deafening silence
Michael Snyder
soc.feminism.
I jump-started the group at least once before, perhaps I can do it again.
Here's a question that's been preying on my mind lately.
I asked a group of co-workers today, including my boss,
but could find no consensus.
What is the difference between 'feminism' and 'radical feminism'?
Which are you? Do you consider yourself to be a radical feminist?
Why or why not? What, for you, defines a radical feminist?
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Megan
this by quoting a friends of hers who says that there are as many
different types of feminsms in the world as there are women.
Whether this is good or bad is arguable but it has nothing to do with
your question. The thing is, there are more feminisms than just
"feminism" and "radical feminism." There is liberal feminism,
materialist feminism, marxist feminism, libertarian feminism (a rather
new, small movement), lesbian feminism, multicultural feminism, third
world feminism, postcolonial feminism, post-structuralism feminism,
queer theory/feminism, psychoanalytic feminism postmodernism feminism,
ecofeminism and of course, radical feminism.
Briefly summarized, radical feminism is the belief that the oppression
of women stems primarily from patriarchy. Should patriarchy be
abolished, women would no longer be oppressed. Radical feminism is also
closely linked to lesbian feminism is many ways, but is not necessarily
the same.
The way I look at radical feminism, however, is a little different. The
word radical actually means "root" and so radical feminsm is the theory
which prescribes deconstructing the root of women's oppression instead
of masking women's oppression by giving them the same privileges white
men get.
You can think of liberal and radical feminism as a way of loking at a
pie (like the dessert). Liberal feminists want a piece of the pie,
radical feminists think the whole pie is tainted and they want to make
a brand new pie which dosn't oppress anyone. Radical feminism is not
the notion that matriarchy is better than patriarchy, although it is
sometimes portrayed as such. You can also think of liberla feminism as
a way of affecting change while working within the system, while
radical feminism wantsto destroy the system.
so, do I consider myself a radical feminist? I do. Patriarchy still
exists and affects us everyday. If it didn't women still wouldn't be
raped, and wives wouldn't be battered. In a world without patriarchy,
abortion, same-sex marriage and non-nuclear families would not be
issues.
What defines a radical feminist? That's like asking what defines a
feminist at all. Do beliefs make one a feminist? Or must one act on
those beliefs and create a life consistent with those beliefs in order
to call oneself feminist? Is being an academic feminist? Can one be
simply a writer or does one have to protest and marhc in washington to
be a feminist?
So, sure, a radical feminist must believe patriarchy is the root of
women's oppression, but does believing make one radical?
To answer this question I go back to a statement a chicana
environmentalist said (whom a friend of mine interviewed as part of her
dissertation): "If you don't live your life a certain way, then all the
education in the world doesn't mean anything."
Dan Holzman
Michael Snyder <msn...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>What is the difference between 'feminism' and 'radical feminism'?
>Which are you? Do you consider yourself to be a radical feminist?
>Why or why not? What, for you, defines a radical feminist?
When I was first learning about feminism in the 70s, there were three
general categories of feminism described, each of which itself
contains further subsections. Those were Liberal Feminism, Socialist
Feminism, and Radical Feminism.
Losely stated...
Liberal Feminism holds that sexism is solvable by reforming sexist
institutions and personal attitudes.
Socialist Feminism holds that sexism is a specific manifestation of
worker exploitation, and holds that socialist transformations are the
only way to solve it.
Radical Feminism holds that sexism is fundamentally ingrained in our
society (Radical meaning "root"), with a true change in society from
that basic level up being necessary in order to end sexism. It
critiques liberal and socialist feminism of trying to fix on the surface an
institution that is broken under the hood.
I consider myself a radical feminist because I think sexism goes
deeper than how or whether we implement capitalism. I also think
history demonstrates that changing either of those things doesn't
end sexism.
Nick (Nick Levinson)
feminism and feminism. In short, they mean what people decide they
mean, and approximately the closest to practical consensuses drawn from
how people practice either branch are these:
-- Radical feminism posits that, for social reasons and not
genetic, females have earned the right to more power than males have
or, arguably, to as much power as males have or more than males have,
the former supporting affirmative action. (The difference between the
two is in whether feminism is whatever masculism is not or exists
alongside equality and masculism. As we live in a solidly masculist
world, that difference arguably is moot.) As I recall, Mary Daly
described herself as a radical feminist while Catharine MacKinnon,
author of Feminism Unmodified, did not for herself.
-- Feminism that is not radical, especially the most popular
feminism in the U.S., seems in practice to mean females having more
power than foremothers used to have. While having more power today is
doubtless a relief, men routinely increase their power near to the max,
and the usual result seems to be that men continue galloping far ahead.
Popular feminism of this sort largely rejects affirmative action,
embracing only personal gain but limiting (not preventing) sisterhood
as a tool of joint advancement. Over a couple of decades, the
percentage of womyn who describe themselves as feminist without an
additional adjective has grown substantially; I gather it's a majority
of U.S. womyn, or at least a majority of U.S. womyn in business and
executive positions or some such large category, but in my observation
defining distinctions is not what they want to do, other than to eschew
radicalism, probably having no idea exactly what they're eschewing
besides the label but sure that whatever radicalism is it's inherently
wrong. That's partly why Andrea Dworkin was forever being challenged.
You ask which I am. I opt for the radical. But as I'm not very brave, I
often back off in hopes of practicing it another time. I do it in my
life and by giving services for others to use. I read a lot, with an
emphasis on womyn's writings. But I don't anticipate getting away with
spelling "womyn" in my writings very often, and often don't try. Womyn
ought to be allowed to choose, even create, etymologies, but that's
apparently too radical a choice. That was men's job, and most of them
who did it died, so how dare we disturb them? We dare, but not often
enough, speaking for myself. My economics are minimalist to support
profeminist volunteering (past) and writing (present) and I'm an
asexual, a way of leaving womyn to each other. But I'd hardly claim
these go very far.
Thurgood Marshall, whose car was forced off the road where his
companions found a rope for lynching (the Whites standing there
scattered, one saying, "The niggers have guns"), and who later joined
the Supreme Court, once said he had a yellow streak down his back. He,
at least, earned his; I haven't. For many womyn, merely having existed
is feminist act enough, and any request we'd want to make must be
turned to the men who killed them, muffled their mouths, and forgot
them. Is it any wonder when womyn conclude that their future lies in
pleasuring men? When girls so conclude?
Sexism is cut from the same cloth as racism, anti-Lesbianism,
xeno-hating, ableism, and its brether, but pure feminism is neither
antiracist nor racist. In practice, however, feminists are quite
capable of racism and of refusing to discuss it, and antiracists are
quite capable of sexism and of refusing to discuss it (and thus Alice
Walker's call for womanism); feminists are quite capable of
anti-Lesbianism and of refusing to discuss it and gay men are quite
capable of sexism and of refusing to discuss it. (I could be accused of
the same, especially since I justify it, albeit to a lesser degree and
willing to discuss it: I object to male-to-female transgenderism as a
mockery of womyn and a masking of womyn's societal experience.) From
this difference between a theoretically pure feminism and feminism in
praxis arises the multiple antichauvinisms ascribed by radical
feminists as part of their theories.
We may imagine a world, or any very populous society, living
consonantly within any radical feminism, but we've never had such a
society yet, and probably won't next week, and predicting what it will
look like is trap-laden. If genderal equality existed and lasted long
enough for our descendents to get used to it, I'm not sure what
oppression of a sexist variety would continue to exist, other than from
psychological internalization, surely serious but reversible; or is it
always reversible? Can internalization in the face of our own contrary
demands long withstand lasting societal evolution? How long?
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
Chain
As introduction, I am a woman in my 30s. Here is my take on feminism
and feminists. I am a feminist. I feel that women should be able to do
ANYTHING they wish and are capable of accomplishing. I support ANY
(legal) free choice a woman makes, whether it is to be a lawyer,
doctor, nurse, stay at home mom. Having said that, I can say that as a
woman who supports true equality, I am therefore against programs like
AA. Women should be hired on merit, not because a quota must be met. If
she is incapable of doing the job, then she shouldnt be hired.
I have seen alot of women who call themselves feminists, and in my
opinion, the4y are not. They are in favor of what THEY see women as
doing; all they wish to do is replace an oppressive patriarchy with an
equally opressive matriarchy. They, to my opinion, dont respect a
womans choice IF that choice differs from what THEY would do.
My opinions are radical in that they are not commonly held, not in that
they are part of the radical movement. I am pro pornography; I see that
as a valid expression of womens sexuality and femininity for women who
wish to express themselves that way. Many will lambast me for that
view. I support the draft...if they draft men, then as an equal I would
expect women to be drafted as well. I support the rights of women to
choose alternate lifestyles such as D/s and BDSM. If a woman freely
chooses to be submissive to her partner, I see no problems with her
choice. Those who say she can not make that choice do all women a
disservice.
So what kind of feminist am I? I dont know if I can be neatly labelled
and packaged...but there are my views for those who are interested.
Chain
Michael Snyder
> Hi all
> As introduction, I am a woman in my 30s. Here is my take on feminism
> and feminists. I am a feminist. I feel that women should be able to do
> ANYTHING they wish and are capable of accomplishing.
Hi Chain,
Don't mean to pick on you, but I find that statement a little
hard to understand. "Should be able to do anything they ...
are capable of accomplishing"? Doesn't "capable of
accomplishing" imply "able to do"? I.e., aren't we all
able to do anything we are capable of accomplishing?
> I support ANY
> (legal) free choice a woman makes, whether it is to be a lawyer,
> doctor, nurse, stay at home mom. Having said that, I can say that as a
> woman who supports true equality, I am therefore against programs like
> AA. Women should be hired on merit, not because a quota must be met. If
> she is incapable of doing the job, then she shouldnt be hired.
OK -- can I interpret that as meaning that you support "equality
of opportunity", as opposed to "equality of outcome"? I.e. that
everyone should have the same opportunity to become a lawyer,
but that doesn't mean that everyone is entitled to be a lawyer?
> I have seen alot of women who call themselves feminists, and in my
> opinion, the4y are not. They are in favor of what THEY see women as
> doing; all they wish to do is replace an oppressive patriarchy with an
> equally opressive matriarchy. They, to my opinion, dont respect a
> womans choice IF that choice differs from what THEY would do.
>
> My opinions are radical in that they are not commonly held, not in that
> they are part of the radical movement. I am pro pornography; I see that
> as a valid expression of womens sexuality and femininity for women who
> wish to express themselves that way. Many will lambast me for that
> view. I support the draft...if they draft men, then as an equal I would
> expect women to be drafted as well. I support the rights of women to
> choose alternate lifestyles such as D/s and BDSM. If a woman freely
> chooses to be submissive to her partner, I see no problems with her
> choice. Those who say she can not make that choice do all women a
> disservice.
Well -- you're certainly a radical *something*... ;-)
Seriously, to me the word "radical" implies "more extreme",
not just "unusual". I would say that the positions you have
described tend to show you to be less extreme than average,
rather than more. Maybe that makes you a radical moderate. ;-)
By the way, I agree with pretty much everything you said
(in case that wasn't clear).
Michael Snyder
> Womyn more thoughtful than I (I'm not a womon) have defined radical
> feminism and feminism. In short, they mean what people decide they
> mean, and approximately the closest to practical consensuses drawn from
> how people practice either branch are these:
> -- Radical feminism posits that, for social reasons and not
> genetic, females have earned the right to more power than males have
> or, arguably, to as much power as males have
That's a rather important distinction. Would you say, perhaps,
that "females should have more power than males" is a radical
feminist position, whereas "females should have as much power
as males" is mainstream, moderate, or non-radical feminism?
> -- Feminism that is not radical, especially the most popular
> feminism in the U.S., seems in practice to mean females having more
> power than foremothers used to have.
OK, so in this instance you're saying that mainstream feminism would
say "females should have more power than they used to have". Is that right?
> You ask which I am. I opt for the radical.
Does that mean you think women should have more power than men?
Or just as much?
Nick (Nick Levinson)
when some of us disagree. For example, I support the right to commit
suicide while simultaneously inquiring why womyn are driven to that
choice (if it's not chosen, it's not suicide), what it is in society
that tells womyn that they're so worthless that they should please die,
and sooner.
You didn't mention suicide. You may enjoy porn; but porn, as understood
in feminist argument, is not simply naked womyn or womyn in sex. The
debate arose because of a recognition that porn was a particular kind
of communication, one that claims that womyn want to be degraded, want
to be torn by men, want to be defeated, that sex is meant to empower
men against womyn, is meant for the control of womyn, is meant to turn
womyn into assistants. The people who read the Dworkin-MacKinnon model
legislation and read it as banning all portrayals of sex are saying
that all portrayals of sex fit the definition of porn in that bill.
They're saying that sex can never be grounded in equality. They go on
to deliberately confuse porn with obscenity. Obscenity and porn
contradict each other, a point conveniently fudged by men who want
access to all of it. And men are by far the major market drivers of
porn and obscenity. You may enjoy porn; so may any womon; as much as it
strips womyn of power, it may still present more power than she
presently has. You must thrive; you must survive; take it a step at a
time, if need be. If porn gets you there, fine; I hope you make it
past, or at least stay alive. No, I'm not arguing that a DVD will kill
you, but that porn is not isolated from society, and that porn educates
not only you but also men who would be your boyfriends (you can be
Lesbian and still men would be your boyfriends if they have anything to
say about it) and thus shapes relationships, both in bed and out. Not
porn alone, but porn contributes.
You wrote:
* * * * *
[A]s a woman who supports true equality, I am therefore against
programs like AA. Women should be hired on merit, not because a quota
must be met. If she is incapable of doing the job, then she shouldnt be
hired.
* * * * *
I support affirmative action (even against me) _and_ believe in merit.
Sometimes, all that's need to is advertise job openings on the other
side of the railroad tracks, to let new candidates know. Sometimes more
is needed. Many major institutions have come around to recognize the
value of affirmative action; in a Supreme Court case in the last year
or two, major business groups and West Point told the Court that they
want to keep affirmative action. I didn't read their briefs, which are
probably available, but employment isn't done in a vacuum, and merit
isn't always judged objectively. Who, for example, will be a good
firefighter? Someone who can carry an unconscious person upstairs to
safety, yes; someone who can work in a team in the smoke that darkens
all vision; someone who can guess a building's risk of collapsing;
someone who can learn the skills and equipment and apply them in a
flash; someone who can administer first aid and knows when; someone who
can command in a pinch (even the lowest-level firefighter must have to
command sometime); someone who knows their own state of health and
alertness; someone who can explain to a homeowner or business how to be
fire-safe; someone who can discover the evidence of arson. I'm sure
there's more. But in New York City, with a population around 8,000,000,
almost every City firefighter is a man. Did only men have merit? Job
application forms, last I heard, are distributed to all the firehouses;
you can walk in and get one; except that often the firefirghters take
them all and give them to their buddies looking for jobs, and somehow
there are rarely any applications left in firehouses for the public to
get. There are other ways of applying, but there are other barriers,
too, and not merit-based. We can either wait another century or so or
we can implement affirmative action and force a fresh look now at
whether merit is being applied or only pretended. The New York City
Marathon (26 miles of running) for years forbade womyn from running.
Therefore, the best weren't winning. Employers who don't use
affirmative action tend not to get the best. Quotas are a last-ditch
remedy, applied when all other steps are sabotaged; employers who
consistently apply standards of merit tend to have diverse workforces
who are highly qualified without quotas and without litigation.
Thoughtful merit improves business' profit and lifts the quality of
public service.
You wrote:
* * * * *
I support the draft...if they draft men, then as an equal I would
expect women to be drafted as well.
* * * * *
The military refuses to let womyn participate in combat to the same
degree men are in combat, regardless of qualification. And, without
combat experience, a womon can hardly rise (credibly) to command
combatants. Thus, fewer officer positions are open to womyn. The
military, last I heard, imposes a quota _against_ womyn.
May I invite you to contact the Pentagon and your Congressmembers and
newspapers and present your argument for merit in the selecting of
soldiers? May I invite you to organize those who are of like mind with
you to coalesce into a movement to make the case, both logically and
politically? The Supreme Court has decided that it's not
unconstitutional to draft only men (meaning Congress can include or
exclude womyn). Can you rewrite the legal arguments to change the
court's mind, a rare and difficult occurrence? Or make a limited case
and increase the role of womyn, if not into full equality then at least
toward it?
You wrote:
* * * * *
I am a feminist. I feel that women should be able to do ANYTHING they
wish and are capable of accomplishing.
* * * * *
And even if they aren't necessarily capable, I hope. Learning is
allowed. George Plimpton couldn't play football but played in one of
the major teams anyway, and then wrote a book about it. (I don't like
football but that doesn't matter.) The book sold well; he was allowed
to experiment and tell about it. Scientists (mostly men) do it all the
time. You may, too.
Select feminist issues that drive you. Push for equality. Swing your
sentences and make them notice what you have to say. Please.
-- Nick
E-mail reply:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
do anything they ... are capable of accomplishing"? Doesn't "capable
of accomplishing" imply "able to do"? I.e., aren't we all able to do
anything we are capable of accomplishing?
I read her word "able" as meaning 'allowed'.
When womyn have their heads shoved underwater, so to speak or
literally, articulation takes a while.
-- Nick
E-mail reply:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
John Jones
I agree with your stated beliefs, but I don't see how that makes you a
feminist. At least not any kind of mainstream feminist.
Nick (Nick Levinson)
believe and the other is what I believe various feminists, or various
womyn, believe, and the latter is primarily what I was writing about.
Michael, you wrote:
* * * * *
Would you say, perhaps, that "females should have more power than
males" is a radical feminist position, whereas "females should have as
much power as males" is mainstream, moderate, or non-radical feminism?
* * * * *
Females being entitled to more power than men as a social right (not
genetic) is certainly radical to me and in the popular mind. I endorse
it; the public mostly does not.
Your quotations of my words are not accurate; I said this right was
already earned, thus justifying "should", and I was describing radical
feminism as others have described it, and describing their aspirations.
Whether equality is radical depends on whom you interrogate. A lot of
people would say it's not, but if you look at how womyn live I think
you'll find they'd rather be comfortable than equal. I don't blame
them; I, too, prefer staying alive than not. Equality hasn't been
experienced, so it's unfamiliar, and unfamiliarity is uncomfortable to
most of us. Asking womyn what's meant by equality, I too often hear the
sort of descriptions that fit difference feminism or the older concept
of separate spheres. An Orthodox Jewish womon (she wouldn't have called
herself a "womon" and denied being Orthodox, asserting that the
nonobservant are simply not Jewish, so, given the context, I think my
description of her is right) called a radio station to voice the
woman's point of view and said that she's a doctor, a lawyer, a rabbi;
then she paused and said, "in the home." Difference feminism and its
earlier analogues may be a firm step on the road to equality, but they
do not constitute equality, despite protestations to the contrary.
Womyn who are segregated are not equal because the fact of segregation
(distinguished from separatism, separatism being chosen by those who
separate, while segregation is imposed on others regardless of
agreement) denies access into the more powerful realm, that of men, and
therefore denies the learning experience that attends participation in
the world of power. If whatever womyn have is given to them, they
haven't learned how to grab it away from those who refuse to give it
up, so, when it's taken away or lost, they don't know how to get it
back or replace it with as much as they had before. Could they learn
that by accident or coincidence? Sure. And you could solve all the
world's problems by accident or coincidence, too. But anyone's highly
unlikely to do that even once, never mind repeatedly. Womyn have to
compete with, fight against, and defeat men who want to keep the best
of what they've got, and that's most men and most things.
Whether equality is radical is not answered in isolation from society.
Feminism and masculism exist solely because of society; therefore, they
have to be defined within society (not necessarily within one society
in ignorance of others but within society in general). Every major
society, to my knowledge, is genderally unequal and all in one
direction, masculist. In that context, equality is radical. In the
entire human world, therefore, equality is radical.
One Lesbian writer, whose name escapes me at the moment, wrote of the
malestream. The human world being masculist, the mainstream is the
malestream. I don't know if you were distinguishing between
"mainstream, moderate, or non-radical feminism" or using the labels
interchangeably or overlappingly; if distinguishing, please clarify the
distinctions.
Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism?, who called
herself an equity feminist, has a page in her book wherein she
absolutely denies any value at all for any feminism outside of the U.S.
(see the passage about the Russian attending the academic conference
stateside), which makes it unlikely that she supports it inside the
U.S. Her model is not grounded in equality, but in inferiority, albeit
not the very lowest of inferiority, not at the moment. That she calls
her model one of equity, though, suggests how far we have to go to move
equality from the realm of the radical to that of the mainstream.
You wrote:
* * * * *
OK, so in this instance you're saying that mainstream feminism would
say "females should have more power than they used to have". Is that
right?
* * * * *
I didn't say that. I said, ". . . seems in practice to mean . . . ." I
was interpreting choices I see made and how womyn's philosophies that
use feminist language are applied, not when facing men directly but
when acting within what they claim is their choice. Common example:
Many womyn have said that they agree with equal pay for equal work, but
then subscribe to some jobs being naturally womyn's and other jobs
being naturally men's, and see nothing wrong with employers using
different job titles for jobs with equivalent responsibility, skill,
and value, even though the job title differences correlate with gender
skewing and pay differentials against womyn. Mainstream feminism says
(when asked) that womyn should have as much power as men have, but
that's not what's being practiced. I say that's because men won't let
them have equality, but womyn who claim they already have it
essentially equate a degree of inferiority to equality.
You quoted me as saying, "females should have more power than they used
to have", but I said, "females having more power than foremothers used
to have", because I was acknowledging that the malestream/mainstream
belief is beyond female adults having more power than female children
and allows that modern womyn can have more power than their
counterparts had in earlier generations. Even so, that's not enough
power. Today's men also have more power than their forefathers had, and
today's men have more power than today's womyn have. If both strive to
maximize their power, men will stay ahead, and thus, in my view and in
the radical view, the need for affirmative action as a corrective, but
such a corrective outrages men, and so mainstream feminism, shaped by
what men have begrudged lately, rejects affirmative action, and thus
cannot seriously pursue equality, since without affirmative action
womyn lack necessary tools with which to obtain equality.
You wrote to Megan in this thread:
* * * * *
I think . . . it is possible to be, say, a moderate feminist and not
believe that we live in a patriarchy.
* * * * *
True, because denying the patriarchalism of societies is a mark of
moderation in feminism, and that's the feminism of which men approve,
if there's any. The foxes guarding the hen-house never say that it's a
fox-archy.
You wrote:
* * * * *
Does that mean you think women should have more power than men? Or just
as much?
* * * * *
I'd like to see major societies in which womyn wield most of the power.
Once that model is visible, equality may be more realistic to people,
and equality may start to obtain. At that point, I'd like it.
