works with other aspects of culture: convince people—the regular scene goers—that the things that you would like to see can be status enhancing and even trendier than what they already have.
This is where I think we fundamentally disagree, Tom. And that’s fine.
Your line of thinking seems to be that providing avenues of access to the privileges maintained by the systems of power described above is a way to “make a difference.” While making a difference is a noble goal, and one I share, accessing privileges through the system that blockades access to marginalized groups sounds a lot like the same old, tired liberal arguments that give us sweatshop-produced rainbow flags. You are, in other words, encouraging people to participate in behavior that is fundamentally callous towards the already-most-marginalized groups of people, rather than encouraging them to do the one thing every one of us could do right now to have an unstoppable power: refuse to participate.
And this is why I am a liberationist, and you seem to be an assimilationist. We don’t have to agree, but I need to understand your position (and I feel I do) and you need to examine your priorities (and I trust you will, if you’re not already doing so).
The discussion thread, still fresh on Tom’s blog, is a good one for you to hop into if you have any opinions or points to raise that I missed. There’s much more I want to say about this, but I’ve got lots to do tonight and I’ve already spent too much time arguing on the Internet.
For those of you in New York City, please consider coming to Conversio Virium’s upcoming free, open to the public meeting next Monday, January 23. I’ll be talking more about this sort of stuff (and a whole lot more) at my presentation there: “Who Else Wants More Play and Less Stress In the Dungeon?” (There’s also a FetLife event you can RSVP to, if you prefer.)
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
[H]ow exactly do conservatives get the masses on-board in the first place? Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”, the preferred liberal Rosetta Stone to unlocking the right-wing brain, suggests that non-elite rightwingers simply get “tricked” into supporting conservative policies. The Big Scary GOP demolishes labor unions with one hand, but draws crosshairs on Tiller the Baby-killer with the other. It’s the only way Frank can explain such “irrationality.”
Robin calls bullshit on that. Non-elite conservatives—the Red State bubbas that have cursed this land for so long—reap very real material rewards, but they’re rewards which fly in the face of the cheery “every one’s good at heart” worldview of liberalism.
Conservatism offers them something Robin brilliantly calls “democratic feudalism.” In other words, dominion over your “lessers” in the private spheres of the workplace (middle-management tyrants) and the home (lockin’ down the wife and daughter’s ladyparts): “the most visible effort of the GOP since the 2010 midterm election has been to curtail the rights of employees and the rights of women.” This is the link between the Santorums and the Pauls of the world–one which Reason magazine, the Mises Institute and other appendages of the supposedly “anti culture-war” libertarian propaganda circuit work very hard to obscure.
Conscience of a Radical: Corey Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind” - By Connor Kilpatrick - The eXiled
See also:
- For more of the same: Corey Robin interviewed on RHRealtyCast.
- For a wonderful illustration of Robin’s key point in action: How to stump anti-choice activists with 1 question.
- For more background regarding the class implications of this argument: Antonio Negri.
- For understanding more about the ways in which resources are restricted to “lessers” and its relevance to intersectionality: A Framework for Understanding Poverty and Re-Caste-ing Alternative Sexuality: A Class Analysis of Social Status in the BDSM Scene.
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
A Framework for Understanding Poverty, by Ruby K. Payne
See also:
- Handouts for “A Framework for Understanding Poverty”
- Using the Hidden Rules of Class to Create Sustainable Communities
(Beyond the obvious fact that there are multiple kinds of resources than merely financial ones, Payne’s other implicit observation is equally important: that there is a concrete distinction between an individual’s perseverance and the social order that often works against them.)
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
![The purpose of the War on Drugs is not to keep people safe or healthy. The purpose of the War on Drugs is to put people in prison, and from that perspective it has been a smashing success.
[…]
The War on Drugs is, at its core, a blunt form of class warfare.
