257 Comments

1. thomas:

   Just so sad how so many of us manly men are so “full spectrum” sociopathic, especially in our terror of the women we hate so much, but profess to love, only if it’s our way — correction, I am most grateful to know that this is not “My Way,” that though I am a former warrior officer from Vietnam, I am also, by act of congress even, a Gentle-man, who delights not in the pain of my loving partner, but in her pleasure . . .

   A very disturbing article which highlights for me the reality that many of our dominant gender, especially here in the U.S. of Empire, are “testosterone challenged” beyond hope for ourselves individually or as a species . . .

   11 March 2005, 10:45 am

2. Ricky:

   *Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.*

   That’s a fact, Jack.

   So, why would a man “avoid” love and affection? Why would I?

   I must ponder.

   I’ll be back.

   Thanks for this, Robert. I’m with you. Let’s start a fire.

   15 March 2005, 12:50 am

3. Ricky:

   You too, Stan! Sorry! One too many beers tonight! Cheers!

   15 March 2005, 12:54 am

4. Ricky:

   Well, now that I’m a little more sober, I notice a couple considerable barriers to talking about this subject in public. What the heck! Like, how often does this conversation take place:

   “So. Jerk off much?”
   “Oh yeah! I do it all the time!”
   “So what gets you off? Do you find your own body deliciously erotic all by itself, or do you use props?”
   “Nah, gotta have props, you know! I can only get off when I feel safe and in control. When I use porn, I’m in charge! I can do whatever I want, hassle-free. I like that feeling.”
   “Yeah, it’s like having your own little private Idaho, and it’s all for *me*! But… don’t you ever get lonesome in there?”
   “Lonesome!? What the fuck…! You some kind of fag, or what!? What the hell kind of talk is that!”

   This line is stuck like a bone in my throat:

   *Men typically consume pornography specifically to avoid love and affection.*

   Or more like a bone in my ear. I have to ask again, what’s up with that? What the hell kind of talk is that!?

   Breaching this topic reminds of that Far Side cartoon with the cows grazing in the pasture, and one cow is suddenly struck with an epiphonous realization: Hey! This is grass! We’ve been eating grass!”

   Or the accountant guy at his desk, who, after thirty years with the firm, in a single salient moment while poring over this months actuarial reports, pencil suspended in mid-air, suddenly exclaims: “This sucks!!”

   Even comedians are shy to broach the topic. Which is odd. Howie Mandell is the only one I can recall at the moment (remember that one where he’s walking around in hip waders a couple sizes to big? anyway…)

   I think we need to talk about this. So how does one get the conversational ball rolling along?

   So what gets you off? What do you eroticize? Tenderness? Mutual delight? Simulataneous openness and vulnerabilty? Or what?

   Me, near as I can tell, I’m an odd mix. Got some serious and severe New Man/Old Man ambivalences goin’ on. I’d like to put my best self forward. Whateer that looks like. It’s not like we’re awash with men who model the New Man. Know what I mean, Vern? Someone has to go first. Maybe Mikey?

   Maybe you and me.

   Are you lonesome? I am. I’m so lonesome I could cry, like the man sang it. I don’t mind sayin’… well, aren’t we all? Aren’t we? Maybe we should say so? Instead of eating grass? Take a more manly proactive approach to what ails us? Men with men doing that which is seemly?

   We do need each other for this. I sure would like a better legacy to pass on to my sons than what I’ve come up with so far. Wouldn’t you? I want to know the joy. Know what I mean? I want my sons to know the joy. I want my daughters to know the joy, and not the terror; not that most exquisite of torments, to realize all the love is a lie.

   I think it begins by telling the truth. To ourselves, and then to each other.

   No, it begins with a hunger…

   Are you hungry, man?

   I sure the fuck am. Beyond telling.

   No, I don’t need meds. I need you to say, Me, too. That’s when the fire starts.

   Got a light, brother?

   16 March 2005, 4:36 pm

5. Ed:

   If you want to create a majority consensus around an issue, dismissing the POV of half the population is not an approach likely to be successful.

   Contrary to the author’s assertion, most religious conservatives do not espouse “male domination”, and our critique of porno is not on puritanical moral grounds.

   Most of the conservatives that I know reject pornography for similar reasons to yours. We reject it because we recognize the destructive influence it has on healthy relations between men and women. Families are important to us, and we’ve seen porn damage families.

   Perhaps the author should get past his ideological biases and look for common ground on this issue.

   16 March 2005, 8:23 pm

6. Stan:

   Actually, I have to challenge Ed on his assertion that religious conservatives do not espouse male domination. They won’t call it that precisely because of the inroads that have been made politically and socially by women, but if we simply open this conversation up a bit, and begin to talk about “roles” and such, the foundation of patriarchy that underwrites religious conservatism becomes glaringly apparent. We might start with gay marriage as an entryway to that conversation. Homophobia is nothing if not an attempt to police gender and keep women and men in their “proper” roles.

   What is Ed’s position on gay marriage?

   The religious right’s opposition to pornography is related most directly to their aversion to putting sexuality in any form into the public sphere, like their insistence on abstinence only sex education, or sex education at all. The very basis of patriarchal rule and the maintenance (to this day) of patriarchal power has been relegating sexuality and sexual intimacy (which have been constructed patriarchally) in the “private” sphere, where “a MAN’s home is his castle.”

   Ironically, this insistence that the question of sexuality is a “private” matter instead of a system of power is exactly where “sex-radicals” and the religious right share some ground. One (religious right) recognizes and one fails to recognize (’sex radicals’) that social systems of power (like sexuality) that exist PRIOR to liberal law are maintained by liberal law’s exclusion of those system’s from political intervention (like the old laws that denied the existence of marital rape and allowed men to batter their wives). Both base their positions onf sexuality on precisely this exclusion. The religious right’s attempts to move sexuality into the public sphere in the face of challenges from LGBT and women is a predictable reaction to a loss of male social power.

   The other irony, IMO, is that the two things that have conspried to give pornography much of its consumer appeal have been the construction of male sexuality as aggression (and masculinity as impersonal and controlling) and Victorian taboos related to sexual practice. Robert’s description of porn “escalation” shows very clearly what this looks like.

   The reason I challenge Ed on his claim is based on what I know aboujt religious conservative definitions of “healthy families,” because those families always place the father-husband at the “head” of the family, even in the Promis Keepers’ version where the ideal father-husband is a kind of benevolent dictator.

   The reason I challenge ’sex radicals’, aside from the fact that they try to football tackle anyone who even critiques porn as an industry, is that they refuse to acknowledge sexuality as a system of power, and try to redeuce the whole issue to a question of personal choice… which is libertarian nonsense. The VAST majority of women who are in pronography have been bounced out of the patriarchal family frying-pan into the patriarchal sex-commodity fire.

   The inhering opposition between porn-purveyors and religious conservatives has created confusion on the left, a left which has in many cases uncritcally internalized libertarian fallacies in their understandable resistance to the retrograde agenda of the religious right. I believe this is due to the most important failure of the left, which has been the failure to grasp sexuality as a system of social power that can not simply be subsumed as a secondary consideration to a schematic notion of “class.” There has been little attempt, for example, (with notable exceptions like Rosemary Hennessy) to theorize desire using a materialist conception of history. So the left has been caught using the “live-and-let-live” orientation that was in position against religious conservatives, or in some cases even adopting forms of biological determinism to describe sexuality.

   17 March 2005, 9:01 am

7. Stan:

   I have just asked those included in the porn debate on an earlier thread to shift to this thread just to give more people access to it. I have been out of town, and will be out again in the near future for over a week, then again from April 11-28. This is not desinged to be a challenge forum for only one person’s position, so it’s no big deal. I do, however, find myself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages on the earler thread who oppose my position, and to which I have not had time to reply adequately. To my partisans on this issue, I apoloogize for my inability to drink from a fire hose. (-:

   I will say this… I don’t think formal logic is the last word on debate. It is, in fact, based on some assumptions about the reducability of every issue almost to plain mathematics. But debates that are more productive than those waged within the confines of formal logic are those who have learned that logic and transcended it, not those who continue to fall short of it with basic fallacies that used to be taught as part of every “logic and rhetoric” course. Dialectics transcends formal logic. Ad hominem attacks, false dilemmas, unrepresentative samples, straw men, non sequiturs, et al, fall short of formal logic. They are not arguments, but counterfeit arguments because they contain within themselves their own disproof or doubt.

