I don’t make these films in order to be shocking or confrontational.

Let’s be clear: the film was called “Milk Nymphos” because it involved a lot of giving women milk enemas.

I make them for the audience that seeks them out.

True enough.

There is a community of people who find these films hot, erotic, joyful and even beautiful.

Reverse political correctness strikes again. Woe betide the one who doesn’t see any particular beauty in milk enemas.

Kinks are a funny thing. I have sub tendencies. I was bullied a bunch in H.S., got called a faggot and a sissy a lot. Now I like to be degraded in bed and called a sissy and a faggot (which my gf has a really hard time doing, because she loves me, obviously).

I wouldn’t be surprised if this sort of things happened to black men as well. I’ve heard a bunch about race play. That doesn’t make it less of an ‘ick’ for me, just like I suspect any partner of a black man who loved him would have a hard time participating in that sort of play.

This, of course, doesn’t change the fact that the movies we’re talking about are obviously much more oriented towards racists than towards black men into racial play. There are two types of people who are interested in those movies: white dudes who like to see women degraded (and the racist reading of the scene is that a white woman sleeping with a black man is degraded by default) or cuckold fetishists who want to be degraded themselves (again, the fact their woman prefers a black man is supposed to be a degrading thing to them).

Trying to convince me that Buttman is making kink-oriented porn for black men who enjoy being treated to racial slurs is even more nonsense.  He wouldn’t make money catering to such a teeny-tiny demographic, especially the “black men who enjoy being called ‘n*gger’ by white women shooting out milk enemas’ kink demographic.

The kink argument is a cover story, and doesn’t address the realities in play.  Perhaps a few kinky people get off on these videos.  They aren’t the intended demographic. The intended demographic are the misogynist white guys in the comments of the interview, telling Tracy Clark-Flory that this is the only good thing she’s ever written.

Which is their way of saying that the only thing they want to hear from women is half-baked rationalizations for sexist, racist porn.

And I’ll add that they’re too stupid to realize that TCF wasn’t even writing those rationalizations, but just interviewing someone who was coughing them up.  I think TCF starts off just curious to see what Lorelei Lee has to say, and then starts feeding her rope.

Re: offensive IR porn/BlackBloc
There’s waaayyy more of that floating around out there than black men could *ever* solely support or create a demand for as a potential audience - they’re more props and proxies than targets. And I think the amount of POC actually into race play is infinitesimally small.

“I can understand how” is such a wonderfully understated way of putting it, though.

Black, sorry, I realize that you finished up by admitting that this porn has nothing to do with creating anything for actual kinksters.  But I have to ask—-if you know that this has nothing to do with what you’re talking about, why bring it up? Why give them further rationalizations and cover stories?  Why can’t we all just be unafraid to look at something straight on?

It’s fascinating to me that once the racism enters the picture, it does become a lot harder to deny that this sort of thing exists to entertain nasty, hateful white dudes.  If it’s just a woman being called a “cunt” and a “whore”, you get a lot more people nodding along to the rationalization.  Add in some racism, and suddenly how silly that sounds becomes more obvious.

Well,  I guess this will really put the nail in my coffin around here, but I had never heard of this practice, so I googled it and what I read made me physically nauseous.  Anyone who thinks this is “beautiful” needs a checkup from the neckup post hasty.

My personal (apparent) prudishness aside, I have come across so many feminists who argue that porn is anti-feminist, anti-woman, and violent and degrading towards women.  And then they add “but I wouldn’t want to censor it…”

Well, what do you want to do about it?  Just keep allowing it to stream into every consciousness, into every nook and cranny of our culture, into all women’s beings?  Into all men’s beings? 

The constant policing of anti-porn views has lent itself to an atmosphere where if you say you don’t use porn, you are somehow viewed as anti-sex or as someone with sex hang-ups and I’m pretty tired of that.  And by the way, that attitude isn’t just at Salon, though I do agree that some of the biggest piles of misogynistic pigshit congregate there, especially on Joan Walsh’s pieces. 

