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NEWS & LETTERS, June 2002
Contradictions in an anarchist book fairChicago—The Matches & Mayhem Anarchist Book Fair is a conference organized by and for anarchist youth, and it was especially exciting for me to see that the emergent youth movement of the past few years (the movement that I come out of) is thriving. When I first became involved in the youth movement, the central issue was the sweatshop problem. The youth that I knew limited their social and political critiques to the IMF, WTO, and World Bank. Though the critique of sweatshop labor is still very important to the anarchist youth movement, it was wonderful to see just how much the movement has grown and developed in the past year. Unfortunately, the youth movement still struggles with the deep problems that caused me to leave it, especially in regard to how some in the movement view and treat women. At the book fair, which I attended on May 11, I bought a zine, a book of monsters, that was amusing—if grotesque—until I reached the image of a dead, naked woman hung from a meat hook while a young guy stuck a straw up her genitals and sucked on it. This image, titled “hooked on the flava," was provided free of critique or context. It could be argued that the young guy was the “monster," hence the inclusion of this image in the zine, but it would be just as easy to argue that the dead woman was the “monster." This mutilation of women’s bodies and the fetishizing of death is imagery taken directly from pornography and advertising. In the pornography industry, a movie where a woman is killed and mutilated during the sex act is called a snuff film. Dead or comatose women are now used to sell vodka, cars, and are sold as images to be used in masturbation. This type of imagery is a response to the Women’s Movement and the resulting entrance of women into public life. The idea, if you can call it that, behind snuff imagery is simple: it tells the viewer that women are things to be used and controlled, and if a woman can not be controlled, men will rape her till she dies. Turning people into things is what capitalism does best. By endorsing and using snuff images, by turning women into things, into dead meat, and by using these images in a “humorous" context, some (not all, or even most) of the anarchist youth are buying into the system that they abhor. They are hurting, oppressing, objectifying, and exploiting women—and they are also limiting the possibilities of their own existence. How meaningful is your life when your satisfaction and amusement depends on the destruction of the lives of others? An honest critique of capitalism must include a critique of the images and products used and produced under capitalism. This, by necessity, includes a critique and rejection of the sex trade and of images that commodify women. —Jen Ainbinder |
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