   I suggest to anyone who is engaged in debates that they at least familiarize themselves with logical fallacies to avoid falling into these traps, and to recognize them when they are deployed against you demogogically. A couple of good web references are:

   http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/index.htm
   http://www.drury.edu/ess/Logic/Informal/Strawman.html

   Let’s aim higher, not lower.

   17 March 2005, 9:56 am

8. Bear:

   What about fair trade porn where women control what kind of scenes they do but are still receptive to healthy male fantasies? I think pornography provides a needed outlet for the lonely in todays modern isolated society. Obviously, the horrible things described should be stopped. I think alot of pornography users would switch to a more socially conscious product if it was appealling. I dont mean some watered down erotica shit though, something which recognizes the darker side of masculine sexuality without perpetuating pain and discrimination.

   17 March 2005, 6:12 pm

9. Stan:

   Exactly what is meant by an outlet? What does this metaphorical language say about how sexuality is constructed? A machine that is building up too much pressure, and will explode if it’s not released? This is not nitpicking, but a real question about how sexuality is epistemologically constructed.

   Reason vs the Beast religious constuction.
   Psuedo-Darwinian Man the Hunter construction.
   Newtonian mechanical construction.
   20th Century “normative” medicalized construction.
   Post-Freudian “drive” construction.
   Post-modern “narrative” construction.

   What these all have in common is they are extracted from history.

   And pornography users, as described in this article, are expressing a consumer demand for ever more “extreme” representations of the objectification of women.

   What is the masculine sexuality you refer to here? Is there usch a thing? If so, where does it come from? Again, not a nitpick, but a very serious question that goes to the heart of what Marx called false consciousness… naturalization. Treating a construction of social power as if it were a fact of nature floating above and out of reach of history.

   Feminists have rightly made a big issue of epistemology for just this reason… HOW we know determines what we think we know. I reiterate the point I have been shouting from behind this debate all along… gender (including desire) is not simply biologically determined. It is a system of real, material power, that is socially and ruthlessly enforced, and perpetuated through ideology. The whole notion of masculinity is a sexual ideology, not some “natural” phenomenon.

   As the title of Leonore Tiefer’s book says, “Sex is Not a Natural Act.”

   Men do love their pornography, and they will perform some gymnastics to justify it. Bob and I are not trying to be the sex police, and we are not trying to rain on anyone’s parade. We are asking our fellow men to engage in some serious self-criticism and analysis. How we have been taught to see ourselves as men has real consequences. Everyone feels defensive when their privilege is questioned, and we can even have a tendency to portray ourselves then as the poor, picked-on victims. (This is a general statement, not directed at one particualr person.)

   17 March 2005, 7:45 pm

10. Sex Worker:

    http://feralscholar.org/blog/index.php?p=2

    17 March 2005, 10:44 pm

11. polybi:

    I reiterate the point I have been shouting from behind this debate all along… gender (including desire) is not simply biologically determined. It is a system of real, material power, that is socially and ruthlessly enforced, and perpetuated through ideology. The whole notion of masculinity is a sexual ideology, not some “natural” phenomenon.

    As the title of Leonore Tiefer’s book says, “Sex is Not a Natural Act.”

    So does that mean we’re naturally neuters?

    polybi

    18 March 2005, 4:31 am

12. Stan:

    It means we are not “naturally” anything. Human beings long ago quit being merely the biological products of natural selection, guided by instincts, and surviving in an ecolgical niche. We are active participants in our own history, but participants without much individual influence over that history, and individuals shaped largely by the forces of socialization. Systems of power, like class and gender and national domination (imperialism), are determinative social forces with the most power, that reproduce themselves in individuals through learning (indoctrination and imitation), not instinct, or mindless drives.

    A pre-pubescent boy who is policed by his peers when he shows any behavior characterized as “female”. They taunt him with terms like ‘pussy’ or ‘faggot’… or, ‘girl.’ His parents ensure that he wears boys clothes, censure him if he cries out of emotion instead of phsysical pain, direct him into activities that seem ‘appropriate’ for boys. He sees ‘male’ behavior modeled by his father, uncles, male teachers, entertainment media, et al, and he sees sexuality constructed everywhere in a (male) subject/(female) object, phallocdentric way. He ‘learns’ what is and is not attractive in a woman (which is why cultures not yet taken over by american hyper-culture often have dramatically different standards fo beauty from the hairless, infantilized, anorexic one we cling to here, jacked up on high heels, and pointed to look like a Barbie doll).

    As new technologies emerge under the pressure of innovation or competition (capitalism), and systems of social power are adapted to fit these new technologies, those systems evolve to fit the reorganization necessary to (1) use the technology and (2) maintain the power of the dominant group (class, gender). This process is ‘history.’ Think about the changes that have occurred with just two technologies, TV and cars.

    Anyway… gotta get some work done.

    18 March 2005, 6:01 am

13. Sex Worker:

    (forwarded from the discussion at http://feralscholar.org/blog/index.php?p=2)

    Ok Stan, maybe you are right about my last few comments. I apologise. I think I too many arguments at once then got conflated them all (several of the comments about being “degraded” etc were from an argument on Portland Indy recently where some “feminists” were arguing that raping prostitutes isn’t as bad as raping other women because they’ve “already had their sexual identity destroyed”) which is ironically just what I got annoyed at you about earlier. Also, most of my last few comments were directed at other peoples posts here.

    I just want to clarify that I don’t support the sex-industry but I don’t oppose sex-work or pornography.

    I think that the reason “radical feminists” don’t support (especially not in practice) sex-worker organisations is because at the heart of their ideology is the belief that either women are mindless victims forced into sex-work or that they are choosing to support the opression of all women for their own profit. Therefore they must either be saved, ignored or opposed.

    Anyway, I think that unless someone actually responds to what I have been saying then I will try (sometimes it’s difficult) not to post anymore here because it is likely just to be frustrated or repetetive.

    18 March 2005, 6:28 am

14. Stan:

    One of the most insidious attacks on the rad-fem position contains the premises that we (1) see women in sex work as degraded (a friend has pointed out to me that MOST prostitutes are most often humiliated, and not ‘degraded’ like a depreciated commodity), (2) that we see these women as having no social agency, (3) and that we see prostitutes as uncle toms. These are grotesque and demagogic substitutions for the position I am advancing, and even more grotesque is the idea that any of us would minimize the rape of a prostitute. That is just a slanderous claim.

    What we are saying is that women who are still practicing prostitutes are not the appropriate people to work with organizaitons that are trying to facilitate women leaving prostitution. What we are saying is that prostitution is more than merely work in the sense of ‘class,’ but that it is a manifestation of a system of power that is both inextricable from class but different from the classic marxist definition of it… patriarchy.

    Here is the opening quote from MacKinnon’s book, “Toward a Feminist Theory of the State”:

    “Sexuality is to feminism what work is to marxism: that which is most one’s own, yet most taken away. Marxist theory argues that society is fundamentally constructed of the relations people form as they do and make things needed to survive humanl. Work is the social process of shaping and transforming the material and social worlds, creating people as social beings as they create value. It is that activity by which people become who they are. Class is its structure, production its consequence, capital a congealed form, and control its issue.

    “Implicit in feminist theory is a parallel argument: the molding, direction, and expression of sexuality organizes society into two sexes: women and men. This division underlies the totality of social realitons. Sexuality is the social process through which social relaitons of gender are created, organized, expressed, and directed, creating the SOCIAL (caps mine) beings we know as women and men, as their relations create society. As work is to marxism, sexuality to feminism is socially constructed yet constructing, universal as activity yet historically specific, jointly comprised of matter an d mind. As the organized exproriation of the work of some for the bvenefit of others defines class, workers, the organized expropriation of the sexuality of some for the use of others defines the sex, woman. Heterosexuality is its structure, desirte its internal dynamic, gender and family its congealed forms, sex roles its qualities generalized to social persona, reproduction a consequence, and control its issue.”