Left-handedness used to a ground for discrimination. It isn't anymore
(except for some technology due to economics, but I've heard no one
claim that lefties are defective anymore). I write with my left hand,
but I don't feel a need to open a prison for right-handers. In 1992,
all three leading U.S. Presidential candidates were left-handed, and it
wasn't an issue, just an amusing one-day observation. No scandal ensued
from that. The three of them got virtually every vote in the general
election, one of them got elected and was in office eight whole years,
and still no scandal ensued from left-handedness, to my knowledge.
-- Nick
Reply:
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Nick_Levinson
Domain:
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Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
>You didn't mention suicide. You may enjoy porn; but porn, as understood
>in feminist argument, is not simply naked womyn or womyn in sex. The
>debate arose because of a recognition that porn was a particular kind
>of communication, one that claims that womyn want to be degraded, want
>to be torn by men, want to be defeated, that sex is meant to empower
>men against womyn, is meant for the control of womyn, is meant to turn
>womyn into assistants.
I think it would be more accurate to say that this was an opinion that
some feminists adopted, rather than calling it a recognition. Other
feminists are of the opinion that this analysis is deeply flawed,
which is why there is still a pornography debate within feminism.
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
some feminists adopted, rather than calling it a recognition. Other
feminists are of the opinion that this analysis is deeply flawed, which
is why there is still a pornography debate within feminism.
Sailors on the oceans before Columbus was born often figured out that
the world was round when they saw their homelands disappear over the
horizon. Columbus and crew, bearing royal sanction, certified it for
almost everyone else. So it is with porn. There is a debate but what
I've heard of the pro-porn side hasn't sounded well-informed on point.
Rather, it's obfuscatory. Remember how it used to be claimed that porn
was harmless? Remember when scientific studies came out showing
otherwise?
-- Nick
Reply:
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Nick (Nick Levinson)
"needed is to", in "I support affirmative action (even against me)
_and_ believe in merit. Sometimes, all that's need to is advertise job
openings on the other side of the railroad tracks, to let new
against me) _and_ believe in merit. Sometimes, all that's needed is to
advertise job openings on the other side of the railroad tracks, to let
-- Nick
Reply:
E-mail:
Nick (Nick Levinson)
a public forum.
You wrote:
* * * * *
OK -- what are women not allowed to do, that men are allowed to do?
Besides become catholic priests and register for the draft?
* * * * *
Without cataloguing all of life experience in its enormity, I'll
suggest keeping in mind ways in which womyn are not allowed: Law is
one, but probably most laws in the U.S. have been rewritten so that
explicit bars against females as a gender have been erased. Laws are
not entirely efficacious anyway; they are often violated. Perhaps more
significantly pervasive today in the U.S. are other systems such as
custom, family upbringing, peer norms, employer practices, client
preferences, religious preaching, educational discouragement, norms in
literature, Hollywood modeling, husbands' and sons' expectations, and
clothing fashion. These are also pervasive internationally, along with
law that is explicitly sexist.
Automatic bars are being replaced by double standards under which womyn
are less welcome and more likely to fail than if gender-neutral
standards were applied. Double standards can be more insidious, since
automatic bars are more visible, which is what led to their being
spotlighted and taken off the books. Litigating on double standards is
expensive, and expense alone can prevent the pursuit of equality,
leaving inequality a model for peers and future generations.
I've read that womyn are now about half the class in law schools, and,
if true, that's wonderful, but, in samplings where I've looked, they're
not half of law firm partners, for example. Instead of there being a
single hurdle that can't be overcome (e.g., a law saying no womyn
allowed) there are now multiple barriers, any one of which might be
crossable but the combination of which are often too much and are
imposed so as ultimately to bar womyn.
And a technical aside: As of the last time I looked, womyn and grrls
are allowed to register for the draft, but their registrations won't be
accepted. When registration was set up to be done by presentation at
post offices, postal staff were nationally instructed not to judge
whether a visitor attempting to register was qualified but to process
all proffered registrations and leave to the Selective Service System
decisions about which registrations to accept. Before the Supreme Court
ruled that single-gender registration was Constitutional, approximately
4,000 females had registered, according to Joan Lamb, spokesperson for
SSS, in a radio interview at about that time. I'm not up to date on
this, so perhaps females are now barred from even attempting to
register, but I'm not clear why the above arrangement with the postal
service would have changed, so, until I'm corrected, I doubt it did.
You wrote:
* * * * *
How many women in the US are having their heads literally shoved
underwater right now? You should be careful how you use the word
"literally".
* * * * *
Imprecision in language (not mine but the original writer's), where the
language is adequate for the communication, is often due to sexism, and
I was suggesting just that possibility. A writer had written; you had
critiqued it, although it was evidently adequate for the purpose; I
critiqued the misdirection of your vector of criticism; and your reply
interjects two qualifications off point:
-- Feminism is not for the U.S. or developed nations only.
Feminisms vary from nation to nation, community to community, family to
family, and between females, because situations and priorities vary,
but feminism is valid internationally. Nor should we apply feminism
only to enemies while keeping our homes masculist. In my comment to
which you were responding, I wasn't limiting to the U.S., nor do I in
many other contexts.
-- The timing is not much relevant. How would we tally such
incidents if those with the heads under adverse control are temporarily
allowed to live? Newspapers won't mention them without deaths ensuing
and often even with deaths ensuing, TV is worse, and often that's not
specifically the media's fault. Rather than get distracted about a
limitation on only those events occurring "right now" or only on the
specific act of shoving a head underwater, consider the range,
terroristic effectiveness, and modern-day persistence of domestic
violence, which is once again in the news because the Supreme Court in
the last few days refused to impose an enforcement duty through
liability for failure on local police departments.
Literalness in this context is correct.
-- Nick
Reply:
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
>the world was round when they saw their homelands disappear over the
>horizon. Columbus and crew, bearing royal sanction, certified it for
>almost everyone else. So it is with porn.
Actually, people have known the world is round since Ptolemey.
Columbus sailed to prove that it would be possible to reach the Indies
by sailing west because the world is round. He turned out to be dead
wrong because, while he possessed some small amount of true fact, he
was completely oblivious to the continent in his way.
I find that your analogy is still apt, though not in the way you
intended.
>There is a debate but what I've heard of the pro-porn side hasn't
>sounded well-informed on point.
Since I don't know what you've read on the pro-porn side, I can't
speak to that, but it's clear we've been reading different stuff.
>Rather, it's obfuscatory. Remember
>how it used to be claimed that porn was harmless? Remember when
>scientific studies came out showing otherwise?
As a matter of fact, I'm still waiting for a study that actually shows
harm caused by pornography. Perhaps you can cite some references?
Michael Snyder
> Michael, I'll reply to your private e-mail here, since soc.feminism is
> a public forum.
Sorry, meant to post.
> You wrote:
> * * * * *
> OK -- what are women not allowed to do, that men are allowed to do?
> Besides become catholic priests and register for the draft?
> * * * * *
>
> Without cataloguing all of life experience in its enormity, I'll
> suggest keeping in mind ways in which womyn are not allowed: Law is
> one, but probably most laws in the U.S. have been rewritten so that
> explicit bars against females as a gender have been erased.
Come on, Nick -- name a law in the US that bars females.
The only US law today that discriminates on the basis of
gender is VAWA.
> Laws are
> not entirely efficacious anyway; they are often violated. Perhaps more
> significantly pervasive today in the U.S. are other systems such as
> custom, family upbringing, peer norms, employer practices, client
> preferences, religious preaching, educational discouragement, norms in
> literature, Hollywood modeling, husbands' and sons' expectations, and
> clothing fashion. These are also pervasive internationally, along with
> law that is explicitly sexist.
*WHAT* law that is explicitly sexist, Nick? You're giving
vague generalities. WHAT custom, WHAT employer practices
are there today that limit women as severely as you've claimed?
> Automatic bars are being replaced by double standards under which womyn
> are less welcome and more likely to fail than if gender-neutral
> standards were applied.
I'm sorry, but you've made a bunch of very general statements,
and when asked for specifics, you're merely answering with
a bunch more vague generalities. Your conclusion is your
hypothesis. You base the conclusion that women are horribly
discriminated against on the premise that women are horribly
discriminated against. That's just circular logic, man...
Robert Huff
> Come on, Nick -- name a law in the US that bars females.
> The only US law today that discriminates on the basis of
> gender is VAWA.
If I may be permitted to answer for Nick: serve in ground combat
units. There was a recent tiff because combat support units in Iraq
(which do include women) were being paired with combat units, and some
Congresscritters though that was too close to them being "in combat".
Thankfully, saner voices prevailed.
Robert Huff
Robert Huff
> Actually, people have known the world is round since Ptolemey.
> Columbus sailed to prove that it would be possible to reach the Indies
> by sailing west because the world is round. He turned out to be dead
> wrong because, while he possessed some small amount of true fact, he
> was completely oblivious to the continent in his way.
He wasn't just wrong about the continent, he was wrong -very wrong -
about the distance. See
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#The_idea" for details.
Robert Huff
Paul Ciszek
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
>in feminist argument, is not simply naked womyn or womyn in sex. The
>debate arose because of a recognition that porn was a particular kind
>of communication, one that claims that womyn want to be degraded, want
>to be torn by men, want to be defeated, that sex is meant to empower
>men against womyn, is meant for the control of womyn, is meant to turn
>womyn into assistants.
The US has more rules and constraints on porn (or even simple nudity)
than France, Sweeden, the Netherlands, etc. The Islamic world has
even more strict constraints. Within the US, "Blue States" such as
Massachusetts and California have an environment where high quality
porn shops such as Grand Openings can exist; "Red States" tend to have
a lousy selection of porn, in my experience.
Which of these places are better places for women to live?
>The people who read the Dworkin-MacKinnon model
>legislation and read it as banning all portrayals of sex are saying
>that all portrayals of sex fit the definition of porn in that bill.
>They're saying that sex can never be grounded in equality. They go on
I have seen an excerpt from the Dworking-MacKinnon model ordinance
that claims that men, animals, etc. serve as "substitute women"
such that even male-on-male gay porn still constitutes violence against
women. So, I think the accusations are justified.
Remember, Canada adopted a form of the Dworking-MacKinnon ordinance
on the national level, and it has mostly been used to sieze shipments
of books to feminist and lesbian bookstores. Playboy, on the other
hand, is still available because they've got more lawyers and money.
>to deliberately confuse porn with obscenity. Obscenity and porn
>contradict each other, a point conveniently fudged by men who want
>access to all of it. And men are by far the major market drivers of
My experience is that all nekkid pictures are labeled "obscene"
by women (and men, but usually women) who want to ban all of it.
--
Please reply to: | "When the press is free and every man
pciszek at panix dot com | able to read, all is safe."
Autoreply has been disabled | --Thomas Jefferson
Michael Snyder
> Michael Snyder wrote:
>
> > Come on, Nick -- name a law in the US that bars females.
> > The only US law today that discriminates on the basis of
> > gender is VAWA.
>
> If I may be permitted to answer for Nick: serve in ground combat
> units.
Robert, it's so great that you chose that example, because
it illustrates how few professions there are that women are
barred from. In fact when we're talking about professions
I almost always say "What professions are women barred
from besides priest and ground combat soldier?"
And anyway, it's not a law, is it? Isn't that a policy of
the US Army?
If that's the best we can come up with, to support Nick's
hugely broad and general statements about women "having
their heads shoved underwater" (literally!), about women
who demand equality doing so at risk of their lives, women
being segregated from the "more powerful world of men",
and, specific to my question above, that law is one of the
ways in which women are "not allowed" -- well, then those
statements are not supportable, and it deserves to be
pointed out.
When you allow statements like that to go un-challenged,
what you are in fact doing is allowing the beliefs of the
most radical feminists to insinuate themselves into the
consciousness of the feminist mainstream (thus returning
to the original question raised by this thread).
Saner minds need to prevail here, and point out that
at least here in the west, things *HAVE* changed.
Women have full or all but full political equality,
and nearly full economic equality. They are no longer
barred from getting loans or credit cards in their own
name, they are no longer denied their share of the assets
of a marriage, there are *NO* obstacles to their becoming
doctors or lawyers, or entering medical or law school.
In the US there are far more colleges that bar men than
there are that bar women.
Feminists ought to step forward and *take credit for
their accomplishments*! In the last three decades
feminism has gotten huge numbers of women into
virtually every profession save priest and combat
infantry, into every political office save one, you've
made both illegal and socially unacceptable the kinds
of discrimination in finance and employment that
were common in the 60's. Colleges that used to have
only token numbers of women now have more women
than men.
Why aren't you taking credit for your accomplishments?
Why are you letting the extremists among you paint a
picture of todays world that in fact more closely resembles
the world of two generations ago? And not all that closely
even at that?
Megan
> *WHAT* law that is explicitly sexist, Nick? You're giving
> vague generalities. WHAT custom, WHAT employer practices
> are there today that limit women as severely as you've claimed?
Now, I can't law name any laws which are explicitly sexist. Like I said
before, all the major laws have changed and perhaps there are some laws
that nobody pays attention to still that still exist. For most part,
laws aren't a problem in the U.S. anymore, but customs and cultural
practices are. Let's not forget that the U.S. does not have it's "own"
culture in the sense that say, many Western European countries do, or
really, any other country in the world. I'd the most definitely
American "cultural values" are capitalism and individualism. The rest
fo the culture practiced here comes from foreign lands. That being
said, just because laws prohibit discrimination, it doesn't mean
discrimination doesn't exist. Let's take, for example, the fact that
female genital mutilation, a practice presumably "unamerican" and
obviously extremely discriminatory, happens in pocket communities all
over the nation. Furthermore, while domestic workers are gaining more
support from human rights advocate groups, many are still basically
enslaved in the homes of rich bankers working for the World Bank or
IMF. Often, these women (who are NOT au pairs, as au pairs have
considerable protection) arrive in the U.S. with contracts and then
their "employers" take away their passports, lock them inside their
homes, sometimes beating them, not feeding them properly, focring them
work 14-hour days or longer, giving them barely any days off, and
paying maybe $100 a month or nothing at all (to which the domestic
workers often have no access).
I would like to point out that au pair are safe from exploitation
because of the type of Visa they hold and the program they participate
in. The au pair program is congressionally sponsored, and usually is
available to middle-class European women. These women receive extensive
training and are monitored by a third party while they are working, so
abuse and exploitation is next to impossible.
Women from developing countries, however, can legally enter the U.S. on
A-3, B-1 and G-5 visas. These women, on the other hand, are not
monitored by any organization whatsoever, and are often at the mercy of
the family which employs them. The people that mistreat these women are
not just normal American citizens, however. They include foreign
diplomats.
Now, what I'm about to say is a bit controversial. I don't want this
discussion to go off on a tangent about prostitution, but
anti-prostitution laws are quite discriminatory. And while both men and
women are affected by such laws, Women are affected more. First there's
the whole idea that a law is being used to control a woman's sexuality.
Obviously, most women do not become prostitutes because they are
empowered by random sex with men and want to get paid for it. Most
women become prostitutes because they make more money that way than
they would holding a bachelor's degree, or even in some cases, a
master's degree. Usually, women in the US are pushed into prostitution
for economic reasons. Sometimes they are coerced by fathers, husbands,
brothers or even mothers. The point is, though, if prostitution were
legal, the government would be able to manage it much better. We could
even tax it. Making prostitution legal wouldn't completely eliminate
the exploitation fo women in sex industry, but it would certainly make
the situation far better for women, especially in the long run.
Anti-prostituion laws are a form of discrimination against women,
except they look like a way to protect women (just like anti-abortion
laws).
We could argue over whether there is such thing as empowering,
diginified prostitution in a patriarchy, but that's not my point. My
point is that a law doesn't have to say "Women can't do this" to be
discriminatory. A lack of a law regulating something (for example, the
government's non-interest in the lives of domestic workers entering the
country of A-3, B-1 and G-5 visas), or a law intended to look like it
is "protecting" women can be just as discriminatory.
[snip]
> I'm sorry, but you've made a bunch of very general statements,
> and when asked for specifics, you're merely answering with
> a bunch more vague generalities. Your conclusion is your
> hypothesis. You base the conclusion that women are horribly
> discriminated against on the premise that women are horribly
> discriminated against. That's just circular logic, man...
>
I hope my points are little less generalized for you.
PS please excuse typos, if there are any (and I'm sure there are), but
I'm really in a rush to read some more Harry Potter ;)
Paul Ciszek
Michael Snyder <msn...@sonic.net> wrote:
>"Robert Huff" <rober...@rcn.com> wrote:
>> Michael Snyder wrote:
>>
>> > Come on, Nick -- name a law in the US that bars females.
>> > The only US law today that discriminates on the basis of
>> > gender is VAWA.
>>
>> If I may be permitted to answer for Nick: serve in ground combat
>> units.
>
>Robert, it's so great that you chose that example, because
>it illustrates how few professions there are that women are
>barred from. In fact when we're talking about professions
I find that the question "Do women actually serve in combat in the
US armed forces?" gets very different answers depending on who you
ask. GWB says that they do not. A woman in the Air Force claims
that the Air Force does not discriminate on the basis of gender at
all. News articles about the Air Force Academy would seem to
indicate otherwise, at least at the academy level. A guy who had
been in the Army claims that women aren't assigned to "combat duty",
but end up in combat anyway, and don't have access to adequate
firepower when that happens because they're allegedly not in combat.
My experience with government agencies would lead me to suspect that
the last description is closest to what actually happens. It also
sort of fits the case of Jessica Lynch.
--
Please reply to: | "When the press is free and every man
pciszek at panix dot com | able to read, all is safe."
Autoreply has been disabled | --Thomas Jefferson
--
Megan
the domestic worker situation from the following book: "Global Woman:
Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy" edited by Barbara
Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild. It's a very good book. Although
the content can be rather depressing, it is a refreshing read in that
the writing is so accessible, unlike much feminist writing (especially
second wave writings and queer theory writings). The article that talks
specifically about the visa situation in the U.S. is called "America's
Dirty Work: Migrant Maids and Modern-Day Salvery" by Joy M. Zarembka.
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
Without cataloguing all of life experience in its enormity, I'll
suggest keeping in mind ways in which womyn are not allowed: Law is
one, but probably most laws in the U.S. have been rewritten so that
explicit bars against females as a gender have been erased.
law today that discriminates on the basis of gender is VAWA.
Also, you wrote:
* * * * *
. . . . how few professions there are that women are barred from.
* * * * *
My statement was describing laws of today as largely being without
explicit bars against womyn -- in other words, on this point, you
mostly agree with me -- and that's why I went on to describe extralegal
systems that achieve anti-womon effects.
But, on laws: I understand VAWA as affirmative action, intended to
offer advantage to the underpowerful gender against the overpowerful
one, and yet differing from, e.g., the old protective laws that forbade
womyn from working in dangerous industrial occupations, thus protecting
them by depriving them of economic opportunity, when a nonsexist
response would have been to mandate job safety for both genders. Those
laws, happily, are gone, as far as I know. VAWA, as far as I know,
wasn't meant to protect womyn from violence by mandating that they stay
home or leave home to avoid it while permitting men other choices, and
thus VAWA is not discriminatory, just as hate crimes laws are not
discriminatory. Likewise, note law that relies on the "reasonable
woman" standard in judging the facts of sexual harassment of womyn
rather than the "reasonable person" standard.
Implicit bars can be found in law. Reproductive rights are often denied
along class lines by law: poverty is especially feminized, so a
Medicare coverage ban on abortions is a law against females. In New
York State, at least a few years ago, at least one category of
insurance was priced higher when covering womyn (all else equal) and
the insurance was mandatory by law, employers by statute having to pay
for it. To the extent that law encouraged the hiring of men over womyn,
the law contained an implicit (not explicit) bar to womyn, and I
suspect the law hasn't changed (although some might argue that the
dollar differences aren't enough to make the difference in hiring
decisions that other reasons do). The failure to enact the Equal Rights
Amendment is legal authority for the view that some sex discrimination
is acceptable; as a matter of Constitutional law, the last time I
looked, gender discrimination is not as solidly forbidden as race
discrimination (on which the Constitution does speak), and therefore
some degree of legal permission for sex discrimination exists.
You wrote:
* * * * *
And anyway, [about "ground combat soldier"] it's not a law, is it?
Isn't that a policy of the US Army?
* * * * *
The last I heard of it, that policy was law, and probably applies to
all military branches. An overall cap on womyn is also on the books, I
think, and I take it we both agree such a cap ought to go. It's
unlikely these provisions wouldn't be law, or litigation (some military
decisions being judicially reviewable) would open the doors to womyn
for lack of a contrary reason grounded in law. And sometimes plain
policies can be law without being enacted.
I wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
. . . . These are also pervasive internationally, along with law that
is explicitly sexist.
* * * * *
*WHAT* law that is explicitly sexist, Nick? . . . .
* * * * *
And you added:
* * * * *
Nick's hugely broad and general statements . . . that law is one of
the ways in which women are "not allowed" . . . .
* * * * *
I referred to law "internationally". Other nations' law, today,
explicitly, includes occupational bars to womyn. To call sharia (the
law Islam mandates for secular governance of everyone in a nation
regardless of faith) no bar to females is possible only if one harbors
a double standard against females. I think we will find sexism in laws
in many, if not almost all, non-Islamic nations, too, developed and
developing.
You further replied:
* * * * *
In the last three decades feminism has gotten huge numbers of women
into virtually every profession save priest and combat infantry . . .
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
than France, Sweeden, the Netherlands, etc. The Islamic world has even
more strict constraints. Within the US, "Blue States" such as
Massachusetts and California have an environment where high quality
porn shops such as Grand Openings can exist; "Red States" tend to have
a lousy selection of porn, in my experience.
Which of these places are better places for women to live?
* * * * *
The only places in the U.S. with anti-porn law to my knowledge are
workplaces, due to sexual harassment law requiring policies against
hostile environments that induce sexual harassment. For instance, such
terms were included in a settlement approved by a court, involving, I
believe, a shipyard in Florida.
Every attempt to pass anti-porn legislation anywhere in the U.S. failed
either in passage or in subsequent challenges on Constitutionality.
I don't know if any anti-porn laws exist elsewhere in the world,
although I'll agree that some interpretations of anti-obscenity law in
some nations are probably extensive enough to encompass porn, too.
You're referring to laws against obscenity. Obscenity in the U.S. is
judicially considered outside the protection of the First Amendment, so
public pressure for bans against obscenity can withstand Constitutional
challenge, and have many times.
Since obscenity and porn are diametrically opposed to each other and
are not to be blended, a ban against one is not like a ban against the
other, either in definitions or in effects on womyn's daily living.
