Treating Porn Like Every Other Media
| December 7th, 2005On Z Magazine’s website, Gail Dines and Robert Jensen are criticizing the left’s attitude towards pornography:
All those media products are critiqued by leftists precisely because the fantasy world they create is a distortion of the actual world in which we live. Police and prosecutors do sometimes seek justice, but they also enforce the rule of the powerful. Individuals in capitalism do sometimes prosper as a result of their hard work, but the system does not provide everyone who works hard with a decent living. Some tiny number of Arabs are terrorists, but that obscures both the terrorism of the powerful in white America and the humanity of the vast majority of Arabs.
Such fantasies also reflect how those in power want subordinated people to feel. Images of happy blacks on the plantations made whites feels more secure and self-righteous in their oppression of slaves. Images of contented workers allay capitalists’ fears of revolution. And men deal with their complex feelings about contemporary masculinity’s toxic mix of sex and aggression by seeking images of women who enjoy pain and humiliation.
I think they make a good point. Partly, perhaps, as a result of the polarization caused by the “porn wars” in the 1980s, and the desire to avoid even a hint of censorship, lefty defenses of porn sometimes seem more knee-jerk than thoughtful. But you don’t have to endorse censorship to critique the sexism, misogyny and racism found in a lot of porn.
Where Dines and Jensen fall down, in my opinion, is in not providing a working definition of what pornography means. The truth is, porn - like “partial birth abortion” - is one of those terms that is used so loosely, it has become impossible to be sure what any particular author means unless they explicitly define their terms.
For myself, I think “pornography” is any media produced with the intention of being used as a masturbatory aid by the audience. But my definition of porn includes material that contains no violence and is not degrading in any obvious way (for example, Colleen Coover’s comic Small Favors), while Dines and Jensen’s analysis doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that there could be such a thing as non-degrading, non-violent pornography. Does this mean that they see all sexually explicit materials - even something like Small Favors - as degrading and implicitly violent? Or are they not counting such material as “pornography” at all?
Two cover-my-behind points. First of all, I’m not denying that there’s a lot of porn out there that is disgustingly violent, and disgustingly misogynistic. Just clearing out my spam makes it clear to me that porn makers believe they can generate a lot of business by appealing to misogyny: “come see this bitch get nailed!” is if anything a mild example of the misogynistic language typical of much porn advertising. Assuming that market incentives work, the high prevalence of this sort of advertising indicates that there is considerable profit for porn producers who make direct appeals to woman-hatred. And there seems to be a similar, although perhaps slightly smaller, market for overtly racist porn.
Secondly, just because a piece of porn is not overtly misogynist or overtly degrading, doesn’t place it beyond feminist criticism. For instance, a lot of porn (such as Playboy-style naked posing) endorses not only very traditional ideas of what is or isn’t attractive, but also implicitly endorses the idea that sexuality is something possessed by women, which men must pry out of women. To me these ideas are problematic; they support a narrow and limiting idea of sexuality, which I think is harmful to society. However, this isn’t a problem with porn qua porn; the same harmful ideas I dislike in even “non-violent” porn, are also found in abundance in non-porn media like “women’s magazines,” “men’s magazines” and popular sit-coms. So although I think this is a legitimate critique of a lot of porn, it doesn’t make sense to single out porn in general for this critique, since these flaws are evident in virtually all of pop culture.
Regardless of what definition of porn Dines and Jensen are using, or if they’re overlooking the existence of non-degrading porn, it’s clear that their critique is applicable to a lot of the porn out there - and that there’s no reason that leftists should give racist and misogynistic porn a pass, when we don’t give racism and misogyny in non-porn media a pass.
UPDATE: Tiffany at blackfeminism.org weighs in, and also discusses “the virgin-victim-whore trichotomy.”
December 7th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
Speaking as someone who has defended a lot of porn in a lot of situations, I couldn’t agree more. In essence, in fact, this critique of porn is also my defense of porn: lots of porn is racist and misogynistic, and that’s awful and should be rightly attacked, just as lots of non-porn media is racist and misogynistic and should be attacked for it. This doesn’t mean that all porn is bad any more than it means that all television is bad . . . but I’ll tell you, damn near 90% of television is bad, and should be called such.
—Myca
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December 7th, 2005 at 3:49 pm
Myca, the article’s point is that leftist criticism of pornography it pitifully lacking. It’s all well and good to say something obviously sexist or racist should be criticized, but the problem with pornography being discussed is that there’s a gaping hole of silence regarding the left’s refusal to hold pornography to the most basic standards of other media.
Very few things are all or nothing, so when do we decide that something has reached the point it’s worth taking action on and do you really think the production and consumption of pornography would fail to meet that standard? If 100% of rapists were male instead of 97% would it really change much about how to approach the problem of rape, or do we say that until it’s 100% we must look at rape as a gender-neutral phenomena because every man and woman can go either positive or negative?
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December 7th, 2005 at 4:03 pm
Amp wrote:
Er, I think that you meant “pry.” :/
[Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out; correction made. --Amp]
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December 7th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
I think that that’s a reasonable complaint, to a point (although it does strike me that one of the things that ‘the left’ has been doing lately that irks the fuck out of me is, in fact, to attack video games in ways that I find unfair), but I think it’s worth looking at what those standards are that other media are held to. In most discussions of pornography I’ve had, I’ve found that what has been advocated is to hold Pornography to a standard that’s actually pretty far above other media, legally.
Now, YES, morally I sure think that there could be a lot more public criticism of porn, I’m just wary because in general our government can’t seem to hear criticism without regurgitating legislation, and except in situations where the activity being filmed is illegal (child porn, bestiality) or the method of filming is illegal (violence, blackmail, drugs), I’m not sure that porn needs more legislation.
It’s not the ‘do something’ that you and I would likely disagree on, but more the specific ‘what to do.’ Just as I think the best reaction to violent and offensive books and films is to produce/purchase/consume positive, life affirming sorts of books and films, so I think the same is true of pornography. I do not believe that violent porn should be banned. I do believe it should be criticized harshly and attacked and lambasted and made socially unacceptable, but I don’t think it should be restricted via the government any more than I think the works of the Marquis deSade ought to be.
—Myca
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December 7th, 2005 at 4:57 pm
I really liked the article.
Amp, though the authors do not provide a definition, I think they are pretty clear that they are talking specifically about the for-profit industry. They say “mass market” in several places, refer to trade publications, etc. Their blanket denial that porn is produced by auteurs in garrets is maybe imprecise, but it serves to underline that they are not talking about those auteurs who are working in garrets to deal with the mysteries of sexuality: either they’re not talking about that kind of porn, or they’re saying that’s not porn. Maybe a clear definition would be better, but I didn’t feel confused about what they meant.