    The point is, prostitution is more than merely work, even in the class-sense. It is also defined fundamentally and not tangentially by sexuality, a connected but separately observable system of power that can not be struggled against inside what is commonly perceived to be the class struggle.

    So while I will never try to disrespect you as an individual, nor any other prostitute (you see now why I am averse to using the term sex worker… it ignores the dimension of sexuality as described by CM), and none of us has ever blamed the women (this is a vicious and innacurate caricature used to sideline our actual argument). I believe it is possible to be a victim of patriarchally constructed sexuality and have human agency at the same time. This is not amutually exclusive proposition.

    I am not trying to save you, nor am I ignoring you. I do think you are wrong in your argument for the reasons stated above. You have not engaged with the issue of HOW sexuality is constructed as a system of power, except in its dimension as ‘work.’

    Hartley, on the other hand, as an individual, works as a lobbyist (paid or not) for an industry in which she now prospers, lies to minimize the violent nature of the industry generally, attacks critics like Dr. Sun with unprincipled polemics, btw way using the language of the capitalist market as her baseline justification. As an individual, I see her very much the way I see Condi Rice or Colin Powell. That’s why I won’t dignify her last missive, which was all the same stuff recycled (including the idiotic implication that I am in league with Christian rightists), with a reply. Anyone who wants to see my counter-arguments can scroll through the comments that preceded this redundancy. Her link, btw, doesn’t work, the one that refers to the Deep Throat discussion.

    No one seems to have noticed that Earnest Greene’s attempt to attack me in his original screed refers to my own military past (which he deploys as an ad hominem attack) includes a reference to me as a reformed “whore.” Interesting, isn’t it, how his use of this metaphor is underwritten by the premise that ‘whores’ are people who will do bad things for money (the pimps always get off the hook in this analogy). Get your head around that one.

    18 March 2005, 7:20 am

15. Sheldon:

    Your original post contained the following, starting with a quote from Nina Hartley:

    “It’s not all Bang Bus, and by no means does all of it, or even most of it, conform to the author’s notions of porn-as-expression-of-misogyny.”

    Then, you said:

    “Actually, in the words of my great grandmother, an earthy Oklahoma Cherokee who would know, “That’s horseshit.

    “Anyone who doesn’t believe me can bring up Google and have a look. I find a porn review site called “Pornliving” there, in which there is a menu of pornographic categories, which lists Amateur (which closer inspection reveals is not exactly true, since these are capitalist ventures), Anal, Asian, Big Tits, Black Girls, Black on White, Blow Jobs, Celebrity, Fetish, Gothic, Hardcore, Latina, Lesbian (in which none of the shaven, siliconed women featured bear the least resemblance to the lesbians I know), Live, Mature, Multiple Models, Pantyhose, Pornstar, Single Model, Soft Core, Teens, Video. In case the blatant racist-sexism of some of these categories or the dehumanization and objectification of women as body parts fails to even bump one’s outrage meter, a peek inside any one of the many sites listed typically describes key forms of sexual action (which is the commodity) – like ejaculating in women’s faces, stretching their anuses with various and often damaging forms of penetration, and gagging them during fellatio – and the vast majority of these sites refer to women in terms like cum-hungry slut, nasty little bitch, etc.

    Ms. Hartley’s contention that this is an aberration within a much more benign industry is patently untrue.”

    Oh, really? For the past week, I have been examining the “Free Tour” and “Guest Areas” of each of the 861 websites (now up to 865) on the Pornliving website for any derogatory epithets hureld at women, not only “bitch” and “slut”, but also “tramp”, “whore”, “bimbo”,
    “tramp”, “harlot”, “ho’”, “slave wife”, “cunt”(referring to the woman per se) and “stupid”, as well as a bit more artfully crafted sentences that reveal the same sentiment. Without considering the context in which these words are used, here is the complete tally, sorted in alphabetical order by first alphanumeric character of website name(so that others can check my data). Each number on the left is the total websites containing at least one sexist epithet toward women; the number on the right is the total websites for that alphanumeric category:

    #0-9: 3 / 9
    A: 4 / 60
    B: 36 / 75
    C: 20 / 74
    D: 9 / 36
    E: 4 / 28
    F: 13 / 38
    G: 13 / 34
    H: 16 / 42
    I: 3 / 14
    J: 8 / 19
    K: 1 / 19
    L: 6 / 35
    M: 18 / 52
    N: 5 / 30
    O: 2 / 8
    P: 18 / 51
    Q: 0 / 5
    R: 9 / 27
    S: 17 / 84
    T: 22 / 47
    U: 0 / 5
    V: 6 / 20
    W: 10 / 27
    X: 1 / 13
    Y: 4 / 8
    Z: 0 / 3

    GRAND TOTAL OF MISOGYNIST WEBSITES REVIEWED ON PORNLIVING.COM:
    —> 255

    GRAND TOTAL OF WEBSITES REVIEWED ON PORNLIVING.COM:
    —> 861

    My trusty, rusty calculator tells us that 255 / 861 = 29.62%

    Stan, is this what you meant by an “absolute majority”? Using your OWN citeria, and then some, your conclusion is way off base. To paraphrase Marx, your indictment of Nina Hartley dissolves into air.

    If one starts to look at context (something which you don’t do, except when Andrea Dworkin is being questioned), that figure might have to be adjusted downward. At least several dozen of the ‘bad’ sites are clearly run by women who have reclaimed words like ’slut’ and ‘bitch’ to give them a more positive, even playful meaning.

    Like African-Americans with the ‘N’ word…

    Like gay people with ‘queer’…

    Like Jews are starting to with…’heeb’ (yes, there is a magazine by that name run by Generation-X Jews)

    Stan, did you actually tally up each of those websites, or were you bluffing, hoping that folks would feel intimidated by the large number of websites to be checked out? Well, not me.

    Dude, if you can’t get the math straight, I don’t believe you’re entitled to be lecturing anybody about simple logic or dialectics. Garbage in, garbage out. Or, as your great-grandmother would say…

    18 March 2005, 7:46 am

16. Stan:

    No, Sheldon, I did not review 800+ websites. I don’t have that kind of time. Robert did some actual research, which is in the article above. Would you care to comment on that?

    What do you not understand about the term “etc.”? And what do you refuse to understand about the argument that the VAST MAJORITY of porn is anti-woman propaganda?

    A mere 29% actually uses epithets to describe women! What YOU call epithets.

    How many that do not use that explicit language reduce women to a body part or phenotype (big tits, teen, black, Asian)? How many represent the women as sex-hungry obsessives? How many of them are pushing to the extremes described by the porn magnate quoted in Robert’s article?

    You are doing it again, Sheldon. You are reducing what I said to one part of what I said in order to recast my argment into one that you think can rebut. Did you just read the PL page on these sites, or did you look inside them? You say you did, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. The question remains, are these sites misogynist?

    I did not do anything except a representative sample, and I found such content in almost all of them, which are invariable linked to other sites. Is the content misgynist, or is it not?

    Here’s the first one I drag up on the second category… “crystal clear exclusive pussy and anal internal cumshots” Does this qualify as misogynist in your cosmos?

    And yes, slut and bitch are such playful terms… the very ones used during virtually every incident of battering and rape.

    Sheldon, this is not about me. Speak to the issue.

    Look at the images in these sites. Anyone, look at the images. What do these images say about women?

    BTW, I just brought up PL, and there is the “feature site of the day,” HomeCummers. It’s all very young, hyper-feminized, obviously posed women. Sub title: The nastiest girls on the web.” First “model”: Hunny Bunny. First title: “Dirty Talking Bitch.”