Which states or nations are better to live in is (a) up to each womon,
not you or I (females are about half the population of any state blue
or red), (b) is likely most often influenced by individual
relationships such as existing couplings and families (even in the
worst nations and wars, with some exceptions, womyn are not seen
avalanching out while men stay behind), and (c) is likely influenced by
other factors far more than the presence of porn. It's my impression
that most womyn who are "into" porn are so because they have
relationships with men who are into it, and need to keep up with, or
ahead of, the men's perceptions, and so the presence of porn shops
often affects whether to live on a given street but hardly which state.
I, too, might prefer blue states; I live in one; but that's too thin a
claim.
If you're saying that states with open porn markets are also better
places to live and that something brings about both conditions in the
same place, that could still be consistent with a view of porn
subtracting from the positive values of a place. Much anti-porn work
was done in a blue state.
The concept of "high quality porn shops" is oxymoronic, of course, but
so would be that of "high quality . . . [obscenity] shops", which is
what would be banned in some communities (U.S. obscenity law relies
partly on community standards, and I'd guess that an imbalanced tally
of laws by nation could be due to a proliferation of local laws
stateside, not a measure of one-locale severity). If what's meant are
publications that meet the literary, scientific, political, or other
standard for protection under the First Amendment, exemption alone does
not determine what's of high quality in literature, science, politics,
or related disciplines. If what's meant are puhlications that are
expensive and meant to appeal to big spenders, class doesn't correlate
with quality in all matters of expenditure.
If you found a "lousy selection of porn" in red states, does that mean
there weren't enough womyn being beaten down for your taste? How,
exactly, would beating more of them achieve more feminism?
Let us know.
You wrote:
* * * * *
I have seen an excerpt from the Dworking-MacKinnon model ordinance that
claims that men, animals, etc. serve as "substitute women" such that
even male-on-male gay porn still constitutes violence against women.
So, I think the accusations are justified.
* * * * *
I agree that "men, animals, etc. serve as 'substitute women' such that
even male-on-male gay porn still constitutes violence against women" as
a generalization (depending on what's subsumed within "etc."). Sex is
usually about symbolism. For example, it's partly about reproduction
even when reproduction is not possible in concrete terms in an
instance; it's about virility, i.e., the ability to repeat
reproduction, and thus the role of the trophy wife. Notice even your
phrasing: "male-on-male gay porn" rather than "male gay porn"; your use
of "on", whether unintentionally or not, implies exactly the invidious
inequality that is at the nerve center of porn, and that is not
necessarily inferred from obscenity.
Single-sex porn can be closer to equality. If, for instance, it
portrays two people who are of the same gender and no one else, that
could present equality. But other symbolism in the portrayal could
still tilt the balance even between two people of the same gender.
Single-sex sexuality can be equal. Not easily, but, at least
hypothetically, it can be. Portraying that would not be porn. Porn
depends on inequality for its existence.
More specifically, porn depends on anti-womon inequality. Either the
womon can be represented by a womon or a womon can be represented some
other way, and thus cats, men, etc. can, depending on circumstances,
become stand-ins for womyn. And for grrls.
Most anti-porn work is not directed against Lesbian or gay male porn,
and so the latter tends to get a free pass, as it were, because it's
easier to make the argumnent when concrete forms are apparent, since
there's one less subtopic to dilute the effort at persuasion, and
because Lesbian/gay life is wrongly the subject of discriminatory
efforts on a frightening scale, without the numbers of gender
discrimination but frequently much more intensive, since, e.g., killing
Lesbians and gay males or firing them from jobs (worldwide) is much
more socially acceptable than are the same punishments in the name of
sexism. Where anti-porn work is directed is a political decision, not
one of theoretical development, but it does control the timing of our
successes.
A correction: Her name was Dworkin; there's no "g". And I don't
remember if the discussion about substitute womyn was in the ordinance
or in discussions about the ordinance; probably the latter; but the
concept is appropriately referred to in a general sense.
You wrote:
* * * * *
My experience is that all nekkid pictures are labeled "obscene" by
women (and men, but usually women) who want to ban all of it.
* * * * *
Obscenity is not porn. Overlaps occur, which is like saying that
astronomy and astrology overlap. We can learn differences. Obscenity
and porn are importantly opposites.
-- Nick
tankboi
....
> Saner minds need to prevail here, and point out that
> at least here in the west, things *HAVE* changed.
> Women have full or all but full political equality,
> and nearly full economic equality. They are no longer
> barred from getting loans or credit cards in their own
> name, they are no longer denied their share of the assets
> of a marriage, there are *NO* obstacles to their becoming
> doctors or lawyers, or entering medical or law school.
> In the US there are far more colleges that bar men than
> there are that bar women.
>
I'm sorry, Michael, but just because the letter of the law has changed,
does not, by any stretch, mean that the are "*NO* obstacles." Overtly
perhaps, there are no obstables. In practice, however, women still
face sexism in a huge an insidious variety of situations that limit
advancement and access to power.
Megan
everyone. Also, on a more cheerful note, I got the new Harry Potter
book today and, while I don't know how many of you all read Harry
Potter, I must say that it's nice to a have a little bit of magic in my
life. Now... onto feminism (which unfortunately is not very magical at
all).
Nick (Nick Levinson) wrote:
[snip]
> You wrote:
> * * * * *
> OK -- what are women not allowed to do, that men are allowed to do?
> Besides become catholic priests and register for the draft?
> * * * * *
>
> Without cataloguing all of life experience in its enormity, I'll
> suggest keeping in mind ways in which womyn are not allowed: Law is
> one, but probably most laws in the U.S. have been rewritten so that
> explicit bars against females as a gender have been erased. Laws are
> not entirely efficacious anyway; they are often violated.
Please note: The following is a reply to Michael's question for Nick.
Before I touch this at all I'd like to say two things: 1. As Nick has
pointed out before, feminism is not only a "developed nations"
movement. Women in developing nations also have their own feminisms,
and we are ll aware that such nations do discriminate against women not
only in cultural pratice, but also through law. That being said, we
should also acknowledge that many developing nations are striving to
improve the situation of women in those countries, Kuwait being the
most notable one, considering its fairly recent decision to grant women
suffrage and the right to hold office (also, a woman was named cabinet
minister just a few weeks ago). 2. In Nick's defense, Nick did say
"...but probably most laws in the U.S. have been rewritten..." because
honestly, I don't know if anyone of us truy is acquainted with every
law on the book in every state. Perhaps there is a law which has not
been changed, but is so forgotten and/or old fashioned, that nobody has
noticed it or pay any attention to it. Most major laws affecting women,
such as workplace discrimination, have been rewritten. What I'm trying
to say is that there are thousands of silly, old fashioned laws which
are sitll on the books. Maybe a few of them discriminate against women?
I believe that Nick was trying to point this out.
All that being said, even with laws against gender discrimination, the
U.S. is still far from being a top nation when it comes to women
holding political office. Even Iraq now has more women holding
political office than the U.S. (though I admit I do not have the
numbers on this and read it in a newspaper I do not trust. The only
news source I trust at all the BBC.)
Later on Michael (and I do hope your read this), you accuse Nick of
making large generalizations without any facts to back the up. But
actually, I don't think Nick was trying to say there are tons are laws
which discriminate against women still. But he was certainly saying
there are still many customs in the U.S. which discriminate against
women, and that feminism is a global movement. Just because there are
few discriminatory laws in the U.S. which does not mean our battle with
law is won.
Ok, that's enough man-defending for a day! ;)
Robert Huff
>>>The only US law today that discriminates on the basis of
>>>gender is VAWA.
>>
>>If I may be permitted to answer for Nick: serve in ground combat
>>units.
>
> the US Army?
I'm pretty sure it's statute, not policy.
> If that's the best we can come up with,
Let me suggest this one is particularly important. Once a group of
people has proven their willingness to serve, and die, it becomes very
hard to argue they shouldn't get their "share of the pie" back in
civilian life. Blacks serving in Korea and the early years of Vietnam
helped drive the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s; it's hard
to avoid speculating the main reason social conservatives in the U. S.
don't want gays and lesbians serving openly in the military has little
to do with operational issues and much to do with marginalizing them
in civilian life.
Robert Huff
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
harm caused by pornography. Perhaps you can cite some references?
I probably could; I've read some and come across others that are
scientific, but I think by now enough are around that you can probably
find them by searching some library databases such as Academic Search
Premier, MasterFile Premier, and JStor for peer-reviewed articles and
Dissertation Abstracts. Sociology, psychology, feminist studies, and
media studies might be apt fields. Experiment with different keywords.
Most were probably prepared in the last 20 years. Even modern lay
sources may cite some recent scholarship.
I'll guess that you have looked but that you felt they didn't measure
up as proof.
Some studies could be critiqued for not actually proving harm, if
applying a standard of finding a person who consumed porn and then did
something harmful, applying instead a standard of correlation. I'll
address that.
Suppose you invent a medicine to cure all headaches. You could find 200
people with headaches, split them into 2 groups with similar
characteristics (matched for headache intensity and duration, sex, age,
general health, etc.), and give one group your wonder drug and the
other group aspirin, asking their permission to have this experiment
performed but not telling them or you which one gets which pill (an
aide would know who got which and would tell you only after the results
were in). You study their progress and you write up your conclusions on
whether the new medicine is significantly better than the
tried-and-true aspirin. (That's a rough and highly abbreviated
explanation of the study process, but sufficient for the point
following.)
By contrast, go back a few decades. Decide you wish to know whether
cigarets cause cancer in humans. The comparable method would be to find
200 people, ask their permission to run the experiment, divide them
randomly into 2 equal groups, forbid one group to smoke at all for a
few years no matter what their prior habits and tastes, and order the
other group to smoke 4 packs a day for just as many years, like it or
not. Putting aside that we now agree cigarets cause cancer because back
then that wasn't agreed, you would still have done the study when it
was believed by some that cigarets do cause it and the belief was
sufficiently credible to warrant a study to establish or discredit the
point, and historically some percentage of studies have produced
results that surprised the investigators, and therefore you'd have to
assume that there's a reasonable possibility that some 4-pack-a-day
smokers were going to die from your experiment. Even back then, that
would have been considered unconscionable, if not murderous.
So, what scientists did was find out how much people were already
smoking and use that data to correlate with cancer diagnoses. The body
of science built up on that start has so conclusively established the
point that even Philip Morris, a major cigaret maker, has in recent
years publicly proclaimed that cigarets are dangerous, going beyond the
Surgeon General's warning on the packs.
But correlations can be critiqued as not showing causality. For
example, people with big feet have bigger vocabularies. That
correlation does not mean that if you wish to learn new words you
should yank your toes hard, because the correlation is true merely in
that generally adults have bigger vocabularies and feet than do babies.
Dig down and one can identify another factor that generally leads to
foot growth and vocabulary growth in the same person; i.e., a
correlation may be the result of something else being the cause of the
two correlated factors.
Designing a porn harm study to show direct harm and not just
correlations would have to assume that harm could follow, even if the
experimenter personally disagreed, because if there wasn't some belief
in that outcome there'd be no call for the study. The dispute fuels the
study, and therefore, whatever your belief, ethics requires counting on
the possibility of harm.
The premise under dispute is whether consumption of porn leads to
acting out what the porn portrays. Porn often portrays sexual
intercourse. Porn also often portrays the application of force against
a womon in order that a man may conclude intercourse by impairing, if
not totally denying, her right to consent. A right to do anything by
definition also includes a right not to do it, so denying her right to
consent includes denying her right to refuse consent. Impairment of
consent is sociologically significant in that impairment of her consent
when his consent is not impaired is to create or reinforce the double
standard by which the genders live: her right to say no is less than
his. Since porn contrasts with obscenity in that a portrayal of a womon
enjoying her sexuality is claimed to be obscene by its opponents while
a portrayal of a womon being sexually subjugated is in the realm of
porn, a scientific study of the harm of porn would have to focus on the
latter: its consumption and its modeling or lack thereof by consumers.
The ethic is that, if harm will follow, you can't order men to consume
porn in order to see if they'll force womyn to do as the porn showed.
It would be unconscionable, because, if porn is harmful, your study
would cause rapes, sexual harassments, and a variety of other
violations usually ignored when sex is present (e.g., assault is
ignored when it can be called foreplay). Nor can you order womyn to
consume porn even without men because, if porn is harmful, they'd tend
to learn that saying no is wrong, at least more so than for men, and
they'd tend to endure when they weren't enjoying, and thus they'd tend
to be more susceptible to rape, sexual harassment, and other
violations.
Besides that, the validity of a scientific test depends on its realism.
A great deal of sex is private, albeit with public signals. What people
say publicly about their own sex lives probably disconnects somewhat
from what they do privately. I don't think there's much doubt about
that. So you can't design a porn-harm study by expecting porn
consumption and subsequent sexual behavior to be where you can
consistently see it (never mind where you can intervene to stop the
worst excesses). Even asking permission to monitor people for a few
weeks won't be good enough, because either you can't monitor totally or
you'll have to create obviously artificial environments (like hospital
settings) in which you can monitor totally but where the artificiality
itself leads to behavioral alterations in response, or merely expecting
unusual monitoring would tend to induce behavioral changes that yield
data about consumption and sex that are not accurate reflections of
their normal lives. Consumption of porn is also often private, if not
quite as often as is sex itself, so that if you ordered half your test
subjects not to consume any porn at all a legitimate question would be
whether they were complying.
Other effects can be measured, not just those on sexual practice.
You might say that reading porn doesn't necessarily have any effect.
You'd be right. But a study can show tendencies. It can show that porn
correlates with a given effect much more than its absence does. If you
could study 200 men, half consuming much porn and half none at all,
and, say, 70 of the 100 high consumers were much more forceful in their
sexual relationships while only, say, 20 of the 100 nonconsumers
crossed your specified threshold of sexual forcefulness, you'd have
established a significant correlation.
Causality remains a valid issue. One solution is to add studies drawing
people out with in-depth open-ended interviews about attitudes
thematically analyzed by impartial analysts, cross-checked with
closed-ended surveys of another sample. Not one or two people but large
numbers of people have to be studied this way in order to ensure that
replicating the study will get approximately similar results.
Numbers help validate data. Legal factfinding is geared to determining
whether one individual committed an act. But without legal process we
still know something's happening. If 100 womyn in Manhattan report
having been raped in the last month but the suspect is acquitted, the
law could say no one did it, and therefore none of the womyn were
raped. We don't have to draw the same conclusion. Social sciences
permit us to accept that 100 womyn who've had no contact with each
other aren't all likely to be lying, and therefore that some were raped
even if we haven't caught anyone. That analytical method is how
international human rights groups draw up their reports about
atrocities committed by armies who deny it: when refugees hundreds of
miles apart and fleeing into different camps and unlikely to have been
able to communicate with each other report nearly identical events of
recent days, an army's denial is less credible to international ears.
People for a study would need to be randomly selected from the universe
being studied, and the universe, the population you want to learn about
through sampling, would have to be defined. There are other protections
in scientific method. On the other hand, some elements have to be
compromised in order to get useful data. A study done by a
criminologist of currently active armed robbers required compromises,
because that topic can't be studied just by knocking on doors and
asking occupants if they've ever gunned someone down, or threatened to,
for quick cash. Those qualified to say yes will probably say no. If the
criminologist's method was critically flawed, we should reject the
data. But if s/he found a method that produced useful data, we should
accept it and proceed from there, e.g., by replicating it with new
angles.
More than one study may need to be read together to get the picture.
If you were unaware of any porn studies showing harm because you
thought none of the studies you'd heard of were valid, now you might
have some tools for analysis as you visit databases of scholarship.
Relatedly, I wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
There is a debate but what I've heard of the pro-porn side hasn't
sounded well-informed on point.
* * * * *
Since I don't know what you've read on the pro-porn side, I can't speak
to that, but it's clear we've been reading different stuff.
* * * * *
In short, extremely briefly, the pro-porn argument I recall was to the
effect that it's a harmless release that has never been proven to cause
harm. I think it's even been argued that it lessens rape by providing
safe release. One major porn publisher even tried for years to finance
feminist efforts, perhaps implying that it believed porn to advance
feminism.
There are too many problems with that line of argument for it to stand.
On a tangential point: You wrote,
* * * * *
Actually, people have known the world is round since Ptolemey. Columbus
sailed to prove that it would be possible to reach the Indies by
sailing west because the world is round. He turned out to be dead
wrong because, while he possessed some small amount of true fact, he
was completely oblivious to the continent in his way.
* * * * *
You were replying to what I had written:
* * * * *
Sailors on the oceans before Columbus was born often figured out that
the world was round when they saw their homelands disappear over the
horizon. Columbus and crew, bearing royal sanction, certified it for
almost everyone else. . . .
* * * * *
Partly, I may be wrong in degree when I was referring to the common
conclusion about Earth's roundness. However, I was not referring to
Columbus' intent or his investors'. My impression is that European
popular belief in Earth's near-flatness (a reasonable belief for the
landlocked and for those coast- and island-dwellers whose experience in
sailing was between visible land masses only, like island-hoppers)
persisted many centuries past Ptolemy until sailors who knew better had
inspired the unknowing with their reports of discovery. A poster,
Robert Huff, in this thread put up a Wiki cite to the effect that
popular belief embraced Earth's roundness much earlier than Columbus'
time; if so, I stand corrected. I don't know if anyone has traced the
belief from Ptolemy's time to Columbus' time, a difficult task. But I
doubt Ptolemy resolved it popularly with his work, i.e., beyond
scholars and coastal royal courts and other elites; among farmers and
serfs et al., it probably took a while, if not all the way to 1492. Old
discoveries used to take much longer to gain common acceptance than new
ones do now, even with confirmation, so I doubt Ptolemy had suddenly
persuaded most Europeans. If xenophobia was a large factor then, and it
probably was, the attitude of common central and northern Europeans
toward Egyptians might be critical to Egyptian credibility and
therefore to Ptolemy's credibility among northern and central
Europeans. The Iron Age with its clear military advantage still took
about 1,000 years to displace the Bronze Age across Europe, which I
suppose you could walk across, with preparation, in less than 5 years,
and ditto back then. The spread of functional iron probably took longer
because of resistance to its adoption; likewise for the spread of the
recognition of global sphericity.
I vaguely recall seeing pictures of ancient maps that showed what
purported to be terrible things lurking past the edges of Earth,
suggesting, if not flatness, at least not sphericity (a partial sphere
with boundaries might have seemed reasonable). Of course, to us, the
old maps are notorious for inaccuracy. But partly that was protective
of drafters. If a sailor reported an island, a shoal, or a monster the
crew had imagined (and had steered clear of, thus not getting a close
look or disproving its existence), the prudent mapmaker, having a
credible navigator's report and nothing to dispute it (if sailor A saw
something and sailor B on another voyage did not, that's not disproof
of sailor A's observation, since the thing could reappear for sailor C
on voyage 3), the mapmaker would have had to add the sighted object to
the map's next edition. And if the map depicted something but sailing
was clear and dull, it was pointless to blame the mapmaker for too-easy
sailing. Thus, maps acquired many features over time, until modern
times. Whether stuff past the edges was entirely mapmakers' decoration
no one believed or represented what they thought were real dangers, I
don't know.
As I recall, and I'm not a Columbus expert or fan (given his role in
the slaughter of the indigenous folks here), he thought Earth's
circumference was only about 18,000 miles (Wiki says around 19,000),
not the approximately 25,000 it is. He saw the land wasn't just
islands; he knew he had encountered a continent; I assume you're saying
he didn't know about this continent before he set sail from Europe. I
don't remember if this continent was on the maps he would have had; I
don't remember if the Varangians (Vikings) contributed maps to which
Columbus et al. had access; I'm pretty sure the Polynesians didn't
print maps. Describing Columbus as "dead wrong" seems a bit much,
though, given that Magellan and crew achieved the goal not much later,
albeit by navigating a southern detour to yield a net western sail.
At any rate, that's a tangential discussion.
-- Nick
Michael Snyder
>>>>Come on, Nick -- name a law in the US that bars females.
>>>>The only US law today that discriminates on the basis of
>>>>gender is VAWA.
>>>
>>>If I may be permitted to answer for Nick: serve in ground combat
>>>units.
>>
>> And anyway, it's not a law, is it? Isn't that a policy of
>> the US Army?
>
> I'm pretty sure it's statute, not policy.
Well I hope someone can answer definitively, it's rather
central to the current debate! ;-)
Although even if it is law, its the only law anyone's been
able to cite so far that openly discriminates against women.
Hardly justification for the highly dramatic statements that
have been made about how the law openly holds women back.
>> If that's the best we can come up with,
>
> Let me suggest this one is particularly important. Once a group of
> people has proven their willingness to serve, and die, it becomes very
> hard to argue they shouldn't get their "share of the pie" back in
> civilian life. Blacks serving in Korea and the early years of Vietnam
> helped drive the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s; it's hard
> to avoid speculating the main reason social conservatives in the U. S.
> don't want gays and lesbians serving openly in the military has little
> to do with operational issues and much to do with marginalizing them
> in civilian life.
I don't mind speculation -- it's when speculations are stated as fact
that I have to jump in and ask for a reality check. ;-)
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
and die, it becomes very hard to argue they shouldn't get their "share
* * * * *
I agree. We shouldn't need war to make a step toward equality, but
still you're right.
-- Nick
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
obviously extremely discriminatory, happens in pocket communities all
over the nation.
I got yelled at by a social worker for saying that it happens in the
U.S. I suspected, though, that the subject was too painful to discuss,
rather than that she could prove that it wasn't happening or was only
extremely rare. I hope it gets discussed more long before it gets
widespread. I think I saw a recommendation by a doctor (perhaps in
Boston) to the need to be nonjudgmental with patients to whom it was
done lest being horrified interfere with openness of communication
needed for trust prerequisite for good health care.
You wrote,
* * * * *
au pairs have considerable protection
* * * * *
An interesting book is Circle of Fire (circa early-mid 1990s). I hope I
have the title right. The author's approach is not notably feminist and
the theme is a crime story (an au pair and a fire), but especially one
chapter near the end has good, if dated, background on au pairs within
Europe, some of whom are abused through cultural isolation and
unfamiliarity. The psychology as explained is extendible to U.S.
conditions.
I agree with you that Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russel Hochschild's
book, which I'm almost certain I read a while back, was very good.
You wrote,
* * * * *
. . . anti-prostitution laws are quite discriminatory.
* * * * *
That's a fair tangent and shouldn't be very controversial (famous last
words, i suppose, but worth a try). Besides their facial contradiction
of modern economics, such that womyn are barred from what men are
supposed to embrace, prostitution laws are discriminatory in their
enforcement. Progress in law enforcement consists, so far, in arresting
men, but they're more likely to be required to take a class in not
committing the prostitution of womyn, a class in lieu of prison (at
least in one jurisdiction), while womyn risk prison, taking of money,
rape by police officers, and, while this isn't explicitly in their
sentences, rape in prison by guards. Men drive prostitution; womyn,
hardly. Without men, even so-called madames would be in other lines of
work (or, admittedly, at home). And if a john beats up a prostituted
womon, the odds she'll be able to press a criminal complaint for
assault are bad.
