Women and Porn

[An'na'Delilah]

On Wed, 29 Jan 1997, Bonehead wrote:

>
> Just a few random thoughts...
>
> I haven't discussed the subject of pornography with a lot of women, but
> the topic has come up from time to time over the years. In addition,
> I've had many occasions to overhear women making comments about porn.
> Based on my experiences, I doubt if I've ever met a woman who wasn't
> deeply offended by pornography, and didn't consider it to be a crime
> equal to child abuse, rape or genocide.

Perhaps you need to discuss the subject with more women then?

In any case, a few distinctions need to be made. I understand that
these are observations regarding your personal experiences, and not having
lived your life, I can't really comment on your experiences. But, seeing
as you posted them, it's safe to say that you wanted to discuss them and
how they match up against other life experiences, and/or other views women
may have.

There _are_ women, and feminists, who are not oppossed to pornography.
Many of us see women taking control of their sexuality and profiting by
it, be it through getting paid for men <or women, let's not forget that
there are _female_ porn consumers as well! > staring at pictures, or
watching a film, or even a woman being paid for providing a sexual service
<prostitution>. As Sidney Biddle Barrows once said, "if you can give it
away, why can't you sell it?"

Porn does objectify women. All "imagery" objectifies. Women are
going to be objectified by men _and_ women, and compared to other women no
matter what. But so what? If this is going to occur, and it will <men
and women are still going to fantasize and objectify whether they get to
look at a woman naked in Playboy, a man in Playgirl, a sex scene in
Hustler, or Lana Turner in a tight sweater!>, there is no reason that
women who have what society wants, shouldn't be able to make a good living
selling it.

And the market doesn't lie. Some women _enjoy_ porn. Some women
_buy_ porn. And some women <admittedly few but growing> _produce_ porn
_for_ women <Candida Royale for instance>. Women do have a sexuality, and
these myths perpetrated by radical feminists and the reactionary christian
right that portray women as the "victim" of porn desex women, removing the
individual woman's control over her own sexual identity. Women can and do
control their own sexual identity and sexuality. Porn doesn't turn a man
into a raving rapist any more than it dehumanizes women. It's
entertainment, and at that it's entertainment that can and often does
reward a woman handsomly for her efforts.

And any person, radical feminist, christian right winger, or some
other self annoited saviour of the world who tells you porn is even
remotely similar to child abuse, rape or genocide, has no business trying
to save _anyone_, let alone the world.

Hell, they need to be saved from themselves.

It seems to me that any woman
> born since about 1960 or so would almost literally have to have been
> raised in a cave to have not been heavily exposed to the standard
> feminist argument that porn is a great social evil perpetrated by men
> for the sole purpose of demeaning and subjugating women.
>

Or any man for that matter. And let's not just blame the nutso
anti-porn feminists. We can blame the Meese Commission, organized
religion, and the American political right wing as well.

But some of us reject these myths, and will continue to speak out
against them.

> And yet, there seems to be no shortage whatever of women available to do
> any and all types of pornography. I have been puzzled by this seeming
> contradiction. If most women consider porn to be so offensive, how is it
> that there are still so many women doing it?

Perhaps it's not _porn_ most women find offensive, but that they just
don't like the _style_ of porn that predominates the market, which is more
oriented to male tastes <please excuse the generalization, I know some
women who find the average porn flick quite exciting>.

For instance, you may hate baseball and find it boring, but love
football. That doesn't mean you hate sports, it just means one particular
"genre" or style appeals to you more than another. I'd posit that many,
many women who find porn "objectionable", find the current plotless, fuck
and suck and cumshot visual depictions boring, but would enjoy more of a
"story/fantasy" plot oriented product.

In any case, it's hardly surprising that those women who see porn as
their best way to make a living, do so.

People do what they gotta do to earn a living.

>
> Feminists would have us believe that most, if not all of these women,
> are victims of molestation or abuse which has warped their personalities
> and damaged their sense of self value, or that they are somehow being
> manipulated or coerced into doing something against their will. I don't
> doubt this is true for some of these women, but it seems to me that this
> explanation by itself is simply not enough to cover all of the
> multitudes of women who do pornography.

While you no doubt can find examples of abuse and molestation leading
to a career choice in porn or prostitution, we do these women <and christ,
let's not forget the _men_ who make porn, they're every bit as objectified
as the women, what man hasn't looked at a 12 incher in a porn flick and
compared himself unfavorably to that guy????> a major injustice by saying
they aren't capable of making choices about their sexuality and who does
or doesn't get to see it.

And the best question is once again asked by Sidney Biddle Barrows,
"if ya can give it away, why can't ya sell it?"

There are simply too many of them
> out there doing it. In fact, I tend to think that the people advancing this
> argument are probably the same people responsible for fueling the mass
> hysteria about underground Satan-ritual-child-abuse which has been repeatedly
> debunked in numerous court cases. It has occurred to me that there might
> be at least one other possible reason why some of these women do porn.
>
> Maybe they're just brats.
>

Or maybe they just see a way to make a living, and use their God given
gifts to do so? What's so wrong about that?

> Go up to a typical American teenage girl (say, 15 or 16), and ask her if
> she likes Madonna. Chances are better than 50% that her answer will be,
> "Sure, Madonna's great, Madonna's cool!" If you then ask her the next
> logical question, "Why?", chances are better than 50% that her response
> will be some version of the following: "Madonna's great because *she
> does whatever she wants*. And not ony that, but she never has to answer
> to anybody, she never has to explain herself to anybody, and she never
> has to listen to anybody who tries to criticize her or tell her anything
> she doesn't want to hear."

Madonna is an excellent example, though perhaps we disagree why. She
takes complete power over her own sexuality, and assumes total
responsibility for it. She makes money off her sexuality, because people
want to be exposed to it, and because she _can_.

>
> It seems to me that this represents the attitude of the typical American
> teenager (not just the girls, but the boys as well.) Any adult who's
> ever tried to tell a teenage girl anything she didn't want to hear
> should have no trouble understanding the attitude I'm describing. And it
> seems to me that many of the 18-to-25-or-so-year-old girls who do porn
> (and forgive me for suggesting that merely being sexually active and
> legally emancipated are not in themselves enough to qualify these girls
> as women) are simply children in adult bodies who haven't outgrown the
> attitude. Heck, many people never outgrow it. Doing porn is simply their
> way of saying, "See?! I can do *anything I want*."
>

They _can_ do anything they want. It's their sexuality, their bodies,
and if people wanna pay them for showing it, more power too them! I think
you overlook <as do the radical feminists and reactionary right> the very
real issue that people make a living at this, and sometimes a good one.
Attributing this as an act of rebellion is a far stretch IMHO, when the
answer appears to be lost in the forest for the trees. Women can make
money at this, and be in control of their own lives, and own sexuality by
doing it. They make decisions which give them the money to live which
empowers them to make even more decisions.

Nuffin wrong with that in my book.

> Feminists, of course, are bound to reject this notion out of hand,
> because it contradicts the most fundamental part of feminist dogma,
> which holds that all women are perpetual victims with no responsibility
> whatever for their own decisions or actions. It is their time-honored
> tradition to accept any argument which portrays women in a sympathetic
> light, and reject as "anti-woman" any argument which challenges women
> to accept personal responsibility for their actions.
>

Some feminists are jackasses ;).

I do think however, that the radical feminists and reactionary
christian right harm women more than help them with this "porn creates
victims" crap. Women are just as capable of men at making choices. We
make good choices and we make bad choices. Agreeing to take off your
clothes for a magazine or film some guy can jerk off to, or agreeing to
give a guy a hand job for $20 are just more examples of choices.
Depending on your circumstances, they might either be good or bad.
For some of these women <and no doubt the guys in porn as well, and the
male homosexual prostitutes>, porn or prostitution is their best economic
choice, and may very well lead to creating even more economic choices for
them.

Let's face it, not every man or woman is gonna be Albert Einstein or
Marie Curie, or Clarence Darrow or Margaret Thatcher. We don't begrduge
it when a guy like Albert Belle uses his body to hit a baseball and
provide entertainment for us, how's a woman _willingly_ using her body and
getting paid for it any different?

> Feminists will, no doubt, accuse me of trying to place all the blame on
> women for the existence of pornography. I, of course, reject this
> notion. I hold the men who produce and consume pornography to be fully
> responsible for their actions. But I also hold the women who participate
> in the making of porn (whether in front of or behind the camera) to be
> equally responsible. I would contend that it is the feminists who are
> trying to place all the blame on men and let the women completely off
> the hook.
>

Some feminists are jackasses ;).

Look, porn exists because there's a market for it. Same as
prostitution, baseball, football, and microwave ovens. Some people are
consumers, some are producers, and some are both. People have sexual
needs and desires, and some other people can make a living meeting those
needs/desires.

That's the way the market works.

> If feminists were really sincere about reducing the proliferation of
> porn (which they have spectaculary failed to do thus far), they would
> challenge the women who do porn. This would require them to say to these
> women, "Hey, part of becoming an adult is that you are responsible for
> your decisions and your actions. You young women are equal participants
> in, and therefore equally responsible, for perpetuating something which
> demeans and degrades all of us."
>

I'd posit that the woman who spreads her legs in a porn flick to earn
a paycheck to pay her rent and feed her kid knows a lot more about being
responsible for her decisions as an adult than some ivy towered cloistured
radical feminist or some right wing religious zealot that screams porn
degrades women does.

But then again, class and socioeconomic status are as significant a
dividing line as is gender IMHO.

> This probably won't happen, of course, because anybody who's ever tried
> to tell a girl or woman anything she didn't want to hear knows what an
> exercise in futility that is.

No one, man or woman, likes to hear what they don't want to hear.

>
> It's so much easier to just bash the men.
>

It is, but I prefer the road less traveled.

Lotsa love,
--Anna
----------------------------------------
An'na'Delilah, Goddess/Wizard/B.I.T.C.H. + ' +
--
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[NoDoubt]

Anna,

I'm emailing to you direct because none of my posts seem to
reach the moderators.

bonehead said:
> > Based on my experiences, I doubt if I've ever met a woman who wasn't
> > deeply offended by pornography, and didn't consider it to be a crime
> > equal to child abuse, rape or genocide.

Before I begin, I wanted to draw attention to the above point.
This is the impetus behind the women's movement's fight against
pornography: real women's dislike of pornography. Women of all
different backgrounds, religions, and nationalities cannot put
into words why they don't like it; they can't give
it more than the label of "gut feeling". Feminists have tried
to speak for those women. Even facing the world's largest
industry and a world full of men who since the dawn of mass
media have tried to convince women that porn is fantastic, and
that they should be more like the women in porn, women have not
liked pornography. The very entymology of the word is "study of
the prostitute". Pornography is the photography, videotaping,
and print rendering of how men look upon prostitutes. (Not the
viewpoint of the prostitute, mind you, because that would be
too revolutionary in that the woman would be in control of the
pen or the camera.) To a degree, the western woman of 1997 finding a
Hustler in her man's possession feels the same as the woman of
1797 (or 1997 for that matter) who finds out that her man is
buying a prostitute.

The eternal difference between a prostitute and a gardener (for
example) is that the prostitute (street or celluloid) hands
over control of the very thing that makes us human: our bodies.
Every body right of every kind is given up, down to the right
of controlling who, literally, enters it.

Before I go on, please know that I am not a professional
"flamer", who goes against everything someone says line by line
just to have something to do. I usually lurk on this newsgroup,
but your post made me think a whole lot, and by linking
together so many pro-porn ideas, you made clearer to
me many of the issues surrounding porn. Your clarity clarified
my clarity. :) So I hope you don't feel overwhelmed but rather
intellectually intrigued that I consider your post so
thoroughly.

> There _are_ women, and feminists, who are not oppossed to pornography.
> Many of us see women taking control of their sexuality and profiting by
> it, be it through getting paid for men <or women, let's not forget that
> there are _female_ porn consumers as well! > staring at pictures, or
> watching a film, or even a woman being paid for providing a sexual service
> <prostitution>. As Sidney Biddle Barrows once said, "if you can give it
> away, why can't you sell it?"

1. Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything
women. Pro-drug, pro-war, pro-child abuse, pro-Barney, pro-smoking, etc.
Let's not deny the humanity of women by suggesting that they
don't think the whole gamut of possible human thoughts and take
the whole range of human actions.
2. Is giving up control of your sexuality the same as controlling
it? Prostitution (street or celluloid) is *giving up* control
of who touches and enters your body, isn't it?
3. "Staring" and "watching" are not the main uses of porn,
masturbation is. That's why it's videos are, as you state
later, boring and plotless. It's point is not to engage or
challenge the mind, but to train it or ellicit a trained
response. The porn industry gives itself away in its pedagogical, almost
militaristic, repetitiveness. Porn knows it's not art, porn
knows it's a tool, like a workout video knows it's a tool. The
only thing that's stopping mass revelation of porn's intent as
a sexual educator and not an artistic venue is the fact that we
cannot have this conversation at 11am on Oprah. (the reasons
for hypocrisy regarding sexuality in mass media we can discuss
at a different time.) Masturbating to something is far
different from just watching it. That kind of physical and
emotional reaction, probably the strongest human feeling in
the world next to pain, evokes MUCH more loyalty and, I'll say
it, Love, than almost anything you just normally observe or read.
What are the effects of this training? Many. I'll discuss them
as I continue.
4. The profit that women make from cellular and street
prostitution is full of irony. The main one being that the
biggest money makers are still men. The pimps, the bar owners,
the magazine owners, and the moviemakers are still primarily
men. Wow...that is absolutely ironic that even in the industry where
women's bodies are the product, men still make the most profit.
(If the lowest rung in the sex industry can make hundreds of
dollars an hour, imagine what the highest rung makes.)
And when was the last time profit made something not harmful?
Women make a profit from drugs, too. But what makes the porn
industry comparable to the drug industry? Let's consider.... A
drug addict has a physical reaction to a drug, that's why they
buy it. They can't get that reaction in any other way except
perhaps with another drug. That's why the illegal drug industry
is so large. Porn ellicits ejaculations, but are ejaculations
the drug for sale? They can't be, because you don't need porn
to have them, they existed before porn, and, as many wives and
girlfriends have asked over the centuries, "what do you need this for
if you have me?" An answer unfolds as I continue...
5. The Barrows quote reveals the attitude that has always taken
the traditional prostitution discussion in the wrong direction.
That attitude is that the food is the problem, not the monster it
feeds. When we have focussed on the monster, we've too often
misidentified it. "Sex is a strong instinct!" people shout. But
women love, want and need sex too, and they don't even seek out
pornography for the most part, let alone seek it out long
enough to find that it doesn't exist for their use. "Men love
sex more than women!" people shout. But a.) far from being
scientifically proven, this sounds like a shared lie to hide
the real reasons for buying a prostitute; and b.) this falls apart
in the face of the fact that men who have plenty of sex buy
prostitutes (celluoid and live). Then what is the monster that
the sex industry feeds?

> Porn does objectify women. All "imagery" objectifies. Women are
> going to be objectified by men _and_ women, and compared to other women no
> matter what. But so what? If this is going to occur, and it will <men
> and women are still going to fantasize and objectify whether they get to
> look at a woman naked in Playboy, a man in Playgirl, a sex scene in
> Hustler, or Lana Turner in a tight sweater!>, there is no reason that
> women who have what society wants, shouldn't be able to make a good living
> selling it.

Porn is not just an objectification of women, it's an
objectification that men masturbate with, that men "love".
Because the industry is so large (in the US, larger than the
nonporn film and music industries combined), and because porn is our
primary sexual educator, not parents or schools, anything
that that industry teaches is going to be as powerful
as what schoolbooks teach. Porn
is a substitute for the live prostitute. What porn teaches is
that all women, in all situations want to make you ejaculate,
or that they *should* want to. The most oft-repeated phrase in
porn has got to be "she wants it". Why the constant use of this
phrase? To convince the buyer, the owner, the john, the viewer,
even the writer of the phrase or the actor who says it, that she
does. Why does he need convincing? To teach him that
no matter what, she wants it. No matter what she says, no
matter what she does, she wants it. Porn teaches men that sex
is a completely selfish act, where the other party has no
humanity, she only exists to ejaculate him. The only pleasure
she has is in pleasuring him. Porn so boldy states these facts
to not see them is like not seeing something because it's so
obvious. Every single scene ends in male ejaculation, male
pleasure, most times with the woman moaning in pleasure as if
she were climaxing herself, which, porn actresses and
prostitutes tell us, is not what's really happening. It doesn't
matter if she has a headache, it doesn't matter if she's tired,
it doesn't matter that she's having her period (period? what's
that? If a man's only contact with women were porn, he would
never know that every single woman has periods!), it doesn't
matter if it hurts, it doesn't matter if she's asleep, it
doesn't matter if she's high, it doesn't matter if she's sick,
it doesn't matter if she's your daughter, it doesn't matter if
she's your neighbor's wife, it doesn't matter if she's dead, and
it doesn't matter if she says she doesn't want it, she wants
it. In porn every single move she makes and word she utters
means "I want it", I want to make you ejaculate. There is no
courting in porn, there is no asking, there is no planning,
there is no questioning of consequences. Women are always
available and ready whenever the viewer is available and ready,
all he has to do is pay and she'll let him jack off all over
her and tell him she loves him. The question of his willingness
doesn't matter because he doesn't even go to her unless he's
willing. It matters little if she's flesh or paper or the glass
of a tv, what matters is that he gets to do and say whatever he
wants with no regard to her feelings. He chooses if her
thoughts deserve consideration or not. Porn not only tells men that this
is a privilege that they deserve, but that this is what sex is,
period. The porn system keeps itself going by teaching these
messages over and over, surrounding men by being utterly
consistent and utterly gigantic. Celluloid and street
prostitution are the food for the monster in men's minds that
says that women are property: owned, not free.

Het porn also teaches that it doesn't matter what men look like,
but it matters a hell of a lot what women look like. Porn
stores are divided into categories of what women look like.
Naturally! If she's not a thinking, feeling human, what else
matters. And no matter what they look like, they are all
"beautiful, hot sexy girls". Great! How liberating! Not so
fast. They're only beautiful because they are willing to be
owned.

And to top it all the porn industry is appallingly racist. While in
schools and on tv we are trying to teach against racism, porn
actively promotes it, constantly giving new life to old
prejudices and stereotypes. But this isn't some KKK flier that
isn't widespread, these are magazines and videos that sell millions every
year.

whew. I've written a lot. I'll respond more later.

Ray Smith
rd...@virginia.edu

[An'na'Delilah]

On Mon, 3 Feb 1997, NoDoubt wrote:

>
> > And the market doesn't lie. Some women _enjoy_ porn. Some women
> > _buy_ porn. And some women <admittedly few but growing> _produce_ porn
> > _for_ women <Candida Royale for instance>.
>

> You're right, the market doesn't lie. And the truth that market
> tells is that the vast majority of porn is produced and
> consumed by men, and that the vast majority of of prostitute
> buyers are men. The fact that some women buy into it means
> little. Women are human, why wouldn't they have the potential
> to do anything? There's a reason why porn's leader is called
> "Entertainment for Men": because that's what it's intended to
> be.
>

The actions and thoughts of the women involved, the women who are
allegedly being exploited, and are apparently from the tone of your post,
too stupid to realize they are being exploited, hardly "means little". It
means a great deal in fact, and that you're not willing to acknowledge
that these women can, do, and _should be able_ to make their own decisions
regarding their lives, their sexuality, and whether they want to either
give away their sexuality, or sell it, you're engaging in an
objectification no better than what you claim porn does, and I'd posit far
worse, because it is an objectification, depersonalization, and oppression
which you ask us to embrace as "liberation".

Women can and do, and _should be able_ to make these choices for
ourselves. Trading big brother for big sister is not a good trade in my
book.

Especially when they're both telling me what I can and cannot do,
think, write, or who I can and cannot fuck, or who I can or cannot make
money off of doing so.

> > Women do have a sexuality,
>

> Hold it right here. Now I'm not going to assume what you've
> read, but I've too often run into people who's perceptions of
> feminist doctrines only come from anti-feminists and evening
> news soundbites. I would like
> to know what you've read that makes you say the above
> statement, apparently in response to someone who said women
> don't have a sexuality. Because what I've read of feminist
> literature has shown me that porn is what negates women's
> sexuality, telling its male viewer that women exist primarily to
> please them, and that women's sexuality comes not from their
> own pleasure, but from men's.
>

What takes away from a woman's sexuality is other people preventing
her from doing what she wants with it, or mandating that she do what
_they_ want with it. I have enough faith in my sisters to believe they
are capable of making good decisions about who, how, and why they do what
they do with their sexuality. I have enough faith that when they do make
"bad" decisions, they have the ability to learn from those decisions.

That's the key though, isn't it? I _trust_ women to make these
decisions. We don't need laws against porn, or against prostitution to
protect women from themselves. _I_ trust us to make our own decisions.

When the state makes those decisions, it takes away a woman's
sexuality the same way it did when it prevented legal abortions.

> > and
> > these myths perpetrated by radical feminists
>

> Please state the source of these as well. I was once told that
> Andrea Dworkin was one of these ephemeral radicals that spewed
> anti-women lies, and then I read her thoroughly. Turns out it's
> not true. If you don't know Dworkin, then check out her website
> at www.igc.apc.org/womensnet/dworkin. It has a lot of text so
> that you can read directly from her books.
>

Oh, I dunno...somehow, statements like "all het sex is rape" sorta
objectifies women and desexes them, dontcha think?

Or does it only desex us when _you_ don't agree with the sentiment?

What you have to understand, if you're going to understand _anything_
I've posted, is that when you remove the decision from the individual and
allow the state to make that decision <making porn flicks, outlawing
prostitution>, the person loses the right to make such a decision.

When that happens, the state has removed the sexual identity of women
for our own good.

Isn't that comforting?

> > and the reactionary christian
> > right that portray women as the "victim" of porn desex women, removing the
> > individual woman's control over her own sexual identity.
>

> 1. Taking the christian right out of our discussion, I wonder how
> anyone saying out loud what most women feel "desexes" them?
> Most women don't like porn because they feel it takes away from
> their sexuality. What does he want that for? Why does he buy
> her when he has me? What's so wrong with me that he feels he
> has to jack off to videos? Why does he picture porn models when
> he's having sex with me?

Most women???? Where do you get this from? If anything, women are
immensely _bored_ with porn flicks, not outraged. Those outraged aren't
the ones who's SO's buy Playboy or rent Deep Throat, it's the academics
who think _we_ are unable to think and act on our own accord, and thus
they need to pass laws to protect us from ourselves that are outraged,
because we don't ascribe to their world view.

But even if you're right about the questions women ask when their het
lovers consume porn, _they're_ making those decisions about their own
lives, and their own lovers, empowering themselves, rather than having the
state say "no, you cannot do that, you're hurting yourself, trust us, _we
know_ better than you do".

_That_ is what desexes women, not a guy jacking off into a skinmag.

>
> 2. By "individual woman", do you mean the sex industry worker?
> If so, how does a woman who gives up sexual control for a
> living aid women as a whole in developing their sexualities?
>

In order to "give up control" of something, one must, ergo, have
control of it in the first place, and it must be one's own to give. If as
you posit a sex worker gives up control of her sexuality, she is in fact,
controlling her own sexuality in doing so. _She_ is making a choice to
give up control of her sexuality to whomever she wants, rather than the
state dictating who, what, why, and at what price she may or may not
excercise that control.

The position that the state needs to take away the control of a
woman's sexuality because she is giving it away or selling it, or using it
in a way you don't approve of, is preposterous.

One must have something before one can give it away.

However, _you_ objectify these women when you say they have given away
their sexuality because they allow themselves to be captured for all
eternity on celluloid. This simply isn't true. If _anyone's_ sexuality
is being coopted here --and I don't believe it is --, its the
_consumer's_, not the actress. It's a
_job_, and her sexuality isn't "given" to the film. or to her john in the
case of a prostitute, she is excercising her own free will to be as
sexual, pretend to be as sexual, or not be as sexual, as she pleases.

In the end, _she's_ making the choice.

> Actually, I intended that as a rhetorical question, but there
> actually is an answer: she sets the example; in a culture where
> frank discussion of sex is taboo even among family, her
> availability and visibilty on the street and in porn makes her
> easily accesible to teach every boy and girl what sex is about.
> Our parents had a proudly sexist culture teach us that
> women's feelings don't matter, now porn fills in wherever it
> can.
>

Perhaps she's setting an example that many anti-porn advocates don't
like, but it might not be the one you're positing. It's her body to do
with as she chooses, and that scares some people. We're not the Barbara
Billingsley's anymore, we're grown up, competent citizens, and we have
control of our own lives and our own bodies, and we don't need people,
either on the religious right, or our protectors among anti-porn feminists
who believe we are incapable of running our own lives, to save us from
ourselves.

> > Women can and do
> > control their own sexual identity and sexuality.
>

> Yes, you're right. What are the factors that form our
> sexual identity? There are many, and the existence of
> prostitution is one of them, a major one in fact. And in our
> industrialized society, porn is a major one. It is available at
> every turn, and no parent can hide it completely. Even when
> they do hide it, the child finds it and not only has to deal with
> it in his/her own mind, but has to deal with why their parents
> hid it. They have to deal with it when it's discussed at school,
> on tv and in Judy Blume novels.
>

If I'm right, and women do control our own sexuality, then why does it
seemingly scare you so that some women might choose to express that
sexuality in a way that you find discomforting?

Role models? Setting a bad example? Who's setting the standards
here? I'm arguing for the fundamental right of a woman to do what, when,
how, and why she chooses to do with her body. That is the logical
extension of the right to privacy as protected by the Court's ruling in
Roe v. Wade. Because it is allies of mine from the left that choose to
infringe upon that right doesn't cut any slack with me. Their motives may
be good, but the restrictions on the sexual expression of women they want
is repressive in the extreme.

> > Porn doesn't turn a man
> > into a raving rapist any more than it dehumanizes women.
>

> You say "raving" as if you believe the old stereotype that the
> average rapist is the stranger in the bushes. I'm sure you know
> that 9 out of 10 rapists are not strangers to their victims.
>

I could have said "asshole" and it would have meant the same thing.
Does my talking dirty turn you on? ;)

> And why wouldn't porn turn men into rapists, or at least
> misogynists?

