nickfaust

Your comments in the "Is God Rational?" make me super happy...
just thought you should know.

I took a long trip with a two year old once.

Once.



I just wanted to thank you for putting me onto Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. It has helped me beyond my wildest dreams in the past week (I am going through my existential angst again). That book means so much to me and I may never have found it if it weren't for you.

Haha hey, long time no talk.
Thanks for the congrats. I'm super happy about it, and I can't ever spell queue without looking it up lol.
How have you been? Hope you get to eat some of your crops.

LOL I am glad you enjoyed my post on Duverger's Law, one of the few things I truly remember from my time as a poli. sci. undergrad

I saw one of your posts in the Feminists group about exploitation...

Well, the notion of exploitation preceded Marxism. The use the notion sees in "all porn is exploitation" statements seems to be a bit closer to the non-Marxist (and purely denotative) sense of "to take advantage of" or "to make advantageous use of." It probably doesn't refer to the extraction of surplus value from labor.

I don't often post in the Feminists group (I am there to learn, not to teach/preach), but one of my more prolific posting sessions there was arguing for exactly what you said when you equated porn-wage labor to non-porn wage labor. All porn (if wage labor) would be exploitative in an economic sense in the same way that all other wage labor is exploitative. Employers profit from paying people less than what they produce. As such, the Marxist analysis about the exploitative nature of wage labor (whether right or wrong) is an observation about how value/profit is produced. Moralism doesn't have to color the analysis, though a moral critique can follow the analysis.

I actually would argue that the Marxist conception of "exploitation" is more analytically useful than that used by anti-porn feminists because it is at least clear about what the nature of the advantage is and how it could be remedied. For instance, a collective in which workers directly enjoy the products of their labor would be one free from exploitation (in the Marxist understanding). In contrast, an all-female porn company (owners, models, camera people, etc.) would still be "exploitative" for anti-porn feminists because of their assumption that women would never choose to engage in sex work freely and that female agency is impossible in a patriarchal society.

Granted, "exploitation" is often used even by Marxists in the general sense (and moralistic sense) of "to take advantage," but I don't think that the mistake the anti-porn feminism is doing is just rehashing Marxist analysis (which they aren't really doing). Instead, I think their mistake is assuming that exploitation is unavoidable in porn because of very bad arguments they have regarding female agency and powerlessness.

It is finals week, so my brain isn't quite at full speed. I hope I am articulate.

this song always touches me...

Good luck with the bullshit.
How was the movie?

This semester I am taking three classes: Western Civilization, American Sign Language 1 and Creative Writing Workshop. Believe me when I tell you my red-blooded Republican father rolled his eyes so hard they nearly fell from his skull when he took a gander at my courses this term. Ha.

Here's to pack-ratdom forever. *raises glass*

its not on Helios..its a shoot i did for a local bondage pay site here...i don't think we are allowed to put links up on SG tho. i'll email it to you later if you want but you should just go look at my pics on SG in a few instead

have you read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom? i am just about done with it now. Morrie has all these great ideas about culture and the way we live without being real or showing emotion beyond what is regarded as "acceptable". blah blah blah.

i don't really have any comments to make except you should read that book. and don't loose touch.

Enjoy it! Go watch some fireworks.