[…]
In the average African or Latin American country, they send out the cops or, in many cases, paramilitary “cleansing” squads to crack skulls. Since America can’t quite get away with that, we have to think of more subtle ways to get them out of our sight. We tried segregation. We tried jamming the poor into vertical filing cabinets. Eventually it dawned on us to simply incarcerate most of them, if not for life then in an endless cycle among the criminal justice system, the underground economy, and poverty. So you ratchet up the drug laws with the full understanding that the huge demand for narcotics (mostly among the upper classes and their children, of course) will funnel tons of people with no other economic opportunities into the trade. So you invest billions in policing, arresting, convicting, and incarcerating them – conservatively estimated at around $40 billion annually.
That’s what the War on Drugs is about.
(via ginandtacos.com » Blog Archive » PROHIBITION)](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/maymay/5327153300/1/tumblr_lkwwenH3NH1qzs83p)
The purpose of the War on Drugs is not to keep people safe or healthy. The purpose of the War on Drugs is to put people in prison, and from that perspective it has been a smashing success.
[…]
The War on Drugs is, at its core, a blunt form of class warfare.
[…]
In the average African or Latin American country, they send out the cops or, in many cases, paramilitary “cleansing” squads to crack skulls. Since America can’t quite get away with that, we have to think of more subtle ways to get them out of our sight. We tried segregation. We tried jamming the poor into vertical filing cabinets. Eventually it dawned on us to simply incarcerate most of them, if not for life then in an endless cycle among the criminal justice system, the underground economy, and poverty. So you ratchet up the drug laws with the full understanding that the huge demand for narcotics (mostly among the upper classes and their children, of course) will funnel tons of people with no other economic opportunities into the trade. So you invest billions in policing, arresting, convicting, and incarcerating them – conservatively estimated at around $40 billion annually.
That’s what the War on Drugs is about.
This blog is my job. If it moves you, please help me keep doing this Work by sharing some of your food, shelter, or money. Thank you!
![Revolutions and the price of bread: 1848 and now (via @KemoKid):
In the graph above the little blue crosses indicate the price of wheat in certain countries that have experienced social unrest this year. The further to the top right the cross is, the higher the medium and short term price hike the country has suffered: for wheat and therefore for bread.
Saudi and Algeria are stable, Occupied Palestine, Jordan and Egypt are on the high end of the price spike; Tunisia, Yemen, Morocco and Lebanon significantly high. There is, therefore, a rough - but only - rough correlation between bread prices and revolutions. So far.
To put the above into perspective, take a look at the USDA’s estimates of food prices from countries around the world:
See how Pakistan is all the way over to the right with 45.5% of the average household spending going to food and America is all the way to the left, where only 6.9% of average household earnings are spent on food? That doesn’t seem fair. Quoting the Nielsen article:
[A]t a time when many countries around the world are facing double-digit inflation on basic food items, can the U.S. be far behind?
The simple answer is no.
At first glance, it looks like America is doing well keeping its food prices low—and thus its populace safely dissuaded from revolution. But peel away the curtain and the story is far more sinister. The question becomes, “How the hell can America afford to keep food prices so low when the average American farm size has actually decreased from 431 acres in 1997 to 418 acres in 2007?”
We have less farmland and yet more food today than we ever did before. And although many people, myself included, ignorantly believed that this was actually proof of “science’s achievements,” that simplistic analysis is wholly quantitative. What of our food’s quality?
According to sources compiled in 2010, the average american eats 1,996.3 lbs. of food per year. Unsurprisingly, most of it is mostly garbage. While charts like the one below may look nice, they don’t seem to account for how much the commodity, subsidized foods like corn are inside other foods and even in the diets of food-producing animals, such as (amazingly) COWS!
The answer to my question, I’m sadly beginning to realize, is that America keeps food prices low using government subsidies—corn subsidies, totaling $75 billion from 1995 to 2009, are the biggest there are, and by a long shot, as wheat subsidies come in a distant second totaling a mere $31.8 billion in the same timeframe—and immigrant labor trafficking. The best documentation I’ve seen of these issues is in the movie Food, Inc., which, to borrow the words of one review:
…is the definitive statement on how America produces crappy food to the detriment of the people who eat it, the animals who are treated cruelly in farms and slaughterhouses, and the largely immigrant workforce that labors in unsafe and low wage conditions. The only benefactors it would appear are the men who run Monsanto, Purdue, Smithfield and a small group of other huge multinationals that only see food as the ultimate commodity. When they look at a tomato, they don’t see something to eat but something to turn into a dollar no matter the consequences to society.
