This is a really interesting essay and is persuasively argued. However I object strenuously to denoting this phenomenon online feminism. As you argue this is all about occupational choice made by individuals. That there are young middle class mainly white women engaging in electronic mediated sex-work has zero to do with feminism.
You rightly say that not every choice a woman makes should be supported.
I challenge you that not every set of changed social behaviors by women is feminist.
Watering down the term “feminism” in this way does nothing for the ongoing struggle to secure and protect hard won rights for women.
Hugely insightful, Gillian, and I agree! I should have put feminism in quotation marks. Sadly I have seen this trend in behaviour marketed as feminism, which I didn’t articulate clearly in the article. I am not appointing this word to this behaviour, but tried to note how it has been appropriated. I’ll take better care in future to make that distinction.
I love the way you have made the link between women's bodies and Earth's body Rachel. In her book Women Earth and Creator Spirit, Elizabeth A Johnson quotes from a study, The Death of Nature by Carolyn Merchant. She refers to the writing of Francis Bacon , celebrated founder of of modern scientific method who uses the language of rape when describing the scientific application to Nature. He speaks of wresting new knowledge from Nature's womb; of seizing her by the hair and moulding her to something new by technology; of penetrating her mysteries, of having the power to conquer and subdue her, of torture with mechanical devices. He write:" Neither ought a man to make scruple of penetrating into these holes and corners when the inquisition of truth is his sole purpose."
Forgive me referencing Iain McGilchrist yet again but he has so much to bring this. The primacy, for example, of relationship over what is related to. It is not the work per se but the relationship between the worker and beneficiary - the employee and employer and here the self-employed and the customer as well as the platform - that is important. In the Only Fans case it would seem that nearly all the relationships are mutually exploitative save for the women-platform one which seems more one way.
More generally, this can be seen in the loss of the Sacred and the values that are a part of that. We now appear to value only that which is useful or profitable. Nothing is sacred: not our bodies or the body of the Earth and our gaze stretches only as far as the thing we want to grasp and ignores the connection that thing has to the wider web of our lives - Indira’s net.
Your instincts were right, Rachel, and no amount of rationalisation will change that.
This is a symptom of the biggest problem of all - one that affects planet and women alike, and also men, in my view.
The world has become increasingly transactional year by year. Everything is disconnected, lacking in relationship, lacking in respect for life itself. Porn is sex without relationship, and that has increasingly come to inhabit marriages too. It is an anti-Tantra, without spirit, without love, without heart. The relationship of body-parts, not humans.
Maybe there is a limited kind of empowerment in the shift from victim to perpetrator, exploiter rather than exploited, but it is one in which everyone is made poorer in the end. Surely the power to be solitary is inferior to the power to collaborate, to combine, to relate and to create together?
It is not so much then, that it is not meaningful to talk of being empowered on a dying planet. It is rather that moving further and further from Relational Being IS the death of the planet. If I thought this was where we would end up, I wouldn't care to be here anyway. Fortunately I don't think that because for me, this is the far end of a pendulum swing. That is my choice anyway, and I guess if I am wrong then I will have died trying. But I hope I am not on my own in that choice.
was about to write same in a different way, without reference to Tantra. Well said.
It's no coincidence that the founders of neoclassical economics strip mined Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism (a reforming moral philosophy of sorts by a man who sort progressive change in his times) to be freed of its concern for consequences, wholesomeness, purity generosity etc in his "Felicitous Calculus" and reduce everything down to "price" as the determinant and full expression of utility. Nothing like Bentham's original work but craftily deploying his insights about pleasure and pain, craving and aversion.
It's a neoliberal society we've been living in since the 70s, and the takeover was planned even before then in reaction to the New Deal kind of socialist-lite progressive policy in post-war USA. Neoclassical economists are the storm troopers used to install neoliberal agendas inside all of our institutions. They lock other kinds of economists out of the conversations, the mainstream journals, the university tenure programs, and political influence. m “The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market” by Naomi Oreskes, Erik Conway (who previously wrote "Merchants of Doubt") explores this US history of influence in some detail.
One broad consequence of the neoliberal project is exactly as you described it.
Others consequences are the ones Rachel explores each week in terms of the exploitation and commodification of the entire ecosphere (GAIA). If more people could understand the roots of this perversion of human enterprise then more we might be able to counter it and redirect civilisation away from the precipice. Or as some Buddhists say, the bad news is the good news. But only helps in the now — if we learn from it.
Thank you Rachel! I will share this article with both of my 35 year old children. This will be a good conversation starter (continuation of many similar conversations). My daughter and I often discuss feminism and privilege. My son too, just less often.
