Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Give $10 today -- write a friend and let them know you did it in their name!

Okay everyone -- I know that 99% of you can come up with $10 today.  I mean in the next five minutes.

I also know that you all have at least one friend (possibly two or three or four) who would be thrilled if you wrote them a little note saying that you gave $10 in their name to this awesome film that needs to be made and get out into the world.

Just tell them... "Come on now, enough of this 'bitches and hos' bullshit... enough of this 'get low'... and how come its always the women who have to get low?... We've already got a situation where the masses of women, and the masses of people generally, are kept down and held down way too low already.  Its time to get up and get on up!"

WE NEED A RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND LIBERATING CULTURE!  GIVE $10 TO SUPPORT AND SPREAD A WHOLE DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK, FEEL, AND BE!
This film won't get finished without your support!
WATCH THIS!

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 10:18 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Sunsara Taylor Speaks at Protest Against Backpage.com for Facilitating Sex Trafficking

Yesterday I joined the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and others to protest Backpage.com for making millions of dollars off of paid advertisements which facilitate the trafficking and the prostituting of women.



The overwhelming majority of women and girls in prostitution are tricked, coerced, or forced through male predation, outright violence, and/or desperation. The notion that women's bodies should be available for sale to men for sexual use and sexual degradation and plunder is a product of thousands of years of patriarchy as it is filtered today through capitalism, which commodifies everything -- including the flesh, the sexuality and the lives of women and girls.

The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which is led by Bob Avakian, is building a movement for revolution. This revolution takes the complete liberation of women as a driving force, and a dividing line. Find out more at: revcom.us

Keep up with the new effort to
End Pornography & Patriarchy: the Enslavement and Degradation of Women
here: stoppatiarchy.tumblr.com

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 4:59 PM | 1 comments

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

"Sex-Positive" Feminism and Sasha Grey; No Defense for Porn

Re-posted [originally published 9/27/11]

Recently, two college students (young women) insisted to me that it was wrong to oppose pornography because we should be "sex-positive." They also insisted that many women choose to go into pornography out of their own ambitions and that ought to be respected as a means of "empowerment."

This is bullshit on so many levels. First, the vast majority of women and girls in pornography and prostitution (and the lines do blur) would get out of it if they could. Second, even where women choose for themselves to be in porn despite the availability of other options, this does not mean that choice is a good one. For them, or even more significantly for society and women as a whole. The view of women that is concentrated and perpetuated in porn hurts all women way beyond those who "choose" to take part in it. Every woman at every hour of every day -- whether on the street, in her home, at her job, in school, or on a battlefield -- is affected by, diminished by, and endangered by living in a world where millions upon millions of men get off of watching women reduced to objects to be tortured, humiliated and brutalized for their sexual arousal.

These young college students then mentioned Sasha Grey as their perfect example of a woman who entered into porn on "her terms" and to "her own benefit and empowerment."

I described, among other things, some of what Sasha describes about herself in the video below -- how she invited a man to punch her in the stomach during oral sex as one of the ways that she won such favor in the porn industry, for instance. The young women hesitated for a moment, but then one of them insisted that if this was her choice we should respect it. "But, what of the content? What of the view of women and sex that is being promoted through this?" I asked them. At this point, they insisted they were out of time and had to go (interesting, as they had stopped on the street and talked at great length and with no seeming hurry for quite some time).

The fact is, most women do not like the acts they are forced to take part in as part of the porn industry. Many women comply with those acts out of fear, out of financial desperation, out of addiction, and other forms of extreme coercion. Often, women don't even consent to what is done to them in film but have no resources or rights to keep the film from being distributed anyway.

But for that fraction of women in the industry like Sasha Grey who choose to be demeaned, degraded, abused, and much more (including films that portray them as small girls, ass-to-mouth scenes, gang-bangs with up to fifteen guys on her at once, scenes where she licks a toilet bowl and worse), the critical question is NOT whether she chose to do those things or not. The key question is the social effect of those actions -- and of broadcasting those actions to millions of viewers.

When someone kills someone else, we don't ask the question, "Did they really feel it in their hearts? Was their choice 'authentic to them?'" We ask first, "What was the social effect?" And, if there is not a very good reason for them to have killed (ie: some situations of self-defense or in certain situations within the context of a just war) their behavior is condemned for its effect on society. Further, such behavior -- wherever possible -- is stopped.

This is an analogy. Killing someone is not the same as choosing to be in a porn film. But, the method involved must be the same. The effect of porn must be evaluated based on its societal effect -- not based on the individual intentions of the people who made it. Judged from its societal impact, porn is extremely harmful to women -- to the women involved in making it as well as to every woman walking the earth where there is an international demand for it. It trains men (and women themselves) to not regard women as human beings worthy of respect and equality, it sexualizes degradation and domination, it strips sex of the full range of human interaction, intimacy, vulnerability and caring it can potentially enable human beings to share, it concentrates some of the most unreconstructed racist bigotry and hatred, and it spreads this courseness of being able to view other people as "things" into other dimensions of this heartless world (it is no coincidence that soldiers fighting in unjust wars often get "pumped up" watching porn before going out killing).

Having walked through all that, take a look at this clip from Tyra Banks when she had Sasha Gray on as a guest. Someone has put some extremely important information throughout the clip which I hope you will also take the time to consider.