You wrote,
* * * * *
. . . most women do not become prostitutes because they are empowered
by random sex with men . . . .
* * * * *
You may have been referring to a men's perception of prostitution as
all-night fun, and I'd like to rebut that male myth. The sex isn't even
random, given that the men who prostitute them are not random in who
they are or in their relationships with womyn. The conditions of
prostitution may be worse than they would be if the men were random. A
major magazine's article extolling the wonders of prostitution still
described a womon's dissociation during an act. In most other subjects
in which participation is extolled, promoters don't include
dissociation as a helpful quality.
You wrote,
* * * * *
Sometimes they are coerced by fathers, husbands, brothers or even
mothers.
* * * * *
And we punish the womyn who've been through that, not the men who put
them there (although not all prostituted womyn would agree that their
own families should be punished, some might). I have a feeling, with no
statistics to back it up, that grrls who grow up in violent households
are more likely to move into violent prostitution, not because they
welcome or expect violence but because leaving what's been apparently
normal all their lives, when it also means leaving one's economic base,
isn't as appealing as it could be to one who grew up without violence
as a home norm.
You wrote,
* * * * *
. . . if prostitution were legal, the government would be able to
manage it much better. We could even tax it. Making prostitution legal
wouldn't completely eliminate the exploitation fo women in sex
industry, but it would certainly make the situation far better for
women, especially in the long run.
* * * * *
I agree prostitution should be decriminalized and taken it out of civil
law, too, and the same for pimping. Pimping that's violent or confining
is illegal without anti-pimping laws, because locking someone inside a
house, rape, and other forms of violence are illegal anyway, and should
be. If the law were silent on prostitution as it is on widget-making,
while the law on rape and on product liability (of widgets) were left
intact and enforced, some of the goals you describe (e.g., taxability)
would be met. If health testing should be required, mens' health needs
checking every time; men don't have to agree, but they also don't have
to have sex. Prostitution should still be challenged, along with
aranged marriage and unequal sex, but not by putting womyn into prison
because men shove their bodies into walls.
You wrote,
* * * * *
Perhaps there is a law which has not been changed [to remove a gender
barrier] . . . .
* * * * *
Thank you kindly, but actually I was taking the explicit facial terms
of most modern U.S. law off the table as far as being a ground of
complaint on the subject, so we could concentrate on other tools
employed by discriminators nowadays. I hadn't thought about obscure
provisions still lurking out there, although that's an interesting
point. However, they largely don't count, and not because they're
hardly known. If there's a village, popation 173, that in 1902 enacted
a ban forbidding womyn from operating horseless carriages and never
repealed it, such an enactment would probably be unconstitutional today
and thus would not be law, i.e., would not be enforceable no matter how
much a policeman ached to ticket a womon _and_ no matter how much a
village judge wished to throw a book at the defendant. One New York
building about a decade ago had a rule (building rules sometimes can be
law) that specified only married couples could work there, not singles;
such a rule being illegal here, it is not law. Even the building's
lawyer aparently thought it wasn't valid but couldn't convince an owner
to erase it.
The tiresome tactic of challenging someone for saying something not
actually said requires counteranswers, and I thank you for yours.
-- Nick
Email:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
Paul Ciszek
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>Every attempt to pass anti-porn legislation anywhere in the U.S. failed
>either in passage or in subsequent challenges on Constitutionality.
Yes, but now Bush gets to pick two Supreme Court justices, and doesn't
have to worry about Democrats challenging his choices. Abortion will
be the first decision this new court will overturn, the legality of
anti-sodomy laws will be the second, and any state or locality that
wants to pass anti-pornography laws will have a good chance of getting
them past the Supreme Court.
>The concept of "high quality porn shops" is oxymoronic, of course, but
"Of course"? Grand Openings in Boston is run by women largely for women.
At least some feminists seem to have an opinion as to what "good" porn is.
>If you found a "lousy selection of porn" in red states, does that mean
>there weren't enough womyn being beaten down for your taste? How,
Are you aware that there is porn that doesn't feature anyone being
beaten at all? It *does* feature people without clothes, and
if you equate that with being beaten, then I think that says more
about you than it does about me, porn, or our society.
>You wrote:
>* * * * *
>I have seen an excerpt from the Dworking-MacKinnon model ordinance that
>claims that men, animals, etc. serve as "substitute women" such that
>even male-on-male gay porn still constitutes violence against women.
>So, I think the accusations are justified.
>* * * * *
>
>I agree that "men, animals, etc. serve as 'substitute women' such that
>even male-on-male gay porn still constitutes violence against women" as
>a generalization (depending on what's subsumed within "etc."). Sex is
>usually about symbolism. For example, it's partly about reproduction
>even when reproduction is not possible in concrete terms in an
>instance; it's about virility, i.e., the ability to repeat
>reproduction, and thus the role of the trophy wife. Notice even your
>phrasing: "male-on-male gay porn" rather than "male gay porn"; your use
>of "on", whether unintentionally or not, implies exactly the invidious
>inequality that is at the nerve center of porn, and that is not
>necessarily inferred from obscenity.
Translation: The Dworkin-MacKinnon model ordinance *would* ban gay
porn that has only men in it. That is *exactly* why many say that the
ordinance is not about protecting women, but about banning all porn.
>Single-sex porn can be closer to equality. If, for instance, it
>portrays two people who are of the same gender and no one else, that
>could present equality. But other symbolism in the portrayal could
>still tilt the balance even between two people of the same gender.
>
>Single-sex sexuality can be equal. Not easily, but, at least
>hypothetically, it can be. Portraying that would not be porn. Porn
>depends on inequality for its existence.
How about porn that features only one person, of either gender?
I'm sure you can come up with some reason why that is bad as well.
>Most anti-porn work is not directed against Lesbian or gay male porn,
>and so the latter tends to get a free pass, as it were, because it's
>easier to make the argumnent when concrete forms are apparent, since
>there's one less subtopic to dilute the effort at persuasion, and
Bullshit. Most anti-porn work is directed against the stores that
sell the stuff, regardless of the specific titles they carry.
Profitable joints are better able to defend themselves than gay or
lesbian bookstores that have a purpose besides (or at least in
addition to) making money, so they get hit worse in many ways.
--
Please reply to: | "When the press is free and every man
pciszek at panix dot com | able to read, all is safe."
Autoreply has been disabled | --Thomas Jefferson
--
Michael Snyder
> In article <003e01c587bd$69cae340$677b...@sonic.net>,
> Michael Snyder <msn...@sonic.net> wrote:
>>"Robert Huff" <rober...@rcn.com> wrote:
>>> Michael Snyder wrote:
>>>
>>> > Come on, Nick -- name a law in the US that bars females.
>>> > The only US law today that discriminates on the basis of
>>> > gender is VAWA.
>>>
>>> If I may be permitted to answer for Nick: serve in ground combat
>>> units.
>>
>>Robert, it's so great that you chose that example, because
>>it illustrates how few professions there are that women are
>>barred from. In fact when we're talking about professions
>
> I find that the question "Do women actually serve in combat in the
> US armed forces?" gets very different answers depending on who you
> ask. GWB says that they do not. A woman in the Air Force claims
> that the Air Force does not discriminate on the basis of gender at
> all. News articles about the Air Force Academy would seem to
> indicate otherwise, at least at the academy level.
AFAIK, ground combat is the only exclusion. We know, for instance,
that women pilots flew attack aircraft in the iraq invasion (and acquitted
themselves quite handsomely).
But why would you say that "semi-equality [is] worse than equality"?
How is being allowed in every military capacity save one worse than
being excluded from all or many?
> A guy who had
> been in the Army claims that women aren't assigned to "combat duty",
> but end up in combat anyway, and don't have access to adequate
> firepower when that happens because they're allegedly not in combat.
>
> My experience with government agencies would lead me to suspect that
> the last description is closest to what actually happens.
Yeah -- but in that respect it happens to everybody. ;-)
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
It would be most helpful if you did so. I've yet to see a study that
showed an actual correlation between pornography use and probability of harm.
I've seen studies that claimed to show "X percent of people who
committed a sex crime used pronography," but that doesn't tell us
anything about how that compares to the general population.
[Explanation of double-blind studies deleted]
While it was nice of you to seek to provide an education on
statistical methods, my degree is in physics, my father's an
epidemiologist, my mother a clinical psychologist, and my sister a
research psychologist. I'm familiar with these tools.
>By contrast, go back a few decades. Decide you wish to know whether
>cigarets cause cancer in humans. The comparable method would be to find
>200 people, ask their permission to run the experiment, divide them
>randomly into 2 equal groups, forbid one group to smoke at all for a
>few years no matter what their prior habits and tastes, and order the
>other group to smoke 4 packs a day for just as many years, like it or
>not.
Actually, that's a poor design. If you seek out 100 non-smokers and
100 4-pack-a-day smokers, you can fill your cohort without asking
someone to take a risk they weren't already volunteering to take. If
your ambitious, you might even include 100 1-, 2-, and 3-pack-a-day
smokers for a more complete analysis.
>Designing a porn harm study to show direct harm and not just
>correlations would have to assume that harm could follow, even if the
>experimenter personally disagreed, because if there wasn't some belief
>in that outcome there'd be no call for the study. The dispute fuels the
>study, and therefore, whatever your belief, ethics requires counting on
>the possibility of harm.
Since you can apply the same method I've described above to people who
use none, some, this type or that of porn, this isn't such a large bar
to doing the study.
>The premise under dispute is whether consumption of porn leads to
>acting out what the porn portrays. Porn often portrays sexual
>intercourse. Porn also often portrays the application of force against
>a womon in order that a man may conclude intercourse by impairing, if
>not totally denying, her right to consent.
I sure hope your study makes these distinctions when it sets up its
cohort.
>Since porn contrasts with obscenity in that a portrayal of a womon
>enjoying her sexuality is claimed to be obscene by its opponents while
>a portrayal of a womon being sexually subjugated is in the realm of
>porn, a scientific study of the harm of porn would have to focus on the
>latter: its consumption and its modeling or lack thereof by consumers.
I think you've got yourself a false dichotomy there. Both depictions
you describe might be defined as obscene or not depending on the time
and jurisdiction such a decision is being made. Since that
distinction is a matter of law and not fact, I'm not sure what your
basis for excluding one and not the other in a scientific study is.
In any event, it remains the case that if you can't find enough men
and women who are already using porn to fill your cohort without
ordering someone to do something potentially harmful, you're not
looking very far.
>Besides that, the validity of a scientific test depends on its realism.
>A great deal of sex is private, albeit with public signals. What people
>say publicly about their own sex lives probably disconnects somewhat
>from what they do privately. I don't think there's much doubt about
>that. So you can't design a porn-harm study by expecting porn
>consumption and subsequent sexual behavior to be where you can
>consistently see it (never mind where you can intervene to stop the
>worst excesses).
That's certainly going to be an issue in any sex research study. No
doubt about it, studying people's sexual habits is hard. There seems
to be quite a few people managing to do it, though, so this doesn't
let a porn-harm study off the hook for taking these things into
account.
>You might say that reading porn doesn't necessarily have any effect.
>You'd be right. But a study can show tendencies. It can show that porn
>correlates with a given effect much more than its absence does. If you
>could study 200 men, half consuming much porn and half none at all,
>and, say, 70 of the 100 high consumers were much more forceful in their
>sexual relationships while only, say, 20 of the 100 nonconsumers
>crossed your specified threshold of sexual forcefulness, you'd have
>established a significant correlation.
That'd definately be a useful thing for you to show if you wanted to
claim that pornography is harmful. I'm still waiting for a study to
manage to show that correlation.
>If you were unaware of any porn studies showing harm because you
>thought none of the studies you'd heard of were valid, now you might
>have some tools for analysis as you visit databases of scholarship.
I'm afraid you've been far less helpful than you may have hoped.
>>Since I don't know what you've read on the pro-porn side, I can't speak
>>to that, but it's clear we've been reading different stuff.
>
>In short, extremely briefly, the pro-porn argument I recall was to the
>effect that it's a harmless release that has never been proven to cause
>harm. I think it's even been argued that it lessens rape by providing
>safe release. One major porn publisher even tried for years to finance
>feminist efforts, perhaps implying that it believed porn to advance
>feminism.
>
>There are too many problems with that line of argument for it to stand.
Let's break it down and see. The arguments you've read are:
1) Porn has never been shown to cause harm.
Frankly, I think this is the core of the pro-porn argument. If it
doesn't cause harm, there's no grounds for legislating against it or
opposing it for any reason other than personal taste.
I think that one will stand nicely until you can present that evidence
we've just discussed. Once you've cited it, we can examine and
discuss it.
2) Porn lessens rape by providing safe release.
I've occasionally heard this, but I don't think it's a particularly important
argument.
3) Porn advances feminism.
Rather than a nameless pornographer you heard of, I think I'll let
feminists like Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Jill Nagle, etc., etc.,
etc speak to the point. You can try to refute them if you like, but
you won't be able to do it by simply asserting that their positions have
too many problems to stand.
Michael Snyder
> Michael Snyder wrote:
> ....
> > Saner minds need to prevail here, and point out that
> > at least here in the west, things *HAVE* changed.
> > Women have full or all but full political equality,
> > and nearly full economic equality. They are no longer
> > barred from getting loans or credit cards in their own
> > name, they are no longer denied their share of the assets
> > of a marriage, there are *NO* obstacles to their becoming
> > doctors or lawyers, or entering medical or law school.
> > In the US there are far more colleges that bar men than
> > there are that bar women.
> >
>
> I'm sorry, Michael, but just because the letter of the law has changed,
> does not, by any stretch, mean that the are "*NO* obstacles." Overtly
> perhaps, there are no obstables. In practice, however, women still
> face sexism in a huge an insidious variety of situations that limit
> advancement and access to power.
Well, the statement to which you are responding was about
obstacles to becoming doctors or lawyers. If you disagree
with that statement, what specifically are the obstacles?
We know that there are now more women than men in
law school and med school, so there can't be many meaningful
obstacles before that point. Are they after med school? Are
male doctors preferentially hired? What makes you think so,
given that female med students are apparently preferentially
admitted to med school? Why do these obstacles appear only
after med school, and not before?
As for the insidious variety of situations that limit women's
advancement and access to power, I notice that you still
haven't named any. Why is this discussion so filled with
sweeping generalizations, and so devoid of actual examples?
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
"combat duty", but end up in combat anyway, and don't have access to
adequate firepower when that happens because they're allegedly not in
combat.
I hope someone is following up on that and posting results somewhere
public. Do you have more on that angle? For example, do they get less
training in weapon usage?
-- Nick
Email:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Megan
> Paul, you wrote,
> * * * * *
> A guy who had been in the Army claims that women aren't assigned to
> "combat duty", but end up in combat anyway, and don't have access to
> adequate firepower when that happens because they're allegedly not in
> combat.
> * * * * *
>
> I hope someone is following up on that and posting results somewhere
> public. Do you have more on that angle? For example, do they get less
> training in weapon usage?
>
I believe the reason women "end up in combat anyway" is because women
are generally assigned to duties like transport. If you're driving down
a street in the middle of war though (or flying an airplane in a
warzone, etc.), the odds of your transport vehicle being attacked is
pretty high, even if you take a side road. So, they end up in combat,
even if they are not on combat duty. Whether they are trained less in
weaponry I do not know, but I do know a woman who served in the army
and I will ask her when I see her.
Dan Holzman
Michael Snyder <msn...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>> I'm pretty sure it's statute, not policy.
>
>Well I hope someone can answer definitively, it's rather
>central to the current debate! ;-)
http://womensenews.com/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2311/context/archive
Today, it's policy. It's law that the Pentagon has to give Congress
60 days notice before changing the policy. The purpose of the notice
is to give Congress time to make it a statute if the Pentagon tries to
change the policy. The notice period was a compromise, with
conservatives wanting to make it statute. An attempt to make it
statute was scuttled and the period was added instead.
Paul Ciszek
Michael Snyder <msn...@sonic.net> wrote:
>
>AFAIK, ground combat is the only exclusion. We know, for instance,
>that women pilots flew attack aircraft in the iraq invasion (and acquitted
>themselves quite handsomely).
>
>But why would you say that "semi-equality [is] worse than equality"?
>How is being allowed in every military capacity save one worse than
>being excluded from all or many?
I'm saying that being excluded from combat entirely is arguably not as
bad as being put in a place where you can be shot *at*, but won't have
the equipment to shoot *back* properly.
--
Please reply to: | "When the press is free and every man
pciszek at panix dot com | able to read, all is safe."
Autoreply has been disabled | --Thomas Jefferson
--
Michael Snyder
"Nick (Nick Levinson)" wrote:
> Michael Snyder wrote:
>>"Nick (Nick Levinson)" wrote:
>>> suggest keeping in mind ways in which womyn are not allowed: Law is
>>> one, but probably most laws in the U.S. have been rewritten so that
>>> explicit bars against females as a gender have been erased.
>
>> law today that discriminates on the basis of gender is VAWA.
>>
>> . . . . how few professions there are that women are barred from.
>
> explicit bars against womyn -- in other words, on this point, you
> mostly agree with me
OK -- you didn't say "explicit" originally, but now that you do,
it seems to imply that, although there may not be explicit legal
bars against women, there are implicit ones. Still waiting to
hear them named.
> But, on laws: I understand VAWA as affirmative action, intended to
> offer advantage to the underpowerful gender against the overpowerful
> one, and yet differing from, e.g., the old protective laws that forbade
> womyn from working in dangerous industrial occupations, thus protecting
> them by depriving them of economic opportunity, when a nonsexist
> response would have been to mandate job safety for both genders. Those
> laws, happily, are gone, as far as I know. VAWA, as far as I know,
> wasn't meant to protect womyn from violence by mandating that they stay
> home or leave home to avoid it while permitting men other choices, and
> thus VAWA is not discriminatory, just as hate crimes laws are not
> discriminatory. Likewise, note law that relies on the "reasonable
> woman" standard in judging the facts of sexual harassment of womyn
> rather than the "reasonable person" standard.
So in other words, VAWA is biased in favor of women,
not against them. And a "reasonable woman" standard can
only be interpreted as favoring women, since it prefers a
woman's standard over an un-gendered one.
> Implicit bars can be found in law.
Still waiting to hear examples.
> Reproductive rights are often denied
> along class lines by law:
Class is not gender. Class discrimination is not gender discrimination.
> poverty is especially feminized,
Oh please!!! Then why are most homeless people male???
> so a
> Medicare coverage ban on abortions is a law against females.
Well, clearly any law governing abortion DIRECTLY affects
women more than men -- but on the other hand, the laws that
explicitly PROTECT abortion rights grant reproductive choices
to women that are not granted to men. Men do not have *any*
legal protections for their reproductive rights. So I think
we're gonna have to call that one a draw.
> In New
> York State, at least a few years ago, at least one category of
> insurance was priced higher when covering womyn (all else equal)
Cite please?
> and
> the insurance was mandatory by law, employers by statute having to pay
> for it.
Well if the employers paid for it, then it didn't impact women.
Unles the employers were more likely to be women than men?
> To the extent that law encouraged the hiring of men over womyn,
Full stop. The law EXPLICITLY bars the hiring of men over women.
Period. If women's uniforms cost more than mens, or women's
insurance costs more than mens, or women take more sick leave
than men, the employer CANNOT use that as an excuse to not
hire women.
> the law contained an implicit (not explicit) bar to womyn,
No, sorry, that's just too much of a stretch.
> and I
> suspect the law hasn't changed (although some might argue that the
> dollar differences aren't enough to make the difference in hiring
> decisions that other reasons do).
Nick, I'm not satisfied that this law ever existed.
You need to document that one.
> The failure to enact the Equal Rights
> Amendment is legal authority for the view that some sex discrimination
> is acceptable;
No, I'm sorry. It may offend your sensability, but it is not
"legal authority" for discrimination (which is legally prohibited).
> as a matter of Constitutional law, the last time I
> looked, gender discrimination is not as solidly forbidden as race
> discrimination (on which the Constitution does speak), and therefore
> some degree of legal permission for sex discrimination exists.
Excuse me? Nick, you're stretching as thin as a spider's eyebrow
here. Both racial and gender discrimination are prohibited by
constitutional amendment. How is one "not as solidly forbidden"
as the other? And how would that constitute "permission for sex
discrimination" even if it were true?
[Michael:]
>>> And anyway, [about "ground combat soldier"] it's not a law, is it?
>>> Isn't that a policy of the US Army?
[Nick (I think):]
> The last I heard of it, that policy was law, and probably applies to
> all military branches.
We definitely need a citation here. I can't say you're wrong,
but I can't accept it on hearsay either.
> An overall cap on womyn is also on the books, I
> think, and I take it we both agree such a cap ought to go.
What "cap"? What does that mean, "an overall cap"?
Are you saying there is an official limit to how high
a woman can rise in rank? That's nonsense. There are
women Generals and Admirals. Do you mean a cap
in the number of women admitted to the services?
Can't believe that either. A cap in women's salaries?
I think you must explain this statement.
> It's
> unlikely these provisions wouldn't be law, or litigation (some military
> decisions being judicially reviewable) would open the doors to womyn
> for lack of a contrary reason grounded in law.
"Unlikely" isn't gonna cut it here, Nick. You're speculating.
> And sometimes plain
> policies can be law without being enacted.
No, I'm sorry, policy is policy. Law is law.
If you're going to make dramatic generalizations
and say that "law" holds women back, you must
talk about real law, not policy. Otherwise, amend
your statement and say that policy holds women
back.
Michael Snyder
> In article <001e01c58da7$4b693c90$a46414ac@msnyder8600>,
> Michael Snyder <msn...@sonic.net> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm pretty sure it's statute, not policy.
> >
> >Well I hope someone can answer definitively, it's rather
> >central to the current debate! ;-)
>
> http://womensenews.com/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2311/context/archive
>
> Today, it's policy. It's law that the Pentagon has to give Congress
> 60 days notice before changing the policy.
OK! Well, then, it isn't law, and we still don't have an
example of a law that (explicitly or implicitly) severely
holds women back.
> The purpose of the notice
> is to give Congress time to make it a statute if the Pentagon tries to
> change the policy. The notice period was a compromise, with
> conservatives wanting to make it statute. An attempt to make it
> statute was scuttled and the period was added instead.
Well, right, but conservatives also want to prohibit abortion.
The fact that they want to is not the same as their actually
having done it.
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
bars against women, there are implicit ones. Still waiting to hear
them named.
Some were. E.g., cf. the inapplicability of Federal equal pay law to
inequity due to market conditions.
If you want many implicit barriers described, read on subjects of
discrimination; some will point to laws effecting implicit
discrimination.
