Just finished watching this movie. I watched it to learn a little more about S&M. I’m very open minded and tolerant about sexuality, but that does not extend to S&M. Sex should be about love or at least pleasure, hurting and humiliating people just is not cool. Isn’t S&M really a continuation of the violence and hierarchy of capitalism and politics into the bedroom? Last month I read John Rechy’s “The Sexual Outlaw” and found the book contained two chapters critiquing and taking down S&M, one theoretical, the other a true allegory of a homosexaul S&M club raided by the police in the 1970s: real humiliation and violence suddenly didn’t seem very sexy and the handcuffs and put-down of the cops didn’t seem as fun as the mock play. Sartre also wrote a critique of sadism and masochism in “Being and Nothingness”; with these things in mind, and having read both Sade’s “Justine”, and “Venus in Furs” I sat down to watch the film…
To my surprise, the movie is not a defense of S&M despite what some critics seem to have imagined. It’s critical and presents Grey as a sadistic, unloving, self-centered capitalism and Ana as a no personality 20-something year-old push-over. Two zeros, Ana and Grey; Grey having quite a few zeros to his name, they still add up to zero. What turned out to be disappointing after a little more reflection was that has any choice really been offered? Was Ana presenting a choice of love against sadism, or was she presenting familism and traditional patriarchy against sadism, which is to say no choice at all. I read a little further into the series and discoved that indeed this is the choice: patriarchy’s most unquestioned institution, the romantic couple is what Ana offers and by the third book they marry and Ana is pregnant.
One the one hand I was satisfied to see S&M presented for what it is, loveless egoism and a continuation of politics and capitalism. On-the-other-hand I didn’t feel that Ana represented a true alternative such as love and pleasure but instead offered patriarchy, the family, and the romantic couple, which is to say exactly loveless egoism, politics, and capitalism…
There have been different kinds and degrees of patriarchy; the J.-Xt. one is not definitive of all. That particular kind was what spawned both the cynicism of western feminism and the optimism of nihilistic capitalism. I do not know how you mean it and what you mean by “love”, but I do not think patriarchy and love exclude each other.
Differentiate here between Patriarchy as the standard-holder of customs and traditions grounding them in a past, increasing self-complexity… from Paternalism, as a general sociological phenomenon:
After reading half of that I began to ask myself, isn’t that Satyr to whom I have not spoken with in at least two years? So I googled for a line from the quotation and it lead to “Knowthyself” forum, and then I spotted that very link at the bottom of your post. Small world.
I don’t support the S&M community despite being very tolerant of homosexuals, pedophiles, asexuals, transexuals, cissexuals, and other sexualities that are about love and pleasure, as opposed to degradation and pain as with S&M. Certainly “50 Shades of Grey” it is an inferior story to “Story of O” but it might still provide some inspiration into nature and so on.
I was hoping to see someone justify S&M. In fact my favorite philosopher this week, Gayle Rubin, does stand up for S&M, but also for pederasts and so on and so on, so I generally appreciate her sexual politics. I would like for example to see someone go along the line of concentism and therefore explain that S&M is fine and well because it involves two consenting adults. This point was mocked to absurdity by “50 Shades of Grey”: the cowardly and rigid Grey told that he would only have sex with Ana after all the contracts were negotiated and signed. In the Foucault-Hocquenghem interview sometimes titled “Sexual Morality and the Law”, Hocquenghem warns us that consentist argument is “a trap”: once we enter the mind space of consentism we are railroaded to the consentist’s conclusions: no problem can be solved from the level at which it was created; and Foucault tells us “Love is not a business contract”.
Despite that I don’t condone S&M, I would almost have preferred to have seen “50 Shades of Grey” glorify and glamorize it rather than propagandizing the usual status quo dominant discourse of familism and the romantic-couple which is in fact only another variety of the patriarchy behind sexual sadism.
Regarding “patriarchy”, I use the term this way: patriarchy is a system of egoic consciousness.
More important then is to define “egoic consciousness”.
"There is always a sense of insufficiency, or what I call egoic consciousness: a sense of self derived from the mind’s activity, which is an extremely limited sense of self compared to the reality of who you are. When you are trapped in this mind-made sense of self, you are trapped in consciousness that is conditioned by the past. The “little me,” I call it, that sometimes thinks it’s a “big me”. But even then, when it thinks "I’m the master of the universe " there is always the hidden fear that this is not so. And this is what creates all the insanity.
