11 Comments

1. Elaina:

   Damn this is really cool!

   27 April 2006, 1:16 pm

2. Yolanda Carrington:

   Thank you Jesus! Are they looking for any other writers…say ones who have only been published in the left/red press? I may know someone.

   27 April 2006, 3:39 pm

3. DeAnander:

   Hey Elaina, just saw TrashTalksBack via BB. any chance that might be you?

   27 April 2006, 8:11 pm

4. Stan:

   Lydia just pointed out to me — and my bad for not spotting it — that there is no category in this women in the media images website for pornography. Amazing in a sense, given that pornographic conventions are now so ubiquitous in advertizing and entertainment storylines.

   Perhaps I could encourage readers wot drop in at WIMN and send along comments that push this subject onto the foreground.

   28 April 2006, 8:32 am

5. Elaina:

   De-

   I’m the blogger in question at the Trash Talks Back.

   Stan, et. al-
   I just sent an email asking the people at “WIMN’s voices” why there is no mention or confrontation of the porn industry/pornography/pornographic images of women in the media on their site.

   I came home last night tired, and the first thing I did was go to that site and run through most of it, I was so excited when I saw the link here yesterday it was what I wanted to do when I got home. I too came to the realization that there seems to be no mention of pornography, and even typed it into the sites search-box, to no avail.

   I’ll give these women the benefit of the doubt, and hopefully we’ll see *something* soon. Otherwise, I’m waiting to link to it from my own blog until these issues are tackled.

   28 April 2006, 12:36 pm

6. Stan:

   I dropped one comment. Hope others can join in.

   http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=117#comments

   28 April 2006, 1:42 pm

7. Lydia:

   Okay. I’m being paranoid. I dropped a comment yesterday afternoon in under the Ponzner intro (sp)–very polite, thanking them for the site, and then asking about a category for pornography, and delineating briefly the prominence of pornography among all “media” (given that this is a site, after all, about women and media.)

   My post is still, apparently, not approved. Or in fairness, maybe I can’t find it? It doesn’t show up on a search. It was hardly abrasive or confrontational. Maybe if I had a guy’s name (no offense, Stan) and embedded it within an article buried within the bowels of the site, as Stan has shrewdly done, my comment would emerge?

   I’ll keep you all informed, but it looks like lots of other recent posts have been approved and posted. . . I really feel like I’m back in a meeting with male _and_ female communications and English professors, all trying to get me off the subject of pornography, rolling their eyes when Lydia brings _that_ back up again. Women and Media is an acceptable area of research, but woe to you if you want to conduct “pornography studies” unless you see it as a “playful,” “empowering” celebration of women’s unleashed animus.

   29 April 2006, 9:33 am

8. Stan:

   Do they say anywhere that the comment awaits moderation? I can’t remember whether mine went straight in or had to wait.

   I also don’t know if they do what Huffingtonpost does… let the author moderate her own comments. I was censored in a comment there two days ago by the individual author.

   We need to keep on this from a couple of angles to see what’s up. I complain all the time about my own tendency evading this topic… but the reality is that many putative feminists are being just as evasive.

   I think the subject continues to call the really important questions — the same questions that shed doubt on the whole on “equality” and “right to privacy” approaches to women’s liberation, instead of calling for an end to actual male power over women. That’s why it is anathema… and therefore why we need to hold onto it like terriers.

   Miles to go. One foot in front of the other.

   Thanks Lydia.

   29 April 2006, 11:08 am

9. James M:

   Don’t know if you’ve seen it yet, but I was able to find the comment:

   http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=82#comments

   29 April 2006, 11:00 pm

10. Julian Real:

    An anecdote:

    I went to see the white feminist activist group, the Guerrilla Grrls,
    who take on lots of media representations of women/wimmin, with some
    specific focus on art museums lack of representation of work by women
    artists.

    After their strong presentation, which covered everything BUT
    pornography, I asked:

    “It seems as though your work quite thoroughly takes on media and
    institutions which exclude or dehumanise women; is there a reason you
    have never taken on the porn industry?”

    One of the two white women, some of the original founders, I believe,
    responded flippantly:

    “Well, for starters, how are we to define pornography?”

    Some of the audience clapped and laughed (with them, not at them).

    I quickly responded:  ”How about if we define it as what the
    pornography industry sells?”

    They changed the topic.

