Re: More Wilhelm Reich

"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." That seems to me to be a much narrower use of the term "authoritarian ideology" than in Reich's passage. It would seem almost tautological to say that sexual liberation results in a state that can no longer be authoritarian on strictly sexual matters. Without sex fascism there would be no sex fascism. Not terribly enlightening there. Calling carceral feminism names like "conservative sexual reform" hardly cuts to the heart of the matter when plenty of sexually liberal people, and certainly many socially liberal people, have supported many of the state's most authoritarian actions (unless they're not true Scotsmen either?). Such is to be expected when there is no personal cost or consequence for imposing one's political choices upon others. "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." It would be nice to see some more sex-positive feminism out there, and perhaps that would help alleviate the paranoia surrounding youth sexuality (sex-positive anything should be seen as an important path for activism). But I don't think this needs to be couched in flimsy Marxist conjecture about a causal connection between family structure and the state. The Marxists have opposed families for the same reason all cults have: to monopolize influence over their adherents. Oh, and it seems that Reich was quite the crackpot. The kindest statement that can be found on his Wikipedia page is from his son saying, "He was a nineteenth-century scientist; he wasn't a twentieth-century scientist. He didn't practice science the way scientists do today. He was a nineteenth-century mind who came crashing into twentieth-century America. And boom!" But as with Plato, perhaps you favor him more for his affirmation than for his soundness.