I think the criticism is right. I think that porn ought to be subject to criticism like other media is when it’s crap, when its elements or metamessage move us backwards (which is overwhelmingly the case with mainstream porn, as the article says).
The authors do say one thing that I think would be better said differently: they make the point that perhaps lots of men on the left defend porn uncritically because they get off to it. In my view, this is probably true. But then they say that the answer is for men to “get over the obsession” with getting off.
I hope the authors didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Opposing porn is not anti-sex. Telling people, men or women, that getting off is an “obsession” to “get over” is anti-sex. I think the better answer is this: men who are getting off to porn that is bad for women and bad for all of us need to find better stuff to get off to. And if it’s not out there, make it: whether film or photo or audio or text, we need to create and enjoy sexually explicit material that speaks to real sexuality, in which all participants’ subjectivity is acknowledged.
Now, the authors don’t explicitly deny that such material does or could exist, and to the extent you read them otherwise, Amp, I think you may be reading something into the text which isn’t there.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2005 at 5:42 pm
I’d go further than that.
For me sex is something people do together for mutual pleasure. When you accept that someone is doing these acts for money instead of pleasure, you are in fact masturbating with someone elses body as your sextoy.
We now know how intercourse without pleasure can damage the female body and lead to such things as vestibulitis and other illnesses. How can we then accept getting pleasure from watching the pain and/or (at best) discomfort of our fellow humans?
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December 7th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
And I totally agree with Thomas that we must be able to find alternatives.
Maybe amateur videos, maybe animated porn, litterature or paintings -but not something that hurts other people.
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December 7th, 2005 at 6:20 pm
I rather think that when the authors of the article were talking about losing one’s “obsession” with getting off, they meant getting off at any cost.
On a related, if not feminist, note, David Wong wrote about porn addiction in the context of challenging some ‘net buddies to go without for as long as they could. Note that this is not a feminist critique of porn, but rather an approach to addiction in general as something to beware of. (Don’t read it expecting feminism, or much sympathy for the average woman’s POV when she has a male porn addict in her life. You’ll be disappointed.)
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/pornoff.html
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
December 7th, 2005 at 8:58 pm
Here’s a question- what good will liberal criticism of porn do? What’s the desired end result? Lets say we find some mysogynistic porn. Easy enough to do. Ok, it’s bad. It puts women down. we criticize it.
What’s the goal of the criticism leveled at it? Who are we trying to convince, of what are we trying to convince them, and how are we going to go about it?
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 5:08 am
Josh, I think we mostly ought to be talking to feminist and lefty men. If enough of us provide an audience for a real alternative (not Suicide Girls, which is porn industry with tattoos), then someone will serve that audience. If someone is serving that audience, the alternative will start to be visible, and can draw more folks away from mainstream porn, and ultimately, parts of the industry may change to accomodate the demands of the audience.
However, it’s a lot more effective if the mainstream doesn’t have to guess what’s going on. If Vivid gets letters saying, “I don’t buy your product because I think it doesn’t value women; I’m getting off to material that I can feel good about,” and they see the impact of that in sales (even a comparatively marginal impact), I think they’ll pay attention. Or they won’t, in which case we’ll just have to keep going around them.
This comment was written by Thomas.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 5:48 am
My standard line on pornography is “the problem with mainstream pornography isn’t that it’s sexually explicit, it’s that it’s fucking sexist.”
I’m not sure if I understand the ‘leftist don’t critique pornography enough’ argument. Personally I very rarely critique out right grossly sexist material of any sort, because that would involve watching it. I can get into extended debate and critique of any of Joss Whedon shows, more easily than I can tell you what’s wrong with the common ideas in an Action movie. Honestly I find the buying and selling of women in mainstream commodified sexually explicit material so disturbing that I find it very difficult to get close enough to analyse it. And I frequently articulate the reasons I feel this way.
But one of the reason I have huge problems with anti-porn feminism is is that often I don’t see that much analysis of sexually explicit material in the way you see analysis of Ally McBeal. The fact that it is ‘pornographic’ is considered in itself enough to condemn it (I’m not necessarily talking about academic work here, which often goes into more detail - I’m talking about discussion between feminists and material produced as part of a campaign). Unlike Thomas I can’t presume that people can make a distinction between the sexism and the sexually explicitness.
Which is a long winded way of saying I agree with Amp that hte problem with that article is that it doesn’t define pornography - and pornography is a sufficiently vague word that, to me, that’s a major flaw.
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 7:50 am
Thomas: Sounds reasonable. I prefer my smut to be mostly written anyhow, so I doubt I’m the target audience. But what he hear you saying is that you think that porn is OK, as long as it treats the subjects respectfully (this presumes that this an be done at all) and that it presents them in a non degrading manner.
I think the idea of actualy promoting a certain class of porn as acceptable, where another class is not up to our ethical standards is such a convoluted nightmare of ethics that I’m not even going to try.
But if you want to, more power to ya. Before you get started though, a word of advice: if you havent’ already, start talking to some people who work in the porn industry. Ask them about what they do, how they feel, and what things are like for them. Read a few porn star blogs. Get to know the industry.
If nothing else, you’ll be better educated as to why something is or isn’t objectionable.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 8:09 am
Gee, I dunno’, J. For starters, maybe a goal could be letting liberal and lefty women know that liberal and lefty men can tell the difference between fantasy and reality– between fake depictions of female sexuality and the real thing. Also, maybe a more detailed critique would remove the protective barrier that too many liberal and lefty men place around the porn industry– as opposed to other industries. If you ask me, far too many refuse to examine the reality of how the industry physically harms the women in it. The same folks who can give you fifteen talking points in fifteen seconds about the nastiness of Nike’s obsession with profits above all else simply refuse to treat the debate about porn as anything that has effects on the physical plane. Somewhere in all that lofty talk about the First Amendment and the joys of the unfettered imagination (yeah, like the average porn film is sooooo creative), it gets lost that pornographic film is a *for profit industry*, in which real people “star” ;And that real people are physically damaged by doing so– so only a few at the top of the heap can reap huge profits.