In order to maintain its fictitious state of identity, the little me needs to be in a state of opposition, or warfare. It needs to have a boundary around itself, so it says, “This is me and this the other, which is not me.” Then a strong sense of separation develops between the image of the little me and the rest of the universe, which becomes threatening. This is the indeed the very root of madness: it needs enemies. Enemies might come in the form of people, or in the form of situations, but what it all means is that the little me also needs unhappiness, since it is fighting “what is.” It is so deeply internalized that most human beings are unaware that they are continually running away from “what is,” to some mentally projected future.
And the little me says, “I will attain something in the future that will make me more complete, and more fulfilled. Instead of being a little me, I will become a big me. One day I’m going to make it!”"
Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now
Egoic consciousness is the self-talk running in our head, it’s the system of emotions end thoughts that keeps us enmeshed in naive-realism and the world. But love is who you really are: that love is the quite patient self waiting in the back ground. Definitionally therefore, patriarchy is always estranged from love.
Prepare for the rise of transexuality as the new “gay rights movement”, and the “coming out” party.
Degeneracy was always accompanied by a rise in hedonism and a reduction of sex to a pastime, a lifestyle, an exploration of orifices and what to do with them.
A fact Moderns deny:
The anus evolved to expel toxins from the organism.
Patriarchy is a technique/technology attempting to control human libidinal energies in a species which is promiscuous and not monogamous, so as to integrate as many individuals into the groups interests and to maintain internal harmony by offering sexual gratification and a sense of belonging.
This is important within homogeneous, genetically and memetically, groups, and far more easier.
In the past dying for your king with whom you shared genes (blood) and believed in the same ancestors (gods) was easy.
With the release of libidinal energies and this “me-me” attitude the system employs different methods to integrate and maintain internal cohesion, one of which is marketing ro brainwashing through repetitive manipulation of sexual desire.
Another is technology which offer release mechanism in porn, movies, music, and so on…
Furthermore, the emergence of heterogeneous groupings makes it necessary to find the lowest-common-denominator to offer a shared identifier creating the illusion of parity and commonality.
This is a dumbing-down.
The little-me big-me dichotomy (your words) correspond to the private and the public self, or the personality and the character, as I call them.
This is where the manipulation of identifiers takes place.
For most, the majority of Moderns, there is no division. He is convinced that his character, his public face is him, because he does not have any private self - it having been stuinted, retarded, shamed into hiding.
This makes Moderns dull and uninteresting.
It is why they repeat the popular narratives without question and any internal struggle.
This is more true for women, who are dependent on group dynamics and rarely develop any sense of self beyond the group identifiers.
Study some of the members on ILP if you want to see real-time examples of the latter.
As I said before, in the past where there was a genetic and memetic homogeneity the private and public self were almost in harmony, in congruence.
Cultural man and natural man were as one.
But in Modern environments with Globalization and the destruction of the family, using liberal values, this harmony has been destroys.
Natural man is denied, setting up a situation where an internal fracture occurs: schizophrenia.
No more private, natural man…all is character or caricature.
Individuals play a role, as it has been presented to them.
they become fake, actors, imitating, reciting lines…they become cynical, assuming that this is true for all, because it is so for the vast majority, and they become hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another.
Also playing a role, being a playa, offers them options. One year they can be this caricature then the next, if they have the means, they can dress the part and be this other caricature.
Money is vital in playing a role, for embodying a caricature.
civility consists in an unspoken agreement to not expose the others duplicity so as to not have your own exposed.
It’s good manners to play along with the others bullshit, if you want him to do the same for you.
So you can then claim to be anything you like, and because there is no developed self-knowledge, no private self, the caricature is the only self the Modern knows…making him dull, dimwitted, and forever easily manipulated and exploited.
david8 is thinking that patriarchy is a negative consequence of internal (even inherent) psychological problems in people which are caused by what looked like some kind of psychic apparatus of conflicting psychological parts, and Aidon is thinking that patriarchy is some kind of dominate social system and tradition in an evolutionarily conservativist sense, and challenges any other kind of unfamiliar social system in which liberal black jewish homosexual hedonistic transvestite rappers become possible.
I like to believe that what is loosely defined as a patriarchy is simply a social system in which males have the most power, but not because of some psychological conflict in people which causes ‘egoic’ problems in consciousness, or, as Aidon proposes, because of being compelled to be ‘better’ or ‘more natural’ or ‘more noble’ simply because this is what he believes and values.
Patriarchy is a natural emergent property of a private property based socio-economic system (capitalism, freemarket) in which the best, most suitable arrangement for the production and maintenance of a family is the single family unit consisting of caretaker and bread winner. You all know this stuff.
The fact that our society can be described as a patriarchy is because we simply agree to say for the sake of brevity that what males are doing is more important.
But this isn’t because males are necessarily such that in any possible arrangement what they did would be more important.