In her book Resisting Reality, Sally Haslanger goes into depth about objectification. The damage it does to women and girls is significant and meaningful.
Men must be encouraged to see this damage as both significant and meaningful to them too. That what we do to women, affects men (even if indirectly) too. I don’t mean to say men are equally harmed. I mean to say unhealthy men do as much damage to women as they do to one another. I often wonder if unhealthy women do as much damage to men as they do to one another as well. Just a thought. Men have to take responsibility for their part (the vast majority) in the exploitation of women.
I wonder how we begin to integrate what causes men to ‘consume’ so much material oriented around objectifying women into larger conversations. How do we teach men to overcome the colonization of their imaginations to look at women as commodities to be purchased?
How we define masculinity is intimately tied to how we define the feminine. How do we change both definitions to be decolonized by world views that treat everyone and everything as commodities?
Your body of work is some of the best i read and watch. Thank you again!
Rachel, I always appreciate your humility, openness and curiosity around the responses. And I deeply appreciate this piece not just for your careful analysis but for your bravery. Not easy to name such uncomfortable truths: “empowering” young women of privilege to stoke the fires of capitalism makes arsonists of us all. I sense that commodifying any of the constituent beings that comprise the body of Earth, be it humans, trees, minerals, water, animals, plants results from the Original Wound of perceiving ourselves as separate from the rest of the body of Earth, thus requiring systems of supremacy to justify exploitation. As you astutely note, colonizing one’s own body is not freedom. It’s part of the colonizer’s plan. And given that there’s no us and them—there’s just us, this inextricably connected collective of beings who constitute the planet— if colonization and capitalism exist, life remains transactional not relational, rapacious not reciprocal.
"Not easy to name such uncomfortable truths: “empowering” young women of privilege to stoke the fires of capitalism makes arsonists of us all. I sense that commodifying any of the constituent beings..."
That hit hard, right to the heart of the matter. Now, having grandchildren, boys and girls, I fear most for them. The commodifying of their lives and everything alive around them - the lives that they all truly cherish. You have said it so clearly. Thank you. It is what we are trying to convey, and live for, and constantly strive to learn.
Thanks for your comment, Richard. I am heartened by the gift of your engagement. When we take a moment to connect we de-commodify. All best to you and your grandchildren.
Thank you Rachel, for prompting and hosting an illuminating discussion. I initially wrestled with adding a comment about the sullied or degraded male’s part in the prostitute transaction and its demeaning effect on us all, but this was covered far more eloquently than I could manage by both Richard B’s “loss of the Sacred” and Ronald’s contribution.
Dear Rachel, this is such an insightful and helpful article! I have been disappointed that emancipated women did little to protect Earth. After all the courage of the suffragettes; we gained a hold on the steering wheel, only to capitulate to Capitalism. Why did we not work to persuade men to choose a wiser path, particularly on the matter of pronatalism? You might enjoy my articles which I publish on Medium & LinkedIn. My most recent article is very relevant to the way that we are all willing slaves that work for capitalism, and suggests two fairly simple concepts that could guide us all into the direction of equitable economic Degrowth. https://medium.com/@barbarawilliams1/universal-basic-provision-94c96be585d7 or https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/universal-basic-provision-barbara-williams-dscre/
I suspect perhaps the hands on the steering wheel was more illusion and aspiration than anything else. same for progressive men in halls of power, they're under surveillance by the elites who consider themselves owners of those corridors of power and they progressive infiltrators always have their hand out for donations and likes. This makes them all the easier to corral and manipulate into acquiescing. It's why outsiders like MLK were such a threat to the system, they knew that to be elected or invited to work inside a privileged institution was to be co-opted and harnessed, divorced of their goals.
That was true once, but the awareness is shifting rapidly now. A new breed of politicians is emerging with the success of Zohran Mamdani https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkXPWMtrdUQ
yes that's one to watch with wide eyes for sure! the billionaires with NY residences are going to be most aggrieved if "something is not done" to prevent this effrontery.
Alastair, you are so right about how it seems our elected officials seem to get co-opted and harnessed. I have come to believe it cannot be changed from within because those in the current government keep reinventing the same systems. It is like they cannot imagine anything else.
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." - Fredric Jameson
a friend of mine used to say (rhetorically) "how long does it take a radical to become a conservative?"
He was a communist in his teenage years but became disillusioned when the Russian and Chinese athletic teams at the Olympics were exposed as systematically taking PEDs. (Not that international sport isn't rife with it these days but in those days it was a bit more a of a crude comparison). I'm not sure what ideological position he took next, he took refuge in publishing in the art world while holding down a corporate graphic design job.