Here's one: In criminal sentencing of drug dealers and their aides,
often a case involving one group of people will result in longer
sentences for womyn, because the top leader will be able to
plea-bargain in exchange for information identifying and convicting
aides, whereas the womyn arrested as carriers (so-called mules) have no
such knowledge to offer, can't offer information in exchange for
relative leniency, and net longer sentences. I don't see how society
benefits from low-level participants getting longer prison time than
the top leaders get from the same enterprise. And, as in the
aboveground economy, where men tend to be in leadership, that men
predominate in leadership in the underground economy is sexist, even to
the extent criminal conduct should be crushed under terminal
imprisonment.
In the same vein, say a boyfriend is a drug dealer and has drugs in a
car. The police arrest everyone in the car and they're all convicted of
possession, because it's apparently not necessary to prove actual
knowledge on the part of every individual in the car. If one argues
that doing otherwise would permit the smuggler to get away by denying
actual knowledge, what about someone who transports the same drugs
cross-country on a commercial flight? Should flight attendants and
baggage handlers get the same prison time the smuggler gets despite the
airline employees having no actual knowledge? Should the Boeing jet be
immediately seized and sold at auction if the car was? Arguably, this
is a point about class; but it is no less a gender case for being a
class case, because in small businesses, legal and illegal, it's common
for men to lead and womyn to follow because that's all the womyn are
allowed to do.
You wrote:
* * * * *
. . . . And a "reasonable woman" standard can only be interpreted as
favoring women, since it prefers a woman's standard over an un-gendered
one.
* * * * *
On sexual issues, i.e., issues revolving around sexuality, men and
womyn have very different perceptions. If, say, a construction worker
emits a wolf-whistle at a passing womon, men and womyn tend to
comprehend the meaning of that whistle very differently. She might find
it offensive or not; a man nearby (who's a stranger to her but happens
to be walking in the same place) is much less likely to find it
offensive, because such whistles are rarely directed at men and thus
men are unlikely to have built up a store of meaning as recipients of
whistlings. To gauge her reaction for reasonableness, a "reasonable
woman" standard avoids dilution by archetypal men.
Even so, the law has few contexts in which a "reasonable woman"
standard is available. To my knowledge, for example, it is not used in
unfair competition business law cases, consumer affairs law, or income
tax adjudications.
I wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
Reproductive rights are often denied along class lines by law . . . .
* * * * *
Class is not gender. Class discrimination is not gender
discrimination.
* * * * *
Reproductive rights are about as gendered as you can get. Some of those
rights, however, are particularly impacted among members of lower
classes. The intersection of class and gender does not invalidate
either as an issue.
The current controversy swirling around Roe v. Wade would fade
instantly if everyone wishing abortions could afford to fly to a
foreign nation and back before they're missed without denting their
wallets. That not being the case, one could argue that almost the
entire debate combines class and gender, albeit to a lesser degree than
the piece of the debate I was highlighting.
Class being present does not mean sexism isn't damaging and to be
excised.
I and you wrote:
* * * * *
poverty is especially feminized
* * * * *
Oh please!!! Then why are most homeless people male???
* * * * *
It looks that way, but I'm not sure it's true. Homeless men who sleep
on city streets are safer than homeless womyn who would sleep there, so
men are more willing to sleep on streets than womyn are, and so you'd
see far more men on the streets; while, in N.Y.C., city-run single-sex
shelters are reportedly more dangerous for men (men assaulting each
other to steal property) than for womyn. Homeless womyn tend to be
hidden. For instance, they may stay with relatives who are trying to
kick them out and who are not obligated to take care of them. Municipal
agencies may or may not count the latter as homeless, but if they don't
have homes of their own and need them, they're homeless. And many have
children with them; I think homeless single parents accompanied by
children are more likely to be mothers than fathers.
Poverty statistics, I think divided by gender, are available from the
Census Bureau, www.census.gov. Let me know if you find that poverty is
_not_ more common among womyn than among men, all else equal.
You wrote:
* * * * *
Men do not have *any* legal protections for their reproductive rights.
* * * * *
I'm male, and I have the right, legally and socially, to refrain from
sexual intercourse and from impregnating a womon, which is plenty of
legal protection for my reproductive rights. Once I put semen into a
womon and until a baby is born or is not, the control of what's in her
is rightly hers. Assuming we're not turning womyn into robots to carry
our seed, what legal protections do men need and not already have for
their reproductive rights?
You wrote:
* * * * *
. . . . The law EXPLICITLY bars the hiring of men over women. Period.
If women's uniforms cost more than mens, or women's insurance costs
more than mens, or women take more sick leave than men, the employer
CANNOT use that as an excuse to not hire women.
* * * * *
Maybe you'd like to look at how the law is carried out. It's hard
enough to win a lawsuit or administrative complaint over discrimination
occurring well after employment has begun. It's far harder to win over
refusal to hire in the first place. And should the womon win, the
financial award will often be near zero, before paying for her lawyer.
You're technically right, but employers can get away with it, and do.
The weakness of the legal system in certain kinds of cases makes the
application of extralegal systems of discrimination effectively
penalty-free as far as law goes.
You wrote:
* * * * *
Cite please?
. . . . .
Nick, I'm not satisfied that this law ever existed.
You need to document that one.
* * * * *
I don't have to, but I'll do you the favor of referring to it, trusting
you'll do one in return. It was either workers' compensation insurance
or unemployment insurance in N.Y.S. (I forgot which), and the rates
were set, I believe, by insurance carriers, not by the state. One of
the reasons for the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment was that it
would have applied to insurance pricing where no bona fide reason for
genderal price differences existed.
I, you, I, and you wrote:
* * * * *
The failure to enact the Equal Rights Amendment is legal authority for
the view that some sex discrimination is acceptable . . . .
* * * * *
No, I'm sorry. It may offend your sensability, but it is not "legal
authority" for discrimination (which is legally prohibited).
* * * * *
as a matter of Constitutional law, the last time I looked, gender
discrimination is not as solidly forbidden as race discrimination (on
which the Constitution does speak), and therefore some degree of legal
permission for sex discrimination exists.
* * * * *
Excuse me? Nick, you're stretching as thin as a spider's eyebrow here.
Both racial and gender discrimination are prohibited by constitutional
amendment. How is one "not as solidly forbidden" as the other? And
how would that constitute "permission for sex discrimination" even if
it were true?
* * * * *
Please identify the Constitutional amendment that bars sex
discrimination beyond suffrage (the Nineteenth Amendment being about
suffrage). Approximately 145,000,000 females will benefit from your
discovery, and you'll be hailed as a scholar and a gentleman for
decades. Maybe a stamp will be issued in your honor.
The ERA did not pass. The fact that it did not pass although Congress
introduced it and sent it to the states for ratification constitutes
legal history (not just political history) that persuades courts in the
adjudication of cases. It persuades the courts that the American public
did not think that the Constitution should guarantee equality of rights
based on gender. As a result, the Supreme Court has applied a standard
of strict scrutiny to racial discrimination but not to sex
discrimination (unless there's been a change in judicial rulings in the
last few years). Laws rarely stand when judged under the standard of
strict scrutiny; laws rarely fail when judged under the much lower
rational basis standard; sex discrimination is examined at an
in-between level. That court also decided that pregnancy discrimination
does not constitute sex discrimination (a point reversed by Congress as
to several particular statutes but not all statutes). A looser
standard, such as an in-between standard, for adjudicating the
lawfulness of a sex-discriminatory act constitutes by implication
permission for some degree of sex discrimination.
That statutes (and perhaps state constitutions) firmly ban sex
discrimination says little about the U.S. Constitution. If an act is
permitted or forbidden under statute but the statute concretely
disadvantages someone, that person may wish to challenge its
Constitutionality. At that point, Constitutional text may come into
play. If the text is unclear when applied to the facts at bar, the
intent of the framers may come into play. That is how reproductive
rights are Constitutionally protected. Those who argue that only
literalism should be allowed in applying the Constitution presumably
would have Marbury v. Madison thrown out; that's a very old case under
which the judiciary may find a law unconstitutional, although nowhere
does the Constitution have words giving that power to anyone. If that
were thrown out, no one would have that power, and therefore there'd be
no Constitutional limit on what laws could be put into effect. In
short, the Constitution has to be understood, not just read.
I have a feeling you're going to ask me to give you a list of citations
fit for a brief. If that's what you're hoping, please visit a law
library. My time isn't unlimited. Yours probably isn't, either, but
prioritize what you'd like to research. And you can probably do it
online without paying Lexis' or West's charges. I've given you keywords
you can use. And while many texts of the Constitution are in serious
need of proofreading, reading the amendments should reliably answer at
least one of your doubts. The most authoritative Constitutional text
online is via the National Archives and Records Administration, and
several sites offer Supreme Court decisions in full text going back
years.
I wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
An overall cap on womyn is also on the books, I think, and I take it we
both agree such a cap ought to go.
* * * * *
. . . . Are you saying there is an official limit to how high
a woman can rise in rank? That's nonsense. There are
women Generals and Admirals. Do you mean a cap in the number of women
admitted to the services? Can't believe that either. A cap in women's
salaries? . . .
* * * * *
The fault is in my brevity; I meant numbers of womyn admitted to
services, not the other items you listed. Even if that cap was recently
dropped, and perhaps it was in light of difficulties recruiting, it was
quite official, and the genderal antidiscrimination statutes don't
apply.
Rising in ranks, however, is limited by another means: Since womyn
aren't supposed to be in combat, the positions at higher ranks will
tend to be limited by every womon's alleged lack of combat experience.
One, it's generally incongruous to let a womon be a sergeant for a
combat unit if men with combat experience are available. Two, if womyn
are less likely to be trained in combat-centered doctrine, they'll be
highly qualified for fewer positions; what's the likelihood
(proportionate to womyn's participation in service either total or as
officers) of one being appointed head of the Army War College? Yes,
some womyn qualify; I think a womon was Secretary of the Air Force
under Bill Clinton, but I don't remember any on the Joint Chiefs of
Staff.
A cap in salaries: No, not to my knowledge, specifically in salaries
and excluding other forms of pay; but if total compensation for
soldiers in combat includes combat pay but female soldiers unofficially
in combat don't get combat pay, that's effectively a cap on
compensation because of gender.
You wrote:
* * * * *
"Unlikely" isn't gonna cut it here, Nick. You're speculating.
* * * * *
That's correct, and I said so, which you know, since you quoted the
proof of it. Speculation is a ground of hypothesis, on which scientific
discovery depends. I speculated on specific points, and pointing you in
the right direction for your research is a helpful service.
You wrote:
* * * * *
No, I'm sorry, policy is policy. Law is law.
* * * * *
Sometimes, policy is law. Example: The Fourteenth Amendment's Equal
Protection Clause generally guarantees that people similarly situated
on the facts are to be similarly treated. While there are glaring
exceptions to that principle, when it applies it demands a degree of
legal consistency. Thus, if a policy favoring individuals is applied to
some individuals, other individuals who are similarly situated as to
facts but are denied the advantage of that policy may be able to
litigate to have that policy applied to them as well, in the successful
case finding that the policy is law until amended. That can be true
even if the policy is unwritten, if its terms can be established by
other means, such as by testimony. Even prisoners have won cases that
way. The enforcing of policy as law occurs frequently in administrative
agency practice.
This example is less about government action and still illustrates how
policy can turn into law: You're an engineer. Suppose a customer wants
a product and prudence says that an engineer is needed to ensure that
it is safely designed. The firm making the product hires or contracts
with an engineer and assignes the task of designing it. It's sold to
the customer, it breaks down causing the customer major damage, and
evidence indicates that the fault is with design, not the
manufacturing. A question then is whether the engineering was
sufficient. The law applies a standard of care to the firm that
designed and offered the product, and thus the engineers must meet a
professional practice standard of care higher than what applies to
ordinary lay people (the latter have to avoid being negligent). The
case focuses on a particular element of product design. Suppose no
statute says how that element is to be designed. Suppose the firm that
assigned the engineer, however, did have an internal policy about, say,
the minimum number of bolts to be used to attach a fan to a frame. Say
the engineer had no good engineering reason for using fewer bolts.
Nothing conflicted with the policy. The customer has a copy of that
policy, because, as part of the lawsuit, the court ordered the firm to
turn a copy over to the plaintiff's lawyer, even if the customer never
had a hint about the policy before the suit. If using fewer bolts can
be shown to have led to the damage suffered by the customer, violation
of the policy will be a violation of the law requiring that the firm's
engineer meet the standard of care required by law. That violation will
be a violation of the customer's general legal right against injury due
to professional malpractice. The firm will likely have to pay the
customer for the damages. Possibly the engineer will have to pay the
firm, especially if the engineer is a contractor, and in that case may
have to pay the customer, too.
You wrote:
* * * * *
. . . . you must talk about real law . . . .
* * * * *
Law is that which will be enforced through a society's legal systems
such as a judiciary. It doesn't have to be called a law to be a law,
just as a contract doesn't have to be called a contract to be a
contract. Likewise, calling it a law, while persuasive, doesn't stop it
from ultimately being voided if, for example, it's unconstitutional,
just as calling an agreement a contract doesn't stop it from being
voided if it violates a governing statute.
I affirmed that there are many extralegal systems for the oppression of
womyn. Policy is among those systems. So, to show sexism, we needn't
talk only about "real law".
You wrote:
* * * * *
As for the insidious variety of situations that limit women's
advancement and access to power, I notice that you [tankboi] still
haven't named any. Why is this discussion so filled with sweeping
generalizations, and so devoid of actual examples?
* * * * *
I sent you some examples of situations limiting womyn's access to power
quite apart from porn. Some you disagreed with, but I take it you
weren't prepared to disagree with all of those. I don't think you
rebutted Megan's statements on point in this thread, and tankboi may
have noticed that a pattern can be found in the examples in life
around.
Since you and others can probably point to instances of men being
treated unfairly by womyn, one could ask whether we're simply embarking
on a game of tit-for-tat. We're not, as "sweeping" observations can
attest. I don't want to make any "sweeping generalizations" that are
wrong; I'm not. I like reading critiques of my work; these
generalizations are well supported. Womyn's income averages far less
than men's, especially when we focus on compensation for services and
exclude transfer payments meant primarily to alleviate poverty (womyn
shouldn't have more poverty than men do, but they do); and the ratio
appears to be far worse in many other nations (perhaps not all but I
doubt any major nations are much better than the U.S. in that regard).
Females are far more likely to be raped than are males, including
incesting; and, while in the U.S., that can be hidden (not that it
should be), in many nations it means the womon's death on a trumped-up
charge of adultery or some such. Womyn are far less likely to hold
major political office (not just the Presidency) than are men; since we
live in a republic, not a democracy, we rely on elected office-holders
to make political decisions for us, and so the electeds often act
without asking our input (whether this is necessary for a nation our
size is quite another debate but there's no huge push to change the
system these days, so men and womyn running for office will do so
within today's governance paradigm), and men elected will make many key
decisions without asking womyn's opinions. And so on.
Given the breadth of effects, we shouldn't get stuck isolating each
case, as if we need only solve each single problem. If a house is
falling, straightening each bent nail may not suffice, and may take too
long to try. Whole new walls may be needed, and fresh architecture.
You wrote:
* * * * *
We know that there are now more women than men in law school and med
school, so there can't be many meaningful obstacles before that point.
Are they after med school? Are male doctors preferentially hired?
What makes you think so, given that female med students are apparently
preferentially admitted to med school? Why do these obstacles appear
only after med school, and not before?
* * * * *
One analytical point is that womyn may be admitted in equal numbers, or
in equal proportions relative to qualified applicant pools, and still
have to work harder than men to gain admission. I'm not at all sure
that grrls' education has so equalized with boys' nationwide that
university applicant pools are of similar sizes and qualities. Whether
preadmission barriers are still significantly gendered is interesting.
Maybe someone knows.
Even were obstacles appearing only after graduation, that wouldn't be
so odd. Society doesn't rectify itself everywhere at once. The delay
can take generations. We may not feel like waiting until laggards get
around to catching up on their obligations. A little prodding might be
in order.
Where would you like to start working to end sexism? If you've done
some work in the past and would like to resume, I'd like to welcome
you. If you haven't, ditto. Tell me what you're committed to and I'll
see what I can think of for you to do.
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
How is being allowed in every military capacity save one worse than
being excluded from all or many?
Mostly, probably, it's not; but sometimes it can be. What some
(definitely not all) African Americans said in the 1960s, for example,
is that they'd rather live in the segregationist South than in the
liberal North because at least in the South you knew exactly where you
stood. Experiences in Michigan and Boston might seem to bear that out.
One reason: If semi-equality means being betrayed by those you have to
count on, your situation can become far more perilous than anyone
else's.
At this point, I'll only speculate: If female soldiers aren't supposed
to be in combat and therefore they're being given only light combat
training (e.g., self-defense in case their base posts are entered by
armed robbers but not by enemy army brigades) but in fact are
frequently in full-scale war combat, their lives and health and their
ability to fulfill the mission females and males are assigned are
crippled. If that repeatedly happens, the command decisions denying
adequate training stop looking accidental, and start looking sexist. By
one gloss, semi-equality may be worse than equality (although that
doesn't mean females should discard participation, because equality may
be reachable).
And if combat comes with combat pay but womyn are falsely listed as not
being in combat, they're probably not getting combat pay for their
combat services, are they? Does less money (if less) mean the womyn
enlistees enter combat out of a greater commitment than the
counterpartial men have?
Soldiers sometimes use part of their pay to buy what they need for
service. If that's necessary and if womyn are paid less because denied
combat pay, they can't afford to have what they need.
Paul wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
A guy who had been in the Army claims that women aren't assigned to
"combat duty", but end up in combat anyway, and don't have access to
adequate firepower when that happens because they're allegedly not in
combat.
My experience with government agencies would lead me to suspect that
the last description is closest to what actually happens.
* * * * *
Yeah -- but in that respect it happens to everybody. ;-)
* * * * *
Paul is referring to an exclusion of womyn that does not happen to
everyone.
Any government agencies may underprepare people in their charge and
that may be true of both genders. However, Paul was citing agencies'
behavior as evidence that the Army may be doing likewise as to womyn
more than men, or only womyn.
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Nick (Nick Levinson)
obscenity and mashing them as if they're one and the same.
You wrote:
* * * * *
any state or locality that wants to pass anti-pornography laws will
have a good chance of getting them past the Supreme Court
* * * * *
I'm not a lawyer and I agree with you about Bush's likelihood of
appointing two justices unopposed and pressing his social agenda, but
I'm not sure getting that agenda through the court is a done deal when
he gets his two, or even three. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to
stake anything on an assurance that the court won't overturn the
abortion and Lesbian/gay rights decisions. They're politically on
tenuous ground. (I kind of hope Rhenquist exercises his civil right as
someone with a perceived disability but still able and willing to work
and serves for a long time, say, until late January 2009, but we may
not be so lucky.)
But of the three issues, my own guess is that the court is likely to
continue preventing porn legislation from taking root when challenged
on First Amendment grounds, which it will be. Obscenity, on the other
hand, will stay in an outlaw state.
You wrote:
* * * * *
Grand Openings in Boston is run by women largely for women. At least
some feminists seem to have an opinion as to what "good" porn is.
* * * * *
I earlier took your word that what Grand Openings sells is porn and not
obscenity, but if you're now saying the opposite then I have no special
objection.
Feminists are not unified on any single issue. I'm happy when a womon
can stand for some part of a feminist goal-set even if she can't go the
whole route.
Not all womyn are feminists. Nor are any womyn who are consumers of
porn necessarily feminist. Many a customer who is a womon may simply
want to keep someone in their life happy. If that helps her get through
life, I'm for that. How she does it is up to her.
You wrote:
* * * * *
Are you aware that there is porn that doesn't feature anyone being
beaten at all? It *does* feature people without clothes, and if you
equate that with being beaten . . . .
* * * * *
I didn't equate nudity with porn; did someone else? If the latter,
please direct that critique to whomever blended porn and obscenity.
Nudity can be pornographic but needn't be. Female inferiority is
essential to porn. Nudity can be used to promote female inferiority,
and, when it is, can turn nonporn into porn.
I'll agree that not all porn is about beatings. Not specifically.
That's because beatings are not the only tool for subjugation of
females. But it's particularly potent as a tool, because it's used so
often in our lives that we (men, too) develop a fear of receiving more
than some threshold of pain, so that a superficially nonviolent symbol
of disapproval can be a reminder of the potential for violence and of
loss of decisionmaking control generally.
You asked:
* * * * *
How about porn that features only one person, of either gender? I'm
sure you can come up with some reason why that is bad as well.
* * * * *
Porn or obscenity? One person can be in either context. That's often
the case.
The more easily understood case in porn is when there's more than one
person. If it's porn, the imbalance between genders usually is most
apparent when the porn has two or more actors and they are of different
genders.
Masturbation usually is taken as obscene, not pornograhic. But that's
not the only one-person portrayal there is. One divorce lawyer asked a
female client to wear her wedding band in court so the jury could see
that she still believed in the institution of marriage, just not that
particular marriage any more. Physically, how big is one ring in a
courtroom? It's almost invisible if you don't know what to look for.
The symbolism could be subtle, but some jurors probably could be
expected to look for the symbol, and probably to vote accordingly
especially if some other factors were lined up as well. Likewise,
Hollywood's movies and TV shows are packed with symbolisms, to make
storytelling so much more efficient without the audience realizing it.
You wrote:
* * * * *
. . . . The Dworkin-MacKinnon model ordinance *would* ban gay porn that
has only men in it. That is *exactly* why many say that the ordinance
is not about protecting women, but about banning all porn.
* * * * *
Yes, generally, that is the intended ban, not because it's gay but
because it's porn -- but, again, is it obscenity (gay obscenity) that
you mean to defend, rather than porn (gay porn)?
Granted the word _porn_ is widely used, formerly as _porno_, when
obscenity is and was meant in public discourse, but I kept the
distinction in this thread and various anti-porn workers did likewise
in their work. Much of the fudging of meanings by others was apparently
intended to protect access even at a cost to womyn, a cost more readily
imposed when those forced to pay it are not much in power.
Gay sexuality can be grounded in equality. Het sexuality can be
grounded in equality. Presentations of either need not be pornographic
and thus would not be banned.
I don't think there'd be an issue if there was a piece of porn here and
there. Its prevalence is what changes the equation. That it establishes
a norm is what limits and disturbs.
Before the term _sexual harassment_ was invented, a mailroom clerk at a
law firm used to show pictures of bikini-clad womyn to secretaries
bringing packages for delivery. He showed the pictures to model ideals.
He turned out to be gay, doubted that political efforts could succeed
in getting gay rights (he had more evidence for that belief then than
he would have had today), and probably leveraged the pictures to hide
his own sexual orientation before that term was established. I may've
been the only person in the office to figure out he was gay. As I
recall, the pictures were magazine cutouts and none of the pictures
went much further to portray sexuality, yet the consistency of bikinis
and body figures would seem to suggest a particular role for womyn, a
role of inferiority mixed with an inference of sexuality in the service
of men as wielders of power, i.e., at least a long-persistent hint of
porn. Many of those pictures plastered the mailroom walls. Today,
that's outlawed in many firms.
