Moral Outage!

One "Laurelin" of the Radical Feminist persuasion, wrote a piece about "moral outrage".

Strange as it may sound, I agree with the main premise of her argument, namely that there is a place for moral outrage in this world, and that progressives and liberals who use the term as a dismissal or insult are actually making it easier for the Bad Guys to get away with being Bad.

As a feminist, I have long ago signed up in my heart and soul and mind to a principle similar to the one she espouses, although I don't put women's dignity above anyone else's dignity in the way that Laurelin sees fit to do:

an attitude that insists nothing is more important than the dignity of women humanity, of the integrity of their our bodies and minds, with the behaviour to match. The refusal to put anything before that. The refusal to harm others except in defence. The refusal to sell one’s soul.

With the alterations I've made, this is an exposition of Christ's highest commandments: "Love God" and "Love your neighbour". Indeed, Christ would have us no raise a fist or sword in defence on our own behalf, but only on the behalf of our neighbour. It is these commandments above all that characterise my Christian faith and my Christian witness in the world.

At this point, we reach the end of where I agree with Laurelin. I would like to make the obervation here, inspired by Infra's comment @ Renegade Evolution's blog, that "moral outrage" is inherently a privileged position to take. If you don't have privilege, then moral outrage is out of reach, and purely academic to your continued need to survive and make ends meet. While you're busy feeling outraged, someone is out there struggling to survive, maybe even struggling to survive those very deeds that make you "outraged".

But the online radfem community has not been as firm in adhering to the commandment to uphold and defend, "the dignity of women" or the "integrity of their bodies and minds". They have avowedly put ideology before these, and before "refusal to harm others except in defence".

Whenever it comes to sex work (whether it's pornography, prostitution, stripping or whatever other branch you care to mention) suddenly the voices of those who are in those industries are meaningless. For example, in the recent debates about Jacqui Smith's plan to bring the "Finnish Model" (which is a modification of the Swedish Model) into British law, the lives and experience of actual sex workers, both male and female, have been routinely dismissed and disparaged by those in favour of the laws. This is even in cases where the evidence of those same women, in Scotland, in Sweden, and presumably in Finland (where the law has been in place for a few years, and has yet to result in a single conviction, so it clearly isn't helping anyone), is that these laws harm women. The radfem crowd would gladly push through laws that will harm women (and have been proven to do so) just because those laws suit their ideological viewpoint.

The shit with which stripper and porn performer Renegade Evolution has had to put up over the past few years from these people has been incredible. She has had threats made against her, abuse hurled at her, had her reports of her experiences and life denied, or twisted beyond all recognition, in the hands of radfem bloggers. She is a woman, but whatever happened to her "dignity", her "integrity of body and mind", and "doing no harm"? Our Lord Jesus Christ had some advice for situations like this, too: "take the plank out of your own eye before you seek to remove the mote from your brother's[sister's] eye." Indeed, it sometimes seems as though anyone (and somehow, especially if she's a woman!) who expresses a positive attitude towards performing any form of sex work is instantly regarded as sub-human and worthy only of contempt by these people.

I blame Laurelin and her ilk, not for their "moral outrage" (which I feel too), but for their total moral outage whenever these discussions arise. Indeed, whenever they bring their dismissive, slut-shaming, woman-hating comments to the sex work debates, I feel something towards them. I feel...

Moral outrage.