I guess we could counter with "how long does it take an oppressed normatively-conservative population under the heel of rentier-capitalism to become radicalised?" Seems like forever but maybe this century will be different to the last where hard won victories often were hollowed out by a giant economic switch and bait using advertising and consumer culture.
thanks for the links; I read your piece straight away. Degrowth I and my uni cohort discuss all the time. For Uni I have to write about Conspicuous Consumerism and pecuniary emulation: people consume to signal status and imitate higher classes (beginning with Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899) for a uni paper this trimester. So I've been reflecting on various historical explanations/assumptions around consumer behaviour and the often times misunderstood nexus of demand and production.
I'm doing a Masters in Economics of Sustainability, online at Torrens Uni in the only university coursework in economics which reads MMT and Ecological Economics as core material for the subjects. all the subjects begin critiquing (deeply) the mainstream theories from Neoclassical Econ along the way. Rachel has interviewed Prof Steven Hail who co-created this post-grad tuition with Gabrielle Bond at Modern Money Lab, Australia and now there is a UK chapter too.
One early conclusion I've come to is that one of the largest destructive elements in the orthodox economic theories, and to some extent institutional economics is that they leave out or diminish the importance of moral/karmic consequence on level of individual actions, family, community, society and this global finance-capitalism-ruled civilisation. Frequently economists diminish the capacity of humans to reflect on such things and change their actions accordingly, the drivers are always presented as external to the body, external to the contemplative mind, and selfishness is either explicitly assumed or implicitly rendered as group behaviours controlled by marketing/ads etc.
I'm glad you talk about UBE not UBI, from an MMT perspective, one I take as accurate, UBI is a sure path to a Lords and Serfs economic model under the glittering distraction of digital currency/crypto.
UBI is potentially inflationary on a very large scale but more importantly it's potential incredibly disempowering if the market is still the place where not just basic needs (shelter, food, medicine) but all human needs (brotherhood, purpose, so-called self-realisation in Maslov's pyramid of needs which I'd replace with the path to liberation/enlightenment, or realisation of non-self, which cannot be done without community but also cannot be achieved by community alone). Employment isn't just a source of income, the claim to a share of a societies wealth, but of empowerment the right to contribute and to have influence, especially if labour unions were strong as they were in pre-neoliberal era.
Unemployment is an artificial construct of capitalism, it didn't exist prior to extensive property rights and labour markets being created and crafted to suit industrialist of the first machine age (Karl Polanyi). AI will only take away "all the jobs" if we let the billionaires and corporates deploying it get away with it. There's no shortage of ecosphere rehabilitation and restoration work that needs doing, but will we allow a billionaire class of elites determine how the resources of this Earth and this productive economy are deployed and for who's ultimate benefit or destruction.
Hoping I'm not being too overly bold speaking into these terrains as a man, but I really feel like some larger perspectives are missing here...
There is a primitive, one-dimensional and reactionary kind of "feminism" that is mostly all about "women becoming better men than men," yet always still within the very same ancient patriarchal, hierarchical and hugely separation-identified, domination kinds of ways... I remember this "better men than men" expression from the days of Margaret Thatcher and later Condoleezza Rice... And even more recently regarding Hillary Clinton...
In other words, seemingly "feminist" actions, behaviors and/or accomplishments that are still buying into, supporting and reinforcing all the very same systems of patriarchy, hierarchy and domination...
Or in more other words a sort of antithetical ideology that never-the-less continues to feed, reflect, reinforce and justify what it appears to oppose, with what is still an extremely participatory (within all the same patriarchal systems) opposition...
Other descriptors:
Coopted feminism: reinforcing the very patriarchal systems they appear to oppose...
Liberal feminism: working within existing power structures rather than challenging their foundations, essentially asking for inclusion in patriarchal systems rather than dismantling them...
Performative feminism: actions that appear feminist on the surface but don't address deeper structural issues, sometimes even reinforcing them...
Reformist feminism: seeking change through existing institutions and frameworks, which merely legitimizes and strengthens patriarchal structures...
Corporate and marketplace feminism: commodifying feminist ideals in ways that serve capitalist and patriarchal interests...
False consciousness: oppressed groups adopting ideologies that actually work against their liberation...
Patriarchal bargains: accepting some benefits within the system while leaving its fundamental power structures intact...
---
So, say, in this case, women sex workers replacing male pimps and male owned and dominated pornography mills with themselves, all the while as they continue to commodify women's bodies and behaviors in service to all the same capitalism, hierarchy, patriarchy, chauvinism, male sexism, male alienation, etc., etc...
Making pornography perhaps (merely?) more socially and culturally acceptable, more mainstream, etc... All the while as they continue to serve the same old male dominated, separation identified and hugely destructive ways of an extremely made-up (by minds lost in the beliefs of separation), alienated, male "owned" and dominated, patriarchal human world...