Because I happen to believe that human beings are capable of rational
thought, and that they aren't as gullible as you would have us all
believe. I also believe that even those of us poor folk born into working
class or welfare homes have the ability to understand the difference
between fiction and real life. I also happen to believe that the
overwhelming majority of men aren't rapists or misoginysts, and aren't
capable of being rapists, and don't choose to hate women, and that, as you
state, they have been exposed and overexposed to porn and sexual
objectification in everything from beer commercials to car ads.

And I _know_ it hasn't been proven that it does. Until it is, and it
won't be, I stand by my position.

If porn teaches
> that women are bitches, trash, floor-crawling animals
> who only deserve the semen that men feed them (which in
> het porn, revealingly, men hate to touch), and only worthy of attention
> when they're fulfilling men's sex needs,then why wouldn't anyone believe it
> and act on it?

Gee, could it be because people have a lot more common sense than you
give them credit for?

Now, not only have you objectified women, and claimed they can't make,
and shouldn't be able to make decisions and thus the state needs to
protect us from ourselves, but now you've objectified men, claiming
because they watch a film, jerk off to a mag, or read a smut book, they're
no longer capable of relating in the real world to women.

God save us from those who would protect us. ;)

These are not phrases that I've made up, this is
> the text of real porn. Just like with any literature, some people take
> some things from it, others take other things. But the intents
> are there, and the porn makers can't deny those intents.
> They can't!

yeah, the intents are there, but they just aren't what you claim them
to be. The intent is to make money, the same as you do when you go to
work every day. They want to make lotsa lotsa money.

This isn't a conspiracy with the intent to portray women as cum
toilets, it's a blunt, crude, direct appeal to earn money.

You may not like it, but that's what it is.

> Every month, they actively decide to not photograph
> any model over 30 unless she's already famous, then they

Because that's what sells, not because they want to portray young
women as cumtoilets, or don't want older women to be seen as having a
sexuality.

> actively decide to cover up any physical sign that she's human.
> They actively tell every actress to "say you love it" whether
> they do or not, and often specifically instruct them to look
> into the camera, for the "boys at home", and say "I love it".

It would alas, be very silly to make a TV commercial for a BMW, and
have the actor or actress in it say "I'd buy the BMW, but it sucks", would
it not?

Why on earth would someone who's selling a jerkoff film want the
actress to say "god, this sex sucks"?

And why on earth would an actress in a sex film lying <or telling the
truth as the case may be, _I_ happen to believe some women actually do
like sex, but God, what do I know, I'm only a woman! ;) > be cause to
outlaw such activities?

_IT'S FICTION_.

Unlike our politicians, who lie every day and expect us to believe it.
;)

> For every porn video scene, decisions are made: she will get it up the
> ass, not Him; she will have gay sex, not Him; she will dance
> for Him and parade and contort her body, and He won't; she will
> lick up His semen, that He ejected from His body, off His cock
> and off His body and off the floor and off her face and off the
> dirt and she's gonna turn to the camera and say to Him at home
> "I want it. I love it." and He's not even going to consider the
> disgusting act of touching his own semen with anything but his
> penis, maybe, if she was "really hot".
>

Well, I guess they don't make gay pron then, eh? ;)

C'mon!

Of course they make decisions about what will or won't sell. This is
_fantasy_, this is what they think will sell. I don't believe products
drive the market, but rather the market drives products. If a guy didn't
wanna jack off to a scene of a woman making love to another woman, they
wouldn't make those scenes.

That doesn't make it a conspiracy to injure women.

> The point of porn is the point of sexism: male privilege; even
> the poorest man downtrodden by the entire world can buy a woman
> and make himself a king.

No. That's simply not true. The whole point of porn is to make
money, plain and simple. because one of the images that sells is the one
of the downtrodden man buying a woman, doesn't mean it's the motivation
behind creating porn.

Stop putting the cart before the horse.

>
> This whole idea that literature and film don't
> affect people is silly. What, we can't learn anything from
> books and movies? Then what's school for? What do we need
> libraries for? Why even write anything down?
>

This is a fascinating concept, I wonder where you got it from. Not
from my post, certainly. But alas, reductio ad absurdem doesn't work in
this case, because that's not remotely the direction I was heading in. ;)

You see, I too believe popular culture does influence people.
However, I believe that people have enough common sense to understand the
difference between reality and fiction, and the difference between good
fiction, and trash. But trash also has its place in a free society. If
you don't like it, don't consume it.

But let's not allow the cultural elitism of a few <or even a majority
for that matter! ;) > to dictate what those of us "uncultured" choose to
consume.

> > It's
> > entertainment, and at that it's entertainment that can and often does
> > reward a woman handsomly for her efforts.
>

> "Smoking calms me down, and plus a lot of people are employed
> by the tobacco industry."
> "Drinking loosens me up, plus my uncle makes a lot of money
> being a Jack Daniels distributor."
>
> Neither of these statements do anything about the fact that
> the smoking and drinking industries causes millions of deaths.
>

And I'm not about to call for prohibition or a ban on tobacco
products, so why on earth would I support the censorship of porn, or
keeping prostitution illegal?

What it comes down to is the right of individual people, in this case
women <though let's not forget about the men in those films, and the gay
male hookers!>, to make decisions about our own lives, our own bodies, and
our own sexuality.

We don't _need_ anyone to protect us from ourselves.

> Just as with smoking and drinking, the problem with
> prostitution (celluoid and street) is not one person doing one
> thing, but an entire billion dollar industry that affects every
> single one of us. It's not one man buying one woman, it's
> millions of men buying millions of women and thinking that it's
> right. You can't point to one piddly little 60-page hunk of
> glossy paper and say "what's wrong with that?", because what's
> wrong with that is the intent of the people who made it, and
> the fact that a million copies of that hunk of glossy paper get
> distributed every month.

You're objectifying everyone but those who agree with you, and
ironically, the "porn industry" again, and
_that's_ the point. People make conscious choices about their lives.
They make some choices some of us may find good, some of us may find bad,
and others of us may feel exactly opposite given the situation.

Individuals should have that right. Individuals should have the right
to expose themselves to a plethora of ideas, no matter how repulsive you
or I might find them.

That includes porn.

>
> Yes women go into it willingly, so what?

That's a big "so what", dontcha think?

The point being, that women should be able to make those choices,
regardless of what you, or big sister in cloistered academe thinks of
those choices. To me, the attempt by radical feminists to remove those
choices from the women who might choose to become prostitutes or make
porn, is no better than the religious right's attempt to remove my right
to abort.

Both are removing my right to do with my body as _I_ please. The only
difference is, one group claims to be protecting my fetus from me, while
the other claims to be protecting my clitoris from me.

Neither is acceptable.

>So what if [the ones
> who aren't drug addicts] make a lot of money? You could say the
> same thing about drug dealers. Where does it all
> go anyway? Where are all the hooker retirees? They make the
> money to get out of it.
>

You ever think those hookers who made the money to get out of hooking
and make something of their lives <isn't it special when we can talk about
something I know a lil sumfin about? ;) >, might be using it to escape
something else?

And your approach is to remove that avenue of escape from them,
because you and big sister know best?

Sounds like Vietnam all over again, we had to destroy the city in
order to save it.

> And if you think prostitution doesn't hurt anybody, tell that
> to the wife of someone who frequents prostitutes, celluloid or
> street.

I prefer to but out of other people's relationships, and think that
maybe they can judge their personal circumstances, and lovers, far better
than I can.

Why is it so hard to accept that _women_ can, do, and should be able
to control their own sexuality?

You're saying that because a hooker might ruin a marriage, they
shouldn't be able to hook. I'm saying that people should be able to make
choices, and then live with the results, or fix the results, without the
state interfering.

> Tell that to the teenage runaways who find out quick
> that johns don't give a damn if you're only 13. Prostitution is
> not some glamorous life, whether the prostitution is in the
> front seat of a car or videotaped and sold.

_I_ do tell them, and I speak from experience, as it seems you've
described my own personal circumstances very accurately.

I do tell them what I used to do isn't glamorous. I do try and help
them find a way out. I do know what it's like, and what can happen to
you.

But I also know that for some girls, it's the _only_ way out. And
I'll be damned if some ivy towered cloistered academic is gonna remove
those options, or keep those options illegal, because he or she "knows
best".

> When people scrub
> toilets for a living, we wish them a better life, but be a
> literal human toilet, and some people think it must be great,
> liberating! If it's so liberating then why hasn't it freed
> women after all these millenia?
>

Who on earth are you arguing with? Everyone's existence isn't white,
middle class suburbia ya know. If you want to talk about 13 year old
hookers, I know one <me> who got away from a much worse situation by
running away and hooking. That _is_ liberating, and it was liberating
even though it was illegal.

And I used my sexuality to escape the situation I was in, and to
escape what i had to do, and make myself a better life. And I see girls
who I talk with at the woman's center and my parish twice a week, who are
doing the same thing, using their sexuality to get out of bad situations
and make their lives better.

That _is_ liberating.

As for freeing women after a millenia, well, taking away our rights in
order to "free us" is silly. And that's what the anti-porn and
anti-prostitution folks want to do. They want to remove the individual
woman's right to choose, in order to liberate the individual woman.

Again, you want to destroy the city in order to save it.

> > Perhaps it's not _porn_ most women find offensive, but that they just
> > don't like the _style_ of porn that predominates the market, which is more
> > oriented to male tastes <please excuse the generalization, I know some
> > women who find the average porn flick quite exciting>.
>

> This is my point. Porn is not just "depictions of sex", porn is
> the deification of male sexuality masked by putting the
> prostitute, by definition man's sexual servant, on a false
> pedestal.

So _what_? Women are rational, thinking people. If they don't like
porn, don't consume it. If they don't want to make it, don't make it.
And if they don't want to have lovers who prefer Hustler to the real
thing, find new lovers.

You objectify us more than porn ever could. We are not helpless babes
in the woods. We are rational, thinking beings, capable of making
decisions about our sexuality, and about our lovers. We even have
educations that allow us to think for ourselves.

Why on earth is that so difficult to understand?

The reason mass-produced depictions of sex have all
> been labelled "porn" is because only men have had the power to
> use the mass media and few have been revolutionary
> enough to depict sex as a two person, not one-person, event in
> a consistent manner. And the achingly few women who create mass
> sexual imagery were raised in pornography and merely echo it.
> We are raised to call all sexual imagery "pornography" because
> for millenia sex itself has been defined by the male
> experience. It's no wonder only 3 out of 7 women have had
> orgasms during sex with men. Men don't give a fuck (pun
> intended), because they are trained not to, and porn is the
> manual, literally.

Some men do, some don't. I got a secret though, some women don't cum
in lesbian relationships either. A good lover is hard <puns abound today
;)> to find. When ya find him or her, hold on tight <giggles>.

But again, we come to individual decisions.

>
> I'd posit that many,
> > many women who find porn "objectionable", find the current plotless, fuck
> > and suck and cumshot visual depictions boring, but would enjoy more of a
> > "story/fantasy" plot oriented product.
>

> Then it wouldn't be porn, it would be a romance novel. :)
>
>

_This_, although meant humourously and did make me chuckle, is an
excellent point about the slippery slope that society heads down when we
begin outlawing "porn". One person's porn is alas, another's erotica, is
alas a romance novel with graphical sexual depictions.

I'm not about to dictate to others what they should get off on, and
I'll be damned if the state is gonna dictate that to me.

> > In any case, it's hardly surprising that those women who see porn as
> > their best way to make a living, do so.
> >
> > People do what they gotta do to earn a living.
>

> Exactly. Any pro-prostitute activist will tell you that the
> best way to end prostitution is to end the feminization of
> poverty.

No argument here, though it won't "end" it of course. But it's a damn
shame when the state forces those women who need that way out of their
circumstances, to work in unsafe environments where others can take
advantage of them.

Prostitution should be decriminalized, and sex workers should have the
same workplace protections any other member of the work force have,
extended to them.

The _law_ victimizes these women as bad as any person or industry
does.

>
> > Or maybe they just see a way to make a living, and use their God given

> > gifts to do so? What's so wrong about that?
>
> Hm...you brought up the beauty myth again. In celluloid and live
> prostitution, every woman is beautiful, no matter her physical
> attributes. Visit your local porn store and you will see every
> shape of woman of every kind on magazine and video covers. It's
> not anything physical that makes her "sexy", but her
> relinquishing of sexual will to her customer. Visit your local
> hooker hotel and you will see the same thing.
>

People want to pay for a fantasy. For many women, they do what they
gotta do, including this, to make a living. Keeping <hooking> or making
<porn> it illegal, will only victimize these women, forcing them to work
in unsafe working conditions, denying them the same protections the
academic who wants to outlaw them has.