Oddly enough, Josh, I wouldn’t expect too many blogs by stars of adult film to be terribly clear-eyed about the realities of the industry for the majority of the women in it. Just like I wouldn’t expect a blog by Phil Knight to be terribly clear-eyed about the realities of life for the shoe assemblers in the average Nike factory. Strange though it may seem, I think that the average highly-paid poster child for the industry probably doesn’t want his/her cash cow scrutinized too closely. Witness, for example, Dr. Chyng Sun’s article about porn industry earlier this year in Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/sun01312005.html
And Nina Hartley’s utterly pathetic response, in which she immediately opted to smear Sun as some kind of Trojan Horse for the Christian Right, smugly glossing over pretty much all the points that Sun tried to make:
http://www.counterpunch.org/hartley02022005.html
Myca wrote:
Myca, you can’t be serious. If you haven’t seen it, you haven’t looked very hard. Just for an example, go google Nikki Craft’s name. You may not agree with everything she says about porn– I’m not sure that I agree with every last bit myself. However, just because I might not take all of it unreservedly doesn’t mean that it’s not real analysis.
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December 8th, 2005 at 8:15 am
I’m not sure why . . . I mean, isn’t this what we do in all other areas of our lives? I think Harold and Maude is acceptable, while The Triumph of the Will does not meet my ethical standards. I find hybrid vehicles acceptable while SUVs don’t meet my ethical standards. I find The Once and Future King acceptable, while Mein Kampf doesn’t meet my ethical standards.
—Myca
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December 8th, 2005 at 8:19 am
I am utterly serious! All the time! About everything!
Even more so because I didn’t write the stuff you attribute to me. That was Reddecca.
;-)
—Myca
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December 8th, 2005 at 8:54 am
D’oh ! Sorry. Must get coffee now. :o
This comment was written by alsis39.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 9:34 am
One interesting point for me is that much of “what gets me off” could absolutely fall under the heading of violent or misogynistic, seeing as how I’m a BDSM dominant, and I enjoy bondage, spankings, and other things that, were they nonconsentual, would most certainly be considered torture.
This has bothered me in the past, and it’s meant that when it comes to porn, my options are either violent & misogynistic porn on the one hand, or porn that doesn’t really address my kinks on the other. Of course, even the violent/misogynistic porn doesn’t really address my kinks, as part of what turns me on is having a happy, aroused partner, and most of the porn out there that does feature my kinks has tended to feature them in the context of **SEE this abducted teen girl abused by two men!!** or something similar.
Why I bring this up is that there’s been a somewhat recent development in the realm of BDSM porn, and it’s a development that I see as overwhelmingly positive. Rather than play-act out a rape or abduction or something, I’ve seen lately much more BDSM porn that maps pretty closely to actual BDSM scenes, including the pre-scene negotiation and post-scene come-down and cuddling. That is, it portrays bondage/spanking/heavier stuff as something that two people who both enjoy it choose to do together, not as something that one person does to another. Also, it puts the consent and safety concerns way up front, which is where they belong. Also, it models responsible behavior for anyone out there who might be trying to figure out whether or not this is something they’re interested in. Also, it’s much more likely to feature gay and lesbian sexuality in a respectful, realistic way. Also it’s much more likely to feature participants of variant body types.
Also . . . it’s hotter. It’s more arousing.
It’s better porn.
—Myca
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December 8th, 2005 at 10:29 am
“However, this isn’t a problem with porn qua porn; the same harmful ideas I dislike in even “non-violent” porn, are also found in abundance in non-porn media like “women’s magazines,” “men’s magazines” and popular sit-coms.”
It seems like erotica involving high male dominance and initial female reluctance are much, much more common in womens’ romance novels than in porn geared to men.
This comment was written by Hari Narayan Singh.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 10:29 am
\drift
There is nothing inherently “respectful” or “realistic” about lesbian sexuality in BDSM porn. It is porn, made for an audience. If there is a marketable niche, then there is nothing realistic about the scenes portrayed. Nothing. [unless you delude yourself into believing there are no directors, klieg lights, or money changing hands]
/drift
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 11:40 am
HNS wrote:
Doesn’t seem that way to me. Both seem equally obsessed with it. The primary difference is that bodice rippers tend toward pretty-pretty euphemisms for genitalia and sex acts. Also, they have just enough emphasis on a plot line (usually the same one, over and over again in obstensibly different books) to escape the charge that it’s mere whack-off material. Even though whacking off is still the primary purpose.
Both, I might add, tend to use rape and allusions of rape as a standard courtship ritual, which is gross no matter how gussied up the language is. :(
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December 8th, 2005 at 11:49 am
Well, no, of course there isn’t, but that’s not what I said, either. Really, there’s nothing inherently realistic or respectful in any sort of media of any type.
What I was saying is that lately I have seen certain types of BDSM porn become more respectful and realistic than other types, and that that’s a good thing.
—Myca
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December 8th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Yes. Exactly.
I have had sooo much trouble surfing through both written and visual erotica, trying to find things that live up to the standards Myca outlined, both in BDSM and in the genre of “two-characters-who-aren’t-together-end-up-fucking (and-staying-together-afterwards),” (the reading of which makes me happy). I spent several years reading romance novels for the sex, but got so thouroughly disgusted every damn time with the “real-life” power imbalances between the characters, the fighting, and the “she-says-no-but-he-knows-better-and-shows-her-so-and-is-right,” followed by her forgetting he’s hurt her and them living happily ever after without so much as discussing it, that I finally threw them all out and went looking online for better things. Problem is, whenever I read something the first time I skim through it on tenterhooks because I’m worried that the same thing will happen, or it will have a sad ending. And unfortunately, for every really good story I find I have to go through four or five mediocre ones and one or two rape and/or sad-ending ones. Some people can’t post decent warnings about their work for anything!
BDSM, and sex in general, is supposed to be something in which the people involved engage because they want to, enjoy thouroughly, and come out happier than before, preferably with a new (or strengthened) emotional connection with the other person(s). Sometimes I wish I could get every author out there to put in their summary whether or not the piece fits these criteria.
But that’s as much a fantasy as the ones I make in my own head, in order to have erotica in which I’m sure everything goes to my standards.
This comment was written by Kyra.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
one thing i think it could do is to be able to better see how porn fits into mainstream culture. i mean, if we criticize it more like any other media, we have to be willing to hold other media to the negative standards of porn, too.
for example, sexist or racist porn takes existing gender or race stereotypes, exaggerates them, and performs them for the excitement of the viewer with the intent of making money, with little real concern for the well-being of the actors (other than testing for STD’s). is that really different from, say, WWF wrestling, or even real professional boxing?
if we keep porn media separate from other media, then we are conceding (to the right) that sex really is substantively different from other biological and psychological processes. if i don’t concede that point, then paying someone to entertain me with sex isn’t all that much different from paying someone to entertain me with violence.
i think Amp’s point is that we should hold porn to the same standards as other media because a discussion of sex ought not be a fundamentally different proposition (no pun intended) than a discussion of any other aspect of society. that difference is, i think, an invention of the right, who seem to be saying (about porn, and maybe prostitution, too), “we think that the market will provide for all, and therefore, you are allowed to use your skills, mind, and body for any money-making purposes that don’t directly harm others except for sex, which we’re going to regulate, because sex really is different.
so…what if sex really isn’t different?