Patriarchy is a contingency of a certain kind of material relations, and every bit of the gender and class consciousness, the sense of the self and one’s identity… that multifaceted subjectivity of the capitalist-consumerist discourse- is a derived narrative.
One day the only remarkable thing left distinguishing male and female human beings will be their sex. They will be able to do, and will be doing, the very same things economically and politically.
This has less to do with consciousness or the psyche or the nobility of proper ethomemetrics- the guided process of memetic (or ethos) transmission of tradition and genetic transmission of phenotypes- and more to do with an arrangement that is suitable to produce the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number. The patriarchy system must have been very efficient in achieving this end or else it would not have evolved and stabilized like it has. I’m not arguing for or against this. Just observing.
(I just made that word up, by the way. Ethomemetrics. Should we keep it? If you paid me the right amount I would write an eleven thousand word essay about what ethomemetrics is and how it works, and you would be all ‘omg that makes total sense!’ if you didn’t fall asleep reading it)
Could there have been a different kind of system in which females had more power, and in which the greatest pleasure for the greatest number was also achieved? Most certainly, but only after the industrial revolution.
A little irony there. The very system responsible for patriarchy could also easily make possible a system with no patriarchy.
Feminism, patriarchy, sex, and gender are trigger issues for nearly everyone, these topics keep people locked in and enmeshed in the society. For some people this becomes an obsession on the scale of paranoid delusion. Although these topic are the back-ground to S&M and “50 Shades of Grey”, I think it will be getting off-topic, and unhealthy, to pursue these issues too doggedly. I’ll just reply to a few points…
The emergence of transgenderism reflects the disolution of the male-female dichotomy in patriarchy. But the importance of phallogocentrism was over-stated, the really important determiner of rationality happens on the child-adult axis of patriarchy and is reflected in the pedophile revolution.
Sounds like we agree. The Mini-me is the public self, it is the conditioned self who is enmeshed in society and believes that he or she is an independent physical entity who possesses an identity and agency; it is the self-talk in our head. The big-me is who you really are, it’s your true-self, it’s original and creative, and it abides in love.
"What creates the blindness is a false self that we so easily get trapped by, and that is what prevents us from seeing or connecting with the “true self.” It has been given many names by many people. It is also called the “essential self,” “authentic self,” “awakened self,” “divine or sacred essence,” “enlightened self,” “higher self,” or “the soul.” The false self is also known by other names such as the “small self,” “the persona,” “the impostor,” “the veiled self,” “the small mind,” “the illusion of self,” or the ego. Some also affectionately call it “Mini me,” Because it embodies the smallness and limited self of everything a person thinks and believes him or herself to be.
The false self is constructed of many external identities. Much of them are defined by what a society or culture values or doesn’t value. Some things are thought to be good and some bad. The identities of the small self, or the ego, spring from what the small self believes it needs.
Here’s what I mean. First and foremost, the false self or ego is a survival mechanism, and so most of its needs are rooted in whatever supports its survival. That would include underlying fears and insecurity which lead one to seek safety and security, and which also can give rise to the need for control, or drive the quest for power.
…[O]ne thing we can say is that the true self is connected with all creation; in fact, all existence, in a way most are unaware of. This is called unity consciousness and it creates a sense of being unified or one with all there is while transcending the pettiness of the false self. When you live in this state you tend to have less of the drives of the false self which are primarily about survival of the separate individual."
“The Ego, The True Self, & Surrender”, Jonathan Parker[/list[
Maybe that’s not exactly what I intend to mean by “egoic consciousness”.
[list]“Egoic Consciousness is the identity we falsely believe we are as a result of the pressures of childhood experience, educational systems, and the media. It is based in fear, shame and pain and leads us to the experience of separation, opposition, and conflict. When we are gripped by Egoic Consciousness – a “false self” – we experience ourselves as lacking something - deficient, unworthy, not good enough.”
And this is usually opposed to a true-self that waits in the back-ground.
“Essential Consciousness is the truth of who we really are, alive and connected with all of reality. When we are in this awareness, we are naturally in touch with the core qualities of strength, faith, will, courage, compassion, and love. We experience being supported by existence itself, trusting that internal guidance will come to us as needed, having a positive view of the unfolding of events in our lives, and able to move forward with passion and purpose.”
“WHAT IS PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT?”, Jason Brody
For me this point is extremely important and I’d like to expand on what you wrote a little bit. First of all, patriarchy had emerged for hominids by 4 million ya, probably before, the house-hold unit appeared around about 50 to 200 thousand years ago. I’m going to past a note I wrote to my friend this week that addresses this issue precisely and I think you will find it interesting?