I have read all of the feminist views for not censoring it.  I’d like to read some feminist arguments FOR censoring it.  I know that some second-wavers supported making pornography a civil rights violation.  But does anyone know if there are any third-wavers arguing for censorship of pornography?  Because I’d like an opportunity to consider the other position.  It seems that we currently only have two mainstream feminist positions on pornography.  The first is that porn is empowering for women (I love that one) and the second is that porn degrades and demeans women but we shouldn’t censor it.

I think that we should all also be exposed to a third position: get fucking rid of it.  We don’t have to agree, maybe I wouldn’t be convinced myself.  But I think we all deserve to at least hear that position.  That is, if any current feminists are arguing it.  Perhaps they aren’t.  I truly don’t know, but would like to.  (I’m not interested in the religious right’s arguments for censorship, since they are some of the biggest porn users their arguments are bound to be all confused and steeped in guilt and excitement)

AnglScarlett, actually despite the fact that I myself look at porn, I have also noted the slow pornofication of our popular culture with some distress. One thing I’ve noted is porn-influenced ads. One particular ad involves a wierd female android sexbot, used to sell vodka. This ad was all over the train I take to work in the morning, and I honestly don’t want to see sexualized skeletal female robots at 6 AM. Nor do I really want to see porny ads for American Apparel.

The problem, though, with trying to ban porniness is:
1. How do you define porn. “I know it when I see it” isn’t good enough.
2. How do you avoid linking yourself with the religious right.
3. If we start banning porn, on the basis that it’s disturbing, then what other ‘disturbing’ things will we have to ban?

I would imagine these concerns partially account for the feminist position #2 you mentioned.

While I would agree with Amanda that “I dislike vicious, mean-spirited pornography as much as the next person who loves humanity, but I also tend to be a fan of free speech and don’t think it’s helpful for the government to censor anyone under the guise of “obscenity”.”, there doesn’t seem to be ANY pornography out there that isn’t about degrading or abusing women.

A few weeks ago, my wife & I had this exact conversation because she bought a book for a beach trip that she thought was a “romance novel” and turned out to essentially be novelized porn. She commented that she didn’t know there was porn for women and I said I didn’t either. So we surfed the web for the elusive “female friendly porn”. Most of the stuff we found was either geared toward lesbians (made sense to us) or if it was hetero, was just as bad as the stuff geared towards men.

I guess what all this babbling is leading to is that I’m just as confused about this as anyone else. Mainstream porn is bad for women, but is it up to me to say"you can’t do this because I think its bad”. There are obviously people who don’t mind getting paid to perform in these videos and that is their right. Even if I think its wrong.

Angl, I explained why I don’t want to censor it:

1) Free speech is a value that we have to support for our own protection.  Laws ostensibly created to censor porn are invariably used to suppress feminism and pro-gay writings, usually far more than it’s used to censor hate speech.

2) It’s better to know your enemies instead of encouraging them to speak in euphemisms.  Like I said, a man who enjoys Buttman videos is telling you, “Don’t date me.”  It wouldn’t be in women’s interest to have that man be better to hide his real self from women he dates.

3) It’s easier to argue with people who just come out with it instead of those who hint at their hatreds.

I’d like to read some feminist arguments FOR censoring it.

Also, the reason you don’t read those arguments any more is they lost.  Pure and simple.  They couldn’t come up with a censorship regime that accomplished their goals.  You can’t stop men from hating women by simply telling them they can’t talk about their hatred in this specific way.

“I have read all of the feminist views for not censoring it.  I’d like to read some feminist arguments FOR censoring it.  “

Perhaps, we could/should ask the question: does one person have the “right” to make money off of bigotry aimed at others?  This guy is making porn deliberately intending to stoke bigot fires and affirm bigot stereotypes - none of which he, himself, would be a target of. Is this “right”; is this “free speech”?  or is it profiting from hate that he wouldn’t never personally need worry about at the expense of those who will?

Of course he has the right to think that way, to be that way, to make movies that way and those involved have the right to be involved (assuming they freely chose to do so), but do they have the right to profit from it? 

