Kipnis and the lower class
nicole...@gmail.com
I found it interesting, in regards to the anti-porn feminist movement, how little commentary they had to say on the fact that Hustler, since inception, has made an effort to disturb their readers by using images such as pregnant women, overweight women, hermaphrodites, and even amputees. Pornography, as I think it should be, should be an art form and show the female and male body in a provocative, explicit, but beautiful way. To use these female bodies to “horrify” rather than excite or arouse the reader seems like mistreatment of the body. Kipnis leaves out a large part of the feminist opinion that I think needs to be covered, especially here, to show this “female disgust” and give insight to how others than just Kipnis viewed this innovative pornography magazine. Citing back to how these grotesque and classical concepts of the human body were dated back in the sixteenth century does little to help Kipnis’s point; if we were to replicate how they did everything back in the sixteenth century, our world would in be a chaotic and barbaric state. However, Kipnis again works against his point, citing Nobert Elias’s point on how throughout history, higher social classes tended to have more respect for the human body and took part in sexual activities only behind closed doors. If we should be following historical practices of representing the body, like Bakhtin, then it could only be the bodies of people from the lower classes, which pornography usually uses. The idea of only lower-class people participating in pornography can help the anti-pornography feminist’s point because a lot of these lower-class, typically poor people are only selling away their bodies to earn money. Pornography would never be an option for them if it did not pay so well and they weren’t so poor.