The left has a long history of fighting capitalist ownership of the media. From Karl Marx to Antonio Gramsci to Noam Chomsky, leftist thinkers have understood the corporate media to be the propaganda machine for capitalist ideas and values. The industry-engineered image of femininity has now become the dominant one in western society, crowding out alternative ways of being female.
No one in progressive circles would suggest for a moment that criticism of the corporate media is a moral panic. [Yet] feminists are now [seen as] conservatives fomenting unnecessary panic about the proliferation of “sexualized” images while the corporate-controlled media industry that mass produces these images is the progressive force for change being unfairly demonized. What a strange turn of events.
To suggest feminists who oppose the pornification of society are stirring up a moral panic is to confuse a politically progressive movement with rightwing attempts to police sexual behavior. The fight against the increasingly narrow and limiting image of femininity is inextricably connected to the progressive fight for democratic ownership and control of the media. This is a political struggle. Feminists are rightly concerned, but we’re not panicking. We’re organizing.
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Moral panic? No. We are resisting the pornification of women. Don’t mix up feminists fighting the the corporate media with rightwing attempts to police sex
(via cultureofresistance)
(Source: socialuprooting, via octagon-surgeon)
