".... private relationship between advertiser and viewer?!"
a call for response and reaction

Advertisers sell consumers to corporations.... usually by cultivating a sort of confidential relationship: We are
expected to FEEL but not to talk about our feelings with each other. We are expected to keep track of the
puns Tide laundry detergent can come up with etc.. all by ourselves. As long as we allow ourselves to be
isolated we allow ourselves to be intimidated. The pimps and the pushers count on it. It is always time to
respond and react. Let us not be separated and silenced by our genders, races, sexualities, etc.

Larry Flynt has invited me.. and you.. to the ASIAN FEVER beauty contest on October 3rd, 10th, and 17th at
8pm. On the 3rd, some anonymous volunteers scoped it out. The Hustler Casino dominates the
intersection of Vermont and Redondo Beach Blvd in Gardena like Disney Land or something. One of the
huge lighted signs flashes a rippling American flag like a flood light. Mr. Flynt himself is helped from a
limo and into his wheelchair and soon disappears into the 'casino' (how there can be a hugely advertised
casino in Gardena is unclear to us).

a group called acolectiv used the following strategy against the New Times, which we notice, is
imminently defunct: New Times advertises bloody carnivorous decadence in the guise of journalism --
acolectiv conducts guerrilla street theatre outside advertised venue.

Advertising works. but as long as we don't allow ourselves to be separated from one another, WE can decide
HOW advertising works. In many or most cases, we'd like it to work as follows: when sick corporations
advertise -- 1. the public makes their business a target of confrontational ridicule and eventual bankruptcy
2. publications like the New Times or LAWEEKLY give up their sick ads or else fold.

So..meet us at the intersection of Vermont and Redondo Beach Blvd the next two Thursdays, Oct. 10th and
Oct. 17th in the evening. Some feel that protest visibility may be higher before sundown - the 'contest'
starts at 8pm - we will be out there from 5pm to 9pm. Bring cameras, bring flashlights, bring banners and
signs.

wonderfull post. interesting event.
cool

Most people are aware that they have choices. They have the choice to consume or not consume, to participate in events or not participate in them. Although I can understand your concern about consumer manipulation, I think the general public has a better grasp on free thought than you might think. As for the asian beauty contest, those women are not being forced to participate; they are participating of their own free will, and for reasons that are not for you or me to judge. Lifestyle choices should be left to the induvidual.

Your writing really hurts my eyes. You guerillas need to take a class in College that would help you to better express your viewpoints. Additionally, I find it most irritating as someone with a brain, when people like you go out of their way to inform me that I lack the mental faculty which has been bestowed upon you and your most pious and ever self righteous rhino booger outlook on life. I think Larry Flint, sadly enough, has a better grasp on personal freedom, than most of the black t-shirted, black block hypocrites constantly on the eternal march for individual freedoms who simultaneously can not accept anything they do not like.

::click here for new post with added images::

First, you look really dumb with your masks and your pathetic little cloth asking the viewer if their "love is a lie?" what the fuck are you trying to say, and who the fuck are you? are you somehow more harminous in your love towards your fellow man/woman? do you have the perfect answer for our love? i sense intense ammounts of hatred and negativity than i do love in your statements. believe it or not, i am an anti-authoritarian and understand the context for your critique of the sex industry, but i also sense your whiteness, your absolutism, your punk rock lifestyle ethic too. looking at the following:

YOUR LOVE IS A LIE
NO MORE PATRIARCHAL IMPERIAL CAPITALISM
NO MORE RACIST SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF OUR SISTERS, DAUGHTERS AND MOTHERS
FROM OKINAWA TO GARDENA: ONE BIG U.S. MILITARY BASE
STOP HATING, INVADING, CONSUMING, DISCRIMINATING


it sounds like you picked this up off your most recent 7". even the last sentences rhyme. have you stopped consuming? i doubt it. have you had sexual desires to fuck? probably. its normal. so instead of player hating everyone with your stupid little sign, why don't you show some compassion for those who get fucked up in this world from capitalist exploitation?

so please take your hateraide elsewhere and start working with organizations that deal with real issues of sexual abuse. this isn't antisect, conflict, rudimentary peni, crass, or whatever crusty shit you probably listen to these days, etc world anymore.

peace.