    Gosh, glad I checked. And here I thought porn was anti-woman.

    18 March 2005, 11:40 am

17. Sex Worker:

    This is the charming discussion I was reffering to (I couldn’t post a link before because because there was some problem with their search engine). This is someones response to an article about Portland city police raping a couple of sex-workers. I know it is not representative of and feminists (that is why I put the terms in quotes), but my point was actually about why I kept bringing it up - not saying that you had claimed that. I think I made that pretty clear so don’t do that “straw man” thing with me, please.

    ——————————————

    the tragedy 11.Feb.2005 10:00

    by sue

    When $ex is for sale, isn’t rape less tragic? Isn’t it more akin to shoplifting from a store than burglary of a house? I understand that the bent of this article was to shame a cop, but this is nothing like the violent rapes of teenage girls. When your body is for sale, sex is theft of a buyable good. Sex no longer is related to love with prostitution, its been reduced to a product. It’s common in the lower and middle classes to distrust and dislike cops, I just happen to not be such a big fan of prostitutes either.

    Were the prostitutes ‘asking for it’? I’m sure they weren’t. I just find it degrading to the rape victims whos sexual identities were destroyed by rape. A fate served to prostitutes much earlier in their lives that will continue at this higher rate if prostitution remains illegal.

    http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/310374.shtml

    18 March 2005, 6:02 pm

18. Sex Worker:

    The other thing is that the reason I posted my comments on the other thread was that they are not relevant to the discussion that has been happening on this one. By posting them here - out of context of what was being discussed there you have changed the meaning of them.

    ———-

    “What we are saying is that women who are still practicing prostitutes are not the appropriate people to work with organizaitons that are trying to facilitate women leaving prostitution.”

    What I am saying is that by taking the position that the only way to approach the issue of prostitution is to demand it’s abolition you are ignoring the reality that it is a part of the material reality of class society. By taking the position that the only way to approach sex-workers is to try to remove them from the industry you have essentially abandoned the potential for organising and the basic human rights of sex-workers. You actually CANT support sex workers organising.

    You also conveniantly ignore marriage. If prostitution is the commodification of sexuality then marriage and the family is sexual slavery.

    In many countries there have been organisations of “house-wives” etc during periods of struggle. I have never heard anyone say that women who are housewives are not the appropriate people to work with organizaitons that are trying to facilitate women leaving the home in response to these organisations.

    18 March 2005, 6:17 pm

19. Pavlos:

    You raise some interesting points and I agree with the goals of your argumentation. However I don’t agree about your assesment of the severity or character of the problem. Here are a few counter arguments:

    As you admit, the main value of porn is that it is a record of actual sex between the performers. We are turned on by the fact that real women, who are generally not slaves, offered to do these scenes. Personally, I find this liberating. The narrative is indeed deplorable, but I would argue that it is a very ugly secondary detail and not the main premise of the work.

    Why are you assuming that men take pleasure in imagining that they are men in a world where women act like Gang Bang Girls? I know that if I was a man in that environment, it would be stressful and mildly entertaining for a few minutes and then I would be sexually drained. I am a man, but I fantasize about having the extremely intense sexual experience the *women* performers appear to have. I cite the increasing degree of extreme penetrations, etc. as supporting evidence. Stupid repression of maintream men’s own “feminine” sexuality may be the main problem here.

    It is hard enough to make a porm movie where the women are stereotypically described as “cock hungry sluts”. The men and the women have to get naked and have sex, they both have to prepare physically, and they have to be content with baring this intimate and vulnerable aspect of themselves to the World. Now you want these already brave folk to exhibit real sex, and real affection, and real intimacy and sexuality. I too would like that, by my, you are demanding!

    So, in summary, when I watch maintream porn I admire the women perfomenrs, the more so the more extreme the acts, and despair at the cruel partiachical scenarios that the producers set up. I don’t think I’m an atypical man, except perhaps in honesty. I see these problems as stemming from repression of vulnerable sexuality (in everyone, but mainly in men) and I agree that *that* is the main problem that Patriarchy has saddled us.

    18 March 2005, 6:26 pm

20. Ricky:

    *I don’t think formal logic is the last word on debate. It is, in fact, based on some assumptions about the reducability of every issue almost to plain mathematics.*

    I’ve heard it said that logic is a male hysteria.

    Not all assertions are propositional - the ones that are are of course debateable. Some assertions are testimonial, like “That hurt me!” Guys like my brother might seek to counter someone’s testimonial assertions (particularly ones that implicate him - “That didn’t hurt! See? [SMACK!]”), but that isn’t debate - that’s simply a hearsay argument in defense.

    I’m not really all that interested in debate. I want to folks hear the screams - all the blood that cries out from the ground, from the mortar in the walls, from the rooftops, from the deep. Just listen - that tell-tale beat, that constant drone - can’t you hear it? Shhh…. just listen! There! See?

    I’m thinking maybe if we can hear, and grieve, maybe then we can start gettting better.

    18 March 2005, 6:32 pm

21. Sheldon:

    Stan, I AM speaking to the issue by engaging you in a debate. You have made yourself part of the issue by creating a blog and taking a stand on porn here. Why should I ignore what I regard as your misrepresentations of the facts – because it suits you? The business about epithets – which you brought up in the first place as a key part of your accusations against Nina Hartley - was easily subject to verification, enabling us to see how much integrity you are bringing to your side of the debate. If that part of your argument is false, then it might well serve notice on the rest of your case.

    There are at least tens of thousands of porn websites on the Internet, and thousands of them are free. Any claim that Pornliving constitutes a representative sample is dubious, since it covers less than 900 of the paid ones, none of the free ones and omits gay male XXX-rated websites entirely.

    It’s nice for you to admit that you didn’t review all or even most of the websites – but don’t you think it would have been more honest if you had said that from the get-go, instead of implying the opposite? Wouldn’t that have kept the debate to a high bar, one that you claim you want?

    I understand what you meant by “etc.” In fact, while you mentioned only two epithets, I went out of my way to include others, expanding the list. You say that list is “what YOU call epithets.” Really, well do tell - which of those words don’t belong there?

    “Crystal clear exclusive pussy and anal internal cumshots” do not qualify as misogynist verbiage in “my” or most liberal feminists’ cosmos. The same websites that refer to female genitalia as “pussy” also refer to male genitalia as “cock” or “prick”. Did you forget that naked men are also featured on these websites and are just as much ‘objectified’ as the women with whom they appear?

    Overall, what indeed do these images say about women, especially the huge majority – 71% - of Pornliving’s websites that are not misogynist? They say that women should enjoy guilt-free reproductive sex and not be punished for it. Women (and men) on these sites are not ‘reduced’ – they are transformed into sex-positive people. That’s an important message of confrontation with the dominant puritanical culture. By and large, that’s the message of the sexually explicit material that’s been emerging from the San Fernando Valley and other venues since the beginning of filmed porn. And that is precisely why porn and its producers have been subjected to persecution by the state authorities.

    That you see the women in these images as ‘obsessive’ says something about you, as if one should downplay one’s libido because sex by itself is evil and can only be justified when part of a greater purpose. Sorry, but I don’t Cotton to the Mather…

    18 March 2005, 6:39 pm

22. Sheldon:

    Oops. I should have originally posted “guilt-free NON-reproductive sex.”

    Would be nice if the posting machinery here had an editing function.

    18 March 2005, 6:43 pm

23. Ricky:

    *…a real question about how sexuality is epistemologically constructed.

    Reason vs the Beast religious constuction.
    Psuedo-Darwinian Man the Hunter construction.
    Newtonian mechanical construction.
    20th Century “normative” medicalized construction.
    Post-Freudian “drive” construction.
    Post-modern “narrative” construction.*

    Cool!

    So, what’s next? IS it up for grabs, then? Okay, once more from the top… Let’s get creative this time around. Maybe we caould start by paying attention…

    Elizabeth Cady Stanton had a great suggestion, I think:
    “Man in his lust has regulated long enough this whole question of sexual intercourse. Now let the mother of mankind, whose prerogative it is to set bounds to his indulgence, rouse up and give this whole matter a thorough, fearless examination.”