Banning all porn -- not obscenity, but porn -- opens vistas for womyn.
That ban does not contradict protection of womyn. The point is not to
shield womyn's eyes from spying a breast. This is not about obscenity.
Rather, it is to maintain womyn's credibility as corporate officers,
firefighters, boxers, and farmers, even when they're twenty years old,
unmarried, yellow-haired, and slim, characteristics men also have while
holding those careers without question about their gender or sexuality.
You wrote:
* * * * *
. . . . Most anti-porn work is directed against the stores that sell
the stuff, regardless of the specific titles they carry. Profitable
joints are better able to defend themselves than gay or lesbian
bookstores that have a purpose besides (or at least in addition to)
making money, so they get hit worse in many ways.
* * * * *
Most anti-porn work to my knowledge is theoretical: e.g., the writing
of books and legislation and the performing of some studies. Most of
the store closures and the like are done on issues of obscenity,
because, in the U.S., on obscenity is where the legal authority
resides.
Lesbian/gay bookstores do indeed have too much difficulty surviving
against the likes of Barnes & Noble and Borders, and large presses,
large distributors, and large chain bookstores have unequal advantages
in working the legal and political systems to their side. But giving
small or L/G stores an exemption from antiporn laws (assuming
enactment) isn't the key to success.
If large publishers want to sell to small low-profit stores who can't
afford to defend against charges and those charges are unfair, the
publishers can pick up the tab, just as obscenity publishers used to
pick up the tab when small newsstands faced police charges.
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
* * * * *
I enjoy doing research as a volunteer where I think it'll help, and
have volunteered to advance feminism. Likewise, I like reading, as an
education for me, which I then apply.
May I invite you to do the research you're interested in? The trap, I
realize, if you believe there's almost no good scientific research in
the literature, is that you might uncover bad examples. I can do that,
too, e.g., in alchemy, but that would be pointless. Look for sound
research, and, if even the best is unsatisfactory, design better.
You wrote:
* * * * *
. . . studies that claimed to show "X percent of people who committed a
sex crime used pronography," . . . [don't] tell us anything about how
that compares to the general population.
* * * * *
I'd agree that's weak proof. Indeed, it's not the general population
you'd want to compare but a demographically matched population. And
it's somewhat backwards: by starting with known sex criminals, the
population of possible porn consumers is skewed by which cases make it
through the criminal justice system all the way to conviction. Stranger
rapes are more likely to lead to conviction than acquaintance rapes;
marital rapes without children witnessing almost never lead to
convictions. Even if police suspicion based on probable cause or
stronger is used in lieu of conviction to determine criminality, the
likelihood of conviction will produce a similar skewing. Thus, the
population studied would be relatively extreme as far as sexual
forcefulness is concerned. Finally, it has the politically-driven
logical flaw akin to claiming that marijuana is a gateway drug to
heroin or cocaine usage without studying alcohol as a possible gateway
(the alcohol industry being politically well-connected) or fizzy soda
as a gateway to alcohol (imagine ads: "if only mom had stopped me from
drinking Coke, then I wouldn't be using coke today").
Yet, if a significantly higher percentage of sex criminals used porn
than did noncriminals, while that doesn't say a lot, it's not devoid of
meaning.
I wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
[T]o know whether cigarets cause cancer in humans . . . ., forbid one
group to smoke at all for a few years no matter what their prior habits
and tastes, and order the other group to smoke 4 packs a day for just
as many years, like it or not.
* * * * *
Actually, that's a poor design. If you seek out 100 non-smokers and
100 4-pack-a-day smokers, you can fill your cohort without asking
someone to take a risk they weren't already volunteering to take. . . .
. . . . .
Since you can apply the same method I've described above to people who
use none, some, this type or that of porn, this isn't such a large bar
to doing the study.
. . . . .
. . . [I]f you can't find enough men and women who are already using
porn to fill your cohort without ordering someone to do something
potentially harmful, you're not looking very far.
* * * * *
Your cigaret design is roughly what was done, but not so much because
the people are easy to find or because of a strong desire to support
voluntariness, but rather because of the health risks.
As you know from your science background, when studying one variable,
keeping other variables from affecting the one of concern is critical
to good science.
What your smoking design does not control for is whether there was a
deeper cause of some people smoking when others don't that also results
in more smokers than nonsmokers getting cancer. For instance, imagine
that some of us have a chemical imbalance such that nicotine tastes
good but the prior imbalance also produces cancer (I know no such
imbalance but let's imagine one). Then it would be incorrect to blame
cigarets for cancer on a correlation alone. However, the alternative
design of forcing some people to smoke prodigiously for years entails
an unacceptable risk to health, so that's out. Thus, we began with
essentially correlational studies, rather similar to studies of the
type you were critiquing as to porn.
When the first cigarets-cause-cancer studies were publicized, cigaret
makers focused on the study flaws. They could certainly continue making
the critiques today, but have largely abandoned that line. They won
cases for years in court largely on a premise of smoking being a
voluntary act (which it is, largely, at least for first-hand smoke),
but not so much that it was safe, or that danger was unproven. They've
given up claiming that proof is lacking.
The correlational design applied to porn has the same problem. You're
right that many consume porn, even excluding those who do so only
passively (e.g., by seeing street advertising) but not everyone buys or
seeks porn. Those who do don't consume it equally. Not everyone has the
same motivations, because not everyone has the same attitudes toward
the subjects of porn, and therefore not everyone has the same reactions
to the porn.
A study of people who are already consumers or not would tell us less
than studies of people who are exposed or denied exposure to porn
without regard to whether they would consume it anyway. The latter
would likely have to depend on finding (or not finding) relatively
quickly-produced effects, and probably not limited to acts of
forcefulness that cross the line into criminality, from relatively
short-term porn exposures, thus probably more intensive exposures, thus
giving us limited result sets, but they're still not necessarily
meaningless.
I wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
Since porn contrasts with obscenity in that a portrayal of a womon
enjoying her sexuality is claimed to be obscene by its opponents while
a portrayal of a womon being sexually subjugated is in the realm of
porn, a scientific study of the harm of porn would have to focus on the
latter: its consumption and its modeling or lack thereof by consumers.
* * * * *
I think you've got yourself a false dichotomy there. Both depictions
you describe might be defined as obscene or not depending on the time
and jurisdiction such a decision is being made. Since that distinction
is a matter of law and not fact, I'm not sure what your basis for
excluding one and not the other in a scientific study is.
* * * * *
The question commonly asked is whether porn causes harm. Feminist
theory has contributed a definition of porn grounded on legal civil
rights theory, a theory not applied by lawmakers as to the intersection
of porn and gender but closely related to U.S. civil rights legal
theory on other grounds. If porn is harmless, womyn's ability to
exercise their civil rights are not adversely affected by porn. But if
their civil rights are impeded and the impediment is suspected to be
porn, porn is a proper test subject for science. Since law has little
to define porn, two other sources can define it: feminist theory and
popular perception. The former is more precise; the latter, more
widespread. Since the latter can evidently blend a lot of semantic
confusion with obscenity, a combination of feminist theory and popular
perception might be more workable. To write a definition, law is not
necessary. To suit a scientific study, feminist theory can be combined
with popular perception by asking recognized anti-porn feminist
theoreticians to produce portrayals that are pornographic and others
that seem confusingly close but are not porn and then mix them up
(keeping separate lists for later separations), and then asking members
of the public to reseparate those mixed-up portrayals. Portrayals that
pass both screens as porn and portrayals that pass both screens as
nonporn become test material. More steps have to be included but that's
a rough concept.
Other angles can be studied. Institutional human resources staff can be
tested in a staged office having mild porn on the walls, handing them
photos of purported job applicants with purported résumés, and
quizzing the staff for their hiring recommendations including their pay
offers without telling them that you're testing anything having to do
with porn. One skill would be in designing photos so that some are more
subserviently sexy than others but all appear to be potential hires;
the distinction could be assigned by a prior panel of photo reviewers
who do not know why you want photos selected at all and know nothing
about the hiring test.
I wrote and you replied:
* * * * *
. . . . A great deal of sex is private . . . . So you can't design a
porn-harm study by expecting porn consumption and subsequent sexual
behavior to be where you can consistently see it (never mind where you
can intervene to stop the worst excesses).
* * * * *
That's certainly going to be an issue in any sex research study. No
doubt about it, studying people's sexual habits is hard. There seems
to be quite a few people managing to do it, though, so this doesn't let
a porn-harm study off the hook for taking these things into account.
* * * * *
But the findings of many sex research studies are not only
controverted, too, they're more limited: they study sex, and besides
that ask about comparatively public matters, such as demographics. Here
the need is to study both porn consumption (generally private) and sex
(generally private), and, in whichever order you pose your questions,
asking about one leads to effects on answers about the other (generally
a reticence).
That doesn't make it impossible, but it does make the studies
expensive, as when multiple large samples have to be drawn instead of
one, resulting in fewer studies and forcing the rest of us to assemble
multiple studies to determine overall effects and causation.
I'd prefer a perfect test. Absent that, we can use the best we can get
or do without. But if harm is substantial and is suspected to be due to
porn, the best studies we can design are better than nothing. Physics
may not have these methods (it may not need them) but social sciences
do, and with double-blinding. Exploring methods allows us more
accurately to critique the studies we find.
You wrote:
* * * * *
. . . [That] [p]orn advances feminism[:] . . . .
Rather than a nameless pornographer you heard of, I think I'll let
feminists like Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Jill Nagle, etc., etc.,
etc speak to the point. You can try to refute them if you like, but
you won't be able to do it by simply asserting that their positions
have
too many problems to stand.
* * * * *
I use shorthand for reasons of time and space, especially when volumes
have already been published. Beyond that, since porn is driven almost
entirely by men, refuting womyn, who are survivors of manhood, is
beside the point.
I was hesitant about positing (I wrote "perhaps") that "one major porn
publisher" thinks porn advances feminism, since I was inferring their
position from their behavior in giving money to feminist efforts, when
the prime alternative explanation is that the same pornographer may
have considered feminism either irrelevant or harmful to porn and
therefore gave money to distract feminists. I listed it only in an
effort to try to represent concisely what the industry might say for
itself. At any rate, the last I heard, that publisher had abandoned
that line of funding.
One of your comments puzzles me:
* * * * *
. . . [That] [p]orn lessens rape by providing safe release[:] . . . .
I've occasionally heard this, but I don't think it's a particularly
important argument.
* * * * *
Do you mean it's not important because it isn't said much or for
another reason?
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
>realize, if you believe there's almost no good scientific research in
>the literature, is that you might uncover bad examples. I can do that,
>too, e.g., in alchemy, but that would be pointless. Look for sound
>research, and, if even the best is unsatisfactory, design better.
I've done the research for many years, and my conclusion is that no
such link can be shown. If you wish to refute me, you're going to
have to do better than simple assertion. If you don't care to refute
me, that's fine, but you've got no grounds on which to claim the
research supports your position. If you can't refute me, it'd be nice
if you'd cop to it.
>You wrote:
>* * * * *
>. . . studies that claimed to show "X percent of people who committed a
>sex crime used pronography," . . . [don't] tell us anything about how
>that compares to the general population.
>* * * * *
>
>I'd agree that's weak proof.
Without that comparison, it's not even weak proof. If X percent of
people who committed a sex crime used pornography and 2X percent of
the general population used it, you'd have to conclude that there was
a *negative* correlation. The percentage by itself is utterly
meaningless.
>Yet, if a significantly higher percentage of sex criminals used porn
>than did noncriminals, while that doesn't say a lot, it's not devoid of
>meaning.
Indeed. If it's ever shown, we can discuss that.
Michael Snyder
> In article <1123027789....@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> Nick (Nick Levinson)
bcdefghijk.com> wrote:
> >Yet, if a significantly higher percentage of sex criminals used porn
> >than did noncriminals, while that doesn't say a lot, it's not devoid of
> >meaning.
>
> Indeed. If it's ever shown, we can discuss that.
Nick, if a significantly higher percentage of depressed people
use anti-depressants, does that mean that anti-depressants cause
depression?
Correlation does not indicate causation.
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
>feminists like Annie Sprinkle, Betty Dodson, Jill Nagle, etc., etc.,
>etc speak to the point. You can try to refute them if you like, but
>you won't be able to do it by simply asserting that their positions
>have too many problems to stand.
>
>have already been published. Beyond that, since porn is driven almost
>entirely by men, refuting womyn, who are survivors of manhood, is
>beside the point.
Given that those women directly contradict your statements, I really
think you need to engage them rather than ignore them if you want
to be taken seriously in a feminist forum. Ignoring women because
they happen to directly contradict your entire premise is about as
privileged as male privilege gets, and you may consider yourself
called on it.
>I was hesitant about positing (I wrote "perhaps") that "one major porn
>publisher" thinks porn advances feminism, since I was inferring their
>position from their behavior in giving money to feminist efforts, when
>the prime alternative explanation is that the same pornographer may
>have considered feminism either irrelevant or harmful to porn and
>therefore gave money to distract feminists. I listed it only in an
>effort to try to represent concisely what the industry might say for
>itself. At any rate, the last I heard, that publisher had abandoned
>that line of funding.
What you've managed to miss is that your attempt to "try to represent
concisely what the industry might say for itself" completely ignores
what people in the industry *has* *in* *fact* *said* *for*
*themselves* *and* *it*. If that's the caliber of your research, I'm
even less confident in your claim to have seen studies that show
evidence linking porn and harm.
>>I've occasionally heard this, but I don't think it's a particularly
>>important argument.
>
>Do you mean it's not important because it isn't said much or for
>another reason?
I mean it's not important because it doesn't matter if it provides
such a release or not. If there is no harm to be shown, then no
benefit need be shown either; and if someone someday shows harm, that
will outweigh the claimed benefit.
Michael Snyder
> Michael wrote:
>> Paul wrote:
>>
>>> A guy who had been in the Army claims that women aren't assigned to
>>> "combat duty", but end up in combat anyway, and don't have access to
>>> adequate firepower when that happens because they're allegedly not in
>>> combat.
>>>
>>> My experience with government agencies would lead me to suspect that
>>> the last description is closest to what actually happens.
>>
>>
> everyone.
Paul is refering to his experience with government agencies,
from which he draws a conclusion about an exclusion of women.
My remark was in reference to Paul's experience with government
agencies, which itself is not gender-specific. Government
agencies behave incompetently toward one and all.
My point being that if Paul's (non-gender-specific) experience
with government agencies leads him to conclude that something
disadvantageous to women is likely to have happened, it is
equally likely that something ELSE has happened that is
disadvantageous to men.
Michael Snyder
<do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com>
wrote in message
news:1121536624.5...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Paul, you wrote:
> * * * * *
> than France, Sweeden, the Netherlands, etc. The Islamic world has even
> more strict constraints. Within the US, "Blue States" such as
> Massachusetts and California have an environment where high quality
> porn shops such as Grand Openings can exist; "Red States" tend to have
> a lousy selection of porn, in my experience.
>
> Which of these places are better places for women to live?
> * * * * *
>
> workplaces
Heh. Ever visited Cincinatti? Indianapolis?
Michael Snyder
> I earlier took your word that what Grand Openings sells is porn and not
I know I'm going to regret asking, but... how do you define the difference
between "porn" and "obscenity"?
And can you define it in any way that doesn't involve personal taste?
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
etc., etc., etc"] directly contradict your statements, I really think
you need to engage them rather than ignore them if you want to be taken
seriously in a feminist forum.
We do take womyn in porn seriously; the late Linda Marchiano, for
example. Survival is critical and not to be sneezed at. Pro-porn womyn
don't "happen" to contradict anti-porn positions; what little I've seen
of their positions regarding feminism suggests no more than furthering
the interests of men, which doesn't strike me as feminist or
happenstance.
Camille Paglia calls herself a feminist but calling herself one doesn't
make her one. Ditto several others. Feminism is defined by content or
by the combination of content and gender (a feminist is a womon who . .
. .), not by gender alone.
But I'll take a look. Can you recommend a printed pro-porn feminist
statement by anyone, preferrably in her own words? I may have found one
(by Jill Nagle), but it appears any circulating copies willl be via
interlibrary loan, which can take months, so other recommendations will
be considered. I didn't see anything by the other two you suggested. I
recall years ago reading Betty Dodson's book on female masturbation and
thinking it a good book; I don't recall her taking a feminist pro-porn
position, though, although I'll consider a specific citation. Annie
Sprinkle has a sex instruction book out this year; does that state a
pro-porn feminist statement?
You also wrote:
* * * * *
Ignoring women because they happen to directly contradict your entire
premise is about as privileged as male privilege gets, and you may
consider yourself called on it.
* * * * *
That's easy; the main premise is wrong. Since I'm not ignoring them, I
think your contention is that I'm not accepting their leadership on
feminism. Womyn are who should be in leadership on feminism, because
feminism is about womyn's lives first. But a man who intends to support
feminism is not bound to follow whichever womon randomly appears in
proximity to the man or whichever womon happens to use the word
"feminist" first or whichever one is famous or whichever one is cited
on glossy paper in a brand-name publication or whichever one is liked
by men or whichever one wins a popularity poll. Womyn should be
listened to and a man may choose to follow this feminist or that. A man
has the power to choose well and therefore the responsibility to choose
well.
You added:
* * * * *
What you've managed to miss is that your attempt to "try to represent
concisely what the industry might say for itself" completely ignores
what people in the industry *has* *in* *fact* *said* *for* *themselves*
*and* *it*. If that's the caliber of your research, I'm even less
confident in your claim to have seen studies that show evidence linking
porn and harm.
* * * * *
"[C]ompletely ignores"? Evidently not, since you described the first
part of my representation with "Frankly, I think this is the core of
the pro-porn argument.". Your words. I made a point of not overstating
what I knew; that is the correct stance to take, so your confidence may
remain intact.
While I might do the favor of doing research on request, I'm not
obligated to do research because you wish me to. That's not meant to
hurt an ego. It's to conserve time and resources, so I can do the
research and writing and other profeminist work that's most needed. In
my observation, the porn industry has its own spokespersons; I'm not
required to be one of them, and didn't attempt to be.
You closed with:
* * * * *
If someone someday shows harm, that will outweigh the claimed benefit
[of providing safe release].
* * * * *
I could see the pornographers arguing a logical balancing of interests
on point; I'm glad you don't. Thank you.
-- Nick
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>Camille Paglia calls herself a feminist but calling herself one doesn't
>make her one. Ditto several others. Feminism is defined by content or
>by the combination of content and gender (a feminist is a womon who . .
>. .), not by gender alone.
I certainly have my disagreements with Paglia. Can you see where you
as a man (unless Nick is short for Nicole) contradicting Paglia's
assertion of feminism is problematic to say the least? I sure can.
>But I'll take a look. Can you recommend a printed pro-porn feminist
>statement by anyone, preferrably in her own words? I may have found one
>(by Jill Nagle), but it appears any circulating copies willl be via
>interlibrary loan, which can take months, so other recommendations will
>be considered. I didn't see anything by the other two you suggested. I
>recall years ago reading Betty Dodson's book on female masturbation and
>thinking it a good book; I don't recall her taking a feminist pro-porn
>position, though, although I'll consider a specific citation. Annie
>Sprinkle has a sex instruction book out this year; does that state a
>pro-porn feminist statement?
Here are some books, all of which are available on Amazon, and
probably on used book sites as well.
Whores and Other Feminists, edited by Jill Nagle
Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry, by Frederique Delacoste
Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor, by Wendy Chapkis
Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures by Alison Assiter & Avedon Carol
Nudes, Prudes, & Attitudes: Pornography & Censorship by Avedon Carol
Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industy, edited
by Ronand Weitzer.
You might also look up Priscilla Alexander, Carol Queen, Carol Leigh,
and Veronica Monet.
You might also find the Prostitutes education Network
(http://www.bayswan.org/penet.html) a valuable resource.
This list is by no means exhaustive.
Michael Snyder
news:ddn1ma$irb$1...@reader2.panix.com...<do_not_e-mail_me_here@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyza
bcdefghijk.com> wrote:
> >But I'll take a look. Can you recommend a printed pro-porn feminist
> >statement by anyone, preferrably in her own words? I may have found one
> >(by Jill Nagle), but it appears any circulating copies willl be via
> >interlibrary loan, which can take months, so other recommendations will
> >be considered. I didn't see anything by the other two you suggested. I
> >recall years ago reading Betty Dodson's book on female masturbation and
> >thinking it a good book; I don't recall her taking a feminist pro-porn
> >position, though, although I'll consider a specific citation. Annie
> >Sprinkle has a sex instruction book out this year; does that state a
> >pro-porn feminist statement?
>
> Here are some books, all of which are available on Amazon, and
> probably on used book sites as well.
>
> Whores and Other Feminists, edited by Jill Nagle
> Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry, by Frederique Delacoste
> Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labor, by Wendy Chapkis
> Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures by Alison Assiter & Avedon Carol
> Nudes, Prudes, & Attitudes: Pornography & Censorship by Avedon Carol
> Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industy, edited
> by Ronand Weitzer.
May I recommend also:
Defending Pornography: Free Speach, Sex, and the Fight for
Women's Rights, by Nadine Strossen (President, ACLU)
Dan Holzman
Michael Snyder <msn...@socmen.org> wrote:
>
>May I recommend also:
>Defending Pornography: Free Speach, Sex, and the Fight for
>Women's Rights, by Nadine Strossen (President, ACLU)
While I'm sure it's a worthwhile read, unless Strossen worked as a
prostitute, I'm not sure this has anything to do with what I'm talking
about.
Chain
Wendy McElroy is a GREAT pro porn feminist writer. She is in the
Libertarian Feminist school of thought. She posts on ifeminists.com,
and she has extensive articles and writings.
My thoughts: I have done porn pictures. Photographs, not films. I loved
it. I felt empowered, embracing a part of my feminity and sexuality
that Id long since repressed. For me, it was a VERY valid expression of
my ideas, thoughts, beliefs, feelings.
Some one else could look at those pictures and see a woman in what
theyd call distress, what theyd call degraded. But they would be wrong.
Obscenity is defined by the Miller Standard, which means that it
appeals to pryient interest, has no redeeming social value, and offends
community standards. Of course, all this is completely subjective.
Any questions anyone has...I look foward to em
chain
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
assertion of feminism is problematic to say the least? I sure can.
Approximately 3,000,000,000 females populate the world. Females don't
all agree on what they want. Feminist claimants don't all agree.
Feminists don't all agree. No one is required to subscribe to whatever
someone calls feminism if it is faux feminism. I read one of her books
(and skipped her art criticism since I wasn't familiar with the works
she was criticising), and found her feminism empty, thus nonexistent.
