I was 21; I’d been politically active for a couple of years and made some decisions. One was that I wasn’t going to ‘hold paper clips for evil’ (that’s the exact phrase I used in my head). This had been relatively easy, because up till then, apart for some administrative work, most of my earnings had been from babysiting and nannying.* I needed money, so I went to a temp agency to see if I could get any admin work.** I’d thought about what I’d do if they offered me something I found repugnant, and I decided I’d pretend I was busy. I was really excited to get my first job, excited and nervous. I was to type plans for an architecht – that sounded OK I thought, that sounded compatible with my politics. Everything was going fine until I got there and I was given the plans that I was supposed to type.
They were plans for a prison.
I could have left, I would never have worked for the temp agency again, but that wouldn’t have been the end of the world. I wasn’t on the bones of my ass, but I wanted to get more work, I didn’t know what I was doing next and I wanted to work.
That was hardly the only time I’ve done things I disagreed with. I’ve typed up letters telling large corporations how to avoid paying their taxes, I’ve done admin to help a temping agency figure out who they’re employing on the railways (undermining union labour – in many ways this is the one I feel worst about), I’ve put out invitations for an event the WTO was holding, and I’ve even worked for the New Zealand Defence Force. I’ve also been the benefactor of an income stream that makes everywhere I’ve personally worked look as ethical as working full-time for a revolution (as the Red Queen probably wouldn’t say).
So when I say that I am still blogging here, and don’t have a problem with what Amp did, that’s not because I don’t hate the sites that are being promoted. The fact that women’s bodies are a commodity, things to be bought and sold, upsets and depresses me. The fact that some people see my body, the one I live my life in, as an object – scares me.
Instead, it’s because I hate everything. Every object we make, everything we do, is perverted by a system that puts profit before people, by misogyny that is tearing a little bit out of all our souls, by the way we suck the resources, not just out of foreign lands, but from the marrow of the bones of the people who live there – and then tell them what’s wrong with the way that they live, by the many other ways we organise our world and stop people from being frree.
There’s no way out of participating in that – not for anyone.
This probably sounds despairing, it’s not meant to be. Like Natasha from Feminish I believe another world is possible. I just don’t think we bring it about through what we do individually. If we’re going to create that world that I have to believe is an alternative to this one then it’s going to be because of what we do collectively. We each have to play a role in the various machines at the moment, but that doesn’t stop us, when we’re strong enough and organised enough from pushing those machines over.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have bottom lines. Every one of us will have things we wouldn’t do, actions that we couldn’t live with ourselves if we took. There are always places where we have to take a stand, not because we believe it’ll change the world, but because taking that stand is the only way we can make it clear who we are and what we believe. I understand and respect that for many women linking to this site is something that they can no longer do. I just wanted to try and explain why I felt differently.
* See my analysis wasn’t nearly as developed as my sense of self-righteousness. I have a huge political problem with child-care as a luxury item. I don’t think that if parents want an evening off (or not to be prosecuted after school or during the school holidays – which was a lot of the work I did), they should have to pay through the nose.
** I certainly should have had an analysis of temping agencies as a way of getting around labour legislations and essential to the casualisation of the labour market, but I don’t think I did.
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Also, to take this to an extreme, if you’re white, and you own land just about anywhere in North America (or Australia, or New Zealand, etc.), and you aren’t planning on gifting it more or less immediately to some Native Peoples group or another . . . well, you’re directly benefiting from rape, murder, and genocide.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that we’re all evil for living where we live, nor (conversely) does it mean that nobody can ever be criticized for anything . . . it’s just that there are degrees, you know? The problem with purity crusades is that none of us are pure. We all live in glass houses.
—Myca
‘I just don’t think we bring it about through what we do individually.’
That’s a very self-serving statement. You do try to make it seem less self-serving by talking about ‘bottom lines’, but it still sounds like you’re not taking responsibility for your actions. Not supporting white supremacist porn would be a bottom line, I think. But what do I know.
Maia–
I agree with you that the main problem is that under capitalims we’re all selling something of ours we shouldn’t have to sell, and if not its because we already own something that doesnt belong to us.
And I agree with you that I would hate to see a mistake like to damage the great space Amp hosts here at Alas.
But I think your comparison is a bit off; when amp sold amptoons to SEO porn promoters he sold not only his own internet realestate, but also the blog’s “authority”–pretty inarguably a collective project that lots of folks have contributed to, and in this case, based explictly on feminist principles. I think that is a different kind of betrayal than your betrayal of your own political principle in participating in the buidling of a prison. The sale of amptoons is closer to you secretly taking that prison-builidng job while simultaneously gaining a reputation and notiriety as spokeswoman for the movement against the prison-industrial-complex.