    I think it’s high time we men started doing that, too.

    So, What are we doing? Anyway?

    Yeah, that thing. That thi-i-i-ing.

    What are we doing?!

    18 March 2005, 6:43 pm

24. Ricky:

    *…as if one should downplay one’s libido because sex by itself is evil and can only be justified when part of a greater purpose.*

    Libido?! Is that your Freudian slip showing, Sheldon, or do you consciously and unapologetically consider yourself a driven man? Surely there’s more to it than just that! Is your love electro-chemical? Is your lust? Gird up your loins like a man, and tell me what “sex by itself” looks like. If you can do that, then tell you can try explaining to me how it’s so much better.

    18 March 2005, 7:22 pm

25. Sex Worker:

    This is Ernests statement:

    “They say there’s no missionary more fervent than a reformed whore, and Goff’s overheated anti-sex-industry rhetoric would certainly seem to bear out that contention, but in terms of actual resumes, I think either Nina’s or mine would be far easier to defend on moral grounds than his.”

    I diddn’t comment on it because, in the version I saw it had been changed to “reformed alcoholic”. Either way it doesn’t actually make much sense.

    Firstly, as I said before, I don’t think your personal history is relevant because you are not supporting the millitary but actively opposeing it. Whether you or Ernest are good activists or nice people is entirely irrelevant.

    Seccondly, the comparison between the millitary and sex-work is pretty flimsy. The only similarity is that people do what they have to, or are conditioned to, to survive. But the job of prostitutes doesn’t involve opressing people on behalf of an imperialist government. Even if you believe that sex-workers are providing ideological support for patriarchy - it still is not the same as being part of the armed wing of the state.

    I know that Nina’s bottom line is Capitalist production. That is where my dissagreement with her lies. I don’t support the sex-industry any more than I support any other industry. But I don’t see how pornography provides any more ideological support for partiarchy than does 90% of depictions of women in the media. Why should I oppose pornography when I don’t oppose magazines like Cosmopolitan? I oppose much of the ideological content but I don’t oppose depictions of sex that are made to arouse people any more than I oppose magazines that are made to entertain them.

    As for the thing about “liberal law” - it’s a flimsy argument because the law DOES intervene in people’s private lives all the time. It intervenes to support patryarchy by outlawing homosexuality, through “age of consent” laws (I’m not advocating pedophilia BTW and I know it’s a complex issue, but the fact is that these laws have been mostly used to supress the sexuality of young, especially gay, people), through re-enforcing domination of women and children through marriage and the family, by outlawing sex-workers (when have anti-prostitution or porn laws EVER actually helped sex-workers?).

    The only times that the law ever doesn’t intervene in peoples private lives are:
    a) when as you said, in the case of male property rights over their family
    b) where progressive activists and community sentiment have FORCED them to but out (ie in the case of homosexuality etc)

    The whole point is that BECAUSE liberal law is just power and class relationships codefied, you can’t depend on it to protect the rights of the opressed. That is why any censorship laws end up being used against progressive sources no matter what they were originally intended for. That is why in Australia pro-choice campaigners have argued for simply taking abortion laws off the books rather than “legalising” it - we have seen what happened with the roe V wade thing in the US.

    Also, I haven’t argued specifically about sexuality being a “globalised system of exploitation” for a few reasons. Firstly, I am not entirely clear on what you mean by that. I have been reading your stuff (not just on this thread) to try to get my head around it and I’m still just not sure what you are trying to say or whether or not I agree with it. My *feeling* is that there is a lack of something (awareness? interest? something ideological?) or something about that on the left. I don’t think the liberal law thing is it. I don’t think that trying to get rid of prostitution or porn will help whatever that is. I’m not even sure what the right question to ask to clarify it is… I just don’t have the words yet so I can’t even think it clearly (and BTW “prostituted people” is NOT the words I’m looking for). I was hopeing that it might come clear to me during the course of discussion but because nobody really responds to what I have written it just isn’t happening. THis debate is fucking frustrating because the left just don’t want to discuss it and always resort to silly guilt trips about some mythical bunch of “prostituted-people” who are not like me or anyone I have ever met. We just aren’t communicating. And no, I’m not going to read Dworkin because I have tried to before and her writing was so self-indulgent and hate-filled it made me feel physically ill.

    Do you get it? I’m *trying* to understand what you (and people like Nina) are saying and I’m *trying* to get you to understand what I’m saying. This *is* personal for me in a way (for obvious reasons) so please excuse me if I get fustrated and angry sometimes.

    18 March 2005, 7:41 pm

26. Sex Worker:

    Actually now that I think about it, even tho the comparison between soldiers and sex-workers is really flimsy, maybe there is a contradiction in how you apprach these issues?

    Q. Lastly, what do you think are the immediate concrete tasks of the anti-war movement? How much of this involves trying to reach out to the troops with their growing demoralization and resentment?

    A. I’ve long been an advocate of reaching out to the military, but not in the ham-handed way some people have tried. Saying goofy shit like “Overthrow your officers!” is not going anywhere now. The BTHN campaign is addressing real issues, with a lot of emphasis on outreach to military families. Soldiers might reactively engage in shouting matches with a stranger from the movement, but they have respectful, thoughtful discussions with spouses and parents and siblings. They also confide in them when they themselves experience doubts.

    Eventually, of course, I believe the soldiers will have to overthrow some of their officers, but not until we overthrow all of our bosses. The important thing for revolutionaries — if that term is to mean anything other than phrase-mongering and adventurism — is to build and maintain a bridge with the military. The day will come when we will need them, and they will need us.

    http://www.agitprop.org.au/nowar/20031111_goff_stan_goff_interview.php

    18 March 2005, 8:20 pm

27. Ricky:

    **But I don’t see how pornography provides any more ideological support for partiarchy than does 90% of depictions of women in the media. Why should I oppose pornography when I don’t oppose magazines like Cosmopolitan?**

    The lights went on for me when I got a handle on the fact that pornography is political propaganda. Pornography perpetuates and reinforces and reiterates and reifies a foundational social myth, namely that Women are for Men, or more explicitly, women are for men’s pleasure. It functions effectively as a psycho-social conditioning agent that results in the ordering of human existence both personally and socially, how people see the world, and themselves and others in it. It’s a fact. Some may regard those assertions as debatable. But it’s something that needs to be looked at, just in case, most would agree.

    18 March 2005, 8:21 pm

28. Ed:

    Well, this conversation has moved far beyond my limited point of input, so I’ll step back out of it. But since Stan asked me a direct question, I feel compelled to answer it.

    I have no opinion on gay marriage. Frankly, it’s not something I’ve given much thought to or care about. But if forced to pick a position, I’d probably favor some sort of civil union. That seems a reasonable compromise between two segments of society disinclined to compromise. However, gay marriage wouldn’t really bother me either. To each his own.

    Beyond that, I think you are wrong to paint all religious and social conservatives with one broad brush. Like all large movements, we comprise many sub-groups at varying points along the spectrum of views. Some no doubt fit your theories. But plenty of others do not.

    If you are truly interested in building a consensus for action and change on this issue, or even trying to shift the tone of public discourse, then you should look for common ground with as many groups as possible. However, if you are merely looking to score some rhetorical points, then by all means reject all points of view that are not ideologically pure.

    Ed

    18 March 2005, 8:31 pm

29. Sex Worker:

    “Pornography perpetuates and reinforces and reiterates and reifies a foundational social myth, namely that Women are for Men, or more explicitly, women are for men’s pleasure. It functions effectively as a psycho-social conditioning agent that results in the ordering of human existence both personally and socially, how people see the world, and themselves and others in it.”

    So does Cosmo, so do most movies, music, books, magazines, everything else. Even those horrible T-shirts with “Princess” written across the breasts.

    The basis of pornography is depiction of sex designed to arouse people. The fact that most of it (including the written variety) contains mysoginist propaganda doesn’t actually fundamentally change that as far as I can see.