Of course prostitution is not f-ing work. If it were unemployed women could be (and have been) docked their benefits for refusing to take 'work' of being orally or vaginally invaded.
I'm sure 'rent boys' don't see their lives as empowered either.
This is a strawman, or strawwoman, argument. The feminists I know (though I suppose anyone can say that they are one) do not see prostitution as in anyway empowering. Though they would accept that not being controlled by a pimp or brothel and being paid directly is preferable to otherwise. They all know that prostitution is all about domination, with the woman being the subordinate, which is the opposite of liberation.
Where prostitution is accepted (and this is different to bouncing about in one's room), such as in Las Vegas, women willing to prostitute themselves (and sexual abuse, drug addiction, mental illness, money problems and lack of education can make 'willing' problematic) quickly run out and trafficking takes over- young girls and women are isolated and gang raped until they become dependent on their pimps.
No feminist (ie a person who opposes the patriarchy (the rewarding of domination over women, other than whites, animals and the planet) and who wants both men and women to stop being oppressed by it) can by definition support the enacting of domination for money.
I don’t read in this text a critique of sex work, but rather a critique of online sexwork and “online feminism”, whatever the latter is supposed to be. Which hardly represent the totality of what sex work is.
The statement on any work exploiting physical labour still holds true and I don’t see any critique of the differences between sex work and factory work (for example).
thanks for writing this, I can't believe you let a Marxist (of all the ideologically close-minded perspectives) get away with such a generalising trope about women for all these years! glad you corrected it, Rachel — better late than never as they say in heaven.
reminds me of an exchange online with the male partner of a young woman in my family circle over a decade ago. he jumped into a conversation I was having on FB with his partner to make the point that I was missing something important when I described the exploitation inherent in the pop music industry of those scantily clad pop sensations. and it was that this particular artist that I'd mentioned "had agency".
I forget who the artist in question was, maybe Brittany? dont recall but well over a decade ago, anyhow I found the "has agency" argument to be as paper thin and minuscule as her clothing in the video. (I'd worked in music videos in 90s — but not on sexploitation videos I hasten to add. so with an inside peak and contacts in the industry wasn't buying this post-modern "has agency" crap).
To the Marxist, the oppression inherent in some-body producing supply to meet a demand such that corporations — who to a large extent still control success in the pop music industry — and “enclose” to borrow your word Rachel, and take most of the profit is obvious — whatever line of work it is. In spite of the putative "creativity" and "artistic agency" the artisan might embody as they are commoditised to the nth degree.
But to many young people today they see "agency" in this exploitation. Presumably b/c having the wealth to express taste preferences in upmarket brand fashion/cars/lifestyles choices (in your MTCs if not in your daily life) which their fans may but envy and the power to change a couple of words in the songs written for them by unsexy writers (also exploited b/c they are forced to share song writing copyright wth artists) is at the high end of aspirations for self-empowerment. Is this perhaps because the youth are born into this rentier-captialism controlled society spiralling into meta-crisis with seemingly little hope of solving intractable societal/global problems? Existential ecological and equity problems that multiply and accelerate rather than close up like the ozone hole after careful consideration and response from the powers that be. Refuge in the one other constant in their lives, being advertised to non-stop on nearly every platform or activity they buy admission into?
If there is agency in such artistry then let's measure it in the artists ability to change outcomes in their domain, defy the political/cultural establishment when it comes to political expression (at Glastonbury maybe). See how far they get *not* playing the fetishising commodification game. maybe to actually write their own songs, even? Billie Eilish and her brother the only example I can think of ATM who appeal to a youth market and demonstrate real artistic independence, Kate Bush in an era long passed. There's others of course but few and far between at the higher levels of commercial success.
The reason song writers have to sell their songs to other artists rather than release themselves is b/c pop music is a marketing driven product with very niche specifications if someone wants to make a lot of money. And for women in that industry that means be young and prepared to sex it up at all opportunities. "mid-career" female music artists without established fame are also expected to replicate this base level product of youthfulness and beauty to the full extent they're prepared to go there, I've heard how A&R reps talk about this stuff, it's not subtle.
This is a really interesting essay and is persuasively argued. However I object strenuously to denoting this phenomenon online feminism. As you argue this is all about occupational choice made by individuals. That there are young middle class mainly white women engaging in electronic mediated sex-work has zero to do with feminism.
You rightly say that not every choice a woman makes should be supported.
I challenge you that not every set of changed social behaviors by women is feminist.
Watering down the term “feminism” in this way does nothing for the ongoing struggle to secure and protect hard won rights for women.
