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Re: More Wilhelm Reich

Posted by Pharmakon on 2024-September-6 12:38:31, Friday
In reply to Re: More Wilhelm Reich posted by Errant on 2024-September-5 02:54:22, Thursday

The two things that attracted me to this quote were that Reich links female and child sexuality as objects of attack (or "imposed sexual repression") by the authoritarian state, using the family as its instrument, and that he critiques "the right of woman to her own body" as an inadequate slogan (he associates it with "conservative sexual reform") because it fails to explicitly address sexual liberation.

The role of carceral feminism in attacking child sexuality is consistent with this analysis if such attacks are understood as an expression of conservative sexual reform. Reich quotes a "[l]etter to the editor [of, apparently, a socialist publication] from a working woman" as an example of the shortcomings of conservative sexual reform. The perspective of the letter is not so far from the one that dominates feminism today. The letter writer declares:

That a man or woman can love many other men or women at the same time is wholly impossible -- it is contrary to nature. The result would be a terrible brutalization which would destroy culture.... Thus, as beautiful as the socialist theory is, and as much as I am in agreement with you on all economic questions, I don't follow you when it comes to sexual matters, and because of this I often have doubts about the whole thing.


Reich calls this the predictable "reaction of a progressive woman" to National Socialist anti-Bolshevik propaganda claiming that communism meant men would have the right to demand sex of women, since women's sexuality would be "a specimen of the people's property."

He replies:

This letter clearly reflects the conflict with which the average person is faced: He is made to believe that he must choose between compulsive sexual morality on the one hand and sexual anarchy on the other hand. The average person has no knowledge of the sex-economic regulation of sexuality, which is as far from compulsive morality as it is from anarchy. He reacts to the imposed severe compulsion with promiscuous impulses; he defends himself against both. Morality is a burden, and instinct appears as a tremendous danger. The man reared under and bound by authority has no knowledge of the natural law of self-regulation; he has no confidence in himself. He is afraid of his sexuality because he never learned to live it naturally. Thus, he declines all responsibility for his acts and decisions, and he demands direction and guidance.


What on earth does Reich mean by "sex-economic regulation of sexuality"? It looks from his chapter headings as though he will get to that in due course.

Meanwhile, I discern here a precursor of the conflict that played out in the 1960s and 1970s, when feminism took a stand in favor of liberated sexuality, only to discover that to men this often just meant they didn't have to take no for an answer. This contributed to the retreat into erotophobia so characteristic of most feminism today.

I have argued before that for youth the right to say no to sex becomes meaningless without the right to say yes. The same thing is true for women. The slogan "My Body, My Choice," so often heard in the abortion wars, merely recycles the slogan Reich critiqued 80 years ago. Yes, to assert the right refuse sex, and to refuse pregnancy, is basic to ending the authoritarian state's use of the family to repress female and youth sexuality. But when advocacy fails to couple this right with a clear assertion of the right to embrace and accept sex, in whatever form desired, carceral feminism is the understandable result.

You ask who defines "sexually awakened" or "sexual consciousness." I am not ready to say Reich has a convincing answer. But carceral feminism unambiguously concedes that power to the authoritarian state. This can only lead to a regime of increasing erotophobia. Reich saw that happening in Germany as Hitler gained power, and we can see it happening today. This parallelism seems to me to make Reich's perspective of current interest.

hugzu ;-p


Pharmakon

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