    18 March 2005, 8:37 pm

30. Ricky:

    “One genius of the system we live under is that the strategies it requires to survive it from day to day are exactly the opposite of what is required to change it.” Catharine MacKinnon

    18 March 2005, 8:37 pm

31. Sex Worker:

    Yes, but the question is how do you approach that. Working to create proffits for capitalists is the opposite of what you need to do to change it but most dont approach that by dropping out - rather by organising for better conditions. People see there power by organising for immediate gains and that helps them to organise agaist the system as a whole…

    Sorry about the over-simplified Marxism 101 but that kind of is the whole point of my argument - how do you concretely approach this isse (read previous thread).

    18 March 2005, 8:46 pm

32. Sex Worker:

    Damn. Now I’m starting to see a hole in my own argument which is that the socialisation of labour under-capitalism creates the pre-conditions for a classless society but does the comodification of sex actually create the pre-conditions for a non-patriarchal society…maybe the destruction of the family system does? Anybody have any thoughts?

    18 March 2005, 8:52 pm

33. Ricky:

    *So does Cosmo, so do most movies, music, books, magazines, everything else. Even those horrible T-shirts with “Princess” written across the breasts.*

    I’m with you on that. It’s just life in the Patriarchy. But pornography is, as they say, a lot more explicit. But yes, for sure, the subtler messages in support of the myth deserve to be challenged, as well. I tend to regard porn as a central metaphor/motif, and the rest as thematic allusions to the same strain.

    *The basis of pornography is depiction of sex designed to arouse people. The fact that most of it (including the written variety) contains mysoginist propaganda doesn’t actually fundamentally change that as far as I can see.*

    Got to ask, Which people is it designed to arouse? Women people? Also have to ask, Why is it that men find misogynist propoganda so arousing? And, Why is that men don’t recognize misogyny even when right in their face?

    18 March 2005, 9:07 pm

34. Sex Worker:

    Well, for a start I have a couple of female friends who write porn. One writes alien sex porn which she sells to magazines, the other writes lesbian porn on the internet for herself and any other people who read it. There are also people who film themselves or others having consensual sex, no monetary transaction involved because they enjoy it. I know that this is a minority, but so are people who put out progressive women’s magazines. Why is a graphic description of sex qualitatively different from anything else?

    18 March 2005, 9:22 pm

35. Sex Worker:

    Also, I know that men find mysoginist depictions of sex arousing because they have been conditioned to. Not just by porn but by everything in their socialisation from how they are treated and taught to treat women.

    18 March 2005, 9:24 pm

36. Sheldon:

    Ricky:

    The libido is simply another term for the sex drive. It’s part of all human’s psychic infrastructure. To what use it is put depends on the society in which one dwells.

    Sex “by itself” could mean a consensual one-night stand or a brief fling. with no follow-up commitments necessary. In the realm of sexual fantasy (which pornography depicts), this is a very popular scenario for people who don’t want to do that in real life due to fear of disease, performance anxiety, etc.

    Hope that helps.

    18 March 2005, 9:32 pm

37. Sheldon:

    Here is the article from the February 9, 2005 New York Times referenced by Nina Hartley for the link-impaired:

    An X-Rated Phenomenon Revisited
    By CHARLES MCGRATH (NYT)

    History, Karl Marx might have observed had he been more savvy about public relations, repeats itself first as documentary, then as a panel discussion.

    On Monday evening, at the New York premiere of ”Inside Deep Throat,” a movie about the making of the groundbreaking 1972 adult film, the guests — who included Claire Danes, Dana Ivey, Ron Silver, Kurt Andersen, Tina Brown, Erica Jong and Brian Grazer, the documentary’s producer — strode boldly into the Paris Theater. They did not hide their faces behind newspapers, as viewers of the original film did until people like Jacqueline Onassis and Truman Capote made going to watch ”Deep Throat” chic and almost respectable. Nor did they resort to the old porn watcher’s strategy of circling the block a couple of times before sidling into the lobby when no one was looking.

    They watched the documentary intently, laughing several times and clapping at the end, and then listened as some experts, including the book publisher Judith Regan and the law professors Catharine A. MacKinnon, of Michigan, and Alan M. Dershowitz, of Harvard, got up and talked about the ”Deep Throat” phenomenon, without coming to many conclusions about what it might or might not mean.

    Neither Ms. Regan nor Mr. Dershowitz, it turned out, had ever seen ”Deep Throat.” Mr. Dershowitz, who defended the movie’s male star, Harry Reems, in a prosecution for obscenity, said he had not needed to see the film to know that an important First Amendment issue was at stake. And though Ms. Regan had presumably been invited on the panel as a ”pornocrat,” to use a term that came up a couple of times — as the publisher of both ”The Surrender,” Toni Bentley’s memoir of anal sex, and Jenna Jameson’s ”How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” — she claimed not to be an expert.

    As a young woman, she said, she was not one of the thousands of sensation-seekers who dutifully lined up at the World Theater, on West 49th Street, where ”Deep Throat” was first shown. She added that she learned about Ms. Jameson from her son, who dropped out of his M.I.T. fraternity because Ms. Jameson’s videos were all the fraternity brothers were interested in watching.

    Ms. Regan proved a surprising ally, moreover, to Ms. MacKinnon, who for years represented Linda Lovelace, the other star of ”Deep Throat,” after Ms. Lovelace claimed she had been coerced into appearing in the film and sought to have it suppressed. The new documentary, she said, told only part of the truth. And by focusing on censorship, she went on, it failed to address the fact that pornographic films not only are sexually exploitive of the women who made them but also tend to employ women, like Ms. Lovelace, with a history of being sexually abused.

    Ms. Regan reminded everyone that ”How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” is subtitled ”A Cautionary Tale.” She said she thought that despite all Ms. Jameson’s financial success, the author was ”miserable,” and that the writing of the book had caused her to realize how much she had been exploited. Though she was not averse to selling a few copies, Ms. Regan added — which is why ”How to Make Love” had a suggestive cover and some topless photographs inside — part of her reason for publishing the book was to encourage Ms. Jameson and women like her to begin exploring their own stories.

    The other big issue of the evening was whether watching porn is bad for you. Absolutely not, said Mr. Dershowitz, who cited evidence showing that as pornographic films become more and more available, the incidence of rapes is actually declining. Ms. MacKinnon had some studies of her own, and also some meta-studies — that is, studies of studies — showing that consumption of pornography ”does increase acts and attitudes of violence against women.”

    This was not the first time these two have sparred, and they now appear to have their roles down pat. She discreetly rolled her eyes while he delivered a line so good that it might have been prepared beforehand: ”Michigan thinks that everything Harvard can do, it can do meta.”

    On the evidence of ”Inside Deep Throat,” which includes scenes from the original and is itself shot in a way that suggests the grainy, lurid look of porn films 30 years ago, the making (if not the watching) of pornographic films may have a strange aging effect. In interview segments, the director, Gerard Damiano (whose oeuvre also includes ”The Devil in Miss Jones,” ”Meatball,” ”Manbait” and ”Manbait 2”), the production manager, Ron Wertheim, and Count Sepy Dobronyi, in whose wine cellar some of the action was filmed, all seem a little raisiny — shrunken and overly tanned. Even former Damiano stars like Andrea True and Georgina Spelvin are, sadly, showing their years.

    The one exception is Harry Reems (aka Herbert Streicher), who, after years of alcohol and drug addiction, pulled himself together and — now trim and silver-haired — works as a real estate broker in Park City, Utah. He was at the premiere, smiling and shaking hands and looking like a guy who never watches anything racier than ”Wall Street Week.”

    ”I haven’t seen an adult film in 25 or 30 years,” he said. ”I don’t need to. I’m happily married now.”

    Correction: February 19, 2005, Saturday An article and a picture caption in The Arts on Feb. 9 about a panel discussion at the New York premiere of the documentary film ”Inside Deep Throat” misstated the surname of the director in some copies. He is Brian Grazer, not Glazer.

