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keryxLast night I went to the Sex Workers Art Show, which I did not catch last year. One of the friends with me is a feminist and has been a sex worker, and the other was a black woman who doesn't count herself as a feminist most of the time.
The performances were, for the most part, okay. It was mainly interesting as amateur art, really - like the sort of thing my friends and I put on all the time, except maybe not as polished.
There was one woman who did a ridiculous and uncomfortable piece kinda lampooning MacKinnon and Dworkin by equating them to strident church ladies with a penchant for believing spurious data. Way to strike a blow for dialogue and understanding the real lives of sex workers by abandoning dialogue and the real lives of people who are bothered by pornography.
That act was complicated in a good way, though, by the performer's(Scarlot Harlot) militant profatness. I want to love her for the militance, for the fat, for the inversion of the frumpy older woman stereotype - but then, grrr, the way she dismissed other women's perspectives. It was hard.
There was burlesque and the usual ranting against Bush, too. There were a couple of burlesque numbers that actually did verge on being provocative (and I mean metaphor or thought-inspiring, not just hot) art, which just thrilled me.
And the interesting thing is that this was all at my alma mater.
...to be continued...
The performances were, for the most part, okay. It was mainly interesting as amateur art, really - like the sort of thing my friends and I put on all the time, except maybe not as polished.
There was one woman who did a ridiculous and uncomfortable piece kinda lampooning MacKinnon and Dworkin by equating them to strident church ladies with a penchant for believing spurious data. Way to strike a blow for dialogue and understanding the real lives of sex workers by abandoning dialogue and the real lives of people who are bothered by pornography.
That act was complicated in a good way, though, by the performer's(Scarlot Harlot) militant profatness. I want to love her for the militance, for the fat, for the inversion of the frumpy older woman stereotype - but then, grrr, the way she dismissed other women's perspectives. It was hard.
There was burlesque and the usual ranting against Bush, too. There were a couple of burlesque numbers that actually did verge on being provocative (and I mean metaphor or thought-inspiring, not just hot) art, which just thrilled me.
And the interesting thing is that this was all at my alma mater.
...to be continued...
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Date: 2006-02-28 03:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-01 04:32 pm (UTC)Dialogue is two sides, each giving their views. It /is/ striking a blow for dialogue when one side presents their views, not "abandoning" it.
And that seems like a pretty fair criticism to me. I've read some of MacKinnon and Dworkin's writings on pornography, and they /do/ believe spurious data and shitty research.
Being "bothered" by porn is fine, but when you make the sorts of assertions that they do, they need some evidence to back it up. Otherwise they really are just being those strident church ladies--they came to their opinions before they actually saw any data, and then tried to hammer the data to make it fit their preconceptions.
Basically, if the performance sucks, that's one thing--but the idea doesn't seem far off the mark, IMO.