hopefully we can all agree that forcing anyone to participate in the 'Asian Fever' contest would be an extremely serious crime. but even putting on an 'Asian Fever' contest at all is offensive. consider this analogy: "being forced to participate" in a white power march would of course be horrible. but white power marches are horrible even if you aren't forced into jack boots. is a 'voluntary' white power march an inappropriate target of protest? protests do happen because, as you say, "the general public has a better grasp on free thought than you might think".

but the white power analogy is partly inaccurate because, unlike the 'Asian Fever' contest, white power rallies and marches are quite exclusively for "white" people - they talk about people of color but they don't invite "non-white" women to undress and compete for their amusement and arousal. the 'Asian Fever' contest, by contrast, has been organized by Larry Flynt's HUSTLER casino, a corporate venue located in the largely asian community of Gardena. We saw Flynt himself enter his venue on the first date of the contest (Oct. 3rd, the last date is Oct.17th 8pm - please protest with us). the phrase 'Asian Fever' refers to a particularly malignant sexual fetish directed at asian women by non-asian men. in some ways the USA military is a better analogy: the USA military is nominally a "voluntary" choice even though most people who participate in it "of their own free will" tend to be working class people of color. does this make the USA military an illegitimate target of protest? there WAS a time when protests against the USA military were commonly misunderstood to be attacks on the working class. we want to clear up any analogous confusion right away. the young women employed in the sex industry are the soldiers of the sex wars - that they tend to be poor is a truism. our protest is directed and focused elsewhere: who are the generals? who are the bosses? who are the pimps and the pushers?

we have all found our way to the IMC, so let's consider the corporate media as a third analogy: do corporations FORCE their media on any of us? is the corporate media an inappropriate target of protest? without putting a gun to my son's head, corporations dominate the media available to him in ways that are familiar not only to media activists. corporate apologists are forever telling us that we have "choices", that nobody is "being forced to participate", that my father is participating of his "own free will, and for reasons that are not for you or me to judge". in other words: mommy has no business discussing your taste in toys - that's between you and the corporation. you and your sister have no business discussing your father's taste in tv shows - that's between him and the networks.... slaves, don't talk amongst yourselves.... and you'll each have your own tv soon if you keep your grades up.... never tell ANYONE your PIN number no matter how intimate you think you are! these kinds of corporate commands are bluffs made from a non-negotiable position of power. it's always the same command: subordinates do not communicate with each other - they take orders from above! these truths are taken to be self-evident. to question them is to violate someone's "free thought"?!

luckily, as you say, "the general public has a better grasp on free thought than you might think".

"Media corporations sell consumers to advertisers.... usually by cultivating a sort of confidential relationship: We are expected to FEEL but not to talk about our feelings with each other. We are expected to keep track of the puns Tide laundry detergent can come up with etc.. all by ourselves. As long as we allow ourselves to be isolated we allow ourselves to be intimidated. The pimps and the pushers count on it. It is always time to respond and react. Let us not be separated and silenced by our genders, races, sexualities, etc."

we ask men not to attend the 'Asian Fever' contest. we are not criticizing women contestants at this event. we demand dignity and respect for all women and people of color. let us keep the focus on those in power.

I wanna see some hot chicks!

to 'eliot savant'--
your message was maybe the least constructive of the reactions we got. all the same:

--"you guerillas need to take a class in college that would help you to
better express your viewpoints"

we think the best way to learn to express your viewpoints and communicate well is by having in-depth discussions about topics that are interesting to you and whoever you are talking with. reading and writing motivated by personal interest is also very important. college sometimes facilitates all that. sometimes it doesn't. it's definitely not essential. but college graduates do make a lot more money on average.

--"i find it most irritating as someone with a brain, when people like you go out of their way to inform me that i lack the mental faculty which has been bestowed upon your most pious and ever self righteous rhino booger outlook on life."

we never insulted you. but all the same, we sincerely think that using the word 'booger' is always a cute thing to do. we don't FEEL pious. i mean, we're not against lascivious sex. we don't like piety. we think sexual piety is what happens when people are so afraid to talk openly about sex that they just separate sex from the rest of life. like when people say "all's fair in love and war" or whatever. we think that's bullshit. that's just what people say when they're afraid to see love or war clearly. how can you say WE'RE pious when YOU are the one who is so scandalized when we ask people to think carefully about sex.

i guess to some people we sound like we're talking down. obviously we don't have any right to. furthermore, we've participated in the culture of pornography ourselves. but we don't believe porn is going to help us get where we want to go. we're trying to break out of our frozen stares and talk to each other. we just don't want to be full of shit. and we think the idea that nothing's wrong is shit.