    18 March 2005, 9:53 pm

38. Sheldon:

    The “Inside Deep Throat” documentary has its own website, from which this account appeared. This is the one that mentions throat rape:

    “The New York screening of Inside Deep Throat at the Paris Theatre was a hoot. The boisterous audience included a clutch of entertainers like Bebe Neuwirth, Claire Danes, Fred Schneider, Scot Whitman John Epperson aka Lypsinka, Jason Bateman, Ron Silver joined at the hips to doppelganger Alan Dershowitz, and Gwyneth Paltrow. There were reams of scribes: Erica Jong, Tina Brown, the Page Six posse, Cintra Wilson, Emma Forest. And a gaggle of documentarians: Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans), Shari Berman (American Splendor), Todd Graff (Camp), and Barbara Kopple (My Generation).

    This time, the hapless lot of directing a post-screening panel fell to Elvis Mitchell, former movie critic at the NY Times. The panel was made up of HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan, journallist Peter Boyer, criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz (who defended Harry Reems in the famous obscenity trial), and feminist professor Catherine McKinnon.

    Mitchell looked on helplessly as McKinnon did her thing, claiming that the film we had just watched was promoting the acceptance of rape. At one point, however, her righteous zeal became unhinged when she claimed that it was not possible to do deep throat safely, that it was a dangerous act that could only be done under hypnosis. “What’s so funny?” she snapped as the audience rippled with mirth. Todd Graff’s hand shot up - “I can do it,” he said, and the room echoed with a chorus of gay men going “me too!” (Gigi Grazer - wife of Brian - later told Graff to stop bragging and that she could do it better than him and had the rocks on her fingers to prove it. Touché). But La McKinnon was not to be discouraged; she claimed that emergency rooms were filled with women victims of throat rape, not to mention the ones who hadnt even made it that far and had died in the act.

    Judith Regan chimed in preposterously, maintaining that her Jenna Jameson autobiography, How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, really was “a cautionary tale” rather than just an afterthought of a subtitle. She argued that all sex workers are victims of sexual abuse. Frontliner Peter Boyer went on on about rape porn and tried to raise a quorum on fisting.

    Which left the task of defending Deep Throat and the porn world by extension to Alan Dershowitz, who pointed out that to say porn promoted rape was akin to saying that rap promoted. . . But then Elvis Mitchell leapt to his feet, as if about to throw a Springer-like punch, and put us all out of our misery by ending the panel abruptly.

    Adjourning to the after party at 81/2, Michael Musto said, “Congratulations, you’ve managed to incite the exact same debate that happened 30 years ago. People said exactly the same things they said decades ago. That really takes some doing.”

    And after that, everyone wound up at the after-after party at The Cock. Except Catherine McKinnon.”

    18 March 2005, 10:03 pm

39. Sex Worker:

    Firstly, the article was funny Sheldon (btw I can too! … sorry, couldn’t help myself…), but I really don’t think that whether or not Linda Lovelace enjoyed making Deep Throat really sheds any light on the issue.

    She was so badly abused that I don’t think she would have been able to make a free decision about whether or not to do porn. Living for prolonged periods under constant fear and pain makes people physically and emotionally incapable of making decisions based on anything other than immediate survival. From the later interview of hers I read she seemed to have a lot of contradictory thoughts about it all (ie that porn helped her escape an abusive relationship and improved her life but that it was also exploitative) and a classic case of PTSD. I think that is far more likely a reason why she flipped so wildly between being anti and pro-porn at various times than any kind of opportunism.

    The point is that she is just one individual and there are also people like Nina who made informed decisions and enjoy their work. Not just in porn but in prostitution and other sex work too.

    “Sexuality is the social process through which social relaitons of gender are created, organized, expressed, and directed, creating the SOCIAL (caps mine) beings we know as women and men, as their relations create society.”

    So is labor.

    “As work is to marxism, sexuality to feminism is socially constructed yet constructing, universal as activity yet historically specific, jointly comprised of matter an d mind. As the organized exproriation of the work of some for the bvenefit of others defines class, workers, the organized expropriation of the sexuality of some for the use of others defines the sex, woman. ”

    I have never said that prostitution is exactly the same as other work. What I have been asking is:

    Why is it that you do not go around calling for wage-labor to be immediately abolished but you (basically) do for sex-work (whatever you want to call it)?

    Why do radical feminists not actively support sex-worker self-organising?

    18 March 2005, 11:56 pm

40. Sheldon:

    Hi, Sex Worker!

    I only reprinted the article(s) here because Stan may have thought that Nina and Anthony were making up stories about MacKinnon because his link to the Times site waa broken.

    BTW, I’ve noticed that both Stan and Robert Jensen don’t exactly say that 100% of porn is misogynist. Stan says an absolute majority of it is, which leaves open the possibility (given a literal reading of the text, since ‘absolute majority’ does not equal ALL) that he thionks some of it is not misogynist.

    Perhaps Stan would like to give us examples of porn that he approves of. Name of videotape, DVD, or website would be fine, thank you.

    19 March 2005, 12:38 am

41. Sex Worker:

    Ps… This is what Engels actually said about it… I have so far not seen the radical feminists add anything particularly enlightening to this.

    —————————
    From Family State and Private Property:

    With the rise of the inequality of property … waged labour appears sporadically side by side with slave labour, and at the same time, as its necessary correlate, the professional prostitution of free women side by side with the forced surrender of female slaves. Thus the heritage which group marriage has bequeathed to civilisation is double edged … contradictory: here monogamy, there hetaerism [multiple sexual relationships] with its most extreme form prostitution. Hetaerism is as much a social institution as any other; it continues the old sexual freedom—to the advantage of the men.

    —

    Monogamy arose from the concentration of larger wealth in the hands of a single individual – a man – and from the need to bequeath this wealth to the children of that man and no other. For this purpose the monogamy of the woman was required, not that of the man, so this monogamy of the woman did not in any way interfere with open or concealed polygamy of the man… In the modern world monogamy and prostitution are indeed opposites, but inseparable opposites, poles of the same order of society.

    ——————
    From Communist Mannifesto:

    The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property-historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production — this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

    Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

    On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

    The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

    Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

    But, you will say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

    And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

    The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

    But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus.

    The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

    He has not even a suspicion that the real point is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

    For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

    Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes,take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

    Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus,at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with,is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest,it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

    ————————-

    Ok I’m gonna try and tear myself away from this discussion again now…

    19 March 2005, 12:42 am

42. Anti-Porn Feminist Activist:

    Hi everyone. I wrote a letter to Counterpunch on Nina Hartley’s article a few weeks ago, and happen to have it handy. I figure I might as well share it with all of you as it seems quite relevant to the discussion on this blog. Feel free to give feedback. I’d love to hear what you all have to say about the points I’ve made in it. And before I forget - thanks for the fantastic article, Stan. If only more people would actually really listen to the truths in it….

    Dear Counterpunch Editors,

    I am a woman who didn’t think much about pornography until a few years ago - when I happened to run across some on the Internet by mistake. I was so disturbed by the cruel and out of control exploitation and misogyny of what I saw that I felt compelled to learn if what I had come across was representative of the American $10 billion porn industry that I knew to exist. So rather than just read the second hand selective writings of individuals on either side of the debate about porn, I decided that the one of the best ways to learn about the issue was to study pornography itself.

    So I went to a porn store with thousands of porn videos and DVDs. I spent a long time looking through hundreds of them at random, to get a very good sampling of what the porn business is all about. What I found was that all of these porn videos had something in common - they all contained one or more of the following elements, and sometimes all of them: degradation, dehumanization, exploitation, violence, cruelty, forced sex, blatant misogyny, and humiliation. (Also in most of them it was clear that the performers were engaging in unsafe sexual practices that would leave them open to possible sexually transmitted diseases.) In not a single one of these videos and DVDs did I see any of these contrasting elements, which I believe most rational people would say are part of a healthy sexual experience: equality, respect, dignity, kindness, caring, sensitivity, or empathy.

