Thanks for the great insightful recognition. And it’s very true what you said,but sometimes in gay male pornography one of the male partners plays the “female” role as the inferior,sexually dominated and hated sex object. See the writings about this by anti-pornography anti-sexist,anti-violence activist and author John Stoltenberg in the excellent important book,Refusing To Be A Man in the chapter about pornography,sexism,womanhating and homophobia,and Christopher Kendal’s articles too.

Carolyn

On the issue of the portrayal of women in porn films and sites, it would be useful to compare it to that of gay men on porn films and sites. I’ve never seen a gay site describe any man in the same degrading terms used to describe women. Nor are they ever portrayed in the same humiliating poses and scenarios. Sounds like an easy paper for a grad student or other researcher.

The “bigger picture” is muddled not because more feminists and activists become more cognizant of the ways that patriarchy infiltrates our lives; the separation in ranks is, IMO, not due to feminists being duped into “abandoning” anything, or turning their angst up on men; instead they’re learning to not abandon themselves and ending up fighting an uphill battle with the men in the movement who need, earnestly, to drop this attitude that they have some sort of libertarian-inspired “right” to consume media materials (pornography) that systematically destroy the identities and humanities of women. It’s the men here who need to come to grips with what’s happening and how their own actions are splitting the movement. Stop fighting with US on this, please.

It seems to me that the size and wealth of the porn industry has grown in a correlation to the growth and development of the women’s movement. The more women that become aware and politicized and against pornography, the more money the industry makes, at least from my eyeballing of the whole thing.

Pornography is a vast print and media library of handbooks and how-to videos that show men how to rape, how to abuse, and how to think of women as non-humans. I’ve figured this out myself, and it’s been the hard way, and I ain’t an expert on any damn thing.

I’m just a woman. And I don’t accept that my and all my sister’s liberation is just a side item with the “revolution” as the main entree. Our liberation is necessary; revolution can’t happen without it.

Gotta go work for the man now.

(If you can read this below and honestly think it means anything at all then you have a totally different idea of cause and effect and scientific inquiry than I do. This is contrived way beyond self-satire yet this is what Gail Dines is hanging her academic career on.)

http://www.dianarussell.com/pornsrole.html

I. THE ROLE OF PORNOGRAPHY IN PREDISPOSING SOME MALES TO WANT TO RAPE

>snipsnip

Rememeber, anti-fascist journalism was verboten in fascist America and for a number of years was relegated to outsider niche rags like Hustler which supported the First Amendment in a way that the ACLU would applaud if one hand weren’t already holding their collective nose. Flynt once printed an amazing article by researcher Mae Brussell which wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t. Brussell figured out who in CIA was an ex-Nazi and had been in on the murder of JFK and many other US government crimes.

So that’s why ‘leftist’ writers are in Hustler.

Next.

http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/CRAPP_E_LIB/dines.html
King Kong and the White Woman:
Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity
by Gail Dines

Ok, I’m trying to read this other Gail Dines article and take it seriously but…is this satire?! or does she really mean it when she writes-
“The penis becomes the defining feature of the black man and his wholeness as a human being is thus rendered invisible.”

She’s looking for “wholeness as a human being” in pictures of naked strangers?!”

I suppose if she were writing about sports she’d say “and they are reduced to a mere number on a jersey as if they didn’t have feelings.”

Actually, that would be a better line of inquiry into dehumanizing violence.

Does anyone else find her approach over-reaching when she attempts to pull social problems into a picture of naked people?

More-
“This article will examine how Hustler draws from past regimes of racial representation and articulates a more contemporary myth where black masculinity, having been allowed to run amok because of liberal policies, has finally rendered white men impotent, both sexually and economically.”

Contemporary myth???
More of this-

“Hard-core pornography similarly depicts black men as more sexually dehumanized than white men. This would seem surprising since in pornography all participants, men and women, are reduced to a series of body parts and orifices.”

Body parts and orifices. Exactly.
Not ‘social values’ or ‘role models.’
Just sex.

Maybe she’s written something else I can find…

I don’t mean to minimize in anyway the elements of the porn industry that DO abuse women or use revel in racism.

Perhaps she thinks that the worst-case porn will shock some out of complacency, classic agit prop.

But she instead inflames neurosis and fascism.

A better approach to a safer world for women and everyone would be to examine the culture of violence in schools, TV, movies, the mock warfare called sports, and war itself, not naked people.

Aaaaaargh! In order to fit into a model of exposing and condemning corporate-backed gender dominance-based messaging (real problem) Dines distorts sex, porn, the individual, who is REALLY controlling ‘mainstream’ media (military intelligence since WWII), and most CRITICALLY, the net effect on society.

Whew. Even lots of information can be a dangerous thing!

Dines sets up so many straw men and women I can hardly keep count. And when the torch of her condemnation is set to them, blinding smoke clouds the social horizen.