> > Madonna is an excellent example, though perhaps we disagree why. She
> > takes complete power over her own sexuality, and assumes total
> > responsibility for it. She makes money off her sexuality, because people
> > want to be exposed to it, and because she _can_.
>

> I've seen so many people talk about Madonna, and it's clear
> that they don't "get" her. I can't tell if Madonna is a
> revolutionary or just stumbling around trying to say what she
> feels. Maybe she's the former because she's the latter. And I
> don't really understand how she came up in this
> conversation, but sex porn and beauty porn are very similar.
> Think about what Madonna says in her songs and videos. She sings
> about her and other women's sexual feelings, but her videos
> include the trappings of porn. But that's because she has to
> deal with porn and prostitution, and like any woman she can't
> ignore them, they're too prevalent. "Open Your Heart" was an
> absolutely perfect video! She plays a stripper, dancing
> for the viewers, including the boy being introduced
> to what adult male sex is supposed to be about. All the while,
> her thoughts are not "slam your red hot rod into my sweet canal",
> but "love me", "open your heart", "I'll make you love
> me", "it's not that hard", "one is such a lonely number", "if
> you'd give me half a chance you'd see, my desire burning inside
> of me, but you chose to look the other way." Like many women,
> the narrator of that song will do anything for his love, even
> be exactly what he says he loves: the prostitute. But even
> being the prostitute hasn't opened up his heart! She is crying
> out, "yes I am sexual, see! just like you wanted. why aren't
> you being sexual for me?" Why are you closing your eyes,
> masturbating on me, then rolling over? Don't you feel anything?
>

And it's _her_ sexuality to do with as _she_ pleases.

Not the Minneapolis City Council's!

> > They _can_ do anything they want. It's their sexuality, their bodies,
> > and if people wanna pay them for showing it, more power too them!
>

> Well let's get real then. If it's so wonderful why haven't you
> joined the ranks? Sign up today! We're always recruiting! Great
> benefits! Excellent working conditions! We're looking for a few
> good women! We're Threequarters of a Million strong and we want
> you! What does your gut tell you Anna?
>

My gut tells me you're about to feel pretty small ;).

I did hook. I ran away from home at 13 to escape a physically and
sexually abusive step parent. I spent 4 years hooking, and managed to
ultimately get some training in the Army, earn a BA, MA, and attend law
school nights, all while teaching during the day. No, it wasn't
glamorous, no it wasn't great work, in fact, most of it was boring.

If I had to do it over again, I damn well would. Because it was
_mine_, it was my only tool I had to escape a horrible situation.

So, I speak with some experience.

> > Women are just as capable of men at making choices. We
> > make good choices and we make bad choices. Agreeing to take off your
> > clothes for a magazine or film some guy can jerk off to, or agreeing to
> > give a guy a hand job for $20 are just more examples of choices.
> > Depending on your circumstances, they might either be good or bad.
> > For some of these women <and no doubt the guys in porn as well, and the
> > male homosexual prostitutes>, porn or prostitution is their best economic
> > choice, and may very well lead to creating even more economic choices for
> > them.
>

> Yet we arrest people who make the choice to steal, or to rob,
> or to sell drugs, even though it might be their best economical
> choice. If your lover goes to a prostitute, how supportive
> would you be of that woman's economical choice?

>
> > Let's face it, not every man or woman is gonna be Albert Einstein or
> > Marie Curie, or Clarence Darrow or Margaret Thatcher.
>

> Is this an argument saying that it's ok to be a human
> cumcatcher as long as you're not a genius? Every human is
> important, and none should have to choose prostitution. Men
> don't have to, why should women?
>

No woman should _have_ to choose prostitution, that alas, ain't a
choice, now is it? ;)

But yes, women should have that avenue of escape should they need it.
You can stick your nose up in the air and rant about how we're degrading
all women by doing it if you want, but for some of us, it was a way out.

And for you to want to make that way out as difficult as possible,
only makes it that much more difficult for those women who badly need to
be liberated, to be freed.

We all don't come from upper middle class suburbia, and a lil time in
the real world that some of us had to live in might show some of these
crusaders out to save us from ourselves what it's really like to be
oppressed.

Hell, they _might_ even learn a thing or two about self empowerment.

> > We don't begrduge
> > it when a guy like Albert Belle uses his body to hit a baseball and
> > provide entertainment for us, how's a woman _willingly_ using her body and
> > getting paid for it any different?
>

> His body's not being entered, that's the difference. People
> think he's a great guy, not a "common whore". People don't
> throw insults like "you baseball player". People don't pour
> their bodily fluids on him and say, "aaah! drink it and like
> it, you female dog!" That's the difference. Let's get real here.
>

I am being _real_, far more real than any of the dogma I've seen that
only serves to objectify us, and detach us from making our own decisions
for our own good.

> > Look, porn exists because there's a market for it. Same as
> > prostitution, baseball, football, and microwave ovens.
>

> And drugs. And bombs. And machine guns. And stolen property.
> And child sex slaves.
>

I don't think we want to turn this into a thread about how much harm
to society we'd eliminate if we decriminalized drugs, so I won't go that
way. ;)

But your point is, we restrict the actions of people because they harm
others. I just don't see that in this case, because I believe people are
capable, and _do_ make rational decisions and judgements about the
difference between fiction and reality.

And in this case, there is _no_ compelling reason for the state to
interfere in the right of the woman to control her own sexuality.

Because you don't like the fact she gets paid for it, and rents it to
someone, is hardly a reason to outlaw it.

> > I'd posit that the woman who spreads her legs in a porn flick to earn
> > a paycheck to pay her rent and feed her kid knows a lot more about being
> > responsible for her decisions as an adult than some

> [stereotype deleted]
>
> I'm glad you agree. Then you should find Andrea Dworkin's
> website fascinating: www.igc.apc.org/womensnet/dworkin

Then you should find my comments fascinating, shouldn't you? ;)

The bottom line for me is this. The outlawing of porn and
prostitution implies that a woman is not capable of protecting herself
from herself, and that the state needs to intervene in order to save her
from herself. By making those claims, and no matter how you slice it,
that _is_ what in fact occurs, the state depersonalizes the woman, and
objectifies her, removing her right to act on her own free will.

Further I would posit that it degrades women to do such a thing. it
is so sexist that it makes my skin crawl. For _women_ to claim we cannot
control our own sexuality, and need to be protected against ourselves
because we're _women_, is exactly what we have been fighting against for
years.

It doesn't make it any less degrading when a woman does it to a woman,
than when a man does it to us.

Respectfully submitted,

--Anna
----------------------------------------
An'na'Delilah, Goddess/Wizard/B.I.T.C.H. + ' +