I think your perspective though does help us to see Amp’s move in larger a larger context of unpleasant choices we all face. In that vein, there are two issues with the sale that haven’t had much play here at alas that help put it in a bigger context:
1)Porn is obviously becoming if it isnt already the main economic engine of the internet as a whole. What does that mean for feminists on the internet?
2) SEO is one mechanism by which porn further dominates the internet–if authenticity is for sale, and the highest bidders are pornographers, what does THAT mean for the internet?
This post is pretty good at making this point clearly;
http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2006/10/13/the-fascinating-tale-of-pro-feminist-male-blogger-and-the-porno-sell-out/
Some commenters suggest that google will fix this ugly SEO business. I hope so. I also hope the porn guys HAVE violated thier contract and Amp can get out of this sticky mess.
Maia:
I have a huge political problem with child-care as a luxury item.
Did it occur to you that by working as a babysitter, you were increasing the supply of child care, thereby driving down the price? We capitalists call this “doing good by doing well.”
I’ve typed up letters telling large corporations how to avoid paying their taxes, I’ve done admin to help a temping agency figure out who they’re employing on the railways (undermining union labour – in many ways this is the one I feel worst about), I’ve put out invitations for an event the WTO was holding, and I’ve even worked for the New Zealand Defence Force.
And God bless you for that.
And God bless you for that.
Maia may have done the typing, but at least she knew it was questionable. You’re in favor of tax evasion, union-busting, and exploitation of the poor.
Bravo.
Anashi – it’s not a self-serving statement – it’s something I believe very much – and have argued over the years in hundreds of different contexts. I think that we make our contribution to building a better world by what we do do collectively, rather than what we don’t do individually.
My actions support a system I find repugnant everyday. It’s just that every day (more or less), I also try and organise and work with other people so that we’re strong enough to build a new world.
Curiousgrl: I wasn’t trying to make a comparison – just explain why I’m not going to judge someone else for what they do to make money (most of the time). I didn’t want to make a grand judgement on the wider issues, just explain why I was taking the position I as.
If this is going to be another, “just exactly how evil is Ampersand,” conversation (which I was sort of hoping it wasn’t), I want to make clear that I don’t think Amp’s actually done a single thing to ‘support pornography’ over non-porn.
As Brandon Berg put it over at Catallarchy:
Is this a morally clear area?
No, but I think it’s equally murky in either direction.
On the one hand, yes, Amp is linked to pornography. There are links to really vile shit from his ‘review’ page. I don’t like that.
On the other hand, Amp is turning dirty money to a clean cause. I don’t know what you all thought these pornographers would be spending their money on otherwise, but let’s agree that it probably wouldn’t be ‘a forum for discussion of feminist issues.’
In order to be convinced that Amp has done something really really bad, I’d need to be convinced that there’s an actual worse result than if he’d made a different choice. No howling about how ‘Amp luvs pr0n’ no castigating us all for not being blind dupes, none of that shit.
Give me a worse result.
Because where I’m sitting, if Amp had done otherwise . . . maybe he’d still have a place to live, maybe not. Maybe Alas, A Blog would be gone, maybe not. We don’t really know how bad it would have been, but we know that it could have been very bad indeed.
The actual material negative result from his actual actions, as far as I can see, is that some awful porn gets ranked by google a little above other awful porn. I’m not sure how bad that is.
Morally this is completely obtuse: everything is bad, so if I’m doing something bad, that’s okay, because things won’t get better based on just me, only if we all work together, and this bad thing is just helping one bad guy get ahead of some other bad guys, etc. Everyone has a limited set of choices, and when you make a choice that you know is wrong it’s awfully convenient to then decide that it doesn’t matter. The porn getting ranked higher on Google means more money for this pornographer, assisted by everyone who links here or posts comments with an outgoing link to their page. There are plenty of free blogging sites that don’t require the site owner to make deals with racist pornographers. I’m sure Amp could use the money, but so what? Why would turning down the money and moving to blogspot or some other host (which would be paying for his bandwidth) be so awful?
The porn getting ranked higher on Google means more money for this pornographer
Yes, as compared to OTHER RACIST PORNOGRAPHERS.
It’s not like the money would go to bunnies and kitties otherwise.
Thanks for saying what you’ve said Maia.