Hugely insightful, Gillian, and I agree! I should have put feminism in quotation marks. Sadly I have seen this trend in behaviour marketed as feminism, which I didn’t articulate clearly in the article. I am not appointing this word to this behaviour, but tried to note how it has been appropriated. I’ll take better care in future to make that distinction.
Thank you for this generous response. Feminist analysis and praxis is ours to protect.
I love the way you have made the link between women's bodies and Earth's body Rachel. In her book Women Earth and Creator Spirit, Elizabeth A Johnson quotes from a study, The Death of Nature by Carolyn Merchant. She refers to the writing of Francis Bacon , celebrated founder of of modern scientific method who uses the language of rape when describing the scientific application to Nature. He speaks of wresting new knowledge from Nature's womb; of seizing her by the hair and moulding her to something new by technology; of penetrating her mysteries, of having the power to conquer and subdue her, of torture with mechanical devices. He write:" Neither ought a man to make scruple of penetrating into these holes and corners when the inquisition of truth is his sole purpose."
I’ve been trying to find these exact references for Bacon’s writing so thank you, I’ll look out that book!
That is grim imagery.
Forgive me referencing Iain McGilchrist yet again but he has so much to bring this. The primacy, for example, of relationship over what is related to. It is not the work per se but the relationship between the worker and beneficiary - the employee and employer and here the self-employed and the customer as well as the platform - that is important. In the Only Fans case it would seem that nearly all the relationships are mutually exploitative save for the women-platform one which seems more one way.
More generally, this can be seen in the loss of the Sacred and the values that are a part of that. We now appear to value only that which is useful or profitable. Nothing is sacred: not our bodies or the body of the Earth and our gaze stretches only as far as the thing we want to grasp and ignores the connection that thing has to the wider web of our lives - Indira’s net.
Your instincts were right, Rachel, and no amount of rationalisation will change that.
The sacred element is hugely important; the logical consequence of the material being considered profane.
This is a symptom of the biggest problem of all - one that affects planet and women alike, and also men, in my view.
The world has become increasingly transactional year by year. Everything is disconnected, lacking in relationship, lacking in respect for life itself. Porn is sex without relationship, and that has increasingly come to inhabit marriages too. It is an anti-Tantra, without spirit, without love, without heart. The relationship of body-parts, not humans.
Maybe there is a limited kind of empowerment in the shift from victim to perpetrator, exploiter rather than exploited, but it is one in which everyone is made poorer in the end. Surely the power to be solitary is inferior to the power to collaborate, to combine, to relate and to create together?
It is not so much then, that it is not meaningful to talk of being empowered on a dying planet. It is rather that moving further and further from Relational Being IS the death of the planet. If I thought this was where we would end up, I wouldn't care to be here anyway. Fortunately I don't think that because for me, this is the far end of a pendulum swing. That is my choice anyway, and I guess if I am wrong then I will have died trying. But I hope I am not on my own in that choice.
was about to write same in a different way, without reference to Tantra. Well said.
It's no coincidence that the founders of neoclassical economics strip mined Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism (a reforming moral philosophy of sorts by a man who sort progressive change in his times) to be freed of its concern for consequences, wholesomeness, purity generosity etc in his "Felicitous Calculus" and reduce everything down to "price" as the determinant and full expression of utility. Nothing like Bentham's original work but craftily deploying his insights about pleasure and pain, craving and aversion.
It's a neoliberal society we've been living in since the 70s, and the takeover was planned even before then in reaction to the New Deal kind of socialist-lite progressive policy in post-war USA. Neoclassical economists are the storm troopers used to install neoliberal agendas inside all of our institutions. They lock other kinds of economists out of the conversations, the mainstream journals, the university tenure programs, and political influence. m “The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market” by Naomi Oreskes, Erik Conway (who previously wrote "Merchants of Doubt") explores this US history of influence in some detail.
One broad consequence of the neoliberal project is exactly as you described it.
Others consequences are the ones Rachel explores each week in terms of the exploitation and commodification of the entire ecosphere (GAIA). If more people could understand the roots of this perversion of human enterprise then more we might be able to counter it and redirect civilisation away from the precipice. Or as some Buddhists say, the bad news is the good news. But only helps in the now — if we learn from it.
Thank you Rachel! I will share this article with both of my 35 year old children. This will be a good conversation starter (continuation of many similar conversations). My daughter and I often discuss feminism and privilege. My son too, just less often.
In her book Resisting Reality, Sally Haslanger goes into depth about objectification. The damage it does to women and girls is significant and meaningful.
Men must be encouraged to see this damage as both significant and meaningful to them too. That what we do to women, affects men (even if indirectly) too. I don’t mean to say men are equally harmed. I mean to say unhealthy men do as much damage to women as they do to one another. I often wonder if unhealthy women do as much damage to men as they do to one another as well. Just a thought. Men have to take responsibility for their part (the vast majority) in the exploitation of women.
