!The worser the better --- agk's diary 18 March 2024 @ 06:09 UTC --- written on GPD Win 1 in bed too tired to make much sense --- I'm helping my local Pride committee design an 18+ club for Pride weekend to be safer from overcrowd- ing and heterosexual hegemony than last year. I see thorny issues to protecting the space's gayness, due to the "gender wars" that have for years played trans against nontrans gays and lesbians, at least in the ratings-obsessed sections of the media landscape. I've been thinking about the feminist sex wars of the '80s, MTV's The Real World from the '90s, and how intra-elite struggles, cast as populist, get adopted or rejected by ordinary people. Sex wars ('80s) --- There was a fight between feminists in the '80s that I know of as the sex wars. It ranged over years and it included everything from fierce rhetoric to pickets, legislation, blacklisting, public shunning, court decisions, and the breakup of long-running friendships and community projects. The fight was in part over prostitution, porn, and sadomasochism. Are they inherently "oppressive" or "liberating"? All the little questions are way more interesting than the big question. The conservative anti-ho/porn/SM camp, in my opinion, made some important arguments and supported bad legislation. Some of the fight was also a culture war, between defenders of "ordinary" women and defenders of "elite" women. Like, "ordinary" women are beaten, financially controlled, treated as objects, etc., because of power gradients that are tangled up in porn and prostitution; but "elite" women have negotiating power so can have fun and make money "transgressing". A half-generation before, conservative woman Loretta Lynn sang, > Now what was I doing? > Jimmy get away from there > darn, there goes the phone > Hello honey > What's that you say? > You're bringing a few ol' Army buddies home? > You're calling from a bar? > Get away from there! > No not you honey, I was talking to the baby > wait a minute honey the door bell > Honey could you stop at the market and... hello? > Well I'll be. > The girls in New York City, they all march for women's lib > and Better Homes and Gardens shows the modern way to live > and the pill may change the world tomorrow > but meanwhile today > Here in Topeka the flies are a-buzzing > The dog is a-barking and the floor needs a scrubbing > One needs a spanking and one needs a hugging > Lord, one's on the way. > Gee I hope it ain't twins again Some of the strongholds set up by "radical" '70s feminists addressed the troubles of Lynn's ordinary woman. Domestic violence shelters, research, and training for judges, police, nurses, teachers, social workers, preachers, etc.; employment protections, especially for white-collar and secretarial women; separatist land retreats where men were not allowed and other women's spaces, like music festivals. In the '80s, some of the struggle was over allocation of attention, volunteers, donations, and public dollars. Some was over respectability. Some was over who would get to be unelected spokespeople for women---important both for personal standing and for which women were spoken about. The sex radicals probably expanded access to quality sex education, which may have helped decrease unplanned teen pregnancy, and may have made it easier for teen girls to report molestation to enforcement systems the sex-conservatives maintained. There may have been other synergies. Also, backpage and craigslist made tricking less dangerous for a while, queer non-heterosexual identity flourished, some labor reforms happened in the porn entertainment industry, and the stuff the conservatives were safeguarding wasn't destroyed by these modest victories of the sex-radicals. Reality TV (1990s) --- COPS went on air in my country in response to the network needing programming to fill the gap caused by a writer's strike. It was followed four years later by MTV's The Real World, which was modern reality TV. Young people lived in a loft rigged with cameras and gave up privacy and dignity for celebrity. They gave short "confessional" interviews to add context to their arguments, crying, or whatever. It started out trying to be prestige television, depicting [wikipedia says] "sex, prejudice, religion, abortion, illness, sexuality, AIDS, death, politics, and substance abuse." Reality TV learned, though, that ratings don't take all that work. All they need is messy, outrageous people and interpersonal feuds. Same formula as professional wrestling and soap operas. Dolan and Frel wrote in Neighbors from Hell (2015), > The network tells Rhonda to sob and be mean--- > She's paid by the tantrum, > makes hundreds per scene! > They film her daily, from breakfast to breakdown > and applaud when she treats her close friends > to a takedown. > Rhonda stumbles along between botox and detox, > and her big life dilemma is > "White socks or pink socks?" > Her three little monsters > have learned mommy's rules, > so if you ever see them, run home from school! > They'll hurt you and hope it gets on the show. > The worser the better, is all that they know. Even as the exploitation of reality TV was critiqued for commercialism and artificiality by The Truman Show (1998), and in stronger terms for its diversion from concrete material issues and damage to participants by The Hunger Games (2008-), social media influencers appeared, producing their own lives as reality TV. Some grew into A-list celebrities for their self-produced entertainment. Celebrities are supposed to be rich, sexy, and have a cause. Late-stage reality TV, Keeping up with the Kardashians (2007-2021) ran concurrently with the rise of influencers. The show was a 30-minute commercial for Kardashian-Jenner retail stores and endorsement deals. It wouldn't have been the phenomenon it was without the family's wealth and connections (OJ Simpson trial, Paris Hilton), Kim Kardashian's sex