Liberation vs. Liberalization

Having heard (and uttered the obligatory cry of dismay at so hearing) that Hersheys recently acquired Dagoba, I've been thinking about the relationship between pleasure and commercialism. It's not such a great leap from thinking about chocolate to thinking about sex (it's also not a great leap from thinking about sex to thinking about chocolate, by the way).

I recently read Mark Greif's article, "Afternoon of the Sex Children" that was originally published in n+1, issue 4 and excerpted in November's Harpers Magazine (which is not yet up on their website). From the excerpt, I gather that Greif is explaining the simultaneous social phenomena of sexualization of youthfulness and the stigma of adults actually having sex with youths. While doing so he makes an interesting distinction between liberation and liberalization:

Liberation implies becoming free to do what you ahve already been doing or have meant to do. But what passes as liberation has often become mere liberalization. Liberalization makes for a free traffic in goods formerly regulated, creating markets in what you already possess for free. It has a way of making your possessions no longer native to you at the very moment that they're freed for your enjoyment. Ultimately, you no longer know how to possess them, correctly, unless you are following new rules.

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[Sexual] liberation went astray because another force turned out to have a use for the idea that sex is the bearer of the richest experiences - commerce. Sex was initially difficult to liberate against the rival norms that had structured it for centuries: priority of the family, religious prohibitions, restrictions of biology. But once liberation reached a point of adequate success, commerce discovered it had a new means of entry into private life and threw its weight behind the new values. What in fact was occuring was liberalization by commercial forces as they entered to expand and coordinate the new field of exchange. Opposition to this is supposed to be not only old-fashioned but also joyless and puritanical - in fact, ugly.

When I stroll down the Castro (which is increasingly rarely, by the way), I notice the commerce, first of all. It's almost become cliche to compare the street to a mall. Large retailers are moving in and replacing independent stores. There is a notable paucity of accessible public space. People are on the move, not spending time on the streets so much as moving to the next bubble of privacy, and many of them are clearly tourists. Any lingering notions that community should be free are safely confined to outbursts of sentimentality about the Castro theatre, as if saving one building can erase the fait accompli of commercialisation. I'm guilty of this behavior myself. So what is to be done?

This coming week I shall be working with some young queers who, I hear, share my concern about the lack of public queer space. I've got my hopes up, but the insistent voice in me mutters danger and hums despair. My unclouded optimism has been killed, and I blame San Francisco - the promised land that failed to deliver. That's the problem with the transcendental visions of the diaspora queer - they're almost always disappointed.

Discussion Questions

1) What are the differences between liberation and liberalization? Has sexual liberation failed, or has it merely stalled?

2) It's pretty clear to me that sex sells, and that this is not the ideal state of affairs, because it requires the creation of a false scarcity of sexual pleasure. But what about selling sex? How does prostitution fit into all this?