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December 8th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
I am serious - but I was serious about the whole paragraph - not just the first sentance.
I’m not saying that the analysis doesn’t exist, just that it’s very easy to have a discussion without anyone actually doing any analysis whatsoever. Even in the article Amp linked to the analysis of porn isn’t as in depth as the sort of analysis that you ususally see of mainstream media. I think analysing pornography as media would be a great idea - but in the paragraph they defend doing that they simply do a much better job of analysing other media than analysing pornography.
This comment was written by reddecca.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
I have often encountered the idea that what is needed is more “good porn” and I find that way of looking at the problems of pornography production and consumption problematic because it makes the focus all about perceived porn consumer satisfaction and this satisfaction of consumers leading to change. Such a point of view is rarely taken in leftist critiques of either media or corporations. When speaking of how Wal-Mart mistreats its female employees customer satisfaction isn’t made an issue by leftists. The consumer choice between cheap items and stopping women’s exploitation was made a long time ago and is very ingrained in our culture; women lost. Few leftists would argue the free market is a mechanism designed to enhance human rights, so why do many leftists suggest relying on the free market is the best way to deal with extreme amounts of exploitation in the making and group defamation in the viewing/using of pornography?
The overwhelmingly male consumer choice for pornography is not only not against the pain, suffering and exploitation of women, these are the most desireable features of the most profitable, wisepread pornography The pain and humiliation of women is the main point, not an accidental byproduct as it is with sweatshop labor or Wal-Mart or the production of non-pornography goods. Amp shared one mild example of an anti-woman porn title and I hope most of us know enough about pornography to know it is a mild example of what commonly found in pornography titles.
Candida Royalle has been making so-called “female porn” since 1984. In the past 20 years not only has female-produced porn not grown appreciably, the misogyny and outright delight in the destruction of female dignity and humanity of mainstream porn has gotten much more violent and revelatory in the violence. The theory that “better porn” or “more female-oriented porn” will lead to changes has been failing for two decades, and a strong case for the growing female acceptance of pornography in part leading men to demand harsher, more violent pornography can be made.
The way I see it, the increased cruelty of porn in recent years is a perfect illustration of what porn is really intended for. It was never about sexual liberation and always about humiliating and hating women. Women increasingly buying into the “sexual freedom” bullshit surrounding porn made everything worse because, as we have many examples to prove, once women start moving in there goes the neighborhood and men move out for greener, meaner pastures. When Russian women became doctors in large numbers, the noble healing art became less attractive to Russian men. Men strenuously keep women out of the military because once it’s shown women can be soldiers then being a soldier isn’t as manly anymore.
Under this model, women accepting pornography as it used to be known meant men didn’t want it that way anymore because if women like something, men stop liking it. So they moved to more anal thinking correctly that most women didn’t like it, but then some women adapted to that too and now anal isn’t edgy anymore, edgy in porn really meaning “That which men like and women don’t, hence making it good and worthwhile”. Now the double or triple anal is where it’s at. Then women got more used to gang bangs, even the 100 people fuckfests, and now simply showing sex with a hundred men isn’t edgy anymore unless it’s accompanied by lots of violence and verbal degradation. Women got used to facials and now bukkake proliferates and, again, the verbal abuse has increased because there’s only so many things you can do to bodies but the patriarchy can always creatively concoct new way to speak about hating women. Women are never going to get to the top of the pornography heap beause anytime they come close men move the heap to keep it untainted by the touch of femaleness.
alsis39 mentioned Dr. Chyng Sun. Dr. Sun interviewed Candida Royalle at a Las Vegas convention in 2004 and asked her, “Did you ever imagine this is where porn would end up?” The question made Candida Royalle cry. I believe she sincerely intended for “female porn” to change pornography for the better but, like most people steeped in patriarchy, she woefully underestimated men’s severe rejection of women as sexual equals.
So that’s my opinion on the consumer end of things that seems inordinately focused on in pornography when compared to other leftist analysis of industries and media, but I prefer to focus on the production end of things because there’s a tremendous amount of abuse going on behind the cameras that’s a lot more hidden that consumer (dis)satisfaction with pornography products.
There’s plenty of evidence that shows prostitution is inherently harmful to prostituted people, and since pornography is nothing but filmed prostitution I don’t see how it could be considered something wholly separate from prostitution in the harms caused to the women used to make it. Both pornography actors and non-porn actors act out sexual scenes, but non-porn actors are not placed daily in situations where their physical and mental health are put at severe risk. Porn actors come from populations with backgrounds much more similar to prostitutes than actresses, and a European study a few years back found porn actors had 6 times the suicide rate of non-porn actors. There is no billion-dollar market in enslaved non-pornographic actresses.
As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, there is no such thing as risk-free sex. Humans just haven’t gotten that good at solving the myriad of problems surrounding frequent sex with revolving partners yet. Natalie Angiers wrote in her Pulitzer-winning book Woman: An Intimate Geography that a woman who has sex with ten different men once each has an inexplicably greater chance of developing pelvic inflammatory disease than a woman who has sex ten times with one man. There is no 100% perfect method of birth control outside hysterectomy, and some STDs are not blocked by condoms even when they are used (in most pornography condoms are not used). In 2005, we do not have all the answers to sexuality, but we have tremendous evidence of sexual capitalism’s harms and since that’s what we’ve got to go on that’s where we should begin.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
December 8th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
An interesting response, Samantha, and one I’ll respond to in more detail at some point (i.e. when I’m not running out the door), but I’d like to ask first what your proposed solution is.
If you honestly believe that, “the theory that “better porn” or “more female-oriented porn” will lead to changes has been failing for two decades,” (although I disagree), then what ought we to do instead?
—Myca
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December 8th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
The day we accept that women must avoid casual sex because of the limitations of biology is the day that we give up and accept that biology is destiny. largely decoupling sexual pleasure from the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections is, to my mind, one of the most important achievements in history, and I think we have to move further in that direction instead of announcing that it has failed.