Like Natasha from Feminish I believe another world is possible. I just don’t think we bring it about through what we do individually. If we’re going to create that world that I have to believe is an alternative to this one then it’s going to be because of what we do collectively.
This is so true. Most of the (little) things I do to bring about that world I wouldn’t have the courage to do if I didn’t know other people had done them before me, or that other people are there to help me do it. And so many things are collective from the word go – how do I know where my thoughts and actions end and another’s begins?(And I know I’ve fallen short of my ideals thousands of times over.)
For example, Alas is one of the blogs that inspired me to keep a blog . (Gees, I even linked as such in BlogTree, for what it’s worth). And I’ve learnt so much from this site and continue to learn so much, so I’ll keep coming. Alas is an immense collective contribution, and because I feel this feminist blogging thing is a collective venture (metaphysically, more than by some rigid consensus), and because I know we’re all doing our best, I don’t feel it’s right, for example, to de-link. Because I would feel that was trying to cut off something that is, if you like, actually a part of me, my blog and my world. It’s not a separate thing I can just say ‘I can do without that now’.
——————–
*Just to clarify: I absolutely respect everyone’s right to have a different opinion on linking. It’s just the logic and vibe that’s working for me; I know things will be different for others.
The porn getting ranked higher on Google means more money for this pornographer
Yes, as compared to OTHER RACIST PORNOGRAPHERS.
It’s not like the money would go to bunnies and kitties otherwise.
And that’s why Amp should have explained things beforehand–so few people understand what he did that the situation’s even more controversial than it should be.
Porn is the driving force behind the internet–most ‘net innovations arose through porn. Like it or hate it (and I hate it), porn is where the money is on the internet, and under capitalism that means that’s where most of the innovation is too.
Amp’s situation is exactly like a mom-and-pop store’s selling out to a national chain which has priced them out (except that they’re not offering exactly the same stuff–both are offering “internet entertainment” but that’s about the only similarities). If you wouldn’t blame Main Street, USA for selling to the big chains, don’t blame Amp.
After reading all this stuff, I’m inclined to disapprove of Amp’s decision in this matter, and and the general way he handled things (I know he apologized for that). I say that in spite of the fact that I really know very little about Amp’s personal situation, etc., (which I grant may be unfair).
That said, I really think it’s critically important that this type of thing *not divide feminists*. The way to do this is to see other people as HUMAN, plain and simple. I can disapprove of what Amp did without thinking he’s some kind of horrible person who has really never done any good in the world. I can’t say how strongly I believe that it is really, really wrong to make moral judgments that condemn an entire person, even if that person is .
Male feminists have male priviledge. It’s just an unfortunate fact. But it doesn’t mean they can’t be useful! Female feminists have various other kinds of priviledge over each other (white priviledge, hetero, etc. etc.) Again, this doesn’t mean they can’t be useful. My main inspiration as a feminist is from wanting to end oppression in all forms, and frankly that’s going to take the work of both the priviledged and non-priviledged. The hate for those who abuse their advantages may be justified, but it isn’t making the oppressions go away.
Human beings are full of flaws and moral weakness. Really. All of them. Plus, any particular individual is going to be blind to many things. If we (who wish to make the world a better place) can’t get past this fact and try to see the good & the potential in people, then there’s really no hope at all. Every one of our allies will disappoint us. Women are betrayed by women all the time. Sometimes female feminists are betrayed by other female feminists.
This is not to say that someone ought to like Ampersand, or read/link to this blog, or any particular action. I’m just responding the most vitriolic posts which seem to expect a very high standard of purity to earn basic respect as a human being.
Oops. I meant to say “even if that person is [insert evil dictator here]”.
I’m arguing that one effect of greater numbers of well ranked bloggers (feminist or not) selling authenticity to SEO companies further pornifies the internet as a whole and undermines the google ranking system. This is good,bad or neutral depending on what you think of porn, and what you think of google rankings.
You can argue that Amps decision has no impact on this growing trend one way or another, comparable to any individual’s decision ot eat meat or not. I’m willing to consider that it is more important than that; the sooner there is a broad conversation about SEO stuff and its impact on blogs the better.
Either way though, I think there is a difference between judgement and condemnation. I hope I’m sticking to the right side of that line. I think Amp made a mistake. I think he’s done much to rectify it. I dont think his error of judgement vacates his efforts as a feminist, progressive and excellent blogger.
I also think saying a friend or comradehas cmade a mistake in a friendly and hopefully supportive way when you think they have is an important political principle.