I wonder how we begin to integrate what causes men to ‘consume’ so much material oriented around objectifying women into larger conversations. How do we teach men to overcome the colonization of their imaginations to look at women as commodities to be purchased?
How we define masculinity is intimately tied to how we define the feminine. How do we change both definitions to be decolonized by world views that treat everyone and everything as commodities?
Your body of work is some of the best i read and watch. Thank you again!
Thank you Ronald!
wanted to say same, but less eloquently. thank you.
Rachel, I always appreciate your humility, openness and curiosity around the responses. And I deeply appreciate this piece not just for your careful analysis but for your bravery. Not easy to name such uncomfortable truths: “empowering” young women of privilege to stoke the fires of capitalism makes arsonists of us all. I sense that commodifying any of the constituent beings that comprise the body of Earth, be it humans, trees, minerals, water, animals, plants results from the Original Wound of perceiving ourselves as separate from the rest of the body of Earth, thus requiring systems of supremacy to justify exploitation. As you astutely note, colonizing one’s own body is not freedom. It’s part of the colonizer’s plan. And given that there’s no us and them—there’s just us, this inextricably connected collective of beings who constitute the planet— if colonization and capitalism exist, life remains transactional not relational, rapacious not reciprocal.
"Not easy to name such uncomfortable truths: “empowering” young women of privilege to stoke the fires of capitalism makes arsonists of us all. I sense that commodifying any of the constituent beings..."
That hit hard, right to the heart of the matter. Now, having grandchildren, boys and girls, I fear most for them. The commodifying of their lives and everything alive around them - the lives that they all truly cherish. You have said it so clearly. Thank you. It is what we are trying to convey, and live for, and constantly strive to learn.
Thanks for your comment, Richard. I am heartened by the gift of your engagement. When we take a moment to connect we de-commodify. All best to you and your grandchildren.
I enjoyed reading this essay, and how you connected it with the body of earth, becasue we are undeniably interconnected with all and everything :)
Thank you Rachel, for prompting and hosting an illuminating discussion. I initially wrestled with adding a comment about the sullied or degraded male’s part in the prostitute transaction and its demeaning effect on us all, but this was covered far more eloquently than I could manage by both Richard B’s “loss of the Sacred” and Ronald’s contribution.
Thanks everyone!
Dear Rachel, this is such an insightful and helpful article! I have been disappointed that emancipated women did little to protect Earth. After all the courage of the suffragettes; we gained a hold on the steering wheel, only to capitulate to Capitalism. Why did we not work to persuade men to choose a wiser path, particularly on the matter of pronatalism? You might enjoy my articles which I publish on Medium & LinkedIn. My most recent article is very relevant to the way that we are all willing slaves that work for capitalism, and suggests two fairly simple concepts that could guide us all into the direction of equitable economic Degrowth. https://medium.com/@barbarawilliams1/universal-basic-provision-94c96be585d7 or https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/universal-basic-provision-barbara-williams-dscre/
Thank you Barbara! I will read with interest.
I suspect perhaps the hands on the steering wheel was more illusion and aspiration than anything else. same for progressive men in halls of power, they're under surveillance by the elites who consider themselves owners of those corridors of power and they progressive infiltrators always have their hand out for donations and likes. This makes them all the easier to corral and manipulate into acquiescing. It's why outsiders like MLK were such a threat to the system, they knew that to be elected or invited to work inside a privileged institution was to be co-opted and harnessed, divorced of their goals.
That was true once, but the awareness is shifting rapidly now. A new breed of politicians is emerging with the success of Zohran Mamdani https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkXPWMtrdUQ
yes that's one to watch with wide eyes for sure! the billionaires with NY residences are going to be most aggrieved if "something is not done" to prevent this effrontery.
If you want more evidence of the massive mindset shift underway, check out my latest blog entry, https://poemsforparliament.uk/2025/06/27/a-crescendo-in-awareness/
Alastair, you are so right about how it seems our elected officials seem to get co-opted and harnessed. I have come to believe it cannot be changed from within because those in the current government keep reinventing the same systems. It is like they cannot imagine anything else.
“It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." - Fredric Jameson
a friend of mine used to say (rhetorically) "how long does it take a radical to become a conservative?"
He was a communist in his teenage years but became disillusioned when the Russian and Chinese athletic teams at the Olympics were exposed as systematically taking PEDs. (Not that international sport isn't rife with it these days but in those days it was a bit more a of a crude comparison). I'm not sure what ideological position he took next, he took refuge in publishing in the art world while holding down a corporate graphic design job.