Beautiful, Intelligent, Talented, Charming, and ~~~HOT .
RedSox Fanatic, Patriots Fan, Teacher, Writer, Mom and Masochist! +
<<<an...@cris.com>>> <<<god...@tsb.weschke.com>>>
+ . ,
"When I'm good I'm very good, but when I'm bad I'm better."
--Mae West
.
~~~<<< AWFL >>> + Strange New Worlds TrekMUSH
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<<<http://www.cris.com/~annad>>> <<<http://www.inet-images.com/snw>>>

[David J. Loftus]

NoDoubt (rd...@curry.edschool.virginia.edu) wrote:

: 1. Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything

: women. Pro-drug, pro-war, pro-child abuse, pro-Barney, pro-smoking, etc.
: Let's not deny the humanity of women by suggesting that they
: don't think the whole gamut of possible human thoughts and take
: the whole range of human actions.

You seem to be agreeing with Anna, generally, so I don't understand your
use of the word "but" here. One of the points of her post was that
anti-porn feminists routinely deny the humanity of other women by
pretending that no woman could possibly enjoy pornography. You utterly
dilute whatever point you are trying to make by equating "pro-Barney" and
even "pro-smoking" with "pro-war" and "pro child abuse."

: 2. Is giving up control of your sexuality the same as controlling

: it? Prostitution (street or celluloid) is *giving up* control
: of who touches and enters your body, isn't it?

Who says she's "giving up control"? Most prostitutes are free to choose
which clients they will entertain, most of the time -- although call
girls undoubtedly have more choice than street prostitutes. But they are
not giving away their bodies, they are renting them --just as we do when
we rent out our bodies to people who tell us what we can and cannot do
for 8 hours a day.

: 3. "Staring" and "watching" are not the main uses of porn,
: masturbation is.

So? What's your problem with that? I suspect Anna was addressing
staring and watching because so much anti-porn feminist theory attacks
just those activities as somehow inherently degrading, sexist, and
power-driven.

: later, boring and plotless. It's point is not to engage or

: challenge the mind, but to train it or ellicit a trained
: response. The porn industry gives itself away in its pedagogical, almost
: militaristic, repetitiveness. Porn knows it's not art, porn
: knows it's a tool, like a workout video knows it's a tool.

The only inherent "pedagogy" I can see in pornography is the desire to
make the viewer buy more porn. That's the only trained response that
could possibly be laid at its door. And in this it is no different from
McDonald's Big Macs and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Whatever "ideology" you
might perceive in pornography (other than the pleasant fiction that
people always want sex and always get what they want out of it) is
inherent in the culture at large, and not any special program of porn,
in my opinion.

David Loftus

[An'na'Delilah]

On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, NoDoubt wrote:

>
> Anna,
>
> I'm emailing to you direct because none of my posts seem to
> reach the moderators.
>

That's quite alright, I actually like receiving well written and
intelligent critiques of my writing in my email, it saves me the trouble
of having to wade through the often misoginyst crap and flame bait posts
in groups like alt.feminism that seem to predominate these days.

> bonehead said:
> > > Based on my experiences, I doubt if I've ever met a woman who wasn't
> > > deeply offended by pornography, and didn't consider it to be a crime
> > > equal to child abuse, rape or genocide.
> {> Before I begin, I wanted to draw attention to the above point.
> This is the impetus behind the women's movement's fight against
> pornography: real women's dislike of pornography. Women of all
> different backgrounds, religions, and nationalities cannot put
> into words why they don't like it; they can't give
> it more than the label of "gut feeling". Feminists have tried
> to speak for those women. Even facing the world's largest
> industry and a world full of men who since the dawn of mass
> media have tried to convince women that porn is fantastic, and
> that they should be more like the women in porn, women have not
> liked pornography. The very entymology of the word is "study of
> the prostitute". Pornography is the photography, videotaping,
> and print rendering of how men look upon prostitutes. (Not the
> viewpoint of the prostitute, mind you, because that would be
> too revolutionary in that the woman would be in control of the
> pen or the camera.) To a degree, the western woman of 1997 finding a
> Hustler in her man's possession feels the same as the woman of
> 1797 (or 1997 for that matter) who finds out that her man is
> buying a prostitute.

What concerns me, is not that anti-porn feminists are concerned about
the women involved in making porn, or who's SO's consume it, or about the
women who become hookers, but what appears to be the ultimate goal of
those anti-porn feminists, which is removing ideas they find objectionable
from everyone else, who may or may not find those ideas objectionable, or
in the case of prostitution, removing the woman's right to choose her own
path in life and empower herself.

See, I really do believe that the anti-porn feminists _do_ care about
women who come from backgrounds like myself. I don't think there's this
giant conspiracy of academe out to enslave us ;). But I think the
tactics, the short term goals, such as banning or outlawing porn and
prostitution, are from my perspective, as great a danger, if not
_greater_, than the "disease" these cures are supposed to eliminate.

I don't dispute your view of how men view porn, because I find it
extremely difficult to place myself in a man's shoes and see what he sees
from porn, and as I detest generalizations, I don't want to take a
viewpoint which I cannot relate to, and then draw a generalization from it
about "men".

So, I'll defer to men such as yourself and others who post on the
issue, to educate me on what men see in porn.

>
> The eternal difference between a prostitute and a gardener (for
> example) is that the prostitute (street or celluloid) hands
> over control of the very thing that makes us human: our bodies.
> Every body right of every kind is given up, down to the right
> of controlling who, literally, enters it.

This I think, is an oversimplification, as certain bodily rights are
_not_ given up <or would not be if prostitution were legal> because others
are. For instance, the porn actress does not allow actors to beat her to
a bloody pulp because she agrees to get paid for someone filming a man
entering her ass. A prostitute should not be forced to allow her pimp to
beat her because she agrees to give a guy a hand job for $20, though that
is in essence what occurs because we as a society drive these women into
the underground economy, denying them the equal protection of the law
they, more than anyone, need. So, I think you overstate your case
somewhat.

That being said, I would agree to a certain extent with you that sex
workers do turn over control of their person for a price, and on a far
more intimate basis than say, the gardner in your example.

But I ask you, is it not better that the very women who's bodies are
effected by these decisions, make them rather than the state, who make
those decisions for prostitutes now, and would if porn were outlawed?

My position is, most certainly yes.

[Anna's Note -- I, fortunately, have through our prior correspondance,
know you agree with me that prostitution should be decriminalized, so we
needn't go down that road that I assumed <in error I might add> that you
want to continue to deny women the legal right to choose prostitution as a
way out of some worse circumstances.]

>
> Before I go on, please know that I am not a professional
> "flamer", who goes against everything someone says line by line
> just to have something to do. I usually lurk on this newsgroup,
> but your post made me think a whole lot, and by linking
> together so many pro-porn ideas, you made clearer to
> me many of the issues surrounding porn. Your clarity clarified
> my clarity. :) So I hope you don't feel overwhelmed but rather
> intellectually intrigued that I consider your post so
> thoroughly.
>

On the contrary, I've found your responses to my post to be most
illuminating, and providing me with food to feed my own insatiable
intellectual apetite. Far from being a "flamer", I find your addressing
of the issues I have raised to be both high praise that you feel you
should address them, and see your response as an opportunity to see this
issue from an entirely new perspective.

I may in the end, disagree with your positions, but I am delighted to
have the opportunity to engage them in discourse. ;)

> > There _are_ women, and feminists, who are not oppossed to pornography.
> > Many of us see women taking control of their sexuality and profiting by
> > it, be it through getting paid for men <or women, let's not forget that
> > there are _female_ porn consumers as well! > staring at pictures, or
> > watching a film, or even a woman being paid for providing a sexual service
> > <prostitution>. As Sidney Biddle Barrows once said, "if you can give it
> > away, why can't you sell it?"
>
> 1. Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything
> women. Pro-drug, pro-war, pro-child abuse, pro-Barney, pro-smoking, etc.
> Let's not deny the humanity of women by suggesting that they
> don't think the whole gamut of possible human thoughts and take
> the whole range of human actions.

Exactly. That was my goal in pointing out that the personal
experiences of one man's relationships with women, no matter how true they
may have been for that one man, do not translate into a universal truism
regarding all women. Sometimes their is a tendency to view the "other",
be it gender, race, or whatever, as a homogenous group all believing or
acting the same way, and such a stereotype does in fact dehumanize women,
ironically, objectifying them IMHO. ;)

> 2. Is giving up control of your sexuality the same as controlling
> it? Prostitution (street or celluloid) is *giving up* control
> of who touches and enters your body, isn't it?

I would say, most definately yes. Unless female sexuality is going to
be solely masturbation <not an unenjoyable experience, but alas, not
enough for all women ;) >, the very act of controlling one's sexuality is
deciding who, what, where, how, why, and at what cost, someone may enter
or not enter my body. If I have the power to give or sell myself, I have
the power not to give or sell myself, or merely to rent myself, and thus,
the power to take myself back from whomever I have leased myself to for
sexual pleasure.

I admit, I have formulated this rather crudely, treating a woman's
sexuality as a commodity to be bought, sold, or given, but when you decide
to have sex with a man for pay, you are controlling your sexuality by
making that decision, the same way you are making a decision to give up
part of your sexuality for free on a date with a lover, or in the bedroom
of your home with your SO.

In a world in which prostitution were decriminalized and workplace
protections were applied to sex workers, a woman who agreed to give a hand
job wouldn't be beaten by her pimp if she changed her mind and fled. It
is the laws against such choice for women that remove her sexuality from
her control, not her decision.

> 3. "Staring" and "watching" are not the main uses of porn,
> masturbation is. That's why it's videos are, as you state
> later, boring and plotless. It's point is not to engage or
> challenge the mind, but to train it or ellicit a trained
> response. The porn industry gives itself away in its pedagogical, almost
> militaristic, repetitiveness. Porn knows it's not art, porn
> knows it's a tool, like a workout video knows it's a tool. The
> only thing that's stopping mass revelation of porn's intent as
> a sexual educator and not an artistic venue is the fact that we
> cannot have this conversation at 11am on Oprah. (the reasons
> for hypocrisy regarding sexuality in mass media we can discuss
> at a different time.) Masturbating to something is far
> different from just watching it. That kind of physical and
> emotional reaction, probably the strongest human feeling in
> the world next to pain, evokes MUCH more loyalty and, I'll say
> it, Love, than almost anything you just normally observe or read.
> What are the effects of this training? Many. I'll discuss them
> as I continue.

I'm not sure that I've ever seen anyone, and certainly I hope I
haven't given you the impression that I dispute this, dispute your notion
that the main concept of porn is to stimulate and arouse, and to allow
some people to attain sexual gratification, or cum. I'd be intrigued by
an argument that porn was "art" however, and would encourage anyone who
believes it to be so, to post those ideas.

> 4. The profit that women make from cellular and street
> prostitution is full of irony. The main one being that the
> biggest money makers are still men. The pimps, the bar owners,
> the magazine owners, and the moviemakers are still primarily
> men. Wow...that is absolutely ironic that even in the industry where
> women's bodies are the product, men still make the most profit.
> (If the lowest rung in the sex industry can make hundreds of
> dollars an hour, imagine what the highest rung makes.)

Removing prostitution for just a moment, this is true of almost _any_
legal enterprise in American society. Women have not had the same
opportunities as men to devote their lives to the business of business,
and thus we are <in general> employees rather than employers. The
ghettoization of women is hardly unique to the porn industry.

As far as prostitution, the illegal issue we're discussing, the
illegality of it has driven women into the arms of pimps and males, in
order to protect their ability to make a living from the law. I posit
that should we make prostitution legal tommorrow, we would have far more
"owner/operators" in prostitution that we would have women working for
abusive, drug pushing pimps.

But your point that those with capital <the porn industry, the pimps
etc> will make far more money off of those who are the means of
production, is well noted, and conceded.

> And when was the last time profit made something not harmful?
> Women make a profit from drugs, too. But what makes the porn
> industry comparable to the drug industry? Let's consider.... A
> drug addict has a physical reaction to a drug, that's why they
> buy it. They can't get that reaction in any other way except
> perhaps with another drug. That's why the illegal drug industry
> is so large. Porn ellicits ejaculations, but are ejaculations
> the drug for sale? They can't be, because you don't need porn
> to have them, they existed before porn, and, as many wives and
> girlfriends have asked over the centuries, "what do you need this for
> if you have me?" An answer unfolds as I continue...

I don't debate that because something shows a profit, it isn't
harmful. I do think however, that these economic opportunities do provide
a way out of even worse circumstances for women, and that rather than
continuing to deny, or starting to deny, these avenues of escape and
empowerment for women, we should instead seek to provide the opportunity
for women to excercise greater control over these decisions she might
make.

It stands to reason that as long as women are going to be in poverty,
or face abusive relationships at home, or have other
socioeconomic/familial dysfunctional problems at home they need to escape
from, the avenues of escape should be made as clean, healthy, and
empowering as we can possibly make them.

Arguing that women should not have to be faced with a choice that
prostitution or porn is a far better life than the one they now live, is a
far cry from closing off those very avenues of escape, which in the end,
is the goal of anti-porn and anti-prostitution proponents, is it not?

> 5. The Barrows quote reveals the attitude that has always taken
> the traditional prostitution discussion in the wrong direction.
> That attitude is that the food is the problem, not the monster it
> feeds. When we have focussed on the monster, we've too often
> misidentified it. "Sex is a strong instinct!" people shout. But
> women love, want and need sex too, and they don't even seek out
> pornography for the most part, let alone seek it out long
> enough to find that it doesn't exist for their use. "Men love
> sex more than women!" people shout. But a.) far from being
> scientifically proven, this sounds like a shared lie to hide
> the real reasons for buying a prostitute; and b.) this falls apart
> in the face of the fact that men who have plenty of sex buy
> prostitutes (celluoid and live). Then what is the monster that
> the sex industry feeds?

A penis with a desire to shoot its wad?

I'm not clear where you're going with this argument. I'm not at all
sure that we can, let alone should, attempt to remold what does or doesn't
turn men on sexually, as long as they're not out beating or raping women.
Is that the end result of your ideas? I don't know. Perhaps you could
clarify what the endgame is, for you.

That might give me a clearer picture of what you're saying.

For the sake of argument, let's concede this is all true. Are you
calling for the criminalization of porn, as other anti-porn activists and
posters do? Are men so unable to differentiate between the reality of
heterosexual relationships and the orgasmic fantasy provided by porn or
the prostitute that the women they are with cannot and do not have
sexually rewarding relationships with their male partners? Are parents so
incapable of counteracting these images, because of their own
"indoctrination"?

What I'm asking is, are these ideas, these fantasies, which are being
