Dear Marijuana Policy Project:
According to the High Times Magazine article, Scandal at the Marijuana Policy Project, by Veinenstock and Cusick, a big sexual harassment scandal occurred implicating executive director, Rob Kampia and causing several MMP staffers to resign; therefore, the MPP didn’t hold their annual sexist Playboy Mansion fundraiser for a year or two. I heard recently that the MPP is going to resume holding their annual sexist fundraiser this July 2011, same place. The MPP’s continued sexist fundraisers promote the objectification, degradation, and violence toward women and girls; male supremacy; a patriarchal, right-wing, Capitalist, imperialist agenda; is highly antagonistic with the green-ethics of the pro-marijuana movement---undercutting the very movement your trying to promote.
One opportunistic and dubious argument mindlessly parroted by the MPP for holding the sexist fundraiser is, “While we understand that the event isn't for everyone, many respected figures have worked with Playboy, from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jimmy Carter (both of whom sat for interviews with the magazine) to highly regarded authors who have published their work in its pages, such as Ray Bradbury and John Updike.” Excuse me, but none of those so-called enlightened people you mention were revolutionaries who concerned themselves much with women’s rights; they were charismatic liberation theologians or supporters of Christianity---for certain rights for certain people, with a de-emphasis on the rights of women. Christianity and other organized religions are all oppressive systems of male privilege. By virtue of upholding Christianity, each of those so-called enlightened people the MPP mentions, upheld male privilege.
Just as Jason Martan is the Grand Wizard of the racist fraternal organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, Hugh Hefner is the Grand Wizard of the sexist fraternal organization known as the Xploitation, Xploitation, Xploitation.
Basic 101 ethics intuits that sexism is just as objectifying, degrading, and debilitating as racism. Sexism, racism, classism, religion, and the state machine are there to serve ruling class hegemony---to divide and conquer the working class here and abroad. Sexism is actually more insidious than racism, because the repercussions negatively impact all cultures and races, all human relations in intimately complex ways.
The “Consent Fallacy”
The MPP may try to opportunistically rationalize holding a sexist fundraiser by arguing, “Those women consent, so they are not victims of oppression or sexism.” The reality, however, is if we lived in a world were women were actually free, then consent would literally mean consent, but we don’t live in that kind of world. When women consent to sexism and blacks consent to racism, sexism and racism become even more insidious; worse. In today’s economic context, consent so often means capitulation for those oppressed groups (women) whom have become metabolized into the oppressive dynamics of the power structure.
By getting enough blacks and women to capitulate to racism and sexism, and working class people to capitulate to classism, their self-maintaining auto-oppression serves as an free ride for the mansion owners, the plantation owners, for a couple reasons: firstly, by virtue that they (owners) get to spend less time and resources on suppressing race and gender rebellions and other class uprisings, since they are less bond to uprise due to auto-oppression; secondly, giving the owners more time and resources to push their imperialist agenda of infinite gain for them and poverty and martial law for us. Sexist, racist, and classist propaganda and practices are there to divide us; to justify war, poverty, prisons, the war on drugs, and to create a surplus of unemployed wage slaves---keeping profits in the hands of a few mansion / plantation owners.
Even the UN Declaration on Human Rights, speaks volumes about how sexual exploitation is a violation of human rights whether tolerated by the state or not, whether in pubic or private. Sexist, racist, and classist institutions are not inherent nor natural for they need to be destroyed for humanity to be free, free to consent based on being free.
Internalization of Oppression
Where you find sexism, racism, and classism, you will find internalization of oppression. Internalization of oppression, auto-oppression, is when we digest, believe, accept or take into ourselves concepts, ideas and images [sexist, racist, classist propaganda] that an oppressive society uses to represent us, serves to maintain a subservient and crippled state of functioning which, therefore, undermines ones ability to be a full-fledged human, coined by Frantz Fanon, a French revolutionary and psychiatrist in his book, Wretched of the Earth,1963. One can compare women’s crippling and silent capitulation to sexism to that of the House Negro in Malcolm X’s 1964 February speech, House Negro vs Field Negro: if the master’s house was burning down, the House Negro would do everything to save the house, whereas the Field Negro would do everything to enhance the flames to burn his house down, down to the ground.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon wrote a song called, Woman is the Nigger of the World. Women are the “niggers” of the world”, especially when they happily capitulate to sexism, especially when they go so far as to rationalize sexism. Too many women are minions of sexual oppression.
Kampia-Hefner like Puritans
From a non-patriarchal, Iroquois Indian perspective, Kampia, Hefner, and their ilk, are just as right wing and anti-women as the Puritans---the Kampia-Hefner camp want women as whores and the Puritan camp want women as chattel. Kampia-Hefner are not liberals and are not hypersexual, but perverted like Puritans. On the other hand, non-patriarchal cultures would never disrespect women for some opportunistic gains.
Prostitution is the Oldest Profession Fallacy
Some sexists would like to shout back another dubious claim that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. Not true. Prostitution is not the oldest profession, but it is the oldest oppression since the advent of patriarchal societies. Prostitution was non-existent in non-patriarchal societies. Pre-patriarchal and current non-patriarchal societies, instead, have sexual rituals and group marriage, because they are not propertied societies, but communalistic.
Natural Contradiction between Patriarchy and Cannabis
There is an inherent contradiction between the patriarchy and cannabis. Cannabis is a natural plant, which does best when grown freely in a world where people are truly free. Patriarchal institutions are Big Pharma (an industry that profits off of death and disease), the Paper Industry (an industry that has no qualms about raping and pillaging the environment) or the Alcohol industry (which has no shame in selling their toxic crap), Prisons (a state sponsored human trafficking industry which profits off of housing many non-violent people), and Prostitution (which commodifies women and justifies violence toward all of them). These patriarchal industries hate anybody and anything that is free. Cannabis is so natural and free that it can’t be fully reconciled under such systems of oppression. So stop oppressing.
Solution
The immediate solution is for the MMP to stop it’s oppressive upcoming sexist fundraisers. The money the MPP gets from these sexist fundraisers is DIRTY money, just as DIRTY as money you would get from holding a racist fundraiser. Stand steadfast to the fact that men and children won’t have freedom if women are oppressed, whites won’t have freedom if blacks are oppressed, and cannabis won’t have complete freedom if there remains a system of hierarchal oppression. If you want to truly get anywhere, faster and more efficiently, you need to elevate the importance of cannabis to the larger cause of human struggle to be free from bondage, to have self-determination. I will continue to encourage others to boycott the MPP, until the MPP makes shows respect for women. In the meantime will begin by publishing this letter en mass as a call to boycott the MPP.
Seriously,
Andrea Lavigne
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