These are the other pieces in the same puzzle that Stephen Colbert highlighted when he testified on immigration reform to Congress. And thanks in part to America’s overwhelming—and overwhelmingly corrupt—military and economic dominance, such “consequences to society” are not confined to American soil. They are actively, intentionally exported to other countries, and all the problems that America’s food lobby foists onto Americans are also being foisted on the rest of the planet.
In 2002, Andrew Cassel discussed Why U.S. Farm Subsidies Are Bad for the World:
The farm bill, which the House of Representatives has approved and which the Senate could vote on this week, calls for taxpayers to fork over some $180 billion to farmers during the next decade. That’s a 70 percent hike above the cost of current farm-subsidy programs, most of which represent direct payments to wealthy farmers and agribusinesses.
Those subsidies make it possible to export millions of tons of food so cheaply that native farmers in places such as Jamaica can’t possibly compete.
By guaranteeing U.S. farmers a minimum payment for commodities such as corn, rice and soybeans, the government encourages overproduction. That drives down the market price, forcing even higher subsidies and creating surpluses that can be shipped to Jamaica and elsewhere.
As far as I can tell, little has changed since 2002. In fact, things have gotten worse. Since then, the Bush administration’s illegal wars in the Middle East have further destabilized the region and, in turn, caused oil prices to rise. And since so much of the food industry is mechanized, it needs oil to function. And that? Yup. You guessed it. Back to the Nielsen article:
With continued unrest in the Middle East and northern Africa and the resulting impact on global oil prices, we will likely see increased inflationary pressures from rising fuel prices have a similar impact on U.S. consumers as experienced in 2008 (i.e., shopping trip compression, more at-home consumption, value buying and increased coupon usage).
In short, it is a food pyramid, except the pyramid isn’t food groups, it’s classes of people, and the food isn’t really food anymore, it’s a weapon of class antagonism.
As the Obama administration continues Bush’s wars, and engages their own in Libya, oil prices continue to rise. This, in turn, raises costs for the food corporations, which, in turn, gives them reason to lobby the government for more food subsidies corporate welfare, which, in turn, help keep food unhealthy yet cheap, which, in turn, keep the American populace lethargic and compliant and fed, which, in turn, prevents us from revolting (at least in a mass democratic movement).
And if that weren’t bad enough, with food prices so low, and with America’s military literally blowing up acre after acre of the rest of the world so that they can’t produce their food natively even if they could compete economically, the large food corporations can supply the demand for food from other countries:
Global demand for U.S. food in developing countries is great for U.S. exports, but those gains may also lead to higher food prices for U.S. consumers.
So. Are you still proud of what your country has become, my fellow Americans?](http://www.tumblr.com/photo/1280/maymay/4891711503/1/tumblr_lk5fkvF8EK1qzs83p)
Revolutions and the price of bread: 1848 and now (via @KemoKid):
In the graph above the little blue crosses indicate the price of wheat in certain countries that have experienced social unrest this year. The further to the top right the cross is, the higher the medium and short term price hike the country has suffered: for wheat and therefore for bread.
Saudi and Algeria are stable, Occupied Palestine, Jordan and Egypt are on the high end of the price spike; Tunisia, Yemen, Morocco and Lebanon significantly high. There is, therefore, a rough - but only - rough correlation between bread prices and revolutions. So far.
To put the above into perspective, take a look at the USDA’s estimates of food prices from countries around the world:
See how Pakistan is all the way over to the right with 45.5% of the average household spending going to food and America is all the way to the left, where only 6.9% of average household earnings are spent on food? That doesn’t seem fair. Quoting the Nielsen article:
[A]t a time when many countries around the world are facing double-digit inflation on basic food items, can the U.S. be far behind?
The simple answer is no.
At first glance, it looks like America is doing well keeping its food prices low—and thus its populace safely dissuaded from revolution. But peel away the curtain and the story is far more sinister. The question becomes, “How the hell can America afford to keep food prices so low when the average American farm size has actually decreased from 431 acres in 1997 to 418 acres in 2007?”