She opposes those rapes to which honorable men object. Other rapes are
okay, by that measure. That's not feminist. Feminists oppose rapes
regardless of whether men like them or not. Other than that, she mostly
attacked feminism. Agreeing with her on feminism is antifeminist and no
obligation of mine or yours, especially since I'm male and therefore
have a responsibility to be profeminist.
You offered:
* * * * *
Here are some books . . . .
* * * * *
Thank you for the reading list and web cite. I may pick just one book.
I assume you chose them because all of them offer feminist statements,
or at least what the authors believe are feminist statements. Simply
knowing that someone enjoys porn or being in porn and hopes others
don't mind womyn liking porn isn't enough to be feminist. I'd rather
read an effort to bring pro-porn thought together with feminism, even
if it looks like a contradiction in terms, so if you have second
thoughts about any of your recommendations and want to narrow my
reading list to a priority list let me know soon.
I'll keep your comment on Nadine's book in mind.
The trap you face is that porn is about subordination of females,
feminism abjects to the subordination, and therefore that feminism
objects to porn. What is obscene is not necessarily based in
subordination. I'm willing to take the time to read a pro-porn feminist
argument. I'm assuming that's what you listed. Narrow the list if you
wish.
Googling within the prostitution website you cited, I mainly found two
articles relating to feminism. The principal doctrinal point they make
is that prostitution may be chosen. Yes, it may be, but that point
needs to be better contextualized, and I intend to address it shortly,
in a new thread.
I skipped things like videos described as feminist. I'd like to read
open explanations of feminism, rather than try extracting from images
what an unseen director might have meant.
You speculated:
* * * * *
. . . . you as a man (unless Nick is short for Nicole) . . . .
* * * * *
I'm male and said so, I think in my first post in this newsgroup.
You don't object to men being profeminist, do you?
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
* * * * *
I Googled ifeminists.com for feminism and pornography, and found two
articles.
She wrote (in Michel Foucault and Pornography, October 2, 2001,
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2001/1002.html,
accessed Aug. 25, 2005):
* * * * *
I view pornography as words and images depicting the graphic sex of
consenting adults.
* * * * *
That's generally the starting point for obscenity, not the porn of
which antiporn feminists wrote. Wendy's definition misses the mark; her
objections to antiporn feminism are grounded in not grasping what porn
is.
That which is obscene is not necessarily objected to as porn. Sometimes
they overlap. Sometimes they don't. The feminist analyses Wendy
describes apply to porn as described by feminist critics, not to all
consent-based sexuality expressions.
One legitimate point of confusion remains: What was obscene was also
called porn or porno. The word _porn_ was used for both ends of the
spectrum. People who spend time understanding the subject, however,
should eventually be able to distinguish two (2) meanings of a word.
English is replete with words that have dual meanings. We're all used
to that, so we can define porn, too, and be clear about it.
She wrote (in The MacKinnon-Dworkin Memory Hole, March 13, 2001,
http://www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2001/0313.html,
accessed Aug. 25, 2005):
* * * * *
The definition of "coercion into pornography" was so broad, however,
that consent was not deemed to be present even though a woman who had
posed for a pornographer had signed a contract and release, had been of
age and was fully informed, had been paid, and had performed in the
presence of witnesses. In essence, the ordinance prohibited the
possibility of consenting to pornography, taking the odd position that
an adult woman's signature on a such a contract had no legal
significance.
* * * * *
Wrong.
The model bill says this: "Proof of one or more of the following facts
or conditions shall not, without more, preclude a finding of coercion .
. . ." (Model Antipornography Civil-Rights Ordinance, Section 3, as
published in Women's Lives, Men's Laws, by Catharine A. MacKinnon
(Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 301 n. 22 (viz., on pp. 493-7).
Wendy's wrong in saying that "consent was not deemed to be present";
rather, to take one example, _if_ the signature was coerced then
coercion could be recognized. That relates to ordinary contract law. If
someone holds a machete over your head and tells you to sign a
contract, you're probably signing under duress, which would make your
signature void for the contract. The model bill would prevent ignoring
duress. If duress is alleged, it would still have to be proven like any
other fact. A womon's contract signature would be just as valid as a
man's under this bill.
She continues to refer to the bill and tells of a colleague's
opposition to it:
* * * * *
. . . John almost causing a riot when he tore pages of 'obscene
material' out of a Bible.
* * * * *
The obscene is not always porn.
And she wrote:
* * * * *
I openly defended pornography. John openly defended pornography.
* * * * *
If she means porn as antiporn feminists defined it, then I'd like to
read that defense, but it appears that's not what she means.
Separately, you wrote:
* * * * *
Some one else could look at those pictures and see a woman in what
theyd call distress, what theyd call degraded. But they would be wrong.
* * * * *
I'll take your word for it: they'd be wrong. Consumers of obscenity or
porn, however, care little for the truth of what's been photographed.
It's fiction that's realistic enough for enjoyment. I take it they're
enjoying what looks like your distress and degradation, just as
Hollywood's consumers tend to enjoy what looks like the experiences of
the actors they see there. If they buy copies of the photos, they're
probably buying them for enjoyment of what they see, not for reality
alone. It's a boost for you (I'm taking your word there, too), and it's
a boost for them, but for different reasons. If they share the photos
of you with anyone else, their reactions also don't depend on the
reality of your experience, but on what they see.
Not that you can do very much about that. Am I right?
Best wishes.
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
* * * * *
which he draws a conclusion about an exclusion of women. My remark was
in reference to Paul's experience with government agencies, which
itself is not gender-specific. Government agencies behave
incompetently toward one and all.
My point being that if Paul's (non-gender-specific) experience with
government agencies leads him to conclude that something
disadvantageous to women is likely to have happened, it is equally
likely that something ELSE has happened that is disadvantageous to men.
* * * * *
I hope Paul weighs in and tells us which of us is right about his
intent.
Governments do unfairly disadvantage all sorts of people, but not
equally. (Paul may not have meant that, but I do.) Governments tend to
boost the powerful; as a result, they undercut the other end of
society. Not always, but often enough.
In this case, womyn are in combat but aren't supposed to be, which is
an inequality fostered by, among others, Congress. I suspect that means
they're not getting combat pay when they're in combat. It appears they
get less by way of equipment and perhaps training in support of their
combat functions because they're officially not in combat. Officialdom
is lying. Government is lying. The lie is gendered. The lie is deadly.
They're lying by contending that womyn are doing less. Person for
person, womyn may actually be doing more than men when both are in
combat, if the womyn are making do with less than men get. The
government in lying, something it does against both men and womyn, is
lying this time so as to compound the sexism imposed in the decision
that womyn may not engage in combat but shall engage in combat. Paul
was at least pointing out that the government is capable of a behavior
which it might apply to anyone but is applying to womyn.
You wrote:
* * * * *
[I]t is equally likely that something ELSE has happened that is
disadvantageous to men.
* * * * *
"[E]qually"? I don't think so. Government no more treats people with
equality than the society as a whole does. Government, especially in a
democracy or republic, gets its values more or less from the governed.
The governed are about 50% male. I'd like to quantify the power held by
males, but it surely isn't as depressed as 50%.
-- Nick
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
difference
between "porn" and "obscenity"?
In short: Porn is about womyn being second to men, about womyn
allegedly wanting to be inferior because they're female.
Obscenity doesn't depend on the gender imbalance. It may even celebrate
female sexuality.
Both center on sexuality and extend into relationships generally; the
terms are rarely used for nonsexual expression.
Porn is objected to because of its impact on the civil rights of womyn
to participate in society, including employment and access to public
accommodations. Obscenity is objected to by its opponents because it
advances sexuality with very different effects on females and males,
and not because of civil rights.
A publication may be both sexually appealing and subjugative of
females. Maybe it's usually both; that's an interesting question.
You also asked:
* * * * *
And can you define it in any way that doesn't involve personal taste?
* * * * *
Porn and obscenity exist and are influential in society because of
interactions with people. Taste can't entirely be avoided, but if by
taste you mean differences like whether pictures are black-and-white or
color, impressionistic or precisely realistic, on greasy newsprint vs.
in oak frames and hand-carved bindings, or accompanied by gangsta rap
or Bach cantatas, the prime issue is in the content and how men
consuming it consume womyn they meet, which means that high-status porn
is porn, porn in centuries-old museums and castles is porn, porn from
Hollywood is porn, and porn discreetly stored in a private closet is
porn. It may be reaching different people whose precise behaviors may
differ, but, in short, if it is the sexual subjugation of womyn it is
porn.
What complicates taste is that most porn is complex. Most of life is
complex; most art is complex (solid squares from abstract artists are
not most art). By one measure, the most successful art appeals to more
people in a niche. Just as Disney-type cartoons include references only
adults are meant to get (so parents will be more willing to sit with
their children through whole shows), most of the more successful (more
popular and more persuasive) productions include symbols in complex
layers that may still appear simple at first thought.
Chauvinism overlaps taste. Is an illustration of sex with someone in a
wheelchair and a partner able to walk demonstrating that someone in a
wheelchair can have fun in sex? Or is it treating that same person as
bound to a wheelchair because of a fundamental inferiority with the
partner lording it over because the one in the wheelchair is nothing
until fucked as a gratuitous favor by the master? Is literature about a
sexual relationship between an African American and a European American
about mutual acceptance or is it racist? If, in either example, you
start by accepting both interpretations as legitimately possible
themes, secondary symbols, with all their subtlety, can tilt the
meaning of the whole.
To Paul, I wrote, to which you replied:
* * * * *
. . . . The only places in the U.S. with anti-porn law to my knowledge
are workplaces . . . .
* * * * *
. . . . Ever visited Cincinatti? Indianapolis?
* * * * *
What about them?
If you're referring to statutory limits, you may be referring to
obscenity law, rather than to porn as analyzed in feminist theory.
-- Nick
Dan Holzman
Chain <OCha...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>My thoughts: I have done porn pictures. Photographs, not films. I loved
>it. I felt empowered, embracing a part of my feminity and sexuality
>that Id long since repressed. For me, it was a VERY valid expression of
>my ideas, thoughts, beliefs, feelings.
There's a broad range of people who come to make a broad range of
pornography under a broad set of circumstances. They tend to feel
a broad range of ways about it, falling all along a spectrum from
what you describe to what Dworkin reported feeling about her
experiences with streetwalking. It's a common pitfall in these
discussions for some pro-porn people to think everyone experienced it
the way they did, and anti-porn people to think everyone involved in
sex work is a child-molested, drug-addicted underage runaway in
impoverished circumstances. Unsurprisingly, this leads to little
effective communication. I just want to caution everyone to recall
that this breadth of experiences exists, and that everyone's report of
their experiences along this spectrum is valid.
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>* * * * *
>all agree on what they want. Feminist claimants don't all agree.
>Feminists don't all agree. No one is required to subscribe to whatever
>someone calls feminism if it is faux feminism. I read one of her books
>(and skipped her art criticism since I wasn't familiar with the works
>she was criticising), and found her feminism empty, thus nonexistent.
You still don't get it. Over in message ID
1125163786.3...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, you assert that
you can't even be a feminist because you're male, and thus have to
settle for being "pro-feminist." (I disagree with that, and think my
mother far more qualified to state who may or may not be feminist than
you.) Particularly with such a recognition on your part, *how* *dare*
*you* set yourself up as the gatekeeper of who is or is not feminist?
What makes you think it is your place to judge women's feminisms and
decide who is worthy? *That* is your male privilege at work, and you
may continue to consider yourself called on it.
Don't misunderstand me: I have no use for Camille Paglia, and think
Molly Ivins gave her work the best treatment I've seen. But I don't
get to say who is a feminist or who isn't, and I myself am a feminist!
>She opposes those rapes to which honorable men object. Other rapes are
>okay, by that measure. That's not feminist.
I'd also assert that's not honorable, but perhaps that's a different
discussion.
>Thank you for the reading list and web cite. I may pick just one book.
>I assume you chose them because all of them offer feminist statements,
>or at least what the authors believe are feminist statements. Simply
>knowing that someone enjoys porn or being in porn and hopes others
>don't mind womyn liking porn isn't enough to be feminist. I'd rather
>read an effort to bring pro-porn thought together with feminism, even
>if it looks like a contradiction in terms, so if you have second
>thoughts about any of your recommendations and want to narrow my
>reading list to a priority list let me know soon.
I've been particularly plugging the Nagle, I will continue to do so if
you're going to read only one. I will suggest, though, that you'd do
well to broaden your exposure further.
>The trap you face is that porn is about subordination of females,
>feminism abjects to the subordination, and therefore that feminism
>objects to porn. What is obscene is not necessarily based in
>subordination. I'm willing to take the time to read a pro-porn feminist
>argument. I'm assuming that's what you listed. Narrow the list if you
>wish.
Since there's no point to arguing about definitions, there's little
point to responding to this beyond noting that I think your definition
of porn leaves out alot of things that most people think of as
pornography.
>I'm male and said so, I think in my first post in this newsgroup.
>
>You don't object to men being profeminist, do you?
I don't even object to men being feminist.
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
>or conditions shall not, without more, preclude a finding of coercion .
>. . ." (Model Antipornography Civil-Rights Ordinance, Section 3, as
>published in Women's Lives, Men's Laws, by Catharine A. MacKinnon
>(Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 301 n. 22 (viz., on pp. 493-7).
There's the ordinance in theory and in practise. Nikki Craft hosts
the Massachusets version of the ordinance at
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OrdinanceMassComplete.html,
which uses the wording:
|34 For purposes of this subsection proof of the following facts
|35 shall not, singly or in combination, disprove coercion:
|...
|56 (11) the person signed a contract, or made statements affirming
|57 a willingness to cooperate in the production of the pornography;
|58 (12) no physical force, threats, or weapons were used in the
|59 making of the pornography;
Even if the words "without more" were present in line 35, if a
woman signing a statement that the consents to making pornography
in the absence of physical force, threats, or weapons doesn't
disprove coercion, what would?
>Wendy's wrong in saying that "consent was not deemed to be present";
>rather, to take one example, _if_ the signature was coerced then
>coercion could be recognized. That relates to ordinary contract law. If
>someone holds a machete over your head and tells you to sign a
>contract, you're probably signing under duress, which would make your
>signature void for the contract. The model bill would prevent ignoring
>duress. If duress is alleged, it would still have to be proven like any
>other fact. A womon's contract signature would be just as valid as a
>man's under this bill.
If that's the case, then the model ordinance is bad law simply because
it doesn't actually do anything. As you note, if a woman's signature
is coerced, it's void under contract law as it exists today and as it
has always existed. The problem was not one of a lack of legal
protection, but of getting a court to believe that the signature was
coerced. The ordinance as you quote it changes nothing. The
ordinance as I cite it actually invalidates the woman's uncoerced
signature.
Chain
I am happy my replies are making it to this thread...lets hope this one
appears as well.
Nick, you say porn makes women inferior, or portrays women as
inferior...how is that? Porn does NOT affect negatively in any way a
womans civil rights or ability to participate in society. Banning porn,
however would negatively affect the rights of womens sexual expression.
In every porn film I have seen, (havnt viewed hard core stuff, just
rather tame vanilla type things) the women have equal roles to the men.
If the women were NOT present, the men surely would not be able to do
very much. Not to be blunt or crass...but what exactly about sex do you
see as portraying women as an inferior, or a secondary? I have seen
some feminist posts here, and they seem to object that men ejaculate on
women, or even IN a woman. They object she is under them in sexual
positioning.
As to your assertation that only women can call someone else a
feminist, thats rather strange. A man can indeed be a feminist if he
supports female equality. Just as I dont have to be gay to support gay
rights, a man doesnt have to be a woman to be feminist.
As for the photographs I have done..Dan, I understand not all women
will feel as I do. Thats OK. But because some women hate it is not
reason to ban it for all. Nick, the general subject of the photography
I have done is BDSM type things. For me, its a celebration of
sexuality. Yes, some men may look at the bound woman with whip marks
and other assorted yummy ouchies and feel shes a dirty female, but
thats hardly my problem that THEY misinterpret what they see. In fact,
if they ENJOY thinking about me as a dirty inferior woman, thats also
fine. It doesnt affect ME, as I know its not true. Let them do THAT as
opposed to using energies to harrass and accost an unconsenting woman.
Sincerely,
chain
Nick (Nick Levinson)
I'm not volunteering for a womon for electoral office against a male
incumbent. He effectively blocks the death penalty, which, among its
other problems, is racist in its application. She favors the death
penalty. Nationally, men virtually fill death row; the figure is in the
neighborhood of 98-99% of the row. I still oppose the death penalty. It
matters in the office they're running for. Apart from that issue, I
don't know whom I'd want in the office.
Supporting a womon for electoral office doesn't require absolutism; one
may select and still give an advantage to womyn. The choice is not
limited to complete ignorance of womyn or complete ignorance of what
running womyn stand for. Affirmative action and intelligence can go
hand-in-glove.
-- Nick
E-mail:
Nick_Levinson
Domain:
yahoo.com
--
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
or is not feminist? What makes you think it is your place to judge
* * * * *
It's my place because I put work into the issue and have no business
putting it where it'll be treasonous to females or to feminism. I don't
have _exclusive_ rights to do so, but I have a responsibility to do
exactly that.
Advancing feminism includes evaluating noteworthy feminist and faux
feminist proposals and, sometimes, making those evaluations public. If
a so-called feminism would, if carried out, advance masculism and
retard feminism, it's our job to take it apart, perhaps privately or
perhaps in full view of the public. We might keep it private because a
female creating it should be encouraged to keep developing, but we
might go public when a faux feminism has already gone public and is
poised to damage our better work.
Being male, I'd rather focus on men's efforts to undermine feminism,
but not always, because a well-established strategy of men is to put
womyn into the front line of antifeminism in the guise of feminism, and
thus not taking apart some womyn's claims would be failing to undermine
men's self-interested efforts to defeat feminism.
To put aside agency as an issue, consider a large retail chain. Owners
are probably men. Customer service departments are probably womyn.
They're womyn because the men believe womyn are better than men at
relationships and know how to turn away wrath, thus saving the stores'
reputations. The womyn, meanwhile, are there mainly for the paychecks,
and not because the stores were inspiringly fantastic shopping
experiences they'll never forget for the rest of their lives and they
wanted to return the favor by helping with customer service. Some
antifeminist womyn are doubtless antifeminist because of their own
choices uninfluenced by men's rewards, but men are happy to reward
exactly those womyn, since they're already established as qualified
antifeminists and since, being antifeminism, they're less likely to
mind the rewards' source, so womyn uninfluenced by men's rewards must
be few indeed. We may therefore look at antifeminism even though
presented by womyn because antifeminism is generally masculism dressed
in pink.
Publicizing critiques is valid precisely because my right to do so is
not exclusively mine. Anyone who proposes to support feminism has the
same right. Whether you agree with my critique or someone else's or no
one's is irrelevant to our rights to critique publicly. Rather, the
need for effective critique calls on a critic to make it convincing.
Proof and logic might make it convincing. Analysis may produce proof
and logic. Judgment may precede analysis.
Suppose I didn't judge. Suppose I accepted as feminist whomever anyone
says is a feminist. Suppose I accepted what anyone says is feminism. Do
I accept the lowest common denominator or the highest? If the highest,
almost no one would qualify; I think most people would see that as
highly judgmental. If the lowest, what's a feminist then? Any person?
Any female? If so, the word would be essentially meaningless. That
stymies communication. We'd have a more specific idea of feminism, but
the word would mean any female or any human, and so the word would be
virtually meaningless. Then we'd have a meaning without a word. We use
the meaning a lot, so we'd need to invent or borrow a word for it. I
say we already have a word; let's use it for what we mean. Of course,
that means judging what people mean.
A female staying alive can be a feminist act by itself. Being proud and
glad that a female stays alive can be a feminist act by itself.
Feminism includes surviving. That doesn't mean that feminism is limited
to surviving. We want more, but we don't all agree on what more we
want. Thus the debates, quite valid debates, on what is feminism and
who is a feminist. Without agreement on feminism, not necessarily
universal agreement but some agreement, we might be unwilling to unify
efforts, and for good reason. Judgment is necessary and good.
Particular judgments may not be. But judgment per se is.
Make a practical example. The National Organization for Women supports
a female's right to choose to abort a pregnancy. Feminists for Life
(certified as feminist by Nat Hentoff and some womyn, I believe)
opposes that right. If both ask for my support on that issue, if I
don't make any judgment, and if both refuse to let me support both if
they can, what should I do? My answer is that I should support the
female's right to choose an abortion and therefore support NOW or some
such effort, and my answer is that I should support womyn's right to
control their own lives (a feminist underpinning) and therefore support
womyn's right to reproductive choice, including by abortion. How would
I make those decisional links without judgment?
Should NOW be nonjudgmental, and therefore work cooperatively with
Feminists for Life on the abortion issue? How? Should Feminists for
Life be nonjudgmental, and therefore work cooperatively with NOW on the
abortion issue? How?
Would, say, Rush Limbaugh make the opposite set of judgments? He might
refuse to have anything to do with Feminists for Life and prefer some
other vehicle. When he positions himself against feminism and against
access to abortions, how would he do so without judging feminisms? If
he supports Feminists for Life, how would he do that without judging
one feminism over another? How come he'd have the right to do so but
profeminists (e.g., me) would not? How would profeminists have the
right but feminists (females) not?
This thread has certainly presented male judgments besides mine on
what's good and bad feminism. The disagreements appear to center on the
judgments made, not on whether to judge.
You declared:
* * * * *
. . . . I don't get to say who is a feminist or who isn't, and I myself
am a feminist!
* * * * *
You just did. Do you agree you do get to say who's a feminist or do you
agree that you can't decide if you're a feminist?
On porn, you wrote:
* * * * *
Since there's no point to arguing about definitions . . . .
* * * * *
They're central.
You added:
* * * * *
[Y]our definition of porn leaves out alot of things that most people
think of as pornography.
* * * * *
It does, but that doesn't matter much. One, we're talking about the
intersection of porn and feminism, such that feminist values inform us
on the meanings of sexual expression and point to the porn to which we
object as violating goals of feminism. Two, porn and obscenity overlap.
We can object to the anti-obscenity position and object to porn at the
same time when we define what we're talking about.
The anti-obscenity crowd has a comparable problem. Imagine doing this:
Create a movie that unquestionably fits the Supreme Court's entire
definition of obscenity and squarely fits the anti-obscenity statute of
your choice. Put all of the obscene content into half of each frame
(half of the screen). In the other half of each frame, present someone
describing recent mathematical research. Obliterate nothing. All of a
sudden, the movie's not obscene anywhere in the U.S. The anti-obscenity
crowd hasn't given up the ghost, though. They still pursue their goals
as best they can.
