Why Gail Dines Is About As Leftist As The Tea Party
http://www.redgarterclub.com/AJK-Multisite/blog/2011/02/23/why-gail-dines-is-about-as-leftist-as-the-tea-party-and-as-marxist-as-rush-limbaugh/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Good catch, LadyHawk! Thanks
even if y'all do leave the seat up. 
Is this about Jeffrey's work (see below) or the efforts to deny women the right to assemble without including men or transgender individuals (Radfem 2012 London controversy)?
Or this? http://flyingontherainbow.com/2012/05/30/the-oppression-of-ms-sheila-jeffreys-a-re-imagining-of-the-facts/
If the latter, isn't 'more speech' the solution to 'offensive speech' ( http://www.aclu.org/organization-news-and-highlights/aclu-fight-hate-speech-more-speech )? What a damn shame to resort to baseless name-calling ("This is not an open forum for right wingers and their enablers to broadcast propaganda." and demands for censorship.
Look Inside Ths Book
Review
'The strength of Jeffreys' new work lies in just how many aspects of the sex industry she covers, and her understanding of their intersections.'
Julia Bindel, The Guardian
About the Author
Sheila Jeffreys is a Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of six other books on the history and politics of sexuality, including Beauty and Misogyny (Routledge, 2005). She is the founding member in 1994 of the Australian branch of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women.
She has a considerable reputation both in the academic world and in the world of feminist and lesbian and gay politics for her work on sexuality, including 6 single authored books. Sheila Jeffreys' work is heavily referenced in academic journals and books, with 30 citations in international refereed journals in 2003 according the Web of Science citations index. Her work has been republished in French, Spanish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, and in many anthologies of feminist thought over the last few years.
Book Description
Publication Date: December 25, 2008 | ISBN-10: 0415412331 | ISBN-13: 978-0415412339 | Edition: New Ed
The industrialization of prostitution and the sex trade has created a multibillion-dollar global market, involving millions of women, that makes a substantial contribution to national and global economies.
The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade (RIPE Series in Global Political Economy) examines how prostitution and other aspects of the sex industry have moved from being small-scale, clandestine, and socially despised practices to become very profitable legitimate market sectors that are being legalised and decriminalised by governments. Sheila Jeffreys demonstrates how prostitution has been globalized through an examination of:- the growth of pornography and its new global reach
- the boom in adult shops, strip clubs and escort agencies
- military prostitution and sexual violence in war
- marriage and the mail order bride industry
- the rise in sex tourism and trafficking in women.
She argues that through these practices women’s subordination has been outsourced and that states that legalise this industry are acting as pimps, enabling male buyers in countries in which women’s equality threatens male dominance, to buy access to the bodies of women from poor countries who are paid for their sexual subservience.
This major and provocative contribution is essential reading for all with an interest in feminist, gender and critical globalisation issues as well as students and scholars of international political economy.
Radfem 2012 Gets a New Home
So a bunch of transactivists succeeded in getting July’s two-day Radical Feminist Conference (Radfem 2012) booted from their location at Conway Hall in London. (Never heard of Conway Hall before, know lots about it now.) It happened a few days ago and the twitters are still tweeting with self-congratulations and unmollified expressions of radfem hate. They use the #radfem2012 hashtag, rather than a #stopradfem2012, because, you know, dogpiling to shut down communication is free speech. The issue is that the conference is open only to “women born female and assigned female at birth.” In other words: women only, and no men or transwomen. Apparently people who come into the world with child-bearing capability can’t talk about their political issues from that perspective without being monitored.
So let’s take stock of what transactivists won by throwing a monkeywrench in an event they “wouldn’t have gone to anyway” as many of them claim.
~ The event will still take place, according to the website, at a different location.
~ A lot more enemies have been made for transgender people where there were none before. These would include women who are not radical feminists but like the idea of women-only space.
~ According to the program, gender identity politics was only one of many workshop topics, but you can bet it’s going to be talked and talked and talked about at the conference now, and not in a nice way.