I guess i agree with others (too late, I know) that its probably enough of “is amp bad? or really really bad?”
you’re not making money on this Maia, so it doesnt fall in to the category of “ok based on financial need” for you. How does the good your posts here do in terms of building thought-provoking feminist discussion weigh against the bad of the notion that any links to your post promote gross porn?
Porn is the driving force behind the internet–most ‘net innovations arose through porn. Like it or hate it (and I hate it), porn is where the money is on the internet, and under capitalism that means that’s where most of the innovation is too.
Apologies for responding to a peripheral point, but I can’t help myself: the quoted statement is simply not true. I’m a (female) computer science PhD who has been working on Internet technology since the birth of the Web. Most Internet innovations arose first through scientists’ desire for better communication with one another (TCP/IP, Gopher, BBS, HTML, email, web browsers, chat…). You could possibly make the case that webcam innovation has been most strongly driven by porn, but it didn’t originate with porn — the earliest webcams were set up in university departments and labs. Porn thrives on the internet, yes, but the money in porn is nothing compared to the money in eBay, Yahoo, Google, etc. Porn on the Internet is much harder for the average person to avoid than pre-Internet porn was, thanks to the economics of spamming, and that probably tends to make people think it’s a bigger part of the Internet than it is.
“Most Internet innovations arose first through scientists’ desire for better communication with one another (TCP/IP, Gopher, BBS, HTML, email, web browsers, chat…). ”
Yes! This is driving me crazy. My father was in the army and used the internet before it was available to the public. The army had a great deal to do with getting the internet started, more so than porn did. The army still drives some of innovation. I think the only thing porns innovated is sinister spam techniques. Porn’s contribution is minimal, and it’s being used here as an excuse and a way to take some of the blame off of Amp and spread it around equally. But in this case I really don’t think things are equal. Someone unknowingly clicking on a link and helping boister porn is a little different morally than someone knowingly entering into a deal with racist pornagraphers to supply that link to people. The ‘knowing’ part is important.
I guess porn’s not as big as I thought. Yay! (And that’ll teach me to listen to the recieved wisdom among my friends).
Nevertheless, porn is the equivalent of a Walmart or Starbucks, and Amp is the equivalent of a mom+pop store. Not so much in their directly competing, but in the fact that, when he needed to make money using his website, there weren’t many other options, and porn was there waiting with ready cash to buy him out.
It’s unfortunate that porn is where the money is (and that Ebay, etc aren’t interested in acquiring popular blogs to boost their relative google prominence). That’s a product of capitalism–a good blog is like wilderness–great to have, even if you only occasionally go there, but not something that enough people will spend large amounts of their individual resources maintaining. Porn is like the strip-malls that replace the wilderness–for some reason, it makes a lot of money and is crass, ugly, and spiritually bankrupt (and a lot of other bad things, many of which aren’t true for malls).
I don’t really think about it like that, to be honest. I don’t have a great purpose to my blog, I don’t think I’m doing any good – I just do it.
I don’t know the profit model of blogspot, but I’m sure I wouldn’t approve. I don’t know who that ‘next blog’ link is going to take people to. I do know that blogspot hosts a blog from a neo-nazi that has the picture of the grave of a friend of mine’s mother (rejoicing because she’s a jew).
The thing is that I’d judge the small family owned business as well, but as a small family owned business. I hate small family owned businesses, just like I hate Walmart (as a union organiser my experience is that the worst employers are small businesses, even if some small businesses are better employers than large corporates – large corporates tend to follow the law in the way small businesses can afford not to). When I said I hated everything I meant it.
I’m not going to spend my time drawing lines between the marginally more unacceptable and the marginally less unacceptable. I focus the political energy I have on the way I treat people, and organising collectively so that we can be stronger.
bean – personally I’d go after Cosmo before I’d go after Playboy (logic explained here)
Pardon the derailing, but you’ve mentioned it twice, so what the heck.
If you “hate everything”, that seems to rather limit our options for economic organization, at least, economic organizations that you’ll like. You’ve said that you hate small businesses and big corporations; do you hate co-ops and individual craftspeople and communes? You talk about “collective action”, but most economic organizations under any paradigm rely on collective action as it is now; what exactly are you thinking will be different when the “collective action” goes in a (presumably) different direction?
It just seems to me that if you really hate everything, then your alienation is from economic questions themselves, not one particular organizational system. And that’s problematic, in turn, if you’re hoping for anyone to take your economic ideas seriously.