communicated to men, so dangerous and destructive, that we as a society
need to act against them, or are you saying that they should exist, but
that people just need to have a counterbalancing viewpoint present, such
as you're presenting now?

I defend to the end your right to make such a counterbalancing view,
and for you to say that porn is an objectification of women that men
masturbate to, and that it fucks up women's sex lives because men then
have a bizarre outlook on female sexuality -- regardless of the veracity
or reasonableness of such claims.

The question is, at least from my perspective, how far do these ideas
go? Far enough for the state to mandate the "other" be outlawed?

> Het porn also teaches that it doesn't matter what men look like,
> but it matters a hell of a lot what women look like. Porn
> stores are divided into categories of what women look like.
> Naturally! If she's not a thinking, feeling human, what else
> matters. And no matter what they look like, they are all
> "beautiful, hot sexy girls". Great! How liberating! Not so
> fast. They're only beautiful because they are willing to be
> owned.
>
> And to top it all the porn industry is appallingly racist. While in
> schools and on tv we are trying to teach against racism, porn
> actively promotes it, constantly giving new life to old
> prejudices and stereotypes. But this isn't some KKK flier that
> isn't widespread, these are magazines and videos that sell millions every
> year.
>

You raise an interesting constitutional issue, albeit a dangerous one
IMHO. The freedom of speech protects racist KKK fliers, but does that
right cease to exist when an idea becomes more subscribed to, or at least
more readily available?

I would posit the answer to that should be an unequivocal "no". In a
free and open society, ideas and thought should be able to compete with
one another in the marketplace of the mind, or in this place, the
marketplace of the genitalia.

Is not the goal of the anti-porn ideas to utilize the state to remove
it from public consumption? I'm not claiming that is _your_ goal, you
haven't stated it is. I know from our previous conversations you agree
that prostitution should be decriminalized, and I certainly accept that
you may believe everything you have written, and not be intellectually
inconsistent in saying that porn should not be made illegal.

After all, I have no problems with people saying "this is a bad idea",
but "I support your right to hold it and postulate on it", after all, that
is the essence of civil libertarianism, no?

> whew. I've written a lot. I'll respond more later.
>

And you've raised some wonderfully lucid points, and created far more
questions in my mind than answers <giggles>.

An excellent post. Thanks for the opportunity to respond to it.

Lotsa love,

[David J. Loftus]

NoDoubt (rd...@curry.edschool.virginia.edu) wrote:

: 4. The profit that women make from cellular and street

: prostitution is full of irony. The main one being that the
: biggest money makers are still men. The pimps, the bar owners,
: the magazine owners, and the moviemakers are still primarily
: men. Wow...that is absolutely ironic that even in the industry where
: women's bodies are the product, men still make the most profit.

Nothing ironic about it. Men make most of the profit in most businesses;
why not more so in a business that caters to men? Keep in mind that
there are better classes of prostitute who make plenty of money and don't
have to share it with anyone, let alone a man.

: And when was the last time profit made something not harmful?

All the time. I would assume the profits Mobil contributes to
Masterpiece Theater and wealthy contributors pass along to the arts in
their respective communities are, on balance, not harmful.

: 5. The Barrows quote reveals the attitude that has always taken

: the traditional prostitution discussion in the wrong direction.
: That attitude is that the food is the problem, not the monster it
: feeds. When we have focussed on the monster, we've too often
: misidentified it. "Sex is a strong instinct!" people shout. But
: women love, want and need sex too, and they don't even seek out
: pornography for the most part, let alone seek it out long
: enough to find that it doesn't exist for their use. "Men love
: sex more than women!" people shout. But a.) far from being
: scientifically proven, this sounds like a shared lie to hide
: the real reasons for buying a prostitute; and b.) this falls apart
: in the face of the fact that men who have plenty of sex buy
: prostitutes (celluoid and live).

All of this is rather beside the point. Adult autonomy and free choice,
coupled with free-market economics, means that some males' willingness to
pay money for sex and some females' willingness to exchange sex for money
will ensure that prostitution will probably always be with us. Why is no
concern of mine. Or yours.

: Porn is not just an objectification of women, it's an

: objectification that men masturbate with, that men "love".

So?

: Because the industry is so large (in the US, larger than the

: nonporn film and music industries combined),

This cannot be true. Let's see your numbers. I've seen anywhere from $6
to $10 billion for pornography, but I can hardly imagine that all
mainstream film and music entertainment doesn't overwhelm this
completely, if you figure in everything from Madonna and "Independence
Day" to all the nation's state film boards, symphonies, bands, and small
groups.

And even if they don't, so what? People are getting what they want, and
there's very little harm been shown.

: and because porn is our

: primary sexual educator, not parents or schools, anything
: that that industry teaches is going to be as powerful
: as what schoolbooks teach.

I haven't found porn to be half the educator that experience is, and I
daresay the same is true for most other grownups. Young people have been
fed lies about Native Americans, Columbus, American labor history, and
many other things, too, and it hasn't done them too much harm.

Sexual ignorance has done far much more damage to people than pornography
has. Even Linda Lovelace Borman agrees with that.

: Porn is a substitute for the live prostitute.

Not necessarily. By that reasoning, murder mysteries are only a
substitute for one's need to kill.

: What porn teaches is

: that all women, in all situations want to make you ejaculate,
: or that they *should* want to. The most oft-repeated phrase in
: porn has got to be "she wants it". Why the constant use of this
: phrase? To convince the buyer, the owner, the john, the viewer,
: even the writer of the phrase or the actor who says it, that she
: does. Why does he need convincing? To teach him that
: no matter what, she wants it. No matter what she says, no
: matter what she does, she wants it.

Again, I disagree that this necessarily has to be the "lesson." Perhaps
the pleasure lies in the process, not the lesson or the destination. Do
you think everyone who watched "The Wizard of Oz" decided that it is
best never to leave one's home? That's what Dorothy keeps repeating, but
that's not what she did, or there would have been no story, and it's not
what we necessarily derive from the tale even if we enjoy it.

: Porn teaches men that sex
: is a completely selfish act, where the other party has no
: humanity, she only exists to ejaculate him. The only pleasure
: she has is in pleasuring him. Porn so boldy states these facts
: to not see them is like not seeing something because it's so
: obvious.

I must be blind, because I have not seen this "monolithic" message in
pornography. In a lot of porn, the woman's pleasure is AT LEAST as
important as the man's, sometimes more. It may not be realistically
derived, it may not be depicted in a manner that would be useful or
successful in attempting to give a real woman pleasure, but the DESIRE
and the AIM of having the woman enjoy herself at least as much as the man
is very much a preoccupation of a lot of pornography.

: Every single scene ends in male ejaculation, male

: pleasure, most times with the woman moaning in pleasure as if
: she were climaxing herself, which, porn actresses and
: prostitutes tell us, is not what's really happening.

Yes. And I understand movie stars don't really take punches and fall off
buildings, let alone survive such activities. So what? It's acting.
We're not interested in "truth" here, we're interested in feeling good.

: It doesn't matter if she has a headache, it doesn't matter if she's tired,

: it doesn't matter that she's having her period (period? what's
: that? If a man's only contact with women were porn, he would
: never know that every single woman has periods!),

Uh, this doesn't come up in mainstream entertainment and novels very
often, either. Should be censure them for unreality, too?

: it doesn't

: matter if it hurts, it doesn't matter if she's asleep, it
: doesn't matter if she's high, it doesn't matter if she's sick,
: it doesn't matter if she's your daughter, it doesn't matter if
: she's your neighbor's wife, it doesn't matter if she's dead, and
: it doesn't matter if she says she doesn't want it, she wants it.

Of course it doesn't matter. Because pornography is fantasy, just like
most entertainment. It doesn't matter that Stallone is tired, it doesn't
matter if Wayne has hemorrhoids (or a missing lung!), it doesn't matter
if Harrison Ford is sick -- the story demands that they triumph in the
end, usually. Because it IS a story.

You act as if the average fella can't tell the difference between a
fantasy woman and a real one. We make mistakes now and then (and women
mistake us for their fantasies, too), but we usually respond to further
input.

: Het porn also teaches that it doesn't matter what men look like,

: but it matters a hell of a lot what women look like.

Does it "teach" this? How? And how is that any different from what
happens in the movies, in _Vogue_, and in _GQ_? Personally, I think a
fair number of men would be happy to have more men in pornography who
were pleasing to look at.

: Porn stores are divided into categories of what women look like.

: Naturally! If she's not a thinking, feeling human, what else
: matters. And no matter what they look like, they are all
: "beautiful, hot sexy girls". Great! How liberating! Not so
: fast. They're only beautiful because they are willing to be
: owned.

Who says? I think most men would happily call them beautiful without
renting the video or buying the magazine.

: And to top it all the porn industry is appallingly racist. While in

: schools and on tv we are trying to teach against racism, porn
: actively promotes it, constantly giving new life to old
: prejudices and stereotypes. But this isn't some KKK flier that
: isn't widespread, these are magazines and videos that sell millions every
: year.

Not so fast. Pornography often denies racism by pretending that men and
woman of various races can meet on the playing field of sex with no
misunderstandings, no prejudice, no hurt feelings. This is also a lie,
but it ain't racist.

David Loftus

[David Fenton]

> > bonehead said:
> > > Based on my experiences, I doubt if I've ever met a woman who wasn't
> > > deeply offended by pornography, and didn't consider it to be a crime
> > > equal to child abuse, rape or genocide.

Comparing personal experiences, though I've met many women (and some
men) who were offended by pornography, I've met none whatsoever who
would consider it a crime equal to genocide, rape, or most forms of
child abuse. Get real.

And NoDoubt responded to bonehead at great and interesting length, only
small parts of which will time permit me to comment on:

>
> Before I begin, I wanted to draw attention to the above point.
> This is the impetus behind the women's movement's fight against
> pornography: real women's dislike of pornography.

What, as opposed to 'unreal' women who don't necessarily think as you
do?

> Women of all different backgrounds, religions, and nationalities cannot
> put into words why they don't like it; they can't give
> it more than the label of "gut feeling".

How did you reach such a conclusion? I'd be interested in reading some
of your references, and would appreciate it if you could forward them.

> Feminists have tried to speak for those women.

Be careful not to equate Dworkin and Mackinnon and their opinions with
all feminists. There are many other voices -- and opinions.

> Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything women.

Implying what, that only anti-porn women have taken a reasoned position?
This demeans anyone who is not anti-porn by your definition. You have
also ignored the fact that there are not only pro- and anti- positions.

As an example of a some views you should consider, I recommend _Women
Against Censorship_, edited by Varda Burstyn (Douglas & McIntyre,
Toronto, 1985). If you had read this, or other articles like these, you
couldn't possibly have made the sweeping statements you made in your
post.

Ms Burstyn, by the way, hosted a 4-hour CBC radio series in 1983 called
"Public Sex". It was a real eye-opener for some people on aspects of not
only pornography but the sex trade and sex workers. Tapes are probably
still available from CBC Radio in Toronto.

Burstyn also testified at an important art censorship case in Toronto in
the mid-80s and was attacked in print by Mackinnon, but be careful not
to type-cast her as pro-pornography. As I've tried to say, it's not that
simple.

--
******************************************************
DAVID S. FENTON
Writing * Training * Research
Science, Technology, Environment

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

[Kirk Job Sluder]

In article <Pine.SUN.3.95.97020...@voyager.cris.com>,

An'na'Delilah <An...@cris.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 4 Feb 1997, NoDoubt wrote:
>> The eternal difference between a prostitute and a gardener (for
>> example) is that the prostitute (street or celluloid) hands
>> over control of the very thing that makes us human: our bodies.
>> Every body right of every kind is given up, down to the right
>> of controlling who, literally, enters it.
>
> This I think, is an oversimplification, as certain bodily rights are
>_not_ given up <or would not be if prostitution were legal> because others
>are. For instance, the porn actress does not allow actors to beat her to
>a bloody pulp because she agrees to get paid for someone filming a man
>entering her ass. A prostitute should not be forced to allow her pimp to
>beat her because she agrees to give a guy a hand job for $20, though that
>is in essence what occurs because we as a society drive these women into
>the underground economy, denying them the equal protection of the law
>they, more than anyone, need. So, I think you overstate your case
>somewhat.

Yes. Because we are dealing with an underground economy, (both in
terms of legality and social status) sex workers can't prosecute
clients who take liberties. The right of sex workers to define what
is or what is not part of the services they provide can not be
effectively enforced.

But on the other hand, I'm really not sure if performing sexual acts
for pay is really more of an issue of "control" than any other
professional-client relationship. Central to the anti-porn
ideology is that sexual acts somehow fall into a different class
of activities from gardening, dentistry, assembly-line work or
graphic arts.

I don't see that the problem is with sex work, rather the problem
is with our social attitudes regarding sex and sex work. Why do
we feel that other professionals have a right to refuse services
they feel are ethically unsound, but that sex workers do not?
(An example of this is the myth that working as a stripper includes
consent to work as a prostitute.)

>> 2. Is giving up control of your sexuality the same as controlling
>> it? Prostitution (street or celluloid) is *giving up* control
>> of who touches and enters your body, isn't it?

I'm not convinced of this point. In real life, yes the criminalization
and condemnation (with the result that even though rape is illegal,
rape against sex workers will not be effectively prosecuted).

On the other hand, some feminists involved in reforming sex work point
out that it is possible to do sex work and maintain control. In this
point of view, sex work is seen as an artistic dialogue between
the professional and the client. The sex professional has the
right to negotiate which acts are performed with the client and
even to turn down clients.

>> 3. "Staring" and "watching" are not the main uses of porn,
>> masturbation is. That's why it's videos are, as you state
>> later, boring and plotless. It's point is not to engage or
>> challenge the mind, but to train it or ellicit a trained
>> response.

I'm not sure how this is different from 90% of what appears on
TV or in the movie theatre.

This is more of a quality control problem than a problem inherent
in pornography. It is possible to create pornography which is
visually pleasing and mentally stimulating as well as erotic.

But this points out a bias in how we think about pornography
vs. other forms of entertainment. The claim is rarely made
that televised sports engages or challenges the mind, but
mental challenge is never considered to be an important
criterion for judging televised sports as a form of entertainment.
Why should pornography be held to a higher standard than
televised sports or even prime-time television?

> I'm not sure that I've ever seen anyone, and certainly I hope I
>haven't given you the impression that I dispute this, dispute your notion
>that the main concept of porn is to stimulate and arouse, and to allow
>some people to attain sexual gratification, or cum. I'd be intrigued by
>an argument that porn was "art" however, and would encourage anyone who
>believes it to be so, to post those ideas.