~ Since the contract with Conway Hall was broken so close to the conference date, the financial and logistical impact was doubtless severe. A factor for transactivists to cheer, EXCEPT this also means a probable lawsuit. The result may not be what the transactivists would want.
~ This has a potential to be a precedent setting legal issue for women’s rights in the UK, if it does go to trial. The result could also be a factor where the issue is addressed under different laws elsewhere in the world. This is long way of saying: transactivists better hope Conway Hall offers beaucoup money to keep this out of court, because this is not an ideal test case, from their point of view.
~ In fighting this battle, a bit of alliance-building has happened between transactivists and Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) who have been identified as hate mongers by the respected Southern Poverty Law Center. This may be an association to haunt transactivists for a long time to come.
So why are transactivists patting themselves on the back? Are they delusional? This is one battle that can only hurt their cause, win or lose, and they were asinine to take it on.
http://radicalhub.com/2012/07/22/london-radical-feminist-conference-july-2012/
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_7_7XIZq1dUJ:conwayhall.org.uk/statement-regarding-radfem-2012+cancellation+radfem+2012+http://conwayhall.org.uk/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
As for Sheila Jeffreys: Here is just one of many lovely quotes from known bigot Sheila Jeffreys:
"When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression…"
That sort of bigotry and hate is not welcome in this group. Not now. Not ever.
Not to mention awful. And horrible.
And wait'll after 5pm, when they start cooking.
Still, you're welcome here any time.
and the seat is never down. Also that there is a lingering aroma of dirty socks.
Cooking is where I draw the line though. You turn that stove on and I leave for good! 
This one, alas, has several flaws that undermine the effectiveness of the overall message.
The post basically offers a three-pronged argument against the assumption that Dines is a leftist (or is representative of the left): first, some right-wingers use leftist rhetoric; second, she tends towards authoritarianism; third, she exaggerates the significance of some things. The first is a good point; however, while it works against the "assumption" that Dines is a leftist, one could deploy the same point (as a cautionary mechanism) against anyone who employs leftist rhetoric. The second ignores the fact that, alas, the "us or them" thinking he's specifically addressing is, while more frequently in evidence on the right, not exclusive to it. The third simply points out a flaw in thinking that is itself ideological neutral. So the structure of the argument doesn't really do what the title/thesis imply.
Aside from that, there are little things that undermine credibility. Like this:
First, I think even the most zealous anti-porn advocate would readily concede that "the overwhelming majority" of predatory capitalists are not pornographers. But that doesn't give any information as to the number/percentage of pornographers who are. Similarly, the notion that some capitalists kicked some other capitalists out of their convention does nothing to dismiss the complicity of predatory capitalism in the latter.
Second, the examples that he gives undermine the argument. Are the Koch Brothers staunchly anti-porn activists? Or is this just based on an assumption that all right-wingers hate porn? I've never heard of them being involved in anti-porn activities, and their Libertarian-party past would suggest otherwise. As for Murdoch, he's a purveyor of pornography through his media holdings.
There are other such mistakes, like the "no true scotsman" fallacy in the paragraph that follows or the apparent assumption in the penultimate paragraph that porn is inherently a "form of progressive speech and action." (Though, to be fair, this might simply be a careless misuse of the word "other."
Especially the point about the unfortunate alliances and about the logic of attacking critiques of Dines as anti-progressive. And, as I said before, I don't disagree with the blogger's general assessment of Dines. I just didn't think their execution is very good.
And, since I don't feel like doing the work I am supposed to be doing today (which involves critiquing student writing and argumentation), I figured I could sublimate with this article, which I didn't see until this afternoon. 
But then, when one lays down with dogs.... or is that ducks?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=275415&sub=trans
Good heavens! Imagine that!
http://moralityinmedia.org/history/
As opposed to noting the brain-breaking cognitive dissonance that must be required to transmogrify fundamentalist RW fuckos like Ed Meese, Judith Reisman or their pals, into "progressive heroes" because hey,
AT LEAST THEY WANT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT SMUT!!! 