It is a diversion, particularly as the answer can be found in the name of my blog. I hate everything under capitalism. I don’t think there’s a way out, within capitalism. I do not see communes, co-ops, or individual crafts people as offering a way of resistance to capitalism. The main way people can resist is by organising – unions are a classic example. I don’t want to further derail this discussion so if you want to reply please e-mail me.
Fair enough. On that not, time to get of the blogs and back IRL!
for me I meant. Everybody else can stay blogging :)
What strikes me most about this discussion — besides surprise that Amp’s domain could have much market value — is how old (in a very good way) it makes me feel. (Reminds me of a line in Dylan’s “One of Must Know.”)
I remember having ideas/beliefs like Maia’s. That rapture didn’t last long and I moved on to activities in the world which have been, I think, positive, such as producing healthy food. And yes even to the point of _selling_ that food. :)
It’s all very well and good (even if I don’t agree) to dislike capitalism. But it seems to me to be immoral as well as unwise to abdicate personal responsibility using the excuse (and that’s what it is) that “the system” is no good. You can have people doing very good things even under a bad system. For example, you think a doctor curing a sick child — and yes, for pay! — is a bad thing?
Maia is one of the most activist people I know, not in blogs but in real life. The implication that she has giving up on making positive change is not at all fair. What she’s talking about is which methods of making change she thinks work.
Maia,
After this I really will stop bugging you, I swear. I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, its just that of all the bloggers on this site, I tend to idetnify with your point of view most, so I’m trying to see how you’re response to this is different than mine. i know you said that you’re not interested in parsing bad and worse, but obviously any anticapitalist must do that each and every day.
I noticed that you made the same ‘blogger’ point on another blog that youve made here; and I think its a bad comparison, both when Amp says it and when you do. Blogger never claimed to be a feministor antiracist or anticapitalist blog; you’re not even ostensibly part of a movement or even discussion with the people who run blogger. Your choice is blog or not blog, and it mostly matters just to you either way. So it makes sense not to waste energy parsing what you think; what you think of blogger isn’t relevant to much.
This conversation is different, if not more relevant to the BIG questions. what you say or do here will, at the very least, have an impact on this blog, on Amp, this space, maybe the feminist blogosphere as a whole. That in itself my be irrelevant to larger poltiical questions, but it doesnt seem like the same scenario.
Maybe you decided it that its better not to criticize Amp too much, or pull out of the blog, because on balance its worthwhile even with ties to prOn, and that what this blog does or doesn’t do has little impact on the problems wiht pron and Prostitution as a whole. Blogs, becuase they aren’t political organizations and are largely just entertainment should be held to a lower political standards than movement groups or political parties.
or maybe thats just what I decided :)
The real difference here, Maia, is that you center the badness of the System around -capitalism;- the people who are getting most upset about Amp’s decision here center it around -patriarchy.- iow: for some people it all boils down to Class Man over Class Woman, -not- Marx’s view of what “class” is or even necessarily socioeconomic theory as anyone leaning Left (by the way you’re talking, at least) would understand it.
Not saying i agree with ’em, obviously; just, that’s what it boils down to. as I was saying in more detail in the other thread (and as Bitch Lab has been talking about for months now, credit where it’s due).
belledame: I think Maia’s analysis can be carried over, because she’s talking about how, when you’re living within a system that runs contrary to everything you believe in, there are very few actions you can take that aren’t tainted in some way. That’s true whether the system is patriarchy or capitalism, although I suppose the case could be made that one or the other is less pervasive.
Maia- Just a small comment. Unless the terminology in different where you are (New Zealand?) than in North America, you were probably typing specs (specifications), not plans. Plans are drafted (drawn), not typed.
It could be, but…it’s not. I think because you know “pornstitution” has such -very- high (low) pride (shame?) of place in this worldview. yah everything’s tainted; but some things a lot more so than others.
Curiousgyrl – don’t worry about bugging me – I like exploring how I react and why.
I think maybe if I explain about my flesh and blood life my reaction to this will be a little more clear. I have been a political activist from the age of 19 (9 years) – I’ve averaged a meeting a week for most of that time – I spend a lot of time around other politically active people. There is a real strain of individualistic solutions – of making your political activism about you, making you OK. I see my politics as being the opposite to that. I’ve also observed that people who do that often burn out – or stop taking any sort of collective action. It seems to me that most people do have a limited amount of energy to dedicate towards politics. I made a decision that my individual decisions (including what I bought and sell) were going to be based on what would sustain me, what would enable me to keep fighting, rather than be a way that I fought.