(yeah, yeah, yeah, free market capitalism blah blah blah - that’s besides the point).

Yes, Gypsy, I would say that a person has a right to say what they want, and if they can get paid for it, even better.  I’d really hate to see a censorship regime that says, “You can say what you want, but if someone pays you for it, we can start censoring you.”  That would mean, realistically, a law that made it possible to ban people like me from making a living.  Conservatives have already deemed liberal bloggers to be “potty mouths”, aka they’re just waiting for the right censorship law to come along and we’re all shoved off the internet on the grounds of obscenity.  Conservatives claim that criticizing religion is hate speech against Christians, so there’s another way that your proposed regime would give them space to ban me from making a living as a writer.

“She commented that she didn’t know there was porn for women and I said I didn’t either.”

Seriously?  Romance novels have always been porn for women.  They’re just a bit heavier on the porn scenes and lighter on the excuse for the porn scenes than they used to be ten, twenty years ago.

#12

2) It’s better to know your enemies instead of encouraging them to speak in euphemisms.  Like I said, a man who enjoys Buttman videos is telling you, “Don’t date me.” It wouldn’t be in women’s interest to have that man be better to hide his real self from women he dates.

3) It’s easier to argue with people who just come out with it instead of those who hint at their hatreds.

Also excellent points which I neglected to mention.

Plus, by moving immediately to censorship, you lose the fight for moral authority.  You’re now a censor, a prude, and a sex-hater.  Anything you say will be lost to most of your free speech-loving audience.

If you start from the position that even hate speech is an argument that should be allowed to be spoken, then you can *argue* with it.  Which means you haven’t forsaken your moral authority.  I think exposing this stuff and calling it garbage without moving to censor it is way more effective.

@ atheist and Amanda, yes, and I do understand points.

@Gypsy, yeah, that’s a great question to me.  At what point does this become hate speech, and how protected should hate speech be?  I know this is a big can of worms, but for instance, I believe that much of what Glenn Beck is doing is hate speech intended to incite violence.  Should that be protected?

And isn’t a lot of porn the same thing?  Amanda says that the pro-censorship feminists lost the argument and that’s why you don’t see that case being made anymore.  THat’s probably true.  I think it may be worth going back to it and taking a second look though. 

I mean it’s just gotten so fucking vile, so violent.  I can’t view it as anything other than hate.  I guess it’s a good point that asking a guy if he’s a fan of this buttman guy is a great way to weed out dates.  Honestly it all just makes me hope I never have to date again.

Molly Ivins told a great story of how she and her liberty-loving friends dealt with the KKK when they marched on Austin, and it’s a story that feminists who feel censorship urges should think about seriously.  Being fans of free speech, they certainly didn’t want to stop the Klan from marching.  Instead, they lined up on the sides of the street during the marched and mooned them.

You don’t get rid of the KKK by banning it and making it seem exciting and dangerous, like you’re a rebel who is censored because you speak the truth if you join.  You get rid of it by arguing with it and winning the public over to your side.

Angl, I don’t know that it’s more violent and vile than the KKK.  Hate speech is nothing new.  You win by arguing with it, not making it seem like you can’t handle the fight so you have to ban it.

“you’re now a censor, a prude, and sex-hater”

But I have been called all of those things just for arguing that porn is degrading to women and for stating that I don’t watch it!  There have been times that I have actually written up posts about how great my sex life with my partner is.  But then I don’t send them because at the last second, I’ll be damned if I’m going to start sounding like some idiot teenager giggling about the great sex I have to convince some idiot on the internet that I don’t hate sex.  I do tell them though that I’m fairly certain I’d hate sex with them.

“I’d really hate to see a censorship regime that says, “You can say what you want, but if someone pays you for it, we can start censoring you.”

Agreed, but that’s not what I was thinking in my post. I wasn’t attempting to say that it’s only after someone profits that censorship should kick in.  I happen to agree with your post at #12.  And, you’re totally right about what religidiots would do with such a law. 