The damage that porn does to the women in it is one of the two big issues, the other being of course what the material does to those who see it and the rest of the culture. The discussion has so far been about the latter, because that’s what readily comes to mind when one discussed media criticism. I have not forgotten the former, however. (Actually, I’m a big fan of text. It lets my imagination work, and I don’t have to worry the same way about the people involved in its production.)
However, when we’re talking about people exploited in the making of porn, it really is necessary to define porn. In discussions of porn in the past, I’ve often used as an example a set of photos a friend sent me once. She’s a sadomasochist like me, and when she came out to me I gave her some of her first toys to get her collection started. Some years ago, she sent a few sexually explicit photos as a gift to my wife and I. Sexually explicit material, exchanged for no money between friend who share an interpretation of the material. Maybe someone would argue otherwise, but I don’t think many of us would see any exploitation in that. Likewise, if a woman posts a fantasy or a story somewhere, taking no money and doing it for no reason other than her own excitement, it’s hard to me to see how that’s exploitive in any but the most attenuated sense. So, when we talk about women being prostituted for male consumers, it seems to me we’re talking about the for-profit industry. It seems to me that’s what the authors linked above were analyzing, and Samantha, it seems to me that that’s what you’re talking about.
I do think there is a huge market of men who want to see women brutalized and degraded, and that angers me. I think a big part of dealing with that is to organize the folks in the industry to protect themselves and empower them to refuse to do more and more of what is bad for them. To the extent that the alternative is to pass laws allowing either the government or private parties to take a chunk out of hte porn industry, every attempt I have seen looks like it will never be used against commercial pornographers and will be used first (and probably only) on a few fringy BDSM folks. Remember that the United Kingdom locked up a bunch of gay male sadomashochists for making BDSM porn for their own community in Operation Spanner, and the bills folks have proposed in the U.S. have been strongly oriented towards shutting down BDSM-oriented material.
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December 8th, 2005 at 4:32 pm
Myca
This comment was written by B.Look at my post, nr 7.
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December 8th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Okay, redecca, I’ll bite. What kind of analysis are you looking for ? To me, it was clear enough in the article Amp linked to that the authors were primarily concerned with filmed sex scenes made for profit, particularly those with violent overtones. They mentioned a woman having a dick shoved down her throat until she appeared to be choking. Surely most adults are familiar with that sort of imagery. I know I am, and I haven’t looked at a porn film in years.
As for me, when I start to imagine how I’d like sexuality to be depicted in this culture, I don’t arrive at anything that reminds me much of traditional pornographic film. Not because I think that the ideal film would have no sex or mention of sexuality in it whatsoever, but because I’d rather not see sex scenes detached from all other context. Also, I don’t think that it’s neccessary that everything depicted about sex be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. However, I don’t like to see the degredation of women –ie, a woman having a dick stuffed down her throat while she appears to be choking, while a man insults her with epithets, etc.– unwaveringly depicted (advertised if you will) in a positive light. Samantha is right. It’s foul, and that POV has an ugly tendency to creep into any and all discussions about sex. As if the words “porn” and “sex” were interchangeable. Is that the best that our culture can do ?
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December 8th, 2005 at 4:53 pm
redecca wrote:
I agree that such selective attacks are stupid. However, the article is correct in its assertion that if we don’t talk about the for-profit aspect of porn, we won’t be able to properly critique such hypocrisy or deal with it properly. Hotel chains make megabucks off mainstream porn produced by large companies, for instance. They are in no hurry to see it disappear. The stuff you describe, however, doesn’t make them any money. It (and those involved in making it) are therefore expendable so that the CEO’s can have their cake and eat it, too. That is, they can sell themselves as upstanding citizens even as they make tons of money off the not-so-secret obsessions of other upstanding citizens.
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December 8th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
I like smut myself and didn’t like the MacKinnon-Dworkin axis at all. That said, pornography should be treated like any other media and the industry that produces it should be held to some sort of at least minimal code of conduct. I’m sure the industry wouldn’t welcome it, though it should; such would not censorship, merely the same occupational health/safety standards that apply at even the lowest hole-in-the-wall.
This comment was written by DP_in_SF.If it’s true the left suffers from a silence syndrome vis-a-vis porn (I’m not sure it does), it’s clear why such happens; some among us, perhaps many, simply feel any level of transactional sex is wrong and many also feel it has nefarious effects for women and on society at large. That lot don’t want a debate; they’d do better to advocate outright censorship. It would be the intellectually honest thing to do.
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December 8th, 2005 at 5:55 pm
DP wrote:
Not really, but I guess it would continue to provide certain sexist liberal/left males with the caricature of feminism that they like to set up and then knock down whenever this subject arises. :/
That’s a neat trick, though, DP. Claim that there’s no silence on the issue but that if there is, it’s all the fault of feminists because we’re so meeeeeean and intimidating.
BTW, since analysis and clarification seems to be all the rage these days, perhaps you’d like to chime in with your definition of “outright censorship.” If you ask me, the “no-condom” policy in hetero porn films is a public health issue. Far as I’m concerned, film companies should be forced to comply with a mandatory condom policy and if they don’t, they should be punished with heavy fines or shut down, just as any other business that lets its employees sicken unnecessarily should be. If these companies don’t want to spoil some idiot’s fantasy image of unfettered sex by showing the condom in the film, let them edit or computer alter it in the editing room. These companies make a fortune;They can certainly afford to do this and keep the fantasy intact without sickening and killing women. If they can’t afford to do this, they don’t deserve to be in business
Is that “outright censorship” ? I don’t think so.
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December 8th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
I would define outright censorship as the law that a local town passed recently that shut down our local “adult” shop. Obscenity laws and the like that tell the community at large what they can and cannot hear, view, or read. That is outright censorship.
I’ve seen many hetero pornographic films that did include the use of condoms, and I think that is a good thing. I think regulation of the industry is a good thing. However, I do not want to see the government be so sweeping as to simply outlaw porn as “obscene” either.
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December 8th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
I didn’t say that stuff about BDSM Alsis although I agree with it. I also agree with you that as an industry porn can and should be criticised the same as other industries. Personally I’d focus regulation of the industry around the conditions under which is was produced, and making condoms a requirement would be an important part of that.
To try and explain what I mean I’ll compare the analysis of non-sexually explicit media in that section with the analysis of sexually explicity media:
“Pornography is fantasy, of a sort. Just as television cop shows that assert the inherent nobility of police and prosecutors as protectors of the people are fantasy. Just as the Horatio Alger stories about hard work’s rewards in capitalism are fantasy. Just as films that cast Arabs only as terrorists are fantasy.