I mean this seriously, if I was an animal rights activist (I’m not but lets pretend for a second), my priority wouldn’t be ensuring that I never ate or wore anything that had the smallest amount of products that came to animals (although I probably would find eating meat, eggs and dairy products impossible). It would be on educating, agitating and organising around animal rights.
Does that make sense? Once you’ve opted out of making wider political action with those sorts of decisions it becomes a very subjective decision making process. Either something sustains you more than it makes you feel shitty about supporting it or it doesn’t. There are places I don’t buy from, but they tend to be small businesses that have a history of sexual harrassment, or of ignoring employment law. I can understand why other people make different decisions from the ones I do and I don’t judge them for them.
The other point that is important to me is that Amp has no veto about what happens on the bits of the server (my understanding was that he had no idea what sort of material would be linked to – he knew it would be porn but not the details). That’s actually a strength to me, because if you veto something then it’s a strong implication that you are endorsing everythign you don’t endorse. I’m not even sure that that makes sense, but it’s an important distinction for me.
Would I have done what Amp had done? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. Once you’ve decided that you make these decisions for yourself , you can’t judge the reason people make other decisions.
My actual reaction when Amp told me:
Nick Kiddle – basically yes – the reason I was talking specifically about capitalism is that we are talking about buying and selling stuff. Capitalism is the system that governs the economy, so it’s what I talk about when I’m talking about economic choices.* I think the debate about the feminist implications of feminine appearances is an example of the same sort of discussion where it’s not about economics, and capitalism isn’t the frame-work, but a sexist and misogynist society is (I’m not particularly fond of the term patriarchy – reason here). I take the same position in that discussion – everything you do is done within the context of a system that defines women in a certain way – you can’t opt out of the system no matter what you wear, (I think The Happy Feminist articulated really well).
Seattle Male – I’m reasonably confident that various actions that I’m taken have made a real difference. My point is not that the world sucks so you should do nothing. My point is that that no-one can live a pure and moral life free from the taint of the systems that I find so repugnant. The only way to make a difference is by operating collectively.
Dee – I’ll remember that for next time I tell the story.
* Although obviosuly the way capitalism operates is gendered, racist, and based on a system of imperialism – I’m not saying capitalism is the only system that matters, even on economic matters. But that if I’m going to talk about the way we interact with the economy capitalism is the starting point.
Since I was, I think, the person who first raised the point about Internet porn that has become something I think I did not say:
I would like to make my point again, but with a little more clarity. What I wrote in the comment linked to above was that, in a column I ghostwrote for a client some years ago, the point was made that “one of the dirty little secrets of online commerce was that the Internet pron industry had pioneered many of the e-commerce and online traffic-generating techniques that made the growth of e-commerce possible”–a rather more narrow claim than what some others have been saying.
Moreover, my point was not to exonerate Amp because we are all culpable–he is still responsible and accountable for the decision(s) he made–but rather that one way of moving this discussion forward, so that it did not remain stuck on Amp’s personal culpability, would be to think about how, as anashi put it in the other Amptoons thread
That, it seems to me, is also what Maia is trying to think about in this thread.
Oops! One more thing I wanted to add: I think the statement I made about pron and ecommerce should have been worded to mean that porn’s online innovations helped to make the growth of ecommerce possible, not that it was pron single-handedly that generated the growth.
Maia;
I completely agree with you w/r/t buying and selling as individual political acts. i came to that conclusion when i speant 2 full days trying to buy vegan, union-made tennis shoes and realized that no matter how hard I wished, they probably didnt exist and literally not one of the many activists whom I respected so much and who had educated me on these points could actually be wearing the ‘right’ shoes.
I actually think that wether you view this act as an individual choice or one wiht an impact on some kind of real politics is the critical point–i discussed it a bit over at Heart’s place, too. It’s one I’m sort of unsure about; while I think a lot of grief would be spared if blogs were understood to be different than movement s and organizations (which need to be held to a lower standard) it seems to me that this blog in particular is closer to a non-political collective project, like a house with a lot of roomates, or a buying cooperative. The political standards there would fall somewhere in between do-what-makes-you happy at the level of the individual and the gravity we should make these decisions with inside movements. Obviously the nature of that collectivity has never been spelled out anywhere or agreed upon, which is part of what made this so sticky.
looked at that way, Amps ‘betrayal” of commenters and the feminist blogosphere receeds a bit, and the most significant issue becomes guest bloggers. I thnk that was my gut reaction, andy why I wondered what you thougth, Maia, early on.
