MIM(Prisons) Pwned by Sexual Liberalism?

Why did we say LLCO is wrecking?

In their response to us, (see “Who has happy sex?”), the Leading Light Communist Organization (LLCO) questioned some accusations we made about their organization contributing to wrecking work aimed at the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM).(1) The author is either unaware of, or being dishonest about, the history of their organization. Prairie Fire was highlighted in a recent interview at llco.org retelling h young adulthood, so certainly s/he can recall what h comrades were printing about MIM a handful of years ago. They participated in a long-standing campaign to paint MIM as crazy wackos as the original MIM comrades suffered the crushing defeat of every aspect of their work. We condemned the Monkey Smashes Heaven (MSH) website for this at the time, but did not call it wrecking work.(2) To accuse us of escaping “the crazy town hotel” because of our critique of the gender aristocracy is not just unprincipled, but once again echoing the imperialists who try to paint radical critiques of the status quo as the work of wackos.(4) And we don’t see a reason to give them a pass this time. We’re concluding here that this is an ongoing problem within their organization. This should have been obvious from our previous article(3), but we felt we should clarify our point here if LLCO is going to accuse us of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt in what they refer to as a “phony setup,” while their comrade accuses us of trying to deflect criticism. If we were afraid of criticism why did we publish an article linking to LLCO’s criticism of our line?

Liberalism is Liberalism

Liberalism puts individual liberty and choice at the forefront. It is not concerned with groups and systems.

Liberalism equates happy sex with consensual sex. MIM Thought does not.

We never said happy sex doesn’t exist. Rather, the main point of our article was that the gender aristocracy is very happy with its sex. We go on to argue that the happy sex of the gender aristocracy presents a challenge to our efforts to organize them against imperialism.

We also say that the struggle to have “good sex” is lifestyle politics and that it supports the pseudo-feminists’ (read pro-patriarchy) agenda. Rather than “good” or “happy,” a more precise criteria to debate would be “consensual sex.” And we say there is no such thing under patriarchy. LLCO broadens this assertion to accuse us of saying consensual sex has never existed for all of humyn history. But patriarchy has not existed forever, so we do not agree that our line implies that “consensual, happy sex has never existed.” More importantly, the theoretical existence of happy sex is not important to us in the struggle to end oppression.

LLCO doesn’t like the examples we listed in our last article, condemning them with their own hypothetical example that is essentially the same, proving our point that power and sex are intimately tied up (pun intended). Rather than measuring individuals’ power differentials to determine which one of them is the rapist (and implicitly then which persyn should be ostracized, imprisoned, or we don’t now what because LLCO hasn’t told us), maybe LLCO can speak to the problem that patriarchal society has conditioned females for centuries to enjoy sex as an oppressed gender as part of the process of producing male pleasure. Such systematic problems of power are not considered by the Liberal who is assured by the individuals involved explicitly saying the word “yes” and having fuzzy feelings inside while doing it.

Since their last post, LLCO stepped up their artwork from “Make Love Not War” to “Keep Calm and Have Good Sex.” It’s hard to believe they still don’t get it when they caricature their own line with such blatant sexual Liberalism. Rather, it seems quite clear that they do intend to promote sexual Liberalism and call it proletarian feminism.

Biological Determinism and the Self

Liberalism, as an ideology, was a progressive force in a certain period of humyn history. Around the turn of the twentieth century theorists discussing sex used animal behavior to argue against the Christian ideas of the “natural order” ordained by God. But today people read too much into Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, using it to validate their own experiences of pleasure. The biological imperative to reproduce and feelings of pleasure are not one in the same. So it has little meaning in this debate to say, “Sexuality is normal behavior for any complex species.” We would like to see some evidence that, “Most people desire a sexual life even in the context of oppression.” For the gender aristocracy, this is apparent, but the gender aristocracy is not most people. More clearly, we’d like to see evidence that most people experience the kind of pleasure from sex that the gender aristocracy does. As an aside, the assertion that “[m]ost people do not desire to be raped” is a tautology when you define rape as something that the average persyn does not desire.(4)

With the advance of the productive forces, widespread leisure societies developed for the first time in history. Members of those societies are much more gender privileged than the rest of the world, and the evolution of pleasure around sex is very tied up with the development of that power differential and an obsession with pornography that came with it. There are many nations that remain resistant to the pornography of the leisure societies, yet the imperialists use it as a tool to divide those nations. MIM saw pornography as any cultural propaganda that props up the leisure lifestyles of the bourgeois classes. LLCO’s recent articles on rape and gender oppression can easily be categorized as part of the patriarchal pornography machine.