I guess we could counter with "how long does it take an oppressed normatively-conservative population under the heel of rentier-capitalism to become radicalised?" Seems like forever but maybe this century will be different to the last where hard won victories often were hollowed out by a giant economic switch and bait using advertising and consumer culture.
There's an event tomorrow might make us all feel more optimistic: https://www.linkedin.com/events/topicbusinessforhumanitywithhan7343595883604635648/comments/
Other evidence of the appetite for profound change in my latest blog: https://poemsforparliament.uk/2025/06/27/a-crescendo-in-awareness/
thanks for the links; I read your piece straight away. Degrowth I and my uni cohort discuss all the time. For Uni I have to write about Conspicuous Consumerism and pecuniary emulation: people consume to signal status and imitate higher classes (beginning with Thorstein Veblen, "The Theory of the Leisure Class" (1899) for a uni paper this trimester. So I've been reflecting on various historical explanations/assumptions around consumer behaviour and the often times misunderstood nexus of demand and production.
I'm doing a Masters in Economics of Sustainability, online at Torrens Uni in the only university coursework in economics which reads MMT and Ecological Economics as core material for the subjects. all the subjects begin critiquing (deeply) the mainstream theories from Neoclassical Econ along the way. Rachel has interviewed Prof Steven Hail who co-created this post-grad tuition with Gabrielle Bond at Modern Money Lab, Australia and now there is a UK chapter too.
One early conclusion I've come to is that one of the largest destructive elements in the orthodox economic theories, and to some extent institutional economics is that they leave out or diminish the importance of moral/karmic consequence on level of individual actions, family, community, society and this global finance-capitalism-ruled civilisation. Frequently economists diminish the capacity of humans to reflect on such things and change their actions accordingly, the drivers are always presented as external to the body, external to the contemplative mind, and selfishness is either explicitly assumed or implicitly rendered as group behaviours controlled by marketing/ads etc.
I'm glad you talk about UBE not UBI, from an MMT perspective, one I take as accurate, UBI is a sure path to a Lords and Serfs economic model under the glittering distraction of digital currency/crypto.
UBI is potentially inflationary on a very large scale but more importantly it's potential incredibly disempowering if the market is still the place where not just basic needs (shelter, food, medicine) but all human needs (brotherhood, purpose, so-called self-realisation in Maslov's pyramid of needs which I'd replace with the path to liberation/enlightenment, or realisation of non-self, which cannot be done without community but also cannot be achieved by community alone). Employment isn't just a source of income, the claim to a share of a societies wealth, but of empowerment the right to contribute and to have influence, especially if labour unions were strong as they were in pre-neoliberal era.
Unemployment is an artificial construct of capitalism, it didn't exist prior to extensive property rights and labour markets being created and crafted to suit industrialist of the first machine age (Karl Polanyi). AI will only take away "all the jobs" if we let the billionaires and corporates deploying it get away with it. There's no shortage of ecosphere rehabilitation and restoration work that needs doing, but will we allow a billionaire class of elites determine how the resources of this Earth and this productive economy are deployed and for who's ultimate benefit or destruction.
Hoping I'm not being too overly bold speaking into these terrains as a man, but I really feel like some larger perspectives are missing here...
There is a primitive, one-dimensional and reactionary kind of "feminism" that is mostly all about "women becoming better men than men," yet always still within the very same ancient patriarchal, hierarchical and hugely separation-identified, domination kinds of ways... I remember this "better men than men" expression from the days of Margaret Thatcher and later Condoleezza Rice... And even more recently regarding Hillary Clinton...
In other words, seemingly "feminist" actions, behaviors and/or accomplishments that are still buying into, supporting and reinforcing all the very same systems of patriarchy, hierarchy and domination...
Or in more other words a sort of antithetical ideology that never-the-less continues to feed, reflect, reinforce and justify what it appears to oppose, with what is still an extremely participatory (within all the same patriarchal systems) opposition...
Other descriptors:
Coopted feminism: reinforcing the very patriarchal systems they appear to oppose...
Liberal feminism: working within existing power structures rather than challenging their foundations, essentially asking for inclusion in patriarchal systems rather than dismantling them...
Performative feminism: actions that appear feminist on the surface but don't address deeper structural issues, sometimes even reinforcing them...
Reformist feminism: seeking change through existing institutions and frameworks, which merely legitimizes and strengthens patriarchal structures...
Corporate and marketplace feminism: commodifying feminist ideals in ways that serve capitalist and patriarchal interests...
False consciousness: oppressed groups adopting ideologies that actually work against their liberation...
Patriarchal bargains: accepting some benefits within the system while leaving its fundamental power structures intact...