I was thinking about a frequent response to trolls, i.e. “no one owes you a platform”.  He can think this way, he can make movies like this, but does anyone else owe him a platform to continue, i.e. profits? Is he free to do what he likes at the expense of other people?  There’s no real world application for this that isn’t censorship,  it seems.

@ Amanda 21.  Yeah, I can definitely see that this is the logical argument, and it’s rational, and it should be true.  But it seems like we’ve lost that battle.  I mean porn has become so mainstreamed.  I bet you have read Pornified Amanda.  That’s a pretty alarming book.  The author does come down against censorhip in the end, to be fair.  But boy that is an alarming book.

“And you’re totally right about what the religidiots would do with such a law”.

Yeah, there’s no arguing around that very real and probably unsolvable problem.

Years ago, in the early days of the dot-com, I was offered the opportunity to run Web marketing operations for a a major porn production house and gave it serious consideration. The contract was generous, they offered professional discretion, and I don’t have much problem with porn in general.

One of the reasons I declined was that several people who’d worked with the industry in one form or another had all told me the same thing seperately, in almost exactly the same words: in the porn business, everyone lies. Even with a contract, I didn’t need the hassle of dealing with liars.

So I’m shocked ... shocked! ... to find someone else in the biz prevaricating (albeit in a very eloqent manner). In that respect, Stagliano is somewhat of an exception: he’s used honesty about the nature of his racist and misogynist porn to attract a fairly large audience of white men who enjoy exactly that kind of thing.

In the case of Stagliano’s stuff, the transgressive nature of porn and kink (which is generally fun and hot and a good thing) provides a cover for the real attraction for this particular audience: unbridled expression of sexism and racism. I suspect they’d happily watch the same content without anyone getting naked or having sex, as an alternative to the supposedly P.C. content society uses to “oppress” their “natural masculinity.”

“Hate speech is nothing new.  You win by arguing with it, not making it seem like you can’t handle the fight so you have to ban it. “

Which is the case I’ve made for arguing with trolls - the point isn’t to change the troll’s mind, it’s to show the audience how to counter. 

I’m caught between this and what AnglScarlett is saying. I agree with her - some porn does seem like nothing more than advocating hatred, abuse and violence as sexy, and women (or whomever) as deserving.  Having worked in rape crisis centers for a long time I can tell you this shit has real world consequences for women (et al).  I have a hard time sticking with a strictly academic argument for free speech, when I see first hand the results of porn poisoning. 

So, on the one hand yes - Amanda it totally right, on the other, I can’t disagree with AnglScarlett either.

if you know that this has nothing to do with what you’re talking about, why bring it up?

Hmm, yeah sorry I guess that wasn’t too clear about that. I was sort of having a stream of consciousness thing going. Like just putting my thought process down as I was reading the article. I start by trying to see her point of view (L. Lee is also a well-known BDSM movie performer, both as sub and domme) and then I just figured out it was a bunch of crap because her explanation makes sense in this generalized abstract world that a lot of libertarians or pr0n defenders hide into, but not in the actual context of the movie she was in.

But yeah, I guess it’s true that if I don’t elaborate on my thought process in my post I do look a lot like I’m mansplaining and giving them cover for this bs. My bad.

(And when I mention that she’s had some BDSM movie experience, by that I mean that she might have been in contact with kinksters into the sort of play I mentionned and try to use that experience as a cover for what was happening, hence why I mention it.)

Angl, the argument is more “Tyrants censor those things they cannot refute.”  To have the government censor an argument is to say you cannot defeat it with logic, so you must use force.

We “win” with logic against hate porn producers only academically.  While we worry about their right of free speech, they’re laughing all the way to the bank.  The people who will suffer the consequences are silenced.  I am a free speech advocate; but its pretty clear that free speech, in this respect, is a one-way street.

Why censor it? It would be much more effective to make it public and point out what awful crap it is. I want my Nazis right out in public where I can see what morons they are. Driving them underground only gives them power. Same goes for Buttman and his ilk.