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 12:00 PM | 15 comments

Sex, pornography, prostitution, trafficking & the sexualization of young girls

all spoken to in my radio program on Equal Time for Freethought - Nov 5, 2011
when I interviewed:
- Meenakshi Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It
-Samantha Berg, National Coordinator of Stop Porn Culture and creator & moderator of Genderberg.com
-Michelle Bart, Chair of Northwest Conference Against Trafficking
Listen here

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 11:00 AM | 0 comments

Monday, November 07, 2011

"Break On Through! To The Occupy! Hella Occupy Oakland!"

Interview with a revolutionary

(Revolution #249, November 6, 2011)


The following report and interview is with someone who was part of Occupy Oakland nearly from the beginning and who was arrested in the police attack and destruction of the camp. Occupy Oakland has now come back, to the same place as before.

Q: Can you tell us why people came together initially for Occupy Oakland?

Hella Occupy Oakland started off converging onto Downtown Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza, all united around the slogan "WE ARE THE 99%!" Many people spoke of the deeply felt anger towards this system in many different ways, from the greed of corporations to the ongoing wars for empire. Others expressed a sense of hope coming from the Occupy Wall Street Movement that is spreading throughout this country and the world, because it is based on mass resistance and mobilization to the crimes of this system on many levels, including mass nonviolent civil disobedience, challenging people to act in accordance with transforming the world, however they may see that or relate to that. Nonetheless the call was clear; we the 99% are indeed, as Annie Day said in her article "Report from Occupy Wall Street: 'We Only Want the World'" (Revolution #247, October 9, 2011), "fed the fuck up," may I add, "hella fed the fuck up!" In the mix the first day were two communists who supported the newspaper Revolution. I was one of them and I had my backpack ready with clothes, hair and toothbrushes, and a sleeping bag ready to hella occupy this mutha fucka! While I listened to people speak and express their sentiments on unity, inspiration, and concerns, a HUGE FUCKING BANNER saying "WELCOME TO THE OSCAR GRANT PLAZA ON OHLONE LAND"
Read more »

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 6:30 PM | 0 comments

Outright Piggery from the Camp of Counter-Revolution

from Revolution #249, November 6, 2011
Revolution is a serious and complex matter. It involves many different people coming together to unite on a common program of struggle, identifying and working toward the aims and means of fighting to make a radical change in the whole way humans interact with each other. Communists are fighting for a revolution which will bring an end to the power held by the capitalist-imperialists over the lives of billions, and bring into being a very different—and better—society for all of humanity. Those who hold power promote counter-revolution, working in every way they can to oppose and derail movements for revolution. This is the counter-revolution,
Read more »

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 6:29 PM | 0 comments

BA EVERYWHERE... IMAGINE THE DIFFERENCE IT COULD MAKE!


Announcing: A Mass Campaign to Raise Big Money to Get BA’s Vision and Works Into Every Corner of Society

Revolution #250, November 13, 2011


“I hope he gets number one Amazon.com. We need to get this kind of word, this kind of conversation out—it needs to be disseminated, it needs to be in the mainstream more. We got to stop thinking that this kind of stuff just belongs at the very, very fringe of society...”
—journalist and writer

“I wish I had a copy of BAsics in high school so that I could counter the bullshit being taught to me. I didn’t have that opportunity, but there are millions of students today who need to hear the voice of Bob Avakian so they can join the fight. BAsics presents an essential challenge to all that is oppressive and intolerant. It paints not only a picture of a new world, but it leaves room for innovation and growth, as a communist future will have, as Bob Avakian says, ‘a solid core with a lot of elasticity.’”
—student from the Midwest

“I want to urge everybody out there to get their hands on this book and to help get it into the hands of others, not just prisoners, but into the hands of youth who are in danger of becoming prisoners themselves.... Help them unlock their potential and give them a sense of purpose that doesn’t involve killing each other. Give them an alternative to the criminal lifestyle that doesn’t involve conforming to this horrid system. That is what they need, that is what they ache for. They want to rebel, they just have to be introduced to the correct way to do so. Put them on the path to becoming communists...”
—a prisoner from California

These are things people have written us after reading BAsics, a book of quotations and short essays from Bob Avakian. They feel the need for more people to know about Bob Avakian—his vision and works. And so do we. 
Read more »

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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 1:40 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, November 01, 2011



W e d n e s d a y ,   N o v.   2  
7 : 0 0 p m

R e v o l u t i o n   B o o k s
p r e s e n t s

 
S U N S A R A   T A Y L O R
O N 
"The Woman-Hating Reality of Pornography and Why You Should Want No Part of It"

This evening is the first in a series of talks by
SUNSARA TAYLOR on
Ending Pornography and Patriarchy; the Enslavement and Degradation of Women
 Sunsara Taylor
Coming up: 

Wednesday, November 16, 7:00pm
"No More Defensiveness, Conciliation,
or Reliance on the Democrats:
Abortion On Demand and Without Apology!"


*
Wednesday, November 30, 7:00pm
 "Why and How the Future Revolutionary Society Will End Pornography, Prostitution, and Patriarchy"

This series of talks by Sunsara Taylor will be followed by Q&A, discussion, debate, and mobilization.  Sunsara is currently working with others to launch a new effort to:  End Pornography and Patriarchy; the Enslavement and Degradation of Women, which can be learned about at: 
http://stoppatriarchy.tumblr.com/call

 
Sunsara Taylor writes for Revolution newspaper, is on the Advisory Board of World Can't Wait, and is a co-host on "Equal Time for Freethought" on WBAI radio in NYC.

Donation suggested: $5-10
Revolution Books / Libros Revolución
146 W. 26th Street (btwn 6th & 7th Aves)
212-691-3345  


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posted by Sunsara Taylor at 9:14 AM | 0 comments

 
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