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So, say, in this case, women sex workers replacing male pimps and male owned and dominated pornography mills with themselves, all the while as they continue to commodify women's bodies and behaviors in service to all the same capitalism, hierarchy, patriarchy, chauvinism, male sexism, male alienation, etc., etc...
Making pornography perhaps (merely?) more socially and culturally acceptable, more mainstream, etc... All the while as they continue to serve the same old male dominated, separation identified and hugely destructive ways of an extremely made-up (by minds lost in the beliefs of separation), alienated, male "owned" and dominated, patriarchal human world...
🙏🌻
Of course prostitution is not f-ing work. If it were unemployed women could be (and have been) docked their benefits for refusing to take 'work' of being orally or vaginally invaded.
I'm sure 'rent boys' don't see their lives as empowered either.
This is a strawman, or strawwoman, argument. The feminists I know (though I suppose anyone can say that they are one) do not see prostitution as in anyway empowering. Though they would accept that not being controlled by a pimp or brothel and being paid directly is preferable to otherwise. They all know that prostitution is all about domination, with the woman being the subordinate, which is the opposite of liberation.
Where prostitution is accepted (and this is different to bouncing about in one's room), such as in Las Vegas, women willing to prostitute themselves (and sexual abuse, drug addiction, mental illness, money problems and lack of education can make 'willing' problematic) quickly run out and trafficking takes over- young girls and women are isolated and gang raped until they become dependent on their pimps.
No feminist (ie a person who opposes the patriarchy (the rewarding of domination over women, other than whites, animals and the planet) and who wants both men and women to stop being oppressed by it) can by definition support the enacting of domination for money.
I don’t read in this text a critique of sex work, but rather a critique of online sexwork and “online feminism”, whatever the latter is supposed to be. Which hardly represent the totality of what sex work is.
The statement on any work exploiting physical labour still holds true and I don’t see any critique of the differences between sex work and factory work (for example).
Correct!
thanks for writing this, I can't believe you let a Marxist (of all the ideologically close-minded perspectives) get away with such a generalising trope about women for all these years! glad you corrected it, Rachel — better late than never as they say in heaven.
reminds me of an exchange online with the male partner of a young woman in my family circle over a decade ago. he jumped into a conversation I was having on FB with his partner to make the point that I was missing something important when I described the exploitation inherent in the pop music industry of those scantily clad pop sensations. and it was that this particular artist that I'd mentioned "had agency".
I forget who the artist in question was, maybe Brittany? dont recall but well over a decade ago, anyhow I found the "has agency" argument to be as paper thin and minuscule as her clothing in the video. (I'd worked in music videos in 90s — but not on sexploitation videos I hasten to add. so with an inside peak and contacts in the industry wasn't buying this post-modern "has agency" crap).
To the Marxist, the oppression inherent in some-body producing supply to meet a demand such that corporations — who to a large extent still control success in the pop music industry — and “enclose” to borrow your word Rachel, and take most of the profit is obvious — whatever line of work it is. In spite of the putative "creativity" and "artistic agency" the artisan might embody as they are commoditised to the nth degree.
But to many young people today they see "agency" in this exploitation. Presumably b/c having the wealth to express taste preferences in upmarket brand fashion/cars/lifestyles choices (in your MTCs if not in your daily life) which their fans may but envy and the power to change a couple of words in the songs written for them by unsexy writers (also exploited b/c they are forced to share song writing copyright wth artists) is at the high end of aspirations for self-empowerment. Is this perhaps because the youth are born into this rentier-captialism controlled society spiralling into meta-crisis with seemingly little hope of solving intractable societal/global problems? Existential ecological and equity problems that multiply and accelerate rather than close up like the ozone hole after careful consideration and response from the powers that be. Refuge in the one other constant in their lives, being advertised to non-stop on nearly every platform or activity they buy admission into?
If there is agency in such artistry then let's measure it in the artists ability to change outcomes in their domain, defy the political/cultural establishment when it comes to political expression (at Glastonbury maybe). See how far they get *not* playing the fetishising commodification game. maybe to actually write their own songs, even? Billie Eilish and her brother the only example I can think of ATM who appeal to a youth market and demonstrate real artistic independence, Kate Bush in an era long passed. There's others of course but few and far between at the higher levels of commercial success.
The reason song writers have to sell their songs to other artists rather than release themselves is b/c pop music is a marketing driven product with very niche specifications if someone wants to make a lot of money. And for women in that industry that means be young and prepared to sex it up at all opportunities. "mid-career" female music artists without established fame are also expected to replicate this base level product of youthfulness and beauty to the full extent they're prepared to go there, I've heard how A&R reps talk about this stuff, it's not subtle.