Consider Your Audience? December 27, 2010

so, “rubble of empires” aka. the prostitution and sandwiches guy recently made an excellent point in the anti-prostitution video above.  i am embarrassed to say that i have never considered the “connection” between state-run welfare and legalized prostitution, but there would be one if prostitution were legalized, wouldnt there?

for example, if prostitution is legalized and legitimized as a “profession” and eligibility for state-run welfare is dependant on ones attachment to the labor market and/or “ability to work” (and much if not all of it is, at least in the US) then in order to be eligible for welfare, women would have to try hooking, before they could collect their benefits.  wouldnt they?  or, if a woman were offered a “job” as a prostitute and turned it down, or tried it for a period of time and then quit, she would be guilty of refusing work.  anyone who has ever collected unemployment benefits knows this is a problem.

furthermore, if a woman were disabled and couldnt work at all, meaning that she couldnt even sit at the movie theater and tear tickets, and couldnt be a walmart greeter, but she could still fuck, if prostitution were legal and legitimized as a “real job” she wouldnt get social security disability or supplemental security income, which requires that the applicant be disabled and unable to perform any work available in the national labor market, at all.  look it up!  undercover punk has blogged about eligibility criteria and problems accessing benefits before, and eligibility criteria for all state-run benefits programs is available online.

incidentally, have the pro-prostitution PIV-pozzies considered this, at all?  just checking.  sheesh.

anyhoo, as i have said here before, i think that anti-porn and anti-prostitution work is the ONLY good work that so-called pro-feminist men are doing.  i thought this welfare-prostitution-connection business was an excellent point, so i asked rubble about it, and to expound on what he meant, and whether it was his idea or not.  and heres what he said:

I guess my argument was that if you were to remove prostitution from the private market but still provide it (in the way I was suggesting that drugs be provided) you would need to have the government paying. There’s not really a source because it was an assertion. But I have found that one way to get people to sympathise (particuarly in Australia where welfare is more common) is to say ‘imagine if your welfare was connectd to prostitution.’

bolds mine.  he seems to be saying that one needs to consider ones audience, when engaging in these “debates” AND that if you choose your words carefully, deliberately connecting your issue to something your audience cares about, or something that affects them, you can elicit the response you want.  you can get them to see your point.

now, this isnt what i had initially intended to write about, when i started this post.  i was just going to write about state-run welfare eligibility-criteria and legalized prostitution.  and i did that.  BUT.  this is kind interesting too, isnt it?  specifically, radical feminists have been producing PIV-critical work for over a century now, since before WWI.  we have “said it” in every way possible, and repeatedly made our case against dangerous male sexuality, and the ways it is specifically and particularly harmful to girls and women.  but even so-called pro-feminist men apparently cant get their minds around this one, or wont. 

nope!  i have not heard of a single allegedly pro-feminist man denouncing PIV, or resolving to not stick his dick into women anymore, because to do so is specifically and particularly harmful to girls and women, and that the trauma-bonding, medical events, and unwanted pregnancies and childbearing it creates is the root of womens dependence on men.  and because denouncing and renouncing PIV is therefore critical to dismantling male supremacy, and to divesting oneself of ones male privilege.  NO ONE, and i mean NO.  ONE.  is doing this, so far as i know.

in fact, i called rubble out on this very thing here, on this blog, (well actually it was less of a call-out and more that i was having a conversation with my own readers, on my own fucking blog) and he responded with an entire video, addressing the issue of the ”credibility” of male feminists generally, but completely ignoring my point about PIV.  now, i am not trying to pick on rubble specifically, and i dont have a problem with him, and he was nice enough to respond to my question about the welfare-eligibility stuff.  BUT.

just what the fuck are radical feminists supposed to do, when men, even allegedly “feminist” ones, cannot be manipulated by “consider your audience” debate tactics for the simple reason that men apparently do not care about girls and women, or about dismantling male supremacy, at all.  if “consider your audience” as a debate tactic works, and i know it does, then all anyone has to do, as rubble described, is to find something your audience cares about, make them see that your subject affects them, or parallels something that does, and then watch as their perspective changes, as intended.

if you try this, and it doesnt work, you probably executed your strategy wrong.  right?  you didnt give your audience a reason to change their minds.  you didnt hit on anything they care about, or feel connected to, at all.  in this case, womens wellbeing, and our lives.  which is the entire fucking problem with all men, in the first place.  they DONT CARE about womens wellbeing or womens lives, and men (even feminist ones!) demonstrate this daily with their relentless, dogged insistence on PIV.  (you bet your ass this is a feminist-litmus test.  yes, for allegedly pro-feminist men, it absolutely is.  and they all FAIL.)

and there is NOTHING, and i mean NOTHING, that affects girls and women specifically, yet also parallels anything that men experience.  hello!  its completely different.  and mens reality isnt real.

now, to be clear, my point is not that radical feminists should focus our attention on women, and give up on trying to convert teh menz.  this one is of course true, and kind of goes without saying.  my point is that the debate-structure and debate strategy itself is set up in such a way that radical feminist discourse will never win.  thats my point.  just like every other fucking thing, its set up so that anything truly radical when it comes to womens wellbeing and our lives will always lose.  its just another example of how existing structures and institutions arent conducive to feminist discourse, at all.  and that we need to find another way.

remind me again why i dont allow mainstream comments on this blog!