I’ve written a much longer essay deconstructing this so-called ‘feminist’ analysis of sexual images on-demand (of both men and women for FREE, by the way) but will instead open with this illustration of the muddle she feeds:

Here’s the real world of individuals she’s amplifying with well-intentioned but poisoned logic>>>

He: (looking at attractive naked women) “Oh my gawd-women are soooo beautiful…”
Her: (entering room ) “Oh my gawd-why do you hate women so much?”

Sexual neurosis is intentionally inflamed by **military intelligence managers of media**to keep the less war-prone woman from affecting the easily war-prone man. I study fascist social engineering through media control and gender truly is the key but Dines-Jensen feed the psy-ops dragon with more heat than light in their essay.

I’ve found more male-centric fascist social engineering in Disney’s animated ‘Chicken Little’ and professional sports then in porn.

Work a little harder, Ms. Dines.

Those who find release in porn are given a form of ‘self-medication’ that relieves some angst which might otherwise be focused on injustice. Arundhati Roy has articulated how the bandaid mercies of NGOs (non-government organizations) can sustain tyranny by diverting energies and personnel that might otherwise be focused on real change, not palliatives.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia shocked many when he opined that orgies were probably good for people as tension reducers. Hmmmm….Which social engineers has be been talking to?

Consider that the FBI cointelpro agents ca. 1970 realized that ‘feminism’ was yet another fracturing agent in an already divided New Left anti-war movement. They realized that getting women to focus on the chauvinist next to them instead of the fascist in the White House served their purposes.

Dines missed Big Picture complexities like these in the simplistic ‘porn is men on top of women’ diatribe.

So beware of simplistic ‘men are the problem’ themes that don’t do the topic of patriarchal dominance the justice it rightly deserves-!!!- because it excludes the TOTAL role of sex vs violence and playing people against each other.

Here are a few choice unfounded conclusions this ‘expert’ is peddling to college women in speeches and her TEXT book(!) and thus doing exactly what the CIA, the Taliban, Rush Limbaugh, and Pat Robertson hope for, an even more weaponized American sexuality, as if that were possible-

“Pornography ultimately tells stories about where women belong — underneath men.”

“Based on three studies of the content of mainstream video/DVD pornography over the past decade, we conclude that woman-hating is central to contemporary pornography.”

“As we understand left analysis, the focus isn’t on individual decisions about how to survive in a system that commodifies everything and takes from us meaningful opportunities to control our lives. It’s about fighting a system.”

“A major theme in pornography is that women are different from men and enjoy pain, humiliation, degradation;”

“Put an understanding of media together with feminist arguments for sexual equality, and you get the anti-pornography argument.”

Experts….sigh.

Many women have posted on message boards about being upset that their boyfriends are wanting to ejaculate on their faces from seeing it in pornography and they don’t want it and feel it’s degrading and disgusting. I even read a post from a guy on a a so-called “Adult” site in an advice section saying he couldn’t understand why his girlfriend who liked to be wild in bed,freaked out and left him because he came all over her face. He says he watches a lot of porn videos and the porn stars love the facials. Several other men on seperate message boards asked how can they get their wives and girlfriends to take a facial and they said how common it’s shown in pornography. One guy even made this a whole topic.And many women and childrenh have said that they were shown pornography as part of their sexual abuse and sexual harassment on the job and were often pressured to do the sex acts the men had seen in the pornography.

I suggest that you Myles read Robert Jensen’s much better articles, You Are What You Eat:The Pervasive Porn Industry And What It Says About You And Your Desires in which he gets into all of this including the ejaculaing on the women and how it’s tied into the social construction of “masculinity” sexist inequality and woman hating. And his other important article that was in MS Magazine in the spring of 2004 called A Cruel Edge:The Painful Tuth About Today’s Pornography And What Men Can Do About it.

Also this is how an anti-pornography workshop called Pornography:What’s The Harm? by therapist anti-violence educator Rus Funk is described on the web site for The Center For Women And Familes. It says, Join the Center For Women And Families in this frank conversation about pornography and the harm it causes to the women and men used in it’s production,to women and men through men’s use of pornography, to women in general,and to sexual,gender and racial justice. This discussion will include ways to combat pornography and to support the people who are harmed.Facilitated by Rus Funk MSW,The Center For Women And Families. Part of Sexual Sexual Assault Awareness month. Co-sponsored by Jefferson County Chapter of The National Organization For Women and The Women’s Center For Growth And Leadership at Jefferson Community College.

Rus Funk also gave this workshop at University of Louisvile and he has a powerful chapter in the recent important book,Not For Sale:Feminists Resisting Prostitution And Pornography(which Stan gave a great review of) called,What Pornography Says About Me(n):How I Became An Anti-Pornography Activist.

It’s unreal to me that Myles could have read this article which explains how sexist and woman hating pornography realy is and claim that someone can be a feminist,radical and pro-porn! Would you say this about blacks and Jews supporting racist and anti-semetic materials I don’t think so!