    I hope, but have doubts, about whether this new blog group will accept
    radical critiques about and activist challenges to the pornography
    industry.  Dworkin and MacKinnon’s names are mud in many feminist
    circles, and the perspective D & M were coming from, with LOTS of
    support from poor white women and women of Colour of many economic
    backgrounds–of taking on deeply misgynist institutions, especially
    ones which exist precisely to sexualise and eroticise racism and
    sexism, among other forms of systemic hate, disrespect, and
    indignity…  this sentence is too long!!!  The reactions to Dworkin
    and MacKinnon’s Civil Rights Ordinance approach to dealing with
    pornographers/corporate pimps, was met with tremendous resistance by
    the industry itself, and its porn-adoring male apologists (
    heterosexual and gay), and by some lesbian and bisexual women who felt
    there could be “feminist porn”.  Women’s/wimmin’s movement has been
    unhealed and unresolved since this betrayal by liberals.

    See:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0080374573/102-2737895-9403301?v=glance&n=283155

    and also:

    The excellent chapter, Liberalism and the Death of Feminism, in
    MacKinnon’s book  Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws. Highly recommended.

    Also, I am in a feminist group of all young white women (one is
    Jewish), except for me, an older non-female militant Jewish “gay”
    radical feminist.  (I refuse to sleep with men, however.)

    We have discussed, thoroughly, their earlier introduction into
    feminism as something that should not radically critique matters of
    sexuality/sexism/racism:  S/M, pornography, prostitution, heterosexism
    in queer community.  I have shared the work of Audre Lorde, Patricia
    Hill Collins, Dworkin and MacKinnon, and Sheila Jeffrey’s with them.

    They now deeply understand that pornography hurts and degrades all
    women.  But “Third Wavers” as twenty-something feminists are
    mistakenly called (there have been far more “waves” than three!), have
    been prone to not deal with this issue, excepting Ariel Levy, in her
    book:  Female Chauvinist Pigs, which does not shy away from these
    issues.  The “Third Wave” book Manifesta has some good things in it
    too, but also stuff that undermines radicals.  But even Levy, in her
    book (F.C.P.), is not totally respectful of Andrea Dworkin, tying a
    section about her in with pro-porn spokesperson Candida Royalle, and
    noting how magazines like Playboy and Time disagreed with Andrea’s
    position, as if that is supposed to make the reader wonder:  ”Hmmm,
    what’s up with that Dworkin character anyway?”  She both quotes
    Dworkin, succinctly and accurately, on the matter of why her book
    Intercourse could not be read accurately.  As you may know,
    Intercourse was instantly (before actually reading it??) collapsed
    into the dismissive “Dworkin says all heterosex is rape” BS line.
    Andrea replies cogently to this, and that response in is Ariel’s book,
    but the very next line, by Ariel, states:  ’I don’t think Andrea is
    being quite fair here’–or something very close to that, implying that
    Andrea herself was too vague, or too confrontational, or something, to
    be understood.  I’ve seen these back-handed compliments as endemic in
    “Third Wave” feminist work, from Rebecca Walker to Ariel Levy.

    I have seen this so many times that I will, truly, be SHOCKED if that
    new blog group takes on pornography and prostitution (same thing, one
    has cameras present), from a radical perspective.

    But I hope that some here can make inroads, can respectfully engage
    those porn-invisibilising women in true and meaningful dialogue on the
    subject.

    I have to recommend the excellent radical work of Jennifer McLune on
    these issues.  And also Yolanda Carrington’s much needed voice.  These
    two voices, among others, ought to rise to the same level of
    prominence as Dworkin and MacKinnon’s.  I vote for McLune and
    Carrington’s voices to be two of the leading voices of the movement
    against racist sexism and sexist racism, which is what feminism is
    supposed to be, among other things.  (Move over white feminists.  Hand
    that microphone to radical women of Colour.)

    40% women of Colour (on that new feminist blog-group) is a good start,
    but when it’s 90% I’ll be more excited at the prospects for
    revolutionary change, in feminism and in the world.

    Re:  Jennifer, see, for example:

    http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/mclune.html

    Good luck.

    Julian

    2 May 2006, 12:02 pm

11. v:

    i’ve seen jennifer mclunes stuff before, and agree she is brilliant. i’d like to read more, does she write regularly?

    5 May 2006, 4:32 pm

Leave a comment