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I recently attended a lecture by Robert Jensen, noted radical feminist, anti-pornography activist, and one of the producers of The Price of Pleasure, an anti-porn film that I’ve written about here and here. I went because I wanted to see what he was like in person. I’ve read some of his work, and I figured it would be useful to check his talk out.
I have quite a lot to say about his lecture. In fact, there’s so much to untangle that this post is split into multiple pages, which is a first for me. But it isn’t until all of the different threads are teased out that the larger pattern becomes apparent. So stick with me and see how it all fits …
Continue reading Untangling the Gordian Knot: An Analysis of a Lecture by Robert Jensen
Over on the Ms Magazine blog, there’s a post exploring whether porn is racist, which was sparked by some of the things that Gail Dines has said about the industry. And in among the various comments, Dines herself includes a link to the chapter in her book on race and the porn industry. Since I believe in both giving different perspectives a fair shake and not talking about things that I haven’t checked out myself, I read through it. She also has another sample chapter on the topic of growing up female in a culture influenced by porn.
At the risk of saying something that may surprise some folks, I actually agree with quite a bit …
Continue reading If Gail Dines Would Stop Shaming People, Maybe Folks Would Listen
One of the most common responses to the anti-porn critiques of pornography is that they’re sex-negative and all too often, that ends up creating a “no we’re not/yes you are” argument. And yet, whenever I read the anti-porn side of things, I’m struck by how often sex-negativity is woven into their claims, although in all fairness, that’s not always the case.
I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that bothered me by the way that Gail Dines keeps talking about gagfactor.com, a website that focuses on men facefucking women. And then it hit me- there are two parts to it. First, Dines is trying to foment a moral panic. And second, she simply doesn’t understand sex.
I can explain the first point better …
Continue reading 7 Ways to Create a Sex-Positive Critique of Porn
Many of my sex-positive, pro-porn friends are talking about the Stop Porn Culture conference in a couple of weeks. I was resisting writing something about this because I don’t want to give them more attention (or, for that matter, more of my bandwidth). And after sitting with it for a bit, I realized I had something I wanted to say.
First things first. I really understand many of the critiques that anti-porn folks have. In fact, I share some of them, myself. There’s a lot of porn that is based on and reinforces maladaptive gender roles, performance-based models of sex, racist, sexist and/or homophobic stereotypes, narrow definitions of pleasure, and more. I absolutely get that and I feel a lot of anger around that.
I …
Continue reading Sigh. Another Conference Against Porn
According to CNN.com, a Tennessee man is facing charges of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor. But it turns out that none of the photos feature more than a child’s face. He took photos of girls’ faces and photoshopped them onto photos of nude women. The investigators don’t think that he had any contact with the girls, but they’re taking the stance that since the purpose was sexual gratification, they can go after him.
A lot of different things come up for me around this. First, I’ll admit to having a judgment- I get squicked by his actions and it’s not easy to figure out where my squick affects what I think about it. That’s one of the challenges with dealing with sexuality- we …
Continue reading virtual child porn
I’ve been inspired lately and I’ve been reading a lot of articles and blogs about porn. The first thing that I have to say is that many of them seem to be written by people with very little actual information about the industry. I’ve been with Good Vibrations for 12 years now, and I’ve learned quite a bit about the porn world, so I can say with some authority that it’s much more complex than most of the portrayals of it would let you know.
There are plenty of anti-porn folks out there who make lots of sweeping statements about the experiences of women in porn. Of course, they almost always ignore the experiences of men in porn and the existence of gay porn, which …
Continue reading we need some porn research
I’ve been reading Ernest Green’s Pro-Porn Activism blog lately and I really like his take on the anti-porn documentary propaganda that I also blogged about recently. I also highly recommend checking out his extensive posts about Stop Porn Culture, including how they misrepresented what many of their porn industry interviewees said, since they contradicted the message that SPC was trying send about porn.
Note: a documentary reports what actually happens. Propaganda looks for anything that reinforces the message that has already been decided on. That’s how you can tell that SPC is all about the propaganda.
One of the things that anti-porn folks have a long history of is trying to get people to feel disgust for porn. Disgust is a really strong motivator because …
Continue reading some more thoughts on the Price of Pleasure
The other day, Kuono posted about the latest round of anti-porn efforts (link broken). I’ve seen these sorts of things come and go, but for the first time in a long time, I sat down and watched their promo video.
I agree with Kuono that it’s ironic that the anti-porn people are using porn to make their point. And that they’re not ensuring that everyone who attends one of their events is over 18. I think that’s completely irresponsible, not to mention unfair and illegal.
I also want to acknowledge that there is a grain of truth to what they have to say. There is a lot of porn (mostly on the internet) that is all about humiliating women. And there is a lot of …
Continue reading a response to the anti-porn folks
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