It must have been in the mid-eighties when I got turned away from a women’s group meeting on nuclear disarmament for being male. Strange humiliation for a kid that was growing up on principles of equality, of respect of diversity, of not wanting to carry out his National Service in Italy (which – incidentally - I managed to keep out of). The first encounter with fundamentalist intransigence dressed in radical garb.
The first of many: beyond the so-called left and right, beyond self-defined progressive and conservative identities, the discovery of parasitic patches of mono-directional thought that seek to kill off all other expressions kept and keeps occurring, sometimes in the unlikeliest places.
To counterbalance the negativity of these encounters, I’ve cultivated a widespread interest in the heretics that have always contaminated schools of thought with diverse perspectives: from the Movement of the Free Spirit in the Middle Ages to feminist pornstars.
Within this last group comes Ovidie. Following the likes of Annie Sprinkle and Nina Hartley, this French porn actress and film-maker published “Porno Manifesto” last year (and recently in the Italian translation I’ve just read).
The book is pamphlet-like in style, offering an insider’s view of the European porn industry from a pro-sex activist perspective; the history of such activism traced through case studies; a critique of a current porn production that has sought to align with mass market and showbiz rules, losing whatever subversive powers it may have had. Trends in commodification that affect the ‘body&soul’ of all workers, regardless of field or profession:
“Sex workers do not sell their ‘soul’, nor their bodies, but a service, just like anybody else that carries out a paid activity. All those that are paid in exchange of a service of whatever nature are reducing their body to goods. All workers commodify their bodies.”
Most interesting, perhaps, is her take on the downfall into consumer status. In a section entitled “Women’s liberation or female consumer liberation” she writes:
“In brief, these women fought for the right to become citizens, workers, consumers, which were perceived as a liberation. For these feminists, in fact, the main enemy was man. Therefore they considered the obtainment of equality with men in certain fields as a step towards freedom. Not for a moment did they maybe dream that man could himself be submitted? Isn’t this form of behaviour similar to that of children that see only direct authority, their school teacher, without even imagining for a second that a Ministry of Education exists?”
The Twentieth Century was a key moment in the history of Human Liberation. Many paths were opened up for the Many. Many are the pitfalls. Like walking out of a closet and into a wallet. These days our humanity is endangered by the reduction of self to mere consumer entity. Questions of slavery and independence remain valid. Away from the economics, is it the essence of life to bloom?