All those media products are critiqued by leftists precisely because the fantasy world they create is a distortion of the actual world in which we live. Police and prosecutors do sometimes seek justice, but they also enforce the rule of the powerful. Individuals in capitalism do sometimes prosper as a result of their hard work, but the system does not provide everyone who works hard with a decent living. Some tiny number of Arabs are terrorists, but that obscures both the terrorism of the powerful in white America and the humanity of the vast majority of Arabs.”
This analysis explains what the problem, and explains why it’s a problem. It talks about how it feeds into analysis. For sexually explicit material an example is given, but that is all: “Apparently the commonplace left insight that mediated images can be tools for legitimizing inequality holds true for an analysis of CBS or CNN, but evaporates when the image is of a woman having a penis thrust into her throat with such force that she gags. ” We don’t get the context or the analysis. A lot of analysis of pornography stops at “this is violent and sexually explicit therefore it is bad.” and to me that’s not enough.
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December 8th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Sorry, but that’s not my experience. The most widespread pornography, available on any highstreet, depicts women, usually on their own, naked and showing tits, ass, and pussy. And that’s basically it. I don’t see any pain there at all, nor do I see it as necessarily humiliating.
When it comes to the internet which, beyond meeting bare minimal standards of legality, is basically unregulated, there is still a lot of porn like that, and probably an equal amount depicting men and women fucking and sucking, again with no discernible pain or humiliation of the women.
There is a large body of porn which does depict women being humiliated, and a smaller body which depicts them being hurt, but neither of these are “the most widespread”, nor is pain and humiliation “the main point” of porn taken as a whole.
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December 8th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Far as I’m concerned, film companies should be forced to comply with a mandatory condom policy…
So are you suggesting that the government should take control of one person’s sexuality, so as to protect another’s life and health?
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December 8th, 2005 at 10:49 pm
Myca, that can be answered on all the levels of what any movement for social change requires and what people can do, and it doesn’t look much different from other actions of feminists. The first level might be all someone reaches, and that could be someone stopping their own use of pornography. The way some react to that suggestion as if I’m asking them to chop off their genitals or never have sex again is amazing to witness. Stopping one’s own use of porn is a good first step.
Public education is always good, whether that’s speakers or documentaries or fiction or direct action. I’ve written on this blog before about my support for the Swedish model of decriminalized prostitution and for the right of women (men and children) used in pornography to sue pimps and pornographers who harm them to make very profitable products. There are endless numbers of ways to forge the acceptance of identities for women as something other than men’s discardable, interchangeable penis accessories. Check out the website linked at the bottom of the Dines & Jensen article for more resources about what can be done. http://feministantipornographymovement.org/leftissue.htm
Thomas, you said, “largely decoupling sexual pleasure from the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections is, to my mind, one of the most important achievements in history” and I absolutely agree. But pornography production is not analogous to having a lot of casual sex. The sheer numbers of partners involved gets astronomical when you consider the other ‘pornstitutes’ have also had a tremendous number of prostituted sex partners in the same highly unnatural conditions of pornography production. Lack of condoms or dental dams, shaving & waxing that leaves tiny but bloody cuts, doing and redoing uncomfortable scenes until rubbed raw, the general brutality against women’s genitals modern pornography male consumers demand of pornography and more contribute to an undeniably toxic environment I would never compare to the most casual of casual sex-havers.
“every attempt I have seen looks like it will never be used against commercial pornographers and will be used first (and probably only) on a few fringy BDSM folks.”
You’d have to convince me how Linda Lovelace having the right to sue the pimps who threatened and raped her into making Deep Throat and speaking before a jury why that film’s viewing should be stopped would automatically put your pornography of choice at risk. I don’t think anyone’s “right” to entertain themselves with photographs of sexualized bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism outweighs the human right of rape victims and other pornography suvivors to seek justice against the pimps that hurt her and prevent them from hurting others in their pursuit of wealth at any human cost.
For years it has been suggested that pornographers should be held accountable for violating basic public health laws, and have you seen any changes to this effect because I haven’t. Prostitution is illegal in California and yet the pornography industry is never held accountable for paying prostitutes to have sex on film. Certainly no one looks at porn made in California as recorded evidence of the criminal act of paying for sex in California even though it is.
The question raised in the article is that while it’s nice to say there should be criticism, there isn’t and that in itself is the largest obstacle to even seeing the problem with pornography is not the sex but the woman-hating, racism and hierarchies validated. It’s easy and clean and nice to suggest the pornstitution industry should be held to basic OSHA standards for safety, and a lot more difficult to ask why that’s not happening in any way and leftists don’t particularly care. It makes leftists feel good to suggest unionization. Stripping is legal and there’s nothing stopping stripper unionization except the near uselessness of unions in America (less than 10% of workers are unionized), the psychological and physical toll working in the sex industry commands, the drug addictions, lack of stable housing, and general climate of accepted sexual harassment sex workers learn to suck up and take like good girls if they want to pay this month’s rent.
Prostitution is slavery, not a job. Where prostitutes are given the option of joining a union, they don’t, and I don’t believe it’s because they’re too dumb to know what’s good for them. I think more than 99% of sex workers in Amsterdam haven’t joined the prostitutes union Red Thread because they’re in no more a position to choose a union than they are to choose being a prostitute- not a choice at all but compulsory. Only an astonishingly low .00025% of German sex workers (100 out of 400,000) joined the service union entitling them to health care, legal aid, 30 paid holiday days a year, a five-day workweek, and Christmas and holiday bonuses.
The liberals wishfully thinking OSHA and unionization and ” pro-female pornography” will eventually make the pornstitution industry less overtly hateful towards women need to start asking some hard questions regarding the lack of progress towards these goals.
A few weeks ago I gave a talk on pornography and prostitution. I spoke to the audience about how pimp & ho parties reinforce sexism and normalize violence against women, and about how we as a culture have regressed to 1970s-style blackspoitation that saw all black men as pimps and all black women as hoes.
My partner was waiting outside for me and overheard a man from the audience say he was not happy when I brought up the racism of pimp & ho parties because he had been to several and of course he’s not racist. The obvious sexism didn’t register a blip on his liberal radar but the mere hint of being complicit with racism made him indignant. So much of the commerical sex industry and human trafficking is predicated on the combined oppressions of racism and sexism that it greatly concerns me when liberals who are generally more on the ball about racism drop the ball completely on something as obviously racist as pimp & ho parties. It’s like the invisibility and acceptance of sexism pervades through to sexualized racism making it similarly invisible and to liberals, and most liberals can’t look this self-censorship in its face and see it for what it really is.
