An interesting review of a book by Laura Maria Agustin entitled, Sex at the Margins. The review examines sex workers' rights:

"Makes me think of brownfemipower’s recent attempts to maintain solidarity among women of color bloggers. Yes, her actions seem admirable to me, but reading this passage again, and seeing how solidarity can be imposed on different groups of people, and how it can be wielded in the name of some sort of common essence of what women are about or ought to be about if only they were free of patriarchal society… it makes me question solidarity as a value that doesn’t need problematizing. Maybe such solidarity feels imposed to other groups of women. Maybe, like the Nigerian sex workers, other women in bloglandia are feeling manipulated by the demand to be solidaristic in the name of some ultimate goal they may not share. As Agustin and others have shown, this solidarity isn’t necessarily an unproblematic way of dealing with conflict or organizing or political action."

An actual excerpt from the book:

"The social constructs its own objects in order to study, organize, manage, debate and serve them. Regimes may appear completely benign on the surface: medicine – healing, the alleviation of physical suffering; teaching – enlightenment of the ignorant; rehabilitating offenders; protecting the vulnerable from abuse; rescuing victims from violence; reducing risk and harm. But terms like harm, enlightenment, rehabilitation and so on are defined by would-be helpers. Those who are to be helped may well not define these terms in the same way, but their opinions are rarely taken into account."

Quick random pondering:

In trying to create such a thing as womyn solidarity or healing, enlightenment, rescue, etc. comes the issue that no longer is the goal centered around actual individuals and the community but has turned into a goal towards the abstract idea of "good" or "mutual understanding." A doctor heals in order to produce the result of health which can easily make the individual the intermediary towards that end, rather than part of the end in itself. How do we not lose sight of the individual in our search for the creation of a "better" social environment?