    Here are a few specific examples of what I found, which were sadly typical of the overall tone of the thousands of videos:

    - “Anally Ripped Whores” - “We at Pure Filth know exactly what you want, and we’re giving it to you. Chicks being ass-fucked till their sphincters are pink, puffy and totally blown out. Adult diapers just might be in store for these whores when their work is done.”

    - “Throat Gaggers #5” - Pictorial: http://www.dvdtalk.com/covers/ts1071374785.jpg Selected quote: “The content is probably enough to make John Ashcroft have a stroke and fans of performers like Brandon Iron will feel right at home enjoying this one for months. I watch a lot of porn and it made me feel somewhat unclean. The semen fly everywhere in this one and most of the women get plastered all over with an emphasis on the mouth and tonsils.”
    Don Houston, DVD Talk

    - “Zero Tolerance - No Holes Barred” - “Women were born with three holes for one purpose: To cram a cock deep inside every cuddly cavity! Like true cock sockets, our whores subject their beautiful bodies to the nastiest 4-way debauchery ever lensed.”

    In your “About Us” section of Counterpunch you say that you are very happy when your newsletter helps people “in their battles against the war machine, big business and the rapers of nature.” To the best of my understanding you are against war in large part because of the violence and cruelty involved. Also - to the best of my understanding - you are against big business because of how they exploit their workers and the general public. I am very perplexed, then, why you would provide a platform in your publication for a spokeswoman for the very big corporate business of pornography. Allowing the corporate porn business to be defended by one of the very few women who have been in it who will support those big corporations in their blatant exploitation of girls and women seems extremely contrary to your stated positions.

    Perhaps you were acting out of ignorance of the full truth about the corporate big business of porn, despite the excellent article by Chyng Sun that Ms. Hartley absurdly tried to rebut. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I will assume you were indeed ignorant of the facts of this issue. Therefore, please allow me to share with you some very enlightening information about the huge corporate business of porn, taken from the transcript of the ABC Primetime Live television show: “Porn Profits: Corporate America’s Secret”. Here are some of the highlights:

    “Pornography has grown into a $10 billion business — bigger than the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball combined — and some of the nation’s best-known corporations are quietly sharing the profits.

    Companies like Time Warner and Marriott earn revenue by piping adult movies into Americans’ homes and hotel rooms, but you won’t see anything about it in their company reports.

    And you won’t hear them talking about the production companies that actually make the films — or the performers the producers hire, men and women as young as 18, for sex that is often unprotected.

    “We have an industry that is making billions of dollars a year, is spreading to cable television and to the Internet, and yet their employees are considered to be throwaway people,” said former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
    Only a handful of “high end” production companies require condoms, leaving the majority of performers vulnerable to AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. While some companies require performers to take HIV tests, there is no government regulation mandating tests across the industry.

    Koop — noting that performers’ sexual activity off the set, with spouses or lovers, can spread disease beyond the industry — says America’s big corporations are complicit in a public health hazard: They want the profits from pornography but “they don’t want to get involved.” ”

    …

    “Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, through its subsidiary DirecTV, delivers hard- and soft-core porn to homes via satellite. Communications giant Comcast supplies various kinds of porn to homes via pay-per-view. And Time Warner owns a cable company that offers erotic programming from Playboy and other outlets, including hard-core.”
    …

    “Few of the companies provide health insurance, and most performers find they must work without condoms if they want to keep getting jobs. “The fans don’t like to see condoms,” said performer Belladonna, reflecting a belief that is widely held in the industry. Like many other performers, Belladonna started in the business when she was 18, the legal minimum.”
    “The person that packs the porn in a box in the warehouse … is entitled to hepatitis B vaccines … But someone that’s having unprotected anal sex, hmm. There is no standard,” said Sharon Mitchell, a veteran performer who now heads a clinic for sex workers, the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation. ”

    http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132370&page=1

    If Nina Hartley is happy being a porn performer that’s her business. But per your “About Us” section you make it clear that it’s your business to battle against big business. The porn that Nina Hartley spins so eloquently into happy and innocent “sexual expression” is a huge corporate business, and getting more gargantuan by the day. It includes many of the biggest players in the corporate game, who are making large fortunes off of exploiting a lot of young vulnerable women in a cruel and sick manner - all for the - as Nina Hartley puts it - “sexual entertainment” of men.

    Luke Ford,”who spent seven years writing an Internet gossip column about the adult entertainment industry for his own Internet Web site”, and “is often referred to as the Matt Drudge of porn” made a very poignant and important point when he said:

    “Most girls who enter this industry do one video and quit. The experience is so painful, horrifying, embarrassing, humiliating for them that they never do it again.”

    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/21/60minutes/main585049.shtml?CMP=ILC-SearchStories

    One has to wonder how bad conditions might be in the porn business that a young woman would not be willing to work in it again - even for $1,000 for a couple of hours of “work”.

    I highly recommend reading all of the transcript linked above, which is from a CBS 60 Minutes show about the big business of porn. There is a lot more information in it about the many large corporations which are wildly profiting off of the pain, embarrassment, and humiliation of so many young girls who have participated in the porn “industry”.

    If you have any good explanation as to why the exploitation and abuse in the corporate big business of porn is any different than any other corporate big business that exploits people, please feel free to share this with me. And if you have any good explanation as to why you gave a well-paid spokesperson for this big corporate business a platform to whitewash the truth in your publication - which is supposed to be totally opposed to such activities - I’d love to hear that as well. Please feel free to enlighten me if I am somehow missing something, or misunderstanding something.

    Thank you very much,

    Sincerely,

    Me

    19 March 2005, 1:30 am

43. Sheldon:

    Nina Hartley is a socialist who has organized sex workers for better and safer working conditions, as has been mentioned earlier in this thread. Of the other sources you mentioned, “Me”, several are Reaganites who can not be trusted. Why trust any Matt Drudge? Or Dr. Everett Koop? Or a Nixon associate like Diane Sawyer? The TV programs you cite were geared toward supporting enforcement of current obscenity laws, and information that would undermine support for those laws was not heard. Those laws put an entire industry under siege, forcing both labor and management to form a coalition, despite their differences, to beat back the prudes.

    Now, whom do you believe if your name is, say, Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn, a socialist (like Nina Hartley), and you’ve already reported on the disreputable conduct of Catharine MacKinnon years ago in The Nation magazine when she lashed out at Serbian feminists for not supporting her anti-porn agenda?

    While I’m no mind reader, I suspect that explains Counterpunch’s decision-making process.

    19 March 2005, 6:33 am

44. Anti-Porn Feminist Activist:

    Sheldon - Just because you repeatedly refer to Nina Hartley as a “socialist” doesn’t mean she really is one. In truth, through her support of the massive corporate business of porn, she - and others like her - are supporters of big capitalist corporations (and all their Republican connections), and the associated exploitation of women and children that comes about in order to create billions of dollars worth of - as Nina spins it so brazenly - “sexual entertainment”.

    Your attempt to refute the facts of what I wrote by engaging in the same old tired tactics of positioning all the sources I used as untrue just because you say so, or somehow complicit with the “Right” - and therefore not to be believed on anything - is pathetically transparent. If you could really dispute those facts you would do so with other facts - rather than attack the sources. Feel free to do so.

    I find it ironic that anti-porn feminists on the left are presented by you as not credible, as well as sources who do not identify as that - whether someone very familiar with the porn industry, a doctor, or a female journalist.

    However, if you and others desire something from the media more to the “left” to say the same things about the corporate aspects about porn, and therefore somehow truly validate them, then feel free to check out this PBS report and site called “American Porn: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/ In particular you could check out this page: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/business/mainstream.html Doesn’t sound like porn has much to do with socialism, does it?

    One question for you and the others: Other than Nina Hartley and her cohorts, who would you consider to be a credible source to refute your arguments and provide you with facts about the capitalist porn industry? What I am getting from you and some others is that you will likely never accept any facts that anyone presents about porn - unless they support it - no matter if they are very left - such as Robert Jensen - or from any ot