I will suggest that the distinction between pornography and "erotica"
(AKA pornographic art) is really imbedded in politics rather than
any real difference between the two. At one time, the primary
purpose of pornography was not to arouse sexual desire, but to
lampoon the political follies of unpopular politicians and the
upper class. (Pornographic cartoons of Prince George with his
mistresses helped to solidify support for King George III during
his insanity.)

I believe pornography is an "art" because it is the consious use
of words and images to achieve an emotional effect (sexual arousal). Perhaps
the best examples of where pornography is recognized as art comes
from Anais Nin's short stories usually collected as "Delta of Venus."

And of course, sexually explicit art is labeled pornography by those
who wish to supress it. ie., Manet's Olympia and Mapplethorpe's
photos of gay BDSM. In both cases the works labeled depict
sexual activities that everyone knows about but dare not discuss.
Manet (and later Degas, and Tolouse-Lautrec (I know I missed
the spelling on that one)) was pornographic for openly painting
the professional mistresses and sex workers of Paris. Mapplethorpe
was labeled pornographic for photographing gay leather culture.

>> Let's consider.... A
>> drug addict has a physical reaction to a drug, that's why they
>> buy it. They can't get that reaction in any other way except
>> perhaps with another drug. That's why the illegal drug industry
>> is so large. Porn ellicits ejaculations, but are ejaculations
>> the drug for sale? They can't be, because you don't need porn
>> to have them, they existed before porn, and, as many wives and
>> girlfriends have asked over the centuries, "what do you need this for
>> if you have me?" An answer unfolds as I continue...

Why have my female lovers used porn as well?

>> 5. The Barrows quote reveals the attitude that has always taken
>> the traditional prostitution discussion in the wrong direction.
>> That attitude is that the food is the problem, not the monster it
>> feeds. When we have focussed on the monster, we've too often
>> misidentified it. "Sex is a strong instinct!" people shout. But
>> women love, want and need sex too, and they don't even seek out
>> pornography for the most part, let alone seek it out long
>> enough to find that it doesn't exist for their use. "Men love
>> sex more than women!" people shout. But a.) far from being
>> scientifically proven, this sounds like a shared lie to hide
>> the real reasons for buying a prostitute; and b.) this falls apart
>> in the face of the fact that men who have plenty of sex buy
>> prostitutes (celluoid and live). Then what is the monster that
>> the sex industry feeds?

I suggest that the reason women do not use pornography or seek
prostitutes (or even casual sex for the most part) is because women
have been trained not to use pornography or casual sex.

>> What porn teaches is
>> that all women, in all situations want to make you ejaculate,
>> or that they *should* want to. The most oft-repeated phrase in
>> porn has got to be "she wants it".

Make the other person ejaculate, while indulging in some very
pleasurable activities. Actually, I don't see or hear the phrase
"she wants it" very often.

>> Porn teaches men that sex
>> is a completely selfish act, where the other party has no
>> humanity, she only exists to ejaculate him. The only pleasure
>> she has is in pleasuring him. Porn so boldy states these facts
>> to not see them is like not seeing something because it's so
>> obvious.

This depends on the person making the pornography. There exists
lots of pornography which spends a lot of time on such non-ejaculatory
activities as masturbation and cunnilingus. In a lot of written
pornography, it is the woman's excitement that takes priority
and ejaculation is just a nice addendum.

>> There is no
>> courting in porn, there is no asking, there is no planning,
>> there is no questioning of consequences.

Again, depends on who is making the pornography.

>> Women are always
>> available and ready whenever the viewer is available and ready,
>> all he has to do is pay and she'll let him jack off all over
>> her and tell him she loves him. The question of his willingness
>> doesn't matter because he doesn't even go to her unless he's
>> willing.

If she's not willing, what is she doing in the frame?

> I defend to the end your right to make such a counterbalancing view,
>and for you to say that porn is an objectification of women that men
>masturbate to, and that it fucks up women's sex lives because men then
>have a bizarre outlook on female sexuality -- regardless of the veracity
>or reasonableness of such claims.
>
> The question is, at least from my perspective, how far do these ideas
>go? Far enough for the state to mandate the "other" be outlawed?

I feel that rather than less porn, we need more better porn which
shows a more realistic point of view.

[Daniel B. Holzman]

In article <19970203224...@curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU>,

NoDoubt <rd...@curry.edschool.virginia.edu> wrote:
>
>The eternal difference between a prostitute and a gardener (for
>example) is that the prostitute (street or celluloid) hands
>over control of the very thing that makes us human: our bodies.
>Every body right of every kind is given up, down to the right
>of controlling who, literally, enters it.

You mean that in a world where prostitution were legal, and prostitutes could do
things like unionize and prosecute people who break the law, they would be unable to
turn customers away? I don't buy it.

>is so large. Porn ellicits ejaculations, but are ejaculations
>the drug for sale? They can't be, because you don't need porn
>to have them, they existed before porn, and, as many wives and
>girlfriends have asked over the centuries, "what do you need this for
>if you have me?" An answer unfolds as I continue...

An answer is far faster in the offing. Wives and girlfriends don't necessarily wish
to be sexual on their husband's and boyfriend's timetable.

> Porn is not just an objectification of women, it's an
>objectification that men masturbate with, that men "love".

I've got news for you. Men masturbate with imagery of women that is not
pornagraphic. Remember the Sears catalog?

>as what schoolbooks teach. Porn
>is a substitute for the live prostitute. What porn teaches is
>that all women, in all situations want to make you ejaculate,
>or that they *should* want to. The most oft-repeated phrase in
>porn has got to be "she wants it". Why the constant use of this
>phrase? To convince the buyer, the owner, the john, the viewer,
>even the writer of the phrase or the actor who says it, that she
>does.

That the *character* does, not that the *actor* does. Porn is presenting a fantasy
of sex, and part and parcel of that fantasy is that the person you are going to have
sex with wants to have sex with you. This is because most men prefer to have sex
with women who prefer to have sex with them.

>Why does he need convincing?

Why do I ask my RL partners if they want to have sex?

>To teach him that
>no matter what, she wants it. No matter what she says, no
>matter what she does, she wants it. Porn teaches men that sex
>is a completely selfish act, where the other party has no
>humanity, she only exists to ejaculate him. The only pleasure

Strange that I have not gotten this message from pron.

>she has is in pleasuring him. Porn so boldy states these facts
>to not see them is like not seeing something because it's so
>obvious. Every single scene ends in male ejaculation, male
>pleasure, most times with the woman moaning in pleasure as if
>she were climaxing herself, which, porn actresses and
>prostitutes tell us, is not what's really happening. It doesn't

Even the ones that don't have any men in them?

>matter if she has a headache, it doesn't matter if she's tired,
>it doesn't matter that she's having her period (period? what's
>that? If a man's only contact with women were porn, he would
>never know that every single woman has periods!), it doesn't
>matter if it hurts, it doesn't matter if she's asleep, it
>doesn't matter if she's high, it doesn't matter if she's sick,
>it doesn't matter if she's your daughter, it doesn't matter if
>she's your neighbor's wife, it doesn't matter if she's dead, and
>it doesn't matter if she says she doesn't want it, she wants
>it. In porn every single move she makes and word she utters
>means "I want it", I want to make you ejaculate. There is no
>courting in porn, there is no asking, there is no planning,
>there is no questioning of consequences. Women are always

Would you like me to provide titles refuting each and every claim in the above?

>Het porn also teaches that it doesn't matter what men look like,
>but it matters a hell of a lot what women look like. Porn
>stores are divided into categories of what women look like.
>Naturally! If she's not a thinking, feeling human, what else
>matters. And no matter what they look like, they are all
>"beautiful, hot sexy girls". Great! How liberating! Not so
>fast. They're only beautiful because they are willing to be
>owned.

You've clearly never been inside an actual porn shop, else you'd see a whole lot of
amatuer-produced pron with men and women who look like - men and women!

Heck, I've even seen a bondage video that was followed by an off-screen interview
with the actress. She sure seemed thinking and feeling to me!

--
Daniel B. Holzman -- Love does not subtract, it multiplies. -- All acts of love
and pleasure are Her rituals. -- An it Harm none, do what you Will. -- They
took my name and stole my heritage, but they didn't get my goat. -- The
word is all of us. -- Remember the Twelth Commandment and keep it Wholly.

[NoDoubt]

According to David Fenton:

> > Before I begin, I wanted to draw attention to the above point.
> > This is the impetus behind the women's movement's fight against
> > pornography: real women's dislike of pornography.
>
> What, as opposed to 'unreal' women who don't necessarily think as you
> do?

No. Representation of the women who exist and who do not like
it. The thrust of the women's movement fights against porn
because the thrust of women dislike it.

> > Feminists have tried to speak for those women.
>
> Be careful not to equate Dworkin and Mackinnon and their opinions with
> all feminists. There are many other voices -- and opinions.

Perhaps you misread? I'll restate using your words: Feminists,
for example Dworkin and Mackinnon, have tried to speak for
those women who dislike porn but sometimes have trouble
articulating or even understanding why.

> > Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything women.
>
> Implying what, that only anti-porn women have taken a reasoned position?
> This demeans anyone who is not anti-porn by your definition. You have
> also ignored the fact that there are not only pro- and anti- positions.

No..perhaps you misread again. I said (less fully) that the existence of
pro-porn women does not negate the harm of porn, just like the
existence of, i.e., pro-drug women does not negate the harm of drugs;
and that we should not deny women humanity by implying that it
is impossible that they could not potentially hold any and all
viewpoints that exist around a particular issue.

Ray Smith
rd...@virginia.edu
--
End the censorship of Andrea Dworkin by US Publishers.
Check out her website and online library at
http://www.igc.apc.org/Womensnet/dworkin
Read her for yourself, don't let the fearful keep you from the truth.

[Jabronitz]

<<Het porn also teaches that it doesn't matter what men look like,
>but it matters a hell of a lot what women look like. Porn
>stores are divided into categories of what women look like.>>>

Gotta agree wholeheartedly with this one. I don't regularly watch porn
movies for these reasons (I am female):

The men are dogs.
The sex scene ends when the man comes, not the woman.
The cum-in-face shots are ridiculous.
The women are unrealistic panting nymphos with no personalities.
Most of the goofy, contrived "dirty talk" is laughable.
It's intimidating to be in a porn video section. The male customers all
think you're "hot meat" available for their enjoyment. Creepy.

[Caitlin M. Shaw]

In article <19970208155...@curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU>
NoDoubt <rd...@curry.edschool.virginia.edu> writes:
>According to David Fenton:
>> [attribution lost -- NoDoubt again?]

>>> This is the impetus behind the women's movement's fight against
>>> pornography: real women's dislike of pornography.
>>
>> What, as opposed to 'unreal' women who don't necessarily think as you
>> do?
>
>No. Representation of the women who exist and who do not like
>it. The thrust of the women's movement fights against porn
>because the thrust of women dislike it.

Is the thrust of the women's movement against porn?

What makes you say so? AFAIK, since the mid-eighties the women's
movement has been running around in internal "sex wars" over porn, S/M,
heterosexuality, and gender roles.

>>> Feminists have tried to speak for those women.
>>
>> Be careful not to equate Dworkin and Mackinnon and their opinions with
>> all feminists. There are many other voices -- and opinions.
>
>Perhaps you misread? I'll restate using your words: Feminists,
>for example Dworkin and Mackinnon, have tried to speak for
>those women who dislike porn but sometimes have trouble
>articulating or even understanding why.

And other feminists, for example Gayle Rubin and Joan Nestle, have tried
to speak for those women who like S/M or butch-femme but sometimes have
trouble articulating or even understanding why. So, in other words,
feminists have been found speaking on both sides of this question.

>>> Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything women.
>>
>> Implying what, that only anti-porn women have taken a reasoned position?
>> This demeans anyone who is not anti-porn by your definition. You have
>> also ignored the fact that there are not only pro- and anti- positions.
>
>No..perhaps you misread again. I said (less fully) that the existence of
>pro-porn women does not negate the harm of porn, just like the
>existence of, i.e., pro-drug women does not negate the harm of drugs;
>and that we should not deny women humanity by implying that it
>is impossible that they could not potentially hold any and all
>viewpoints that exist around a particular issue.

Likewise, the existance of, i.e., pro-censorship women does not negate
the harm of censorship.

'Women and the feminists who speak for them' cannot be said to be
monolithically pro- or anti- just about anything complicated.
Generally, we all agreed on just about everything practical and
ideological and are letting these pro/con wars get in the way of real
work that needs to be done.

For example, there are pro-choice feminists and anti-abortion feminists.
Both organize around the issue of abortion because it is an area which
is important for women trying to control their own bodies, and both
assert that their side is trying to give women the greatest control
(pro-choice by offering the choice, anti-abortion by preventing others
from forcing an abortion on a pregnant woman).

For example, there are pro-sex and anti-porn feminists. Ditto and
ditto (pro-sex by offering a chance to assert one's own sexuality,
anti-porn by preventing others from forcing a rigid sexuality on a
woman).

Etcetera etc. At the moment in the U.S. it is perhaps commonest to be
pro-choice and anti-porn; that has not always been the case, nor does
it indicate a groundswell of support for any side but rather a
perponderance of theoretical approaches from one side or another. Most
feminists have a strong opinion on most of these topics, and have or
will eventually reach a solid and well-supported stance; it does not
make one "right", only convinced.(*) If we can recognize this, and work
on the things we *do* agree on in spite of it all, we can still get our
real work done.

(*) Deeply as it pains my mathematician's soul, "A and not-A" may be a
true statement at times, for "A" dealing with human beings.

Caitlin
--
Caitlin MacKay Shaw /\ /\ /\ <http://www.princeton.edu/~cmshaw>
<cms...@princeton.edu> \/ \/ "There is no one true way." M. Lackey
Princeton University Mathematics Department and Women's Studies Program

[Kirk Job Sluder]

It occurs to me that there are very different views about how much
control sex workers have over their work.

The first view states that because sex work centers on sex, the women
who do sex work don't have control over the services they perform, the
cost of those services and the right to refuse clients.

On the other hand, many of the women who have been involved in sex work
describe it not as a loss of control, but as a means of self-expression.
They insist that they do have control over what services they perform,
and who they perform for.

I feel that somewhere in this gap is the heart of the problem.

Why do many feminists and many clients of sex workers assume that
sex workers do not have control? (A common complaint I've read from
strippers is that clients assume that they are willing to do more than
dance.) How do we give sex workers control? Is the ability of sex
workers to determine services offered, clients served and price for those
services possible?

--
Kirk Job Sluder
csl...@indiana.edu
http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~csluder/home.html
"Never clap your hands while holding a fountain pen."

[David Austin]

In article <19970208183...@ladder01.news.aol.com> Jabronitz,

jabr...@aol.com writes:
>I don't regularly watch porn
>movies for these reasons (I am female):
>
>The men are dogs.
>The sex scene ends when the man comes, not the woman.
>The cum-in-face shots are ridiculous.
>The women are unrealistic panting nymphos with no personalities.
>Most of the goofy, contrived "dirty talk" is laughable.

Though there is porn that lacks these characteristics,