We have less farmland and yet more food today than we ever did before. And although many people, myself included, ignorantly believed that this was actually proof of “science’s achievements,” that simplistic analysis is wholly quantitative. What of our food’s quality?
According to sources compiled in 2010, the average american eats 1,996.3 lbs. of food per year. Unsurprisingly, most of it is mostly garbage. While charts like the one below may look nice, they don’t seem to account for how much the commodity, subsidized foods like corn are inside other foods and even in the diets of food-producing animals, such as (amazingly) COWS!
The answer to my question, I’m sadly beginning to realize, is that America keeps food prices low using government subsidies—corn subsidies, totaling $75 billion from 1995 to 2009, are the biggest there are, and by a long shot, as wheat subsidies come in a distant second totaling a mere $31.8 billion in the same timeframe—and immigrant labor trafficking. The best documentation I’ve seen of these issues is in the movie Food, Inc., which, to borrow the words of one review:
…is the definitive statement on how America produces crappy food to the detriment of the people who eat it, the animals who are treated cruelly in farms and slaughterhouses, and the largely immigrant workforce that labors in unsafe and low wage conditions. The only benefactors it would appear are the men who run Monsanto, Purdue, Smithfield and a small group of other huge multinationals that only see food as the ultimate commodity. When they look at a tomato, they don’t see something to eat but something to turn into a dollar no matter the consequences to society.
These are the other pieces in the same puzzle that Stephen Colbert highlighted when he testified on immigration reform to Congress. And thanks in part to America’s overwhelming—and overwhelmingly corrupt—military and economic dominance, such “consequences to society” are not confined to American soil. They are actively, intentionally exported to other countries, and all the problems that America’s food lobby foists onto Americans are also being foisted on the rest of the planet.
In 2002, Andrew Cassel discussed Why U.S. Farm Subsidies Are Bad for the World:
The farm bill, which the House of Representatives has approved and which the Senate could vote on this week, calls for taxpayers to fork over some $180 billion to farmers during the next decade. That’s a 70 percent hike above the cost of current farm-subsidy programs, most of which represent direct payments to wealthy farmers and agribusinesses.
Those subsidies make it possible to export millions of tons of food so cheaply that native farmers in places such as Jamaica can’t possibly compete.
By guaranteeing U.S. farmers a minimum payment for commodities such as corn, rice and soybeans, the government encourages overproduction. That drives down the market price, forcing even higher subsidies and creating surpluses that can be shipped to Jamaica and elsewhere.
As far as I can tell, little has changed since 2002. In fact, things have gotten worse. Since then, the Bush administration’s illegal wars in the Middle East have further destabilized the region and, in turn, caused oil prices to rise. And since so much of the food industry is mechanized, it needs oil to function. And that? Yup. You guessed it. Back to the Nielsen article:
With continued unrest in the Middle East and northern Africa and the resulting impact on global oil prices, we will likely see increased inflationary pressures from rising fuel prices have a similar impact on U.S. consumers as experienced in 2008 (i.e., shopping trip compression, more at-home consumption, value buying and increased coupon usage).
In short, it is a food pyramid, except the pyramid isn’t food groups, it’s classes of people, and the food isn’t really food anymore, it’s a weapon of class antagonism.
As the Obama administration continues Bush’s wars, and engages their own in Libya, oil prices continue to rise. This, in turn, raises costs for the food corporations, which, in turn, gives them reason to lobby the government for more food subsidies corporate welfare, which, in turn, help keep food unhealthy yet cheap, which, in turn, keep the American populace lethargic and compliant and fed, which, in turn, prevents us from revolting (at least in a mass democratic movement).
And if that weren’t bad enough, with food prices so low, and with America’s military literally blowing up acre after acre of the rest of the world so that they can’t produce their food natively even if they could compete economically, the large food corporations can supply the demand for food from other countries:
Global demand for U.S. food in developing countries is great for U.S. exports, but those gains may also lead to higher food prices for U.S. consumers.
So. Are you still proud of what your country has become, my fellow Americans?