tape, or the bland Conservative wrapping monologue each episode about the importance of family. Of course, their income was dependent on their ratings. The part about needing to have a cause is the part that's most relevant to my thoughts in this essay. To try to do feminist or lesbian stuff in today's world, I have to wonder how it will impact the followers of various influencers, whose take on the issues often has less to do with questions of nuance and care than with the feuds and outrageous- ness necessary for them to keep their monetized self in the limelight. [A recent list, presented from the anti-trans or "gender critical" perspective, is on the www by Nina Paley as "Newbie's Guide to the Gender Wars." The list is presented on the www without the shock and outrage by longtime trans advocate Andrea James as "Gender Wars anti-transgender playing cards."] Influencers don't just directly monetize attention through ads and endorsements. Those in the gender wars, on both sides, also become the public faces of networks of foundations, nonprofits, thinktanks, lobbying organizations, and PAC and "dark money" groups. These networks grew up in the 1990s around "family values" conservative evangelical corporate Christianity, corporate Pride and LGBT civil rights litigation, etc. They employ a lot of people to call donors, write their grant applications, lobby their politicians, update their spreadsheets, craft their messages, make their powerpoints, keep their books, provide legal council, etc. Their largest funders largely control their agendas, and their largest funders are billionaires: Pritzgers, Kochs, Clintons, etc. The stuff influencers are talking about gets really outlandish and mean because that sells the ads. Below the surface, it also aligns with the whims and profit centers of the wealthy. For example, how come there's such a battle over whether trans kids can get very expensive plastic surgery? Whose whim does that offend? Whose profit does that juice? Here in Topeka --- The gender wars also structurally resemble the sex wars of the 1980s in rhetoric. The most coherent "gender criticals" resemble the most coherent '80s sex-conservatives with their concerns. Are ordinary women's concerns---shitty dudes, employment protections, pay gaps, unpaid caregiving, abortion, pregnancy and children, women's spaces, etc---going to be pushed aside by advocates for a tiny minority? Will trans advocates gain the legitimacy to speak for half of the population? These are the anxieties of professionals and managers, the people who operate in the network I described above---not the entertainers, but the office workers. Steve Waldman called their anxiety "predatory precarity." > ...if we haven't rigged our housing choice so > that the local public school is good enough, we > pay up for a private school. If we can afford to > be choosy...we pay up for the private school that > devotes significant resources to the searches and > scholarships that deliver...a "carefully curated > integration...that allows many white parents to > boast that their children's public schools look > like the United Nations." It is extraordinarily > expensive to be both comfortable and some > facsimile of virtuous. You'll never see as many > rainbow flags as you see in Marin County. > > ...you are missing something important, as a > matter of politics if nothing else, if you don't > get that the people who are your predators > financially are, in their turn, someone else's > prey. Part of why the legalized corruption that > is the vast bulk of the (dollar-weighted) US > economy is so immovable is that the people whose > lobbyists have cornered markets to ensure they > stay overpaid are desperately frightened of not > being overpaid, because if they were not overpaid > they would become unable to make all the absurd > overpayments that are now required to live what > people of my generation (and race, and class) > understood to be an ordinary life. It's not novel to note trans people need decrimin- alization, housing, education, and employment, but trans advocates want to sell medical and plastic surgery interventions. Anne Tagonist wrote about it in 2009 on her livejournal. It's not earthshattering to note that programs of universal concrete material benefit like a national health service funded by single-payer medicaid for all, debt and loan jubilees for individuals and countries, jobs guarantee, universal free daycare, twelve weeks of family leave, progressive taxation and estate taxation, and so on, would particularly benefit the most vulnerable people the trans rights activists and the gender criticals say they represent. Instead of mass politics, we get paternalist politics, because that is what juices the billionaires, employs the predatorily precarious professionals and managers, and sells the ads. Here in Topeka, the wash still needs a-hangin. Regardless of populist rhetoric, paternalist policy has pretty narrow, often debatable, benefits for ordinary people it putatively defends. Here in Kentucky, in my quest to make Pride's 18+ clubhouse safer from overcrowding and heterosexual hegemony, I'm going to relax. I want more gay men to feel at home there than last year, and more lesbians. I want trans and gender-variant people and crossdressers to feel welcome, too. Partly because of different ways of life, partly because of the background noise of the gender wars, members of these groups don't always feel welcome, relaxed, or in control---in some cases in space that's too shared, in other cases in space that's too segregated. An idea, a way forward, to make the club fun and decrease the anxiety of partiers is to have hours "for" subgroups and ways to "flag" membership in a subgroup. Each of these are ways to be celebrated or self-celebrate without overdoing paternalism or "y'all come" lassez-faire neglect of peoples' anxieties. Least that's my hope.