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Published in feminist journal Rain & Thunder issue #56, Spring 2013
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Laurel Long took the time to interview Samantha Berg, a generation X
radical feminist and anti-pornstitution activist. Berg was a lead
organizer for Radfem Reboot, an all-womyn gathering held in Portland,
Oregon in July 2012.
Laurel
Long (LL): How did you discover radical
feminism?
Samantha Berg (SB):
A woman once wrote that her feminist process was: liberal, feminist, pro-sex
feminist, radical feminist. My radicalization process looks a lot like that,
landing on radicalism in my mid 20s.
The first change was realizing that
being feminist is believing in women’s liberation as per the femin- part,
but it’s equally grounded in the suffix -ist marking someone who takes
action. Usually there will be overlap in what serves all women and what serves me,
but I’m speaking in the deepest philosophical sense of committing oneself to
bettering the lives of all women.
Then I began reading and openly identified as a feminist. Soon I learned enough
to realize my use of and support for pornography (strip clubs, other
pornstitution) fit under pro-sex feminism, and I accepted that. The shift from
pro-sex to radical took about two years beginning to end. I hadn’t been
applying my feminism to pornography for all the usual reasons like acceptance
from my porn-using partner, the thrill of being a baddie bad girl who used a
boy thing, all those twirly emotions that collide around sexuality.
I was becoming more radical in other
areas of my life. Still a porn user, I moved from NYC to Portland, a city
famous for its unconventional politics and booming prostitution industry. I
continued my poverty-relief campaigning while honoring my feminism through
pro-choice activism. These forces came together in actualized practice when I began
to find myself turned off by the idea of using pornography from 1) a feminist
viewpoint 2) an anti-corporate control over media viewpoint 3) a sexual health
educator’s viewpoint.
In the longer version there are the people I’ve loved who suffered from and
lost their lives to prostitution, but I’ll skip that personal portion of the
narrative for now. This is the part where I find through the internet that
there are other feminists who feel about pornstitution the same way I had come
to feel about it. They also turned out to be anti-corporate, anti-war,
pro-environmentalism and pro-alternative politics, just like me. They called
themselves radical feminists and after more reading I decided it was a fitting
term.
LL: Some
women have said that discovering radical feminism saved their lives. Would you
say this is true for you?
SB: I wouldn’t say that’s accurate
for me. Anti-pornstitution activism gives me purpose and pride and it makes me feel
less crazy in a world where the insanity of male supremacy lords over us all,
but it didn’t spark renewed life in me. The people in my life who have cared
for and supported me are the ones who “saved my life,” radical feminism is the
love that I’m able to give back now that I’m in a safe and trusting place.
LL: What do you think are the biggest obstacles
facing women today?
SB: Corporate media exploitation of
women’s fears and insecurities. From movies to music to the internet, my
generation of women consumes images produced by others (almost entirely men) at
a greater rate than ever before. We’re drowning in a sea of woman-negative
media that would be hard to stay afloat in with rafts, and we don’t have those.
As we struggle uphill to procure basic tools like critical analysis and freedom
from unwanted media intrusion, corporate psychologists work harder to worm into
the subconscious minds of the most dubious, skeptical media consumers.
LL: One problem women with your politics face is
finding other women with similar politics. How many other radical feminists do
you know near where you're located?
SB: There are about a dozen radfem acquaintances in
the Portland area. I’ve worked with them on and off for years on specific
protests and projects.
Lately there’s been a resurgence of
anti-prostitution energy as housewives, businesswomen, and retirees are coming
together to address the Pacific Northwest’s especially large problems with rape
slavery. They are my friends and colleagues, but most wouldn’t call themselves
radical feminists. No matter, they’re targeting johns and talking honestly
about porn, which makes them more woman-centered than the poseurs of popular
feminism.
LL: Are you active on the feminist blogosphere?
Does this help keep you sane? In any case, what else do you do to maintain as
much sanity as possible in this f-ed up world?
SB: Yes and yes. Fighting back is
the healthiest thing a shit-upon woman can do. I make no claims to having
maintained my sanity.
LL: What is your vision for change in the next
5-10 years?
SB: Nordic model all the way, baby. Mandatory health
protections for pornstitutes and strippers. Actual application of laws that are
supposed to keep pornography away from kids.
LL: What do you wish you had known five years ago? SB: The johns, the johns, the johns. Stay on target.
Capitalists and apologists will do everything to talk about anything but the
johns.
LL: This
is your moment! What would you like to say to young women today?
SB: The situation is grim, but we have the solution.
Susan B. Anthony watched as nation after nation passed women’s suffrage, and in
my lifetime I’ve seen the same global sweep with the Swedish model of
prostitution. We are living through an exciting and productive time to be a
radical feminist.
LL: I’m curious to know more about the Radfem
Reboot event held in July 2012. What were the successes?
SB: Feedback has been that Reboot was a particularly
congenial event as such political gatherings go. I’m a veteran of
anti-trafficking and pro-women conferences, but I haven’t clocked as many years
as some of the women who told me how pleased they were with the overall
civility of the weekend. Personally, I’m most proud of the behind-the-scenes
chaos being handled well enough that attendees were none the wiser.
LL: What would you do differently if you held the event again?
SB: Honestly, it was the conference
of my dreams and I wouldn’t make any big changes. This was my chance to do a
radfem conference Bergstyle and I’m pleased as a peach with how it went. The
speakers were women I wanted to learn from, the breadth of topics was
impressive and favored my anti-pornstitution interests by design, and friends
I’ve been collaborating with for years flew across the planet to give me hugs.
Organizing Radfem Reboot made me feel so useful, respected, and loved that it
would be greedy to ask for more.
LL: Is there anything that came out of the event
that would be good for Rain & Thunder readers to know about?
SB: Preliminary plans for more
conferences would probably be of most practical interest to readers and I’m
sure the details of those are forthcoming, so I’d like to share a more
spiritual anecdote.
There was one woman who participated not because she was a radfem or knew
anyone there, but because she lived down the street from the venue and stepped
inside to use the bathroom Saturday morning. Seeing our large gathering of only
women, she took a seat and wound up staying through Sunday night. The Portland
sisterhood grew by one and once again I felt vindicated in every way about
radical feminism because our advanced theory workshops spoke to the soul of a
woman simply passing through. At our most philosophical we don’t stray from the
axis of real women’s lives and truths.
That’s the first story I tell non-radical feminist friends when they ask how my
conference went, but my favorite story came out of Saturday night’s group
activism. Alas, that one can only be told in person so you’ll have to get
yourself to the next radfem gathering and ask me or another woman who
participated about it. I promise it’s worth the travel and lodging costs.
Laurel Long is a 26-year-old radical
feminist activist who first “met” Sam Berg through her fantastic online website
www.genderberg.com When not
engaging in radical feminist activism, Long works as a sexual assault and
mental health crisis counselor.
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