While our critic refers to biological determinism rather than sociology to explain sexual pleasure, both explanations imply greater forces are at play than the choices of two individuals. Yet, LLCO thinks our line denies humyn agency. Against this, we already said that we cannot go around telling people how to have sex in a way that they can avoid rape. Anyone who does this is being dishonest. That does not mean that proletarian morality has ceased to exist. It just means there is no magic combination of individual actions that can get you out of the patriarchy. While we must operate within the limits of the material reality we find ourselves in, we still get to make a choice of what to do at every moment of our lives. Pretending happy fucking is the same thing as sex without patriarchal influence is ridiculous.

In their discussion of Descartes, LLCO argues that we are idealists for daring to envision a world without oppression, where there would be no coercion in sexual relations. We call that being communists.

Answering some more questions from LLCO

LLCO claims there is another hole in our logic by asking, “How are all these systems of oppression reduced to a single measure whereby we can determined[sic] rapist and victim?” We already stated in our article, we don’t care. We are not trying to answer the pornographic questions that they pose in their response, we are trying to convince people that patriarchy needs to be overthrown!

LLCO tells you to “[t]hink about how silly this is for a moment. MIM implies that you cannot both have a plan to eliminate individual cases of rape as part of a broader, revolutionary plan change society fundamentally.”(1)

No, we said you should act scientifically. In other words be aware of the outcome of your actions. The LLCO/Liberal line means more Black males in prison and more Amerikans happy with the status quo. Maybe this is their strategy to strengthen the national contradiction in the United $tates. But no, there is no mention of principal contradiction, or overthrowing imperialism or patriarchy in their response. The whole content of the article could have been written by the Democratic Party if one just cut out the words “Leading Light Communism.”

We also addressed this in the article they are critiquing when we wrote: “And we agree that under the dictatorship of the proletariat the masses will pick out these unreformable enemies for serious punishment. Yet, the majority of people who took up practices of capitalism or of the patriarchy will be reformed.”

LLCO writes,

“Thus, for MIM, everyone who has ever had sex has been involved, one way or another, in rape. Every great communist leader has been a rapist or a victim of rape, or both. MIM even named their movement after someone who they see as a rapist. Mao was reported to be sexually vigorous. According to MIM, all sexually-active people of Third World and First World are rapists or victims, or both. All children from happy homes, from loving couples, are really products of rape.”

Hey, we’ll one up you there. Being asexual doesn’t eliminate gender power either. The gender power that you hold is inherent in a patriarchal society regardless of who you fuck and how.

Perhaps LLCO should disavow Lin Biao because he did not come from a proletarian or peasant background. Lin was not from the oppressed classes. Neither were plenty of other great communist leaders, and we would assume the same for plenty of LLCO folks who are First World residents. People are a product of their birth circumstances and the society into which they are born. We don’t judge individuals for this, we judge them for their political line and practice. Apparently LLCO can stomach this when it comes to class but not when it comes to gender.

Pushing the debate forward

LLCO correctly argued that the slogan “all property is theft” … “can undermine the people’s struggle under certain conditions.” They then imply that the same is true for “all sex is rape.” Okay, but what are those situations? Because we’re saying “all sex is rape” is a powerful anti-Liberal slogan right now in the First World and we don’t see it undermining the struggle to liberate the majority of the world’s people.

Since we both seem to think the other is talking past us, here are our suggestions for points we’d like to see LLCO address to make this debate worthwhile going forward:

In what actual conditions do you see “all sex is rape” sloganeering as reinforcing bourgeois or patriarchal interests? and how?

Or the other side of that question, where do you see “you can have good, consensual sex” being used to effectively challenge the patriarchy or imperialism or working in the interests of the oppressed masses in general?

Until they can do this, we don’t see how their arguments are based in any attempts to overthrow patriarchy (which would be implied by their claim to uphold proletarian feminism). It all comes across as a defense of sex because they know sex makes people happy. While clarity may be lacking on both sides, it is at least clear that we hold opposite views on this issue.

[UPDATE: This debate was continued here]