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December 9th, 2005 at 12:31 am
Sure, Robert. Just like a construction worker wearing a mandatory hardhat is having his/her mind controlled by the government. [rolleyes]
And BTW, my own hat is off to you. Unlike the average liberal or Lefty, at least your laissez-faire attitude doesn’t rest solely inside your VCR. :p You’re consistent. I’ll give you that.
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December 9th, 2005 at 12:41 am
Samantha wrote:
Ehh… I don’t consider myself a liberal, and you’re quite right that it’s all just wishful thinking. If anyone gave a damn about the women’s health, condom use would already be common practice in the industry. I mostly brought it up because, as I said, I get tired of the whole discussion being couched solely in terms of speech issues. There IS definitely a connection between societal contempt for women and the ability of disease to spread amongst the performers. I think that it’s important to harp on that whenever someone wants to bring up Nabokov or Joyce or whatever– as if that’s what we’re talking about here. >:
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December 9th, 2005 at 3:08 am
Samantha, are you speaking specifically about commercially produced pornographic films and photographs, or are you saying something broader? Surely, you’re not saying that I should stop looking at those photos of my friend?
As for the private right of action as a tool to take material off the market, I hear what you’re saying. Linda Borman had a cause of action for assault against all those people. And I understand that it would have meant a great deal for her to be able to stop the distribution of the film. Actually, I think that giving performers a say in how their images are used over time is, while difficult, ultimately a good thing. However, that leaves open the Norma McCorvey problem: fundamentalists have sometimes been really effective at recruiting allies that will embarass feminism. I don’t want to see some “ex-gay” converts to the far right using a statute to attack material that they were perfectly happy with when it was made. I’m not saying it can’t be done (off the top of my head, the kernel of how to do it is by using the “Son of Sam” law as a starting point), but I am saying that creating that right of action is a delicate balance between empowering aggrieved women and handing anti-sex religious activists a stick to beat us with.
About the multiple partners thing, thanks for clarifying. I wasn’t sure you meant what that statement might have implied, and you didn’t.
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December 9th, 2005 at 3:15 am
Amp:
Just out of curiosity, how many men do you know who habitually use non-pornographic content in “women’s magazines,” “men’s magazine’s” and popular sit-coms to masturbate to orgasm, or to provide scenes for masturbatory fantasies?
This comment was written by Rad Geek.Report this comment to the moderators
December 9th, 2005 at 3:18 am
Robert I don’t believe sexuality can be bought and sold, so in regulating any form of pornography I don’t believe that the government is regulating sexuality, but regulating capitalism. I don’t trust the government to regulate capitalism, because it’s always going to choose the capitalists.
Samantha I would be more than happy about any legislation that enabled restrictions on pornography based on the conditions under which it was made.
The issue Thomas was raising was that laws regulating the content of pornography never went after mainstream pornography, but always went after the margins. There has been far more successful action taken against sexually explicit material written by and for people exploring their sexuality, than taken against Deep Throat. Any strategy we propose must acknowledge that fact.
I hate to state the obvious but the capitalist state is more a friend of the patriarchy than of women.
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December 9th, 2005 at 7:08 am
To mock the mainstreaming of porn, I created a satirical advertisement from the porn community. Go visit Out of Work? Look No Further For Careers in the Adult Pornography Industry
But also, there is the mainstreaming of prostitution. For example, this fall a friend of mine in an EMBA program recalls that his group decided to create a business plan for a car wash chain in China called, “Pimp My Car Wash” or something silly. When he objected to this, he was ignored by his four campadres. The group presented their idea to the class, at which point, a professor had to point out the tastelessness of this name.
Also, as a parent, how do I explain “Pimp My Ride” to my children? I mean, of course, my objection to this? It’s painful to introduce them to “Pimp” altogether, but I must do so, otherwise, they may come to associate it with “dressing up.” What’s next: “Pimp My Prom”?
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December 9th, 2005 at 8:21 am
Rad Geek:
None. I can’t understand the reelvance of this question, however, unless you misunderstood my post.
I wasn’t saying that porn shared EVERY trait with women’s magazines, etc; just that it shared certain, particular traits I object to. “Mastrubation material” isn’t a trait I object to, and isn’t one of the shared traits I was referring to.
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December 9th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Thomas wrote:
If we let that silence us, then fundies win as surely as they do if they invade the movement and take it over. Why commit to any activism at all then, if your primary fear is that someone embarassing will show up to stand next to you when the six o’clock news camera is rolling ?
If liberal and Lefty men object to feminists supposed eagerness to recruit fundies as allies, let liberal and Lefty men become better allies themselves. Let them become the allies of women that they should have been all along.
If liberal and Lefty men object to fundie involvement in issues surrounding pornography, let them point out that they themselves have not exactly kept the industry going all on their own. The same fundie men who thump the Bible on Sunday were probably whacking it to some porn video the night before. The ranks of corporate bigwigs that sell this stuff and profit from it are scarcely all connoisseurs of Noam Chomsky and his ilk.
Speaking of spinning issues, Right-wingers these days don’t hesitate to make hay of racial issues in the public arena. We’ve certainly seen it on this blog. I’m surprised that Lefty journalists like Amy Goodman don’t consider that before they allow their work to be published in the viciously racist –as well as sexist– Hustler. If personal embarassment at being championed by scum like Flynt doesn’t give them pause, you’d think that fear of how the association could be pitched in conservative circles would do so.
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:14 am
Amp:
Amp, the reason I asked is because for most antipornography feminists, the role that pornography plays in the formation of men’s sexual fantasies, desires, attitudes, pleasures, and activities is not just incidental to the critique of its consumption. It’s an important fact about pornography that men masturbate to it; not because masturbation is bad, but because fantasizing about and orgasming to scenes that are supposed to derive their “sexiness” from pornographic display, infantilization, sexualized humiliation and control, misogyny, racism, et cetera is.
Of course antipornography feminists need to, and do, strenuously object to misogynist content in all forms of media. (Dines’ and Jensen’s main point in the article you link is actually that if you accept those forms of media criticism — as you should — then it doesn’t make sense to suddenly turn off the scrutiny when it comes to the usually much more overtly reactionary content of pornographic media.) But the problem with saying, “This isn’t a problem with pornography specifically, it’s a problem with all media” is that there is a specific difference between “media” that you relate to by laughing at it, getting kicks from it, relaxing to it, etc., and “media” that you relate to by orgasming to it, habitually.