(e.g., Candida Royalle seeks to avoid them in her Femme
series) this seems to be a good description of what's
typical.

>It's intimidating to be in a porn video section. The male customers all
>think you're "hot meat" available for their enjoyment. Creepy.

While I certainly believe your report of your experience
(and, perhaps, those of others with whom you've spoken
about this), this may not be typical. In a few anthropological
studies of 'adult'-only video stores and in my experience
(as well as that of other men and women I've spoken to)
the presence of a woman or women in an 'adult'-only video
store, or in the 'adult'-video section of a video store is
often seen as embarrassing or somewhat intimidating
by male patrons, some of whom will leave the store or
section. (Typically, male patrons will even avoid eye-
contact or any verbal exchange with other males there.)

I'll offer two anecdote-sketches to help illustrate this.
(Of course, a few anecdotes do not establish what is
typical.) (a) I was in an 'adult'-only video store on a
moderately busy Saturday evening when two African-
American women (early 20s, I'd guess) entered and
began looking at video boxes together, often laughing
loudly at the descriptions and pictures that they
found on the boxes. After about 20 minutes of mirth,
they chose two videos to rent and departed. The
area around them was rapidly depopulated by the
men then present, many of whom hunkered down or
left without renting. (b) At another video store,
two women entered on a relatively quiet weekday
afternoon and told the clerk on duty that they were
vacationing, middle-aged, married women from a
small town in-state where porn was unavailable
even for rental and they were looking for some
hot stuff. (I'm paraphrasing closely.) With
some whispered consultation and giggling, they
examined the 'adult' holdings in
the relevant section and bought several videos.
The men in that section left the store quickly
when the women arrived there. Perhaps they'd
have left anyway, but given their speed, it
didn't seem that way.

I don't know how often a woman alone enters
adult video stores or sections. I've not often
seen this, though the reaction of men has
been about the same. A pair of women or
a man/woman couple seem to be left well
alone. My impression is that a pair of
women is seen as more discomfiting than
a man/woman couple, but I'm not confident
of this.

David.

[Ennead]

NoDoubt <rd...@curry.edschool.virginia.edu> wrote:

: This is the impetus behind the women's movement's fight against
: pornography: real women's dislike of pornography. Women of all

: different backgrounds, religions, and nationalities cannot put
: into words why they don't like it; they can't give

: it more than the label of "gut feeling". [...]

What does this make women who like pornography, or (more likely) neither
like pornography nor loath it with the passion of the feminist
antipornography movement? I'm deeply suspicious of attempts to justify
this (or any other) position with an appeal to how "real women" feel, when
even among feminists there's no consensus over the meaning, importance and
response to pornography. The truth is, "real women" feel every which way.

: 1. Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything
: women. Pro-drug, pro-war, pro-child abuse, pro-Barney, pro-smoking,

: etc. Let's not deny the humanity of women by suggesting that they
: don't think the whole gamut of possible human thoughts and take
: the whole range of human actions.

Okay. So if "real women" are pro-porn, then you have to admit that the
feminist antipornography position is only speaking for how =some= real
women "feel." Why do the feelings of some women count more than the
feelings of others, in your opinion?

: 2. Is giving up control of your sexuality the same as controlling

: it? Prostitution (street or celluloid) is *giving up* control
: of who touches and enters your body, isn't it?

No. Agreeing to have sex with someone for money isn't agreeing to have
sex with anyone, anytime, in any way. A lawyer, by being paid to practice
law, doesn't lose the right to turn down clients; ditto for a prostitute.
(To the extent that this is not true now, it's mostly because of the
illegal nature of prostitution, which has the effect of denying
prostitutes legal protection.)

: 4. The profit that women make from cellular and street
: prostitution is full of irony. The main one being that the
: biggest money makers are still men. The pimps, the bar owners,
: the magazine owners, and the moviemakers are still primarily
: men. Wow...that is absolutely ironic that even in the industry where
: women's bodies are the product, men still make the most profit.

: (If the lowest rung in the sex industry can make hundreds of
: dollars an hour, imagine what the highest rung makes.) [...]

First of all, "the lowest rung" doesn't make anywhere NEAR hundreds of
dollars an hour; I don't think you have a very realistic picture of the
"industry."

Second of all, who owns the modeling companies, magazines like
Cosmopolitan, make up companies, diet pill companies, etc; not to mention
TV networks and widgit manufacturers? You're certainly right to say men
are most of the owners, but this is no truer of sex workers than it is of
any other industry in the United States, whether it profits off women's
bodies or not; and while this is wrong, and needs to be changed, it needs
to be changed throughout the economy, not just in the sex businesses.
(Although if you want to see more self-employed prostitutes, you should be
supporting decriminalization.)

: Porn is not just an objectification of women, it's an

: objectification that men masturbate with, that men "love".

: Because the industry is so large (in the US, larger than the

: nonporn film and music industries combined),[...]

No it's not.

: The most oft-repeated phrase in

: porn has got to be "she wants it". Why the constant use of this
: phrase? To convince the buyer, the owner, the john, the viewer,
: even the writer of the phrase or the actor who says it, that she

: does. Why does he need convincing? To teach him that

: no matter what, she wants it. No matter what she says, no
: matter what she does, she wants it. Porn teaches men that sex
: is a completely selfish act, where the other party has no
: humanity, she only exists to ejaculate him. The only pleasure

: she has is in pleasuring him.

I don't think this follows from your premise that "she wants you" is the
most common phrase. It seems to me that, if "she wants you" is the most
common phrase, what that indicates is that a lot of men want to mastrubate
to a fantasy of having sex with a beautiful woman who wants to have sex
with him. Far from "no matter what she says, no matter what she does,"
it's very much dependant on what she says and does; that's why both the
language ("she wants you") and the visuals tend to indicate consent, and
that's why this theme is emphasized so much.

: Porn so boldy states these facts

: to not see them is like not seeing something because it's so
: obvious. Every single scene ends in male ejaculation, male
: pleasure, most times with the woman moaning in pleasure as if
: she were climaxing herself, which, porn actresses and
: prostitutes tell us, is not what's really happening.

Actually, a good number of sex workers claim to researchers to have
orgasims with clients, although they also claim it's not as good as those
in recreational sex. See "The Sexuality of Prostitutes" in THE JOURNAL OF
SEX RESEARCH v24 p200-208.

And a lot of porn doesn't involve scenes of male ejaculation at all; for
instance, photos and videos of women posing alone, or faux-"lesbian" sex
scenes.

: It doesn't
: matter if she has a headache, it doesn't matter if she's tired,

: it doesn't matter that she's having her period (period? what's
: that? If a man's only contact with women were porn, he would
: never know that every single woman has periods!), it doesn't
: matter if it hurts, it doesn't matter if she's asleep, it
: doesn't matter if she's high, it doesn't matter if she's sick,
: it doesn't matter if she's your daughter, it doesn't matter if
: she's your neighbor's wife, it doesn't matter if she's dead, and
: it doesn't matter if she says she doesn't want it, she wants

: it. [...]

Very few people have fantasies of having sex with people who are sick, or
unwell, or hurting, or who doesn't want it. This last bit contradicts
what you've said earlier; if there is one most common fantasy reflected in
pornography, it's that she -does- want to have sex. On the whole, neither
men or women tend to have =realisitic= sexual fantasies; that's why
they're fantasies. (I doubt there are many romance novels in which the
male romantic interest is afflicted with back pains or hemmaroids.) I
don't think having unrealistic fantasies is a bad trait, so long as we
retain the ablity to distinguish between fantasy and reality.

So far, most of your case is really dependant on your readers having the
same reaction to porn that you do, and the same opinions. If in my
experience what you're saying doesn't reflect the opinions of the
overwhelming majority of "real women," and if I don't see the same things
in porn that you see, then there's nothing in your post to convince me
that you're right.

I'm also a bit confused about what the real-world policy implications of
your views are. If porn is all the evil that you say it is, what should be
done to fight it, specifically? Do your views on prostitution mean that
you favor or oppose decriminalization?

In any case, than you for posting such a thoughtful arguement.

Yours,
--Ampersand

[Russell Turpin]

-*--------

The lowest rung in the sex industry is not occupied by the
performers, but by the workers paid minimum wage who package and
mail the product, tote the equipment, put up and take down the
props, clean the house, run the retail registers, etc. I suspect
that it hardly matters to most such workers whether the studio in
which they work produces mainstream or pornographic product,
whether the bar in which they work features pornographic
entertainment, or whether the store in which they work sells
pornography.

Russell

--
I'd rather that a bigot mistake me for a lesbian than that a lesbian
mistake me for a bigot.
-- Tovah Hollander

[Jabronitz]

David. Thanks for your insight. Maybe what I need to do is find an
open-minded female friend to go with. It just makes me think of the "pack
mentality" of a lot of men, and that a woman alone is often seen as "fair
game." Too bad. I feel as though I don't even have rights to my own
sexuality. It's hard enough to accept that I can't walk certain places
alone at night, but a video store!?

[Charles Lieberman]

David J. Loftus (dl...@netcom.com) jebgr:

| NoDoubt (rd...@curry.edschool.virginia.edu) wrote:
| : Because the industry is so large (in the US, larger than the
| : nonporn film and music industries combined),

| This cannot be true. Let's see your numbers. I've seen anywhere from $6
| to $10 billion for pornography, but I can hardly imagine that all
| mainstream film and music entertainment doesn't overwhelm this
| completely, if you figure in everything from Madonna and "Independence
| Day" to all the nation's state film boards, symphonies, bands, and small
| groups.

Maybe Madonna is considered porn. Where do you draw the line? Is _Henry and
June_ pornographic? Is Russ Meyer an artist?

| : Porn is a substitute for the live prostitute.

| Not necessarily. By that reasoning, murder mysteries are only a
| substitute for one's need to kill.

Aren't they? Actually, in the former case no harm is done is the substitution
isn't made.

| : It doesn't matter if she has a headache, it doesn't matter if she's tired,
| : it doesn't matter that she's having her period (period? what's
| : that? If a man's only contact with women were porn, he would
| : never know that every single woman has periods!),

| Uh, this doesn't come up in mainstream entertainment and novels very
| often, either. Should be censure them for unreality, too?

...and most adults can tell where reality ends and fiction begins.

| You act as if the average fella can't tell the difference between a
| fantasy woman and a real one. We make mistakes now and then (and women
| mistake us for their fantasies, too), but we usually respond to further
| input.

...and if we don't, WE should be penalized, not our fantasies, imagined or
filmed (I may be misinterpreting what Mr. Loftus said)

--
Charles A. Lieberman http://members.tripod.com/~calieber/index.htm
Brooklyn, New York, USA
"Well I have walked/Over miles/And under a stone wall/Across the fields
of snow"--For Squirrels

[Charles Lieberman]

Ennead (enn...@teleport.com) jebgr:

| No. Agreeing to have sex with someone for money isn't agreeing to have
| sex with anyone, anytime, in any way. A lawyer, by being paid to practice
| law, doesn't lose the right to turn down clients; ditto for a prostitute.

Similarly, agreeing to have sex with someone--even a spouse in some (not
enough) places--is not the same as agreeing to have sex with that person on
(their) demand, 24/7/365, whatever financial arrangements may have been made.

--
Charles A. Lieberman http://members.tripod.com/~calieber/index.htm

[Barbara Saunders]

In article <5de5mn$o...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,

Kirk Job Sluder <csl...@indiana.edu> wrote:
>It occurs to me that there are very different views about how much
>control sex workers have over their work.
>
>The first view states that because sex work centers on sex, the women
>who do sex work don't have control over the services they perform, the
>cost of those services and the right to refuse clients.
>
>On the other hand, many of the women who have been involved in sex work
>describe it not as a loss of control, but as a means of self-expression.
>They insist that they do have control over what services they perform,
>and who they perform for.
>
>I feel that somewhere in this gap is the heart of the problem.

I see another gap. In addition to the unspoken belief that sex workers
have no control over what services they provide clients, I'm reading a
presumption that selling sex is intrinsically degrading and that anyone
who sells it must be "out of control" in some way, either driven by some
mental problem, forced economically, or brainwashed.

Barbara

[Ral...@aol.com]

in <19970203224...@curry.edschool.Virginia.EDU>,
<rd...@curry.edschool.virginia.edu> writes some interesting stuff about porn
and it's messages being reinforced by orgasms, but also:

>This is the impetus behind the women's movement's fight against
>pornography: real women's dislike of pornography. Women of all
>different backgrounds, religions, and nationalities cannot put
>into words why they don't like it; they can't give

>it more than the label of "gut feeling". Feminists have tried

>to speak for those women.

And then:

>Yes, there are pro-porn women, but there are pro-everything
>women. Pro-drug, pro-war, pro-child abuse, pro-Barney, pro-smoking, etc.

It's bad enough when, in the course of claiming to speak for women, someone
dismisses those women who happen to disagree with them.

>Ray Smith
>rd...@virginia.edu

But it's particularly ironic when it's a man doing it.

I think men have a place in feminism. I think men have a place on this
group. But telling women about themselves is not it.

Women have had enough men telling them about themselves over the years - one
the radical notions of feminism is that women are the experts on women.
We've got plenty to contribute in the form of our own thoughts and feelings
about how our society has affected us and how feminist proposed changes to it
would affect us.

In this case - how has porn affected you, or people you know?

Ralph

[Chris A. Hall]

saun...@well.com (Barbara Saunders) wrote:
>In addition to the unspoken belief that sex workers

>have no control over what services they provide clients, I'm >reading a presumption that selling sex is intrinsically >degrading an=
d that anyone who sells it must be "out of control" >in some way, either driven by some mental problem, forced >economically, or bra=
inwashed.

Part of this argument is always based on the assertion that sex
is inherently more intimate and personal than anything else you
can do, and that by selling it, you are cheapening a vital part
of your own soul. The thing that bothers me about this line of
thought is that it ignores the many ways that we're required to
sell vital parts of our souls to survive. For myself, I think
that my writing is a more personal and intimate part of myself
than is sex. I can have sex with a woman that I just met tonight
and say goodbye to her in the morning with no moral qualms, but
I'm not quite so casual about what I do with my writing. I would
feel much cleaner selling my body for sex (although I don't know
if I'm physically equipped for that kind of work) than I would
writing ad copy or political speeches. The first is a simple
mechanical job, which doesn't necessarily require commitment from
your mind or soul. The second, by definition, requires you to
twist your words, your mind, and your imagination in order to
support stances and ideologies that are not your own. Following
the logic of anti-prostitution believers, it would make more
sense to outlaw people who prostitute their art.

In terms of prostitution as economic exploitation of women, I
have yet to see any real demonstration of how prostitution is
inherently different than the standard exploitations committed by
capitalism. Who is more exploited, a woman who gets fifty bucks
for a ten-minute blowjob, or a woman working ten hours for
minimum wage at the local McDonald's? It seems to me that if
there is economic exploitation in prostitution, it has to do with
the symptoms of the larger economic order, rather than the
mechanism of selling sex.