The feminist anti-porn movement had a terminology problem, but perhaps
it was insoluble at a stage of feminist theoretical exposition. The
word was used for both types of expression. A movement that uses more
concrete political skills will pick a terminology that makes positions
much easier to distinguish by the persuadable people in the middle.
That failing leads to exactly the kind of muddling you refer to ("your
definition of porn leaves out alot of things that most people think of
as pornography"), a muddling I've read in books on other feminist
subjects by feminist authors that made passing reference to porn and a
muddling that I've heard in conversation with feminists concerned about
other issues.
Earlier editions of Our Bodies, Ourselves had content that could be
described as obscene (had it been published separately from other
content that would have been adjudged socially redemptive in an
obscenity prosecution). Those editions were also feminist. To read a
feminist position in favor of that book with its potentially obscene
content is hardly necessary for me. That's why, for pro-porn feminist
statements to read, I was specifically considering porn as
subordinative of females. That's why definitions matter.
-- Nick
Michael Snyder
> In article <2meNe.9837$p%3.3...@typhoon.sonic.net>,
> Michael Snyder <msn...@socmen.org> wrote:
>>
>>May I recommend also:
>>Defending Pornography: Free Speach, Sex, and the Fight for
>>Women's Rights, by Nadine Strossen (President, ACLU)
>
> While I'm sure it's a worthwhile read, unless Strossen worked as a
> prostitute, I'm not sure this has anything to do with what I'm talking
> about.
Sorry, didn't see anything about prostitutes in the post I was replying to.
What about Carol Queen, had she worked as a prostitute?
Or Susie Bright?
They're both very much in support of your (and my) position vis a vis
sex-positive, porn-positive, sex-work-positive feminism.
Michael Snyder
> Being male, I'd rather focus on men's efforts to undermine feminism,
> but not always, because a well-established strategy of men is to put
> womyn into the front line of antifeminism in the guise of feminism, and
> thus not taking apart some womyn's claims would be failing to undermine
> men's self-interested efforts to defeat feminism.
Dude, you really see this as a war, don't you?
So, how do you see yourself? "Not like other men"?
Dan Holzman
Nick (Nick Levinson) <do_not_e-m...@abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com> wrote:
>
>* * * * *
>. . . . *how* *dare* *you* set yourself up as the gatekeeper of who is
>or is not feminist? What makes you think it is your place to judge
>women's feminisms and decide who is worthy? . . . .
>* * * * *
>
>It's my place because I put work into the issue and have no business
>putting it where it'll be treasonous to females or to feminism.
When a woman says she is feminist and you say she is not, you betray
your commitment to her agency by definition. You can't get around
this. The one and only reason you think you can judge better than any
woman whether or not she is feminist is your male privilege.
This is made even more stark by your awareness of your "outsider"
status, as evidenced by your need to call yourself "pro-feminist"
instead of "feminist."
>I don't have _exclusive_ rights to do so, but I have a responsibility
>to do exactly that.
You are not competent to do that, therefore it is not your
responsibility.
>Advancing feminism includes evaluating noteworthy feminist and faux
>feminist proposals and, sometimes, making those evaluations public. If
>a so-called feminism would, if carried out, advance masculism and
>retard feminism, it's our job to take it apart, perhaps privately or
>perhaps in full view of the public.
I question your use of the term masculism, but I suspect it's neither
the first nor the last definition we'll differ on.
>We might keep it private because a
>female creating it should be encouraged to keep developing, but we
>might go public when a faux feminism has already gone public and is
>poised to damage our better work.
Will you listen to yourself? You're going to "encourage" a "female"
who doesn't conform to your vision of feminism to "keep developing?"
And, of course, by inference any woman you don't denounce obviously
has your stamp of approval, which puts you in a position of power
relative to those women you do agree with, too.
<sarcasm>I'm sure they're
real glad they've got your leadership to rely on, otherwise how
would the poor dears ever reach enlightenment? Kinda makes you
wonder how they ever found feminism in the first place without
"pro-feminists" like you to lead the way.</sarcasm>
Could you possibly set yourself up in a more condescending manner
towards women?
>being male, I'd rather focus on men's efforts to undermine feminism,
>but not always, because a well-established strategy of men is to put
>womyn into the front line of antifeminism in the guise of feminism, and
>thus not taking apart some womyn's claims would be failing to undermine
>men's self-interested efforts to defeat feminism.
Being male, you need to focus on your own sexism.
There are all kinds of criticisms you could make of Paglia without
ever once presuming to usurp her agency by denying her assertion of
feminism. If you think that one of those criticisms is that she's a
mouthpiece for someone else, you could try to make that case, but it's
a different issue.
>To put aside agency as an issue, consider a large retail chain. Owners
>are probably men. Customer service departments are probably womyn.
>They're womyn because the men believe womyn are better than men at
>relationships and know how to turn away wrath, thus saving the stores'
>reputations. The womyn, meanwhile, are there mainly for the paychecks,
>and not because the stores were inspiringly fantastic shopping
>experiences they'll never forget for the rest of their lives and they
>wanted to return the favor by helping with customer service. Some
>antifeminist womyn are doubtless antifeminist because of their own
>choices uninfluenced by men's rewards, but men are happy to reward
>exactly those womyn, since they're already established as qualified
>antifeminists and since, being antifeminism, they're less likely to
>mind the rewards' source, so womyn uninfluenced by men's rewards must
>be few indeed. We may therefore look at antifeminism even though
>presented by womyn because antifeminism is generally masculism dressed
>in pink.
You can look at anti-feminism all you like. There's no shortage of
it. Antifeminist women even do us the favor of making a point of
announcing their antifeminism loud and proud. Phyllis Schafley is an
anti-feminist. Camile Paglia is a feminist. They're both wrong about
alot of things, but "feminist" isn't a synonym for "right."
>Make a practical example. The National Organization for Women supports
>a female's right to choose to abort a pregnancy. Feminists for Life
>(certified as feminist by Nat Hentoff and some womyn, I believe)
>opposes that right. If both ask for my support on that issue, if I
>don't make any judgment, and if both refuse to let me support both if
>they can, what should I do? My answer is that I should support the
>female's right to choose an abortion and therefore support NOW or some
>such effort, and my answer is that I should support womyn's right to
>control their own lives (a feminist underpinning) and therefore support
>womyn's right to reproductive choice, including by abortion. How would
>I make those decisional links without judgment?
There are things you can judge and things you cannot judge. You can
judge whether or not to adopt a pro-choice stance. You cannot judge
whether someone who sees the issue differently than you is feminist.
The fact that someone is "feminist" doesn't require that you agree
with them.
Similarly, Susan Brownmiller and Angela B. Davis have very different
views on the Emmet Till murder. They're both feminists, even if one
is right and the other wrong.
>This thread has certainly presented male judgments besides mine on
>what's good and bad feminism. The disagreements appear to center on the
>judgments made, not on whether to judge.
There's a difference between juding "good and bad feminism" and
judging "feminist and not feminist."
>You declared:
>* * * * *
>. . . . I don't get to say who is a feminist or who isn't, and I myself
>am a feminist!
>* * * * *
>
>You just did. Do you agree you do get to say who's a feminist or do you
>agree that you can't decide if you're a feminist?
I get to say if I am a feminist or not. I do not get to say if anyone
else is a feminist or not. You get to say if you are a feminist or
not, and you have said that you are not a feminist.
>On porn, you wrote:
>* * * * *
>Since there's no point to arguing about definitions . . . .
>* * * * *
>
>They're central.
Definitions are always central. If you do not share definitions, you
cannot debate meaningfully. I am not prepared to accept your
definitions because I don't believe they reflect the dialog that has
gone before, or the definitions in use in society today.
>It does, but that doesn't matter much. One, we're talking about the
>intersection of porn and feminism, such that feminist values inform us
>on the meanings of sexual expression and point to the porn to which we
>object as violating goals of feminism.
You seem to think there's a monolithic "feminism" such that there is a
single "meaning of sexual expression" espoused by "feminist values."
If that were the case, there'd be a whole lot less debate on the
topic.
Nick (Nick Levinson)
inferior, I don't describe all sexual expression as making females
inferior. Instead, I'm concerned with what makes females inferior in
society, and, by extension, with sexual expression that makes females
inferior. Not all sexual expression, but sexual expression that (in
part) has that effect. A lot fits and it's hard for me to come up with
exceptions, but it is at least theoretically possible for sexuality to
be grounded in equality and therefore for expressions of sexuality to
be grounded in equality, and I've come across pictures in feminist
literature that at least attempt equality. I make the distinction
because many readers don't, which fudges the issue, and part of the
problem is that the word _porn_ has been used for both. What I'll
address here is porn as harmful to womyn's rights.
You asked:
* * * * *
Nick, you say porn makes women inferior, or portrays women as
inferior...how is that?
. . . . Not to be blunt or crass...but what exactly about sex do you
see as portraying women as an inferior, or a secondary?
* * * * *
On the surface, porn often shows people simply having sex. Yet, the
actors' roles and accompanying symbols convey who's vulnerable and
who's in charge.
Example, from the most public forms, such as national magazine cover
photos: Unequal nudity: she's nearly naked, he's hardly at all. Most of
us wouldn't want to be nude in public (except perhaps in an imaginary
world; and I've said to many womyn that you have the right to walk down
42d Street and Broadway naked and be left alone; but where practicality
rules we usually opt to be dressed in public). Nudity in public is not
a problem because of prudishness, but because of what would be an
out-of-control reaction of too many people nearby. It's not wrong,
immoral, or stupid to be nude in public, but most of us decline the
invitation partly because of practical problems growing out of how
nudity is understood. Nudity marks vulnerability. Vulnerability calls
for protection. Since self-protection for nudity is presumably achieved
by getting dressed, staying nude is taken as a call for protection by
someone else. Since the norm of the context is for womyn (not men) to
be nude, the protectors would be men. The inequality is in making the
womon vulnerable, not the man, and thus in communicating that
(relatively speaking) womyn need protection and men provide it. That
essentially means men can protect themselves and womyn can't. That
means men are more capable, womyn less.
Another example: Youth befits womyn; men can be middle-aged; females
can be grrls. In men, increasing age represents increasing power (until
adjudged very old). In females, the desirable age is the absence of
age. What men consider sexiest is approximately the same as what
fathers-to-be consider ideal in mothers-to-be: younger than the man and
young enough to mother a large family from the first child's birth to
the last child's adulthood, and getting started in that sequence
requires starting young. Men in their fifties are perhaps at the peak
of their economic power as potential family providers; womyn never
match that at any age. Womyn are adjudged as peaking sexually in their
twenties, more or less, and therefore as peaking in their fertility in
their twenties, more or less. If female virginity isn't demanded and
experience is accepted, men are still conflicted about very much of it,
but not about men being very experienced. Thus, by age alone, men are
supposed to be the more powerful, womyn the less.
Porn, like most other well-known forms of entertainment that are not
porn, is very successful and happily well-absorbed by audiences. That
makes it educational. It becomes a model that is widely emulated, both
in private sexual expression and in how men relate to womyn in
nonsexual contexts, such as at work. The more we teach that men are
better and womyn are lesser, the more that power in society will go to
men and away from womyn. The more that happens, the harder it is to get
power back, even when deserved by merit. When a womon proposes to do
anything usually done by men and says she can but is disbelieved (and
refusal to test is further disbelief), men become more believable and
womyn less. Not only is this so of the same womon who was modeling in
porn, but other womyn by extension.
Try a thought experiment: Take a hundred examples of porn on sale using
both genders and imagine switching the genders. You can do it and it
could feel quite comfortable, but it probably wouldn't sell as well.
The market is driven mostly by men, men like what feels good, power
feels good, and the power of being dominant tends to feel good. Not
just the power in violently or apparently violently dominant sexuality,
but the power in common nonviolent heterosexual expression in which the
man's orgasm (expressing potential eternity) is virtually mandatory (or
not virtually) but her orgasm is optional. The porn that sells best is
that which best fits customers' demands, and most customers are men
(many, probably most, womyn who buy it do so to please men in their
lives, so men's wishes would still come first in publishers' plans).
Actors may merely follow a script when the camera's on, and not really
mean it in their off-screen lives. The portrayal, however, is
educational. Education isn't just what's in school, mediated by a
licensed teacher who's usually boring. Education is whatever you learn
from. Hollywood is educational. A century ago, immigrants would watch
movies carefully for clues on the American way of doing things, like
where the fork goes in a dinner setting. For those of us who are
already well-acclimated to American society, like if we were born here,
we learn newer things and more subtle things from Hollywood. Even lines
from scriptwriters make it into common conversation.
Porn, too, educates. People learn from it. Insofar as it promotes
womnyn's inferiority, men, and womyn, learn that men like womyn to be
inferior and learn how to express inferiority so as to please men. Not
only men and womyn. Boys and grrls learn it well. They grow to become
men and womyn and have already absorbed the lessons of inferiority,
repeated so many times in so many ways until origins are forgotten.
You stated:
* * * * *
Porn does NOT affect negatively in any way a womans civil rights or
ability to participate in society.
* * * * *
It affects her when she isn't taken seriously for a profession or a
nontraditional occupation (a nontraditional occupation being one
traditionally filled by men, such as most building construction
trades), because she walks into an interview when a man was expected
and the interviewer thinks of her as a sex object, which, per porn,
means, among other things, so vulnerable she needs to be protected by
the men on the job and so inferior it hardly pays to hire and train her
when a man could be, well, manly enough to handle the job without
problems of self-confidence.
You stated:
* * * * *
Banning porn, however would negatively affect the rights of womens
sexual expression.
* * * * *
Since porn (unlike what's called obscenity) is premised on female
inferiority, if banning it affects womyn's rights to sexual expression,
it's banning womyn's right to be inferior in sex. Womyn have that
right. Also, you have the right to take aspirin instead of morphine
when you're in pain, but that doesn't authorize a drug company to sell
morphine as if it's aspirin. Mostly, for instance, a ban on porn would
allow a womon wrongly used in porn to stop its sale and distribution.
Generally, if a womon wants to bring a lawsuit against porn, she's
hardly likely to believe that the porn helps her rights.
If, in a sense of rights, one womon protecting her rights against porn
crosses another womon's rights to porn, that is the same problem we
face throughout society of balancing interests. Cotton-picking is
doubtless an honorable occupation, but slavery is still wrong. After
the Civil War, some former slaves asked to return to their former
masters, and did return. But the right to be free of slavery outweighed
the right to be secure within slavery. The two conditions, slavery and
freedom, coexisted badly. Some states allowed slavery at the same time
other states forbade it. But greedy people would travel around looking
for runaway slaves and bring them back to their masters, and even if
that could be called legitimate for the time and place it was often
abused by arbitrarily picking Blacks and bringing them to whomever was
willing to pay a bounty for the capture; a Black claiming freedom
wasn't believed in slave-state courts, which is why many moved far into
the North and into Canada. Slavery had to be banished nationwide. If
womyn are to have the same rights to participate in society, they need
the same power.
You noted:
* * * * *
In every porn film I have seen, (havnt viewed hard core stuff, just
rather tame vanilla type things) the women have equal roles to the men.
* * * * *
Then that's not porn.
You observed:
* * * * *
If the women were NOT present, the men surely would not be able to do
very much.
* * * * *
I don't think you're making a statement about mathematics, but rather
that womyn are necessary, and that men need womyn, and thus womyn are
very powerful.
Being needed is empowering, but even more empowering is being the man
who can demand that a female need him and get the demand fulfilled.
Thus, inequality.
You commented:
* * * * *
I have seen some feminist posts here, and they seem to object that men
ejaculate on women, or even IN a woman. They object she is under them
in sexual positioning.
* * * * *
I think you're asking how ordinary sex can be disempowering.
Being underneath isn't usually a problem except when it's demanded as
the permanent state. The one on top is more mobile, more flexible, and
can move around more, having less weight to bear. The attraction of
being underneath can pale when it's required for almost all times.
Ordinary sex is often imposed precisely because it is ordinary. The man
choosing it is already more powerful than she is, so when he demands
she has less room to say no, whether it's to an unusual request or to
the ordinary. She might like having control in the relationship. Thus,
her objection, even to the ordinary.
You wrote:
* * * * *
Nick, the general subject of the photography I have done is BDSM type
things. For me, its a celebration of sexuality. . . .
* * * * *
Fine. You're the best expert on your feelings. I'm happy to take your
word for them.
You added:
* * * * *
. . . . Yes, some men may look at the bound woman with whip marks and
other assorted yummy ouchies and feel shes a dirty female, but thats
hardly my problem that THEY misinterpret what they see.
* * * * *
Agreed.
You declared:
* * * * *
In fact, if they ENJOY thinking about me as a dirty inferior woman,
thats also fine. It doesnt affect ME, as I know its not true.
* * * * *
If you have no contact with them, it probably won't affect you as much;
indirect feelings tend to be weaker than direct by the time they get to
you.
It will be more likely to affect you when you have that contact and a
conflict ensues because their idea of what's true contradicts yours.
Depending on the nature of the conflict, it could be serious. For
instance, imagine applying for an executive job and your new boss knows
you from your photos. It will probably affect your working
relationship, because of your new boss's response to what they saw in
the photos and how they had interpreted them.
I'm not saying you should avoid something because someone you might
meet later might respond adversely. None of us would ever be able to do
much. But the difference in perceptions isn't always resolved by your
self-confidence, however much deserved.
The more important effect in terms of scale is that the man who
concludes that your being whipped makes you "a dirty inferior woman"
and enjoys you on those terms (regardless of your intent) will bring
his new-found education to his other contacts with and about womyn.
It'll increase the chances that he'll seek similar jollies from other
womyn, and if that makes it harder for him to take womyn seriously at
work then he'll be less likely to hire them for jobs, for example. And
that exemplifies the reason for antiporn legislation as a civil rights
measure.
You suggested:
* * * * *
. . . . Let them do THAT ["ENJOY thinking about me as a dirty inferior
woman"] as opposed to using energies to harrass and accost an
unconsenting woman.
* * * * *
That's very generous of you, but of doubtful efficacy. People pursue
likely pleasures in the hopes they'll be pleasurable. Whatever the
subject, most of us want more of whatever gives us pleasure. Thus,
escalation is likelier than de-escalation or abandonment. All of us
reach limits, but often those limits are external. Eat your very
favorite flavors of the highest quality of ice creams at the rate of a
quart an hour and I bet your digestive system gets you to stop sooner
or later. A man might want sex nonstop for months on end, but within
days at most his need for sleep will catch up to him no matter what
position he's in, and she'll be pretty clear about her need for sleep,
too, and probably clear about some other needs as well.
Maybe it works. If his harassment is reigned in by knowledge of its
illegality or because he hasn't found womyn who'll indulge some of his
tastes, then maybe he won't consider escalating beyond seeing your
photos, and you don't even have to meet him. But I doubt it usually
works that well.
On another issue, you raised this:
* * * * *
As to your assertation that only women can call someone else a
feminist, thats rather strange. A man can indeed be a feminist if he
supports female equality. . . .
* * * * *
Being a man, I will never experience sexism first-hand. I will
experience it second-hand, but that's much easier to miss. Anything to
someone else is easier to never see and thus easier to discredit.
Men should support female equality, but few do. It runs against their
interests. It runs against mine. I like being powerful. By supporting
feminism, I'm, in effect, undermining my own power. That's a good thing
to do, so I suppport feminism. But support from someone against their
own interests is inherently less reliable (all else equal) than support
from people acting in their own interests. So, to make clear that
feminism as a movement belongs to those who need it the most, which
doesn't include me, and that feminism belongs to those who should
control its directions, which doesn't include me, I'm a profeminist,
not a feminist.
You analogized:
* * * * *
. . . . Just as I dont have to be gay to support gay rights, a man
doesnt have to be a woman to be feminist.
* * * * *
I support gay rights. I volunteered in a Lesbian/gay rights
organization and assisted in drafting its bylaws. At a meeting where
the bylaws were approved, I was nominated by leadership to be its
parliamentarian. I refused, partly because as a non-gay I didn't belong
in its leadership. That was despite one leader's position that I could
represent hets as friends of gays (a misinformed position but it did
have its logic). I thought they should instead have asked a Lesbian who
didn't hold an office. At least one was sitting there, and I include
her even though I urgently disagreed with her on a crucial issue. I
considered the nomination to have been an antigay act (even though the
man who nominated me was gay) and my refusal was for the good of the
organization and the movement.
Comments?
Best wishes.
-- Nick
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
Or Susie Bright?
They're both very much in support of your (and my) position vis a vis
sex-positive, porn-positive, sex-work-positive feminism.
* * * * *
I offered to read one book that attempts to argue that porn (themed to
promote subordination of females) is feminist (which opposes
subordination of females). I'll probably start hunting for Jill
Nagle's, but if you'd like to suggest a book or an article by Carol or
Susie that makes that case, feel free. Note the contradiction inherent
in the case.
Sexuality can, at least theoretically, be grounded in equality; thus,
expressions of sexuality can also be grounded in equality. The argument
I'm looking for has to go beyond that, viz., that unequal sex can be
feminist (beyond merely being an improvement over some unspecified even
more unequal relationship with men). That'll be eye-opening, if it can
be established.
-- Nick
Michael Snyder
> Michael, you asked Dan:
> * * * * *
> What about Carol Queen, had she worked as a prostitute?
>
> Or Susie Bright?
>
> They're both very much in support of your (and my) position vis a vis
> sex-positive, porn-positive, sex-work-positive feminism.
> * * * * *
>
> I offered to read one book that attempts to argue that porn (themed to
> promote subordination of females) is feminist (which opposes
> subordination of females).
And that, folks, is what was call a straw man.
You set up the PREMISE that porn is "themed to promote
subordination of women", which of course by definition
makes it anti-feminist, and then demand that someone
argue that it is feminist.
And this is how you argue in general, Nick.
You turn your conclusions into hypotheses.
Nick (Nick Levinson)
* * * * *
biographies of women due to sexist attitudes that a description of a
woman is not complete without mentioning what her husband does and if
she's had children.
* * * * *
More than that: Because of sexism, men's bios often, I think usually,
include wives and children. Note bios on book jackets. (However, I
don't know if wives' occupations or interests are mentioned more or
less often than husbands'.)
In low-level political campaigns, it's generally considered helpful if
(a) a male candidate shows his spouse and children and (b) a female
candidate doesn't. I haven't seen the former explained; I guess the
rationale is considered too obvious. The explanation I've seen for the
latter is that for a womon to show her husband and children in her
campaign literature raises a question among voters about why she isn't
staying home to take care of said husband and children. (A workable
answer is to show that the husband is actively supporting her campaign;
one womon candidate who was doorbelling pointed him out doorbelling
across the street.) Raising that question usually costs votes, but only
if the candidate is female. Since voters tend to be older than eligible
nonvoters, voters' feminisms may lag society's feminisms.
-- Nick