Thanks f or all that.
I realized, amid my many typos, one grammatical error above injures the clarity of my point; blogs, not political organizations and movements, should be held to lower political standards.
Oops! One more thing I wanted to add: I think the statement I made about pron and ecommerce should have been worded to mean that porn’s online innovations helped to make the growth of ecommerce possible…
Even with your narrower statement, I don’t think this is true. Which online innovations are you referring to? I think porn maybe innovated the use of credit cards as a proof of age online, but I can’t think of anything else. Ecommerce has been driven by online auctions, search engines and search engine advertising, and technologies like Java, Javascript, and SSL. The black market/organized crime innovates in different ways (spam of various kinds, trojans, link farming, botnets, etc) but those innovations are not especially useful to legitimate ecommerce, since the point is that they are innovations used for cheats and cons.
I also think it would be useful to many of the participants in this thread to draw the distinction between black market (I’m using this term loosely because I can’t think of something better — I might also say covert, parasitical, or criminal) and official legitimate Internet commerce. There is porn on both sides of that line. Playboy doesn’t need to spam or use search engine optimization techniques, and spammers sell many other questionable things besides porn. Not only that, but many times spammers are selling stolen porn (bootlegged copyrighted material). If you want to understand the economic behaviors, motivations, and impact, this is a case where I’d argue that the black market vs. official/legitimate distinction is much more useful than the porn/not-porn distinction.
curiousgyrl: Try http://www.nosweatstuff.com.au/ (if in Aus/NZ) or http://www.newint.com/catalog/sneakers.htm (for North America). Union-made, not in a sweatshop, and vegan.
Once I worked doing a website for a conservative political party. I desperately needed the money at the time, but I felt really dirty. I think I’d rather pose naked on the internet.
Tsunami–
I have not been able to find the column that I wrote and so I don’t really have much to say in response; it was some time ago–a long time ago by internet standards–and my memory is hazy, but I vaguely remember something about link sharing. What I remember clearly, though, is that it was in a publication considered authoritative at the time and that the overall thesis was that much of what Google and Ebay and other online giants were doing was based in stuff that the online sex industry had pioneered. Nonetheless, since I cannot find the article, I am perfectly willing to chalk my point up to faulty memory.
Yes, absolutely it makes sense. It’s called “leverage”. Sometimes a given effort/contribution/change can be most effective to the overall cause by indirect action. (FWIW, republicans are generally more aware of this than democrats. The “direct and personal” action viewpoint is more of a liberal thing.)
Think of it this way: Some rich liberal folks have recently given, oh, somewhere in the range of 37 BILLION dollars to charity. It will be directly spent on charity.
Leverage is the recognition that the U.S. budget is somewhere in the range of 2 TRILLION dollars, I think–so the interesting albeit theoretical question is whether a lobbying group with 37 billion in receipts could influence the budget through lobbying, advertising, campaig contributions, etc to acheive a disbursement to charity of more than 1.5% in a single year, or (more realistic) more than 0.25% per year over a 6 year Senate term. If you know the amounts spent on campaigns you begin to think the answer is pretty obvious.
Maia, you kicked off this disscussion of moral dilemmas by posting a scenario where you, needing money, declined to earn that money by assisting with development of plans for a prision.
I’m curious. Why was this a moral dilemma? What’s wrong with typing up plans for a prison?
Everyone here has just passed by that completely, as if it’s a given that this is unspeakably wrong (literally; no one’s spoken of it, unless I missed it). Why?
RonF,
You misread. She did not decline to make money typing plans for a prison.
Tsunami, anashi:
The Deparment of Defense found, as it became more dependent on data communications, that their communications network had many single points of failure. In case of war, it would be very simple for an enemy to totally disrupt communications by blowing up a few central communications points. It decided to fund development of a network that would self-heal, so that data would be communicated around failed nodes and that would be able to handle disruptions, errors, etc.
To that end, the Advanced Research Projects Administration in the DoD funded development of IP, TCP/IP, RIP, routers, etc. It was implemented as ARPANET and connected various military facilities and the research universities and other institutions that were involved.
The people at these institutions started using it for non-DoD purposes. Other institutions managed to get hooked up. It became apparent that there were a host of non-military applications for this network. For a while, only not-for-profits were allowed to get on; I can remember filling out a form swearing not to use the network for commercial purposes as a condition of getting on the ‘Net. “.com” is a relatively late addition to the Top Level Domain list, and this is also why .mil refers to the American military only, not all military uses.