“At first there was the ‘primal horde’. One or a few males dominated the group and herded the females. This was the earliest form of patriarchy and is similar to that practiced by other sociable mammals such as primates or lions. This system of competing for females and domination of the horde was not very efficient, or at least less efficient than the incest and capitalism system that was soon to out compete it. It happened somewhere before 50,000 ya and after 200,000 ya, possibly at the dramatic improvement in tool making that is called the Mousterian/Acheulean divide. After the invention of the new political arrangement, instead of one male competing to control all the territory and all the females, henceforth, each male would have his own micro-territory (the household) and the women on it. These women were swapped in a very exact way: one’s man’s daughter was given to another man as his wife; this created networks of debt. The bride prices or dowries created a complex network of trade exchanges. This was the birth of capitalism and the family household unit in a single cultural technology: incest-taboo. It is a good guess that clothes wearing began at this time too. It began among the males with the purpose of covering the penis with a penis-gourd or loin-cloth because just as the size of a stag’s antlers determine his status, the size of a man’s penis determine his. Penis size is the result of testosterone levels in adolescence, it’s elevation is caused by sunlight, short burst physical exertion, high protein diet, occasional fasting, and minimal bad-stress: these were the environmental conditions under which the successful hunters were living. The penis was covered to conceal the automatic signal this natural scepter was sending and therefore interrupted the primal horde’s hierarchy. The result was a more efficient and cooperative sex-pol system based on incest and the trade and family-units it created. This “band of brothers” out-competed the older primal horde.”
So, this clears the nexus of Patriarchy in terms of “I am capable, I am Able”, starting from Proper-ty to Hospitality, marriage being an extension of this.
Patriarchy is Self-Possession of what is Proper-ly one’s own.
Interesting quotes, and although patriarchy and capitalism are certainly background issues to “50 Shades of Grey”, I’m going to refrain from replying any further for now as the discussion seems to be getting further afield from S&M or issues more directly related to the film; as well, these gender issues are quite triggering for some people to the point of paranoid delusion and there is no sense feeding triggers to such people. One might even take the point further as did Gayle Rubin and say that S&M is fundamentally a issue of sex, and not one of feminism or gender issues and also not one of Marxism.
""Catherine MacKinnon has made the most explicit theoretical attempt to subsume
sexuality under feminist thought. According to MacKinnon, “Sexuality is to feminism
what work is to marxism . . . the molding, direction, and expression of sexuality organizes
society into two sexes, women and men.” This analytic strategy in turn rests on a
decision to “use sex and gender relatively interchangeably.” It is this definitional fusion
that I want to challenge.
There is an instructive analogy in the history of the differentiation of contemporary
feminist thought from Marxism. Marxism is probably the most supple and powerful
conceptual system extant for analyzing social inequality. But attempts to make Marxism
the sole explanatory system for all social inequalities have been dismal exercises. Marxism
is most successful in the areas of social life for which it was originally developed — class
relations under capitalism.
In the early days of the contemporary women’s movement, a theoretical conflict
took place over the applicability of Marxism to gender stratification. Since Marxist theory
is relatively powerful, it does in fact detect important and interesting aspects of gender
oppression. It works best for those issues of gender most closely related to issues of class
and the organization of labor. The issues more specific to the social structure of gender
were not amenable to Marxist analysis.
The relationship between feminism and a radical theory of sexual oppression is
similar. Feminist conceptual tools were developed to detect and analyze gender-based
hierarchies. To the extent that these overlap with erotic stratifications, feminist theory
has some explanatory power. But as issues become less those of gender and more those
of sexuality, feminist analysis becomes misleading and often irrelevant. Feminist thought
simply lacks angles of vision which can fully encompass the social organization of
sexuality. The criteria of relevance in feminist thought do not allow it to see or assess
critical power relations in the area of sexuality.
In the long run, feminism’s critique of gender hierarchy must be incorporated into
a radical theory of sex, and the critique of sexual oppression should enrich feminism.
But an autonomous theory and politics specific to sexuality must be developed.
It is a mistake to substitute feminism for Marxism as the last word in social theory.
Feminism is no more capable than Marxism of being the ultimate and complete account
of all social inequality. Nor is feminism the residual theory which can take care of
everything to which Marx did not attend. These critical tools were fashioned to handle
very specific areas of social activity. Other areas of social life, their forms of power, and
their characteristic modes of oppression, need their own conceptual implements."
Gayle Rubin, “Thinking Sex:
Notes for a Radical Theory
of the Politics of Sexuality”
A famous tattooist acquaintance of mine has declared that he will Facebook unfriend anybody who even mentions 50 Shades of Gray… doesn’t that say it all.