And that difference might explain why antipornography feminists think that pornography’s role in men’s sexual desires, fantasies, pleasure, and behavior deserves particular attention and criticism.
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:16 am
Hustler is racist? How?
I’m not asking to challenge. I don’t read the magazine and have no idea what’s between it’s covers, other than the two or 3 times that I’ve opened one up and found it pretty much filled with porn that I don’t find appealing at all.
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:25 am
Re-reading, I’d just like to note that by “pornographic display” I was slipping into jargon. I don’t mean the (circular) claim that pornography is bad (including “mainstream” pornography) because it involves the kind of display that you see in pornography. I meant to pick out display based on the presupposition that you were discussing, Amp, when you said “For instance, a lot of porn (such as Playboy-style naked posing) endorses not only very traditional ideas of what is or isn’t attractive, but also implicitly endorses the idea that sexuality is something possessed by women, which men must pry out of women.”
Also, here’s an attempt to say it more concisely. The special role that pornography plays in sexual fantasy and masturbation for most men, from our teen years onward, means that the sort of experiences we associate with the reactionary stuff in pornography is different in at least two important respects from the reactionary stuff that we see in other media. (1) The pleasures we associate with it are more intimate and intense, and (2) the use of it has a much more direct relationship to the sort of sexual person that each of us chooses to become. I have trouble buying the line that “it doesn’t make sense to single out porn in general for this critique, since these flaws are evident in virtually all of pop culture” because it papers over an essential difference between the role that pornography and other forms of pop culture plays in men’s sexual lives, and thus an essential difference in the effects that its content has.
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:30 am
RonF, a frequent motif of Hustler, particularly its cartoons, is the pairing of the vacuous, blonde White floozy with the animalistic, hulking, hung-like-a-nine-iron Black male. Don’t even get me started on their imagery vis-a-vis Black women. And don’t click on the “King Kong” link there unless you’re prepared to see just how horrid said imagery is. >:
http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:31 am
Alsis39, you said:
I didn’t mean to speak too broadly here. I certainly agree that the fear of turncoats shouldn’t be paralyzing. I was pointing out a problem specific to the creation of private rights of action. I was not even saying that this problem is dispositive; only that it requires consideration.
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:37 am
Yes. In fact Hustler is one of the most crudely and overtly racist of the old guard of pornographic publications.
You can find plenty of examples and discussion in King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity and at the Hustling the Left website in general. (Warning: emphatically not “work-safe,” as they say.)
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:38 am
hung-like-a-nine-iron
Three a half feet long, half an inch in diameter, with an angled wedge glued to the end?
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December 9th, 2005 at 11:45 am
Thomas:
Thomas, let’s set aside for a moment the legal question of whether or not (say) born-again people who were once in pornography should have the right to force pornographers to stop distributing images of them, in favor of an ethical question. Let’s imagine that someone used to be in pornography and didn’t have any particular trouble with it at the time, but later in life regretted it, for reasons that you don’t agree with (for example, becoming a born-again Christian). Let’s also imagine that this person wishes that he or she had never been in the movies, and doesn’t want people masturbating to her or his pornographized image.
Do you think that it’s right for you to keep doing so, even against the explicit wishes of the person whose image you’re using for masturbation material?
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December 9th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
Thomas, I see your point, but I’m not even sure that the word “turncoat” is correct. Fundy leaders are generally quite blunt about their adherence to patriarchal values and their –public, at least– objection to pornography as something that undermines the authority of a patriarch over his family. If there really are hordes of feminist leaders anxious to march into to battle with these people, I’m thinking that they already know. Of course, it’s also true that fundie women, like other kinds of women, may well find men’s use of pornography personally devastating to their own marriages and family life. In that case, again, one would not really be talking about “turncoats” so much as bridge-building, radical feminist style.
Though I’m not nearly as well-versed in radical feminism as many folks here, I *do* believe that both mainstream porn and fundie religion have innumerable commonalities that are rotten for women. Both cast women as either angel or slut. Both define women solely in male terms, and in what use to or threat to man she is.
Hah !! Leave it to Robert to bravely air the Hustler-Golf Digest axis for all the world to see. Actually, I think Flynt does own a golfer’s mag, but I don’t remember which one.
BTW, an earlier piece/lecture Robert Jensen gave on pornography from a Lefty perspective appeared over at Left Hook earlier this year. (Just scroll past the fundraising pitch at the top.)
http://www.lefthook.org/Culture/Jensen030905.html
Jensen does indeed describe in great detail there what he considers pornography to be.
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December 9th, 2005 at 12:47 pm
Radgeek, in a word, no. (I don’t think that’s an inescapable conclusion: in non-erotic performances and creations, generally the performers and even the creator do not maintain control over time unless they own it. I think you’d respond that porn is a special case, and I think I’d agree.)
I don’t own a copy of Deep Throat (or any other mainstream porn movie; I have not purchased mainstream porn movies in a decade), and I have not watched it since I found out what happened. If a friend asked me to delete sexually explicit photos of her, I would.
But how do we progress from the ethical principle to practice? In the modern world, the nature of information (and images) is that they are in the wind, and we can’t get them back. You’re not suggesting, for example, that it is possible to go into everyone’s homes and get back their copies of Deep Throat, right? The Government has not even been able to do that with Traci Lords’ films, and those are actually illegal to possess.
If all you’re talking about is limiting the ability of folks to sell for profit an image of a person, that narrows the problem significantly. One can imagine a real procedure for putting some kind of stop on materials when a performer revokes a release, since most of this stuff is governed by release and age verification requirements anyway. As long as there has to be a place where folks can check the ages of the performers, there also has to be a place where a woman can write to say, “please stop selling that DVD.”
But I think you ought to acknowledge that this kind of downstream control puts the creators in a tough position. I’m not talking about Vivid Video — I don’t care if they declare bankruptcy tomorrow. I’m talking about gay men and lesbians and leatherfolk making material for their own communities. How do you make that if you know that, in the future, any performer could ask to be pulled from it? If you shoot a scene with six people, and any of those six people changes their mind later, the whole scene goes out no matter how much the other five like it.
Sure, money is an issue because even people who produce this material only for a small community ought to be able to try to make enough off it to make it a break-even proposition, but let that aside. Just folks shooting digital video for a small community — should they have to change what they create because pieces might get pulled out? Suppose someone’s a chronicler of the BDSM community in Brooklyn in 2005. If it’s going to be a part of the leather community’s history, do they have to carefully create it so that the removal of any one person’s images leaves a cohe