Finally, laws were passed in Congress to fund the setting up of major backbones for the network and for opening it up to the public. That was the birth of the true Internet as we know it. Al Gore took a leading role in the latter. That’s what he was talking about when he laid claim to being the father of the Internet. He had nothing to do with the technology, but from a functional viewpoint of changing ARPANET to the Internet he was absolutely correct. Of course, that didn’t stop his political opponents from completely distorting what he was talking about, but they apparently think justifying their ends also justifies abandonment of honor.
RonF: nice explanation. However, I’m a little surprised that you seemed to be directing it at me, as that would be rather condescending given how I described my credentials. Some of the original designers of TCP/IP are currently my colleagues. I’m sure you didn’t intend offense, but given this is a feminist site I found it ironic to have my area of expertise explained to me by a man yet again.
I found that pretty bizarre too. I’m not sure who RonF meant to be describing it to, as there didn’t seem to be anyone in the thread who didn’t know the origins of the net, and nothing RonF wrote addressed the dispute over whether there are any significant beneficial innovations that originate with pron.
whether there are any significant beneficial innovations that originate with pron.
In the last year or two we have certainly seen movies & TV & music start to use the economic model that has been very profitable for pron. That is, how to make money from online content and how not to worry too much about piracy. Pron’s innovations on the web have rarely (if ever) been technological in nature. It’s mostly been business/profit models.
Oh have been there done and that. It has come to really annoy me, because of course the people who can afford to do this, the people who set the standards. It’s almost entirely people from affluent backgrounds who rail against consumerism.
Incidentally working in the union movement kind of helps that. While union organisers will tell you where not to buy, I’ve never heard a union organiser say “You should buy this product, it’s a great factory.” My friend who does a lot of work in the clothing industry wouldn’t choose any NZ clothing factories – even the unionised ones.
RonF – It was a dilema because the prison system is deeply racist, and upholds state power, and the economic system (both of which I oppose).
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Tsunami, I’ve re-read your post and I do apologize. I must have read it too fast initially. That was sloppy of me.
RonF – It was a dilemma because the prison system is deeply racist, and upholds state power, and the economic system (both of which I oppose).
I’ll at least grant that some people involved in the functioning of the American legal system (and those of a great many other countries) manage to use it in a racist fashion or in some other improper/illegal/immoral way. I’m not convinced that the system is inherently racist. But, it’s no concidence that when now-ex-Governor Ryan of Illinois commuted the sentences of everyone on Death Row, just about everyone involved was black or Hispanic. Sometimes we do have to look at results and ask hard questions about how they got that way.
But not building prisons is not going to change that. It’s not the prison system, it’s the legal system. Not building prisons is just going to ensure that those people who are unjustly (and justly) incarcerated end up in prisons are are overcrowded and otherwise don’t meet the current standards for humane incarceration and cannot be adequately maintained.
If we have no prisons, what do we do with rapists and murderers? Or anyone else that you and I can both agree have committed a crime? I think that alternatives to incarceration should be used a lot more than they are. But what do we do with criminals where incarceration is the best way to handle them? Let’s not forget that while there are people who are unjustly incarcerated, there’s a lot of people who are quite justly incarcerated.
If you oppose state power, what power do we use to deal with criminals? I don’t care what societial system we have (capitalist, socialist, etc.), there are going to be bad people that the good people need to be protected from. What substitute for state power is there for that?
In passing, it’s deeply ironic that Illinois’ ex-Governor Ryan, who emptied Illinois’ Death Row (an act that I supported, BTW) is now due to be locked up himself and may well die in prison because of crimes of fraud and bribery that led to (among other things) six children being burned to death in a van that ran over a part that fell off a truck that was driven by a non-English speaking immigrant who got his license illegally from a Secretary of State’s employee who took a bribe from the immigrant so that he could pay thousands of dollars into the Secrtary of State’s election fund as a condition of keeping his job.
RonF: fair enough, apology accepted.
I too have thought about the shoe issue. I wear American size 13 or 14 (European size 47.5) width 2E or 4E shoes. They’re not easy to find in any case. My choices are a) buy shoes made by an Asian for what, 10 cents an hour, or b) have them custom made for hundreds of dollars, which I can’t afford and I don’t even know if there’s any such thing as custom made sneakers (as opposed to dress shoes, which I wear maybe once every 6 months).