--"I think Larry Flint, sadly enough, has a better grasp on personal
freedom...."

we disagree. but it's interesting that you write "sadly enough". that implies that you wish it were otherwise. if you find Larry Flynt's "grasp on personal freedom" unsatisfactory, then we wish you felt safe enough to say so and explain why. but we aren't surprised if you don't. we haven't really gotten ANY support from the LA-IMC community (except maybe 'ippy'? where are you?). on the street we got plenty of support. if people do not feel as safe expressing criticism of HUSTLER at LA-IMC as they do on the street in front of the HUSTLER CASINO, then LA-IMC has a problem.

--"has a better grasp on personal freedom, than most of the black t-shirted, black block hypocrites constantly on the eternal march for individual freedoms who simultaneously can not accept anything they do not like."

comparing Flynt's "grasp on personal freedom" with that of the black block is bizarre and not likely to reveal much of anything (for one thing the 'block' is not an organization per se but a tactic). but if you want to be more specific in your criticism of the black block, we'll read what you have to say.

across the activist communities, the black block has often been credited with inspiring and politicizing the young, putting "obscure" economic issues on every tv, helping to internationalize solidarity with the zapatistas, and many other admirable achievements. it has also been blamed for scaring people out of politics, diverting attention from important issues, allegedly not being diverse, etc. etc. Most often the corporate media demonizes the block while the alternative media says the black block "made protest sexy". recently almost all alternative media and organizations have abandoned any support for the black block. LA-IMC, thankfully, has not. we recognize that debates (maybe even this one) can help us all understand much better and correct mistakes, but we SUPPORT the black block and deny the justice of laws forbidding the wearing of masks. anonymity is a valuable tactic in the fight for solidarity.

why haven’t you commented on the racist nature of the ‘Asian Fever’ beauty contest? you must be aware that your silence on this matter comes across as collusion. is the right to pornography more important than racism?

definitely believe the exoticism and romanticism of certain races is offensive. This event at the hustler, obviously isn't about expressing your self-sexuality & race. So, with that I don't think anyone is "player hating everyone with your stupid little sign," i am concerned, when womyn's bodies are exploited... (free-choice or not) when womyn have to prostitute themselves for economic... reasons, it's not to express some sort of sexuality, but it's still hurtful. (And as little as an Asian-beauty contest may be) it's still harmful (regardless if it's self-inflicted or not...)
*
secondarily... (who did anything?) so some people heard about this shit... and decided to do something about it. i doubt anyone else helped... it doesn't look like it... so why are so many people bashing. (yes, i agree on the fact in my mind, that there are far-more important issues with sexism & race (than this event at the hustler)... and there are great organizations for that...) but i also think every little thing counts. even if it's two people holding a little cardboard sign in front of the hotel. (i think it works!)
*
anyway... i give props to these people... fuck corporations that try to steal MY sexuality...my gender... my body... my race. + beauty-contests are stupid anyway... (OUR BODIES ARE NOT FOR SALE!!!)
peace-
f(e)minist

"How did you manage to weave corporations into this?
Demonize Larry to your heart's content but how to you get from Larry to corporations?"

hustler IS incorporated, so it IS a corporation.
what did you think Hustler was, a mom-and-pop-store?

reply to 'f(E)minist'

thanks for the support. it gives us energy! tell us more.... where do you think we should go from here?

you mentioned that there were great organizations addressing issues of racism and sexism. can you point us in some directions we might not know? we know a few orgs but we're also frustrated by a lot. we support a lot of organizations but we're not totally committed to any. maybe that's inevitable but maybe we just have to find or create something.

wushu

every little thing does count.
let's work together.

SOLIDARITY WITH THE BREAKAWAY MARCHERS OF SAN FRANCISCO!!

SOLIDARITY FOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY AND MAYDAY!!!!