Besides, how do you draw a line between porn that degrades women and porn that doesn’t? Buttman obviously degrades anyone who comes near it. But some people might even find regular old straight porn degrading, even if it’s happy amateur exhibitionist. Whose opinion rules?

Hate speech is nothing new.  You win by arguing with it, not making it seem like you can’t handle the fight so you have to ban it.

Exactly. And by exposing it for what it is and letting people decide for themselves.

One of my favourite examples of this kind of thing is the story of Superman vs. the KKK. Basically, a writer named Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the organisation during its post-WWII re-surgence and tried to expose it, but the local police wouldn’t do anything about it. He then went to the writers of the Superman radio show and offered his info for the basis of a new villanous opponent. The producers jumped all over the hokey, semi-occult rituals and costumes as well as the hateful agenda. By the time that the “Clan of the Fiery Cross” series finished airing, newcomers to Klan rallies were showing up mainly to laugh at them.

#28

Blackbloc, actually, my thoughts were going the same direction as yours were. The way racism affects sexuality is interesting to me as well. I have also noted the way that sexual attraction can, weirdly, feed on racial hatred. Didn’t know if it was entirely germane here though.

Also Amanda, I have a tendency to just spout trivia for absolutly no other reason than to spread knowledge, whether people around me want to or not. It’s a personal failing I’ve tried to fix ever since I wouldn’t shut up about my 10th level D&D;rogue in high school.

I once said “There’s been no decent porn made since 1984”.

To which my friend replied “1984 was porn?”

#36

Imagine a jack-boot stomping on the face of freedom, forever… and freedom is totally into it.

@atheist: The way I see it, there’s two schools of thoughts about ‘unPC’ dominance-style kinks.

1) As equality becomes more and more a reality, these will become more prevalent because there is a ‘need’ for dominating/being dominated ingrained in human beings (this I find is shared by most libertarian kinksters). I find that explanation particularly repulsive personally, in particular because I’ve had past lovers who were into rape play (and while I’m the sort of person who would indulge a partner willing to try it out, it did squick me out a bit) and it’s used to give all sorts of essential characteristics to women by men who are into domination play.

2) An interest in being degraded in this way is a mimetic reaction about being in contact with a form of dominant/submissive social relationship IRL (patriarchy, racism, etc). As equality is gained, these things will disappear by themselves because people will no longer have formative youth experiences that involve being degraded or degrading another human being, so they will not ‘imprint’ on it anymore. I find that more likely, in particular since ‘furries’ only came up once a generation of kids raised on anthropomorphic animals on TV grew up (they imprinted on that sort of things).

The implications are that kinks would be a lot different in an egalitarian world, and that while being into BDSM is not in itself a demonstration of ‘patriarchal intent’ on the part of, say, a dominant man, it is a red flag that shows the continued existence of patriarchy, in that such desires would not arise if a man did not imprint early in childhood on the dominant social paradigm where men dominate women.

We “win” with logic against hate porn producers only academically.  While we worry about their right of free speech, they’re laughing all the way to the bank.  The people who will suffer the consequences are silenced.  I am a free speech advocate; but its pretty clear that free speech, in this respect, is a one-way street.

I don’t see anyone arguing for Stagliano’s free speech also arguing that critics of his stuff be silenced. Criticism and censorship are two different, indeed almost diametrically opposed, things.

On a purely visceral basis, I’d find Amanda’s depiction of the audience for Stagliano’s stuff more compelling than any call for censorship. You ask to get rid of the stuff, you’re portrayed as a prude by his audience; you expose that audience as losers with screwed-up attitudes toward women and minorities, they have to explain why they’re not.

athiest at #37, if I’d been drinking milk while reading that the people around me would have been treated to a G-rated preview of “Milk Nymphos Part 27.” Well done.

Also, atheist, slightly off-topic: Alan Moore’s “Black Dossier” League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel depicts the sort of porn that the Ministry of Truth would put out for Oceania’s proles: a kind of Newspeak Tijuana Bible.

The best argument against censoring porn is, “How?”  Realistically, you’d need a gigantic police state apparatus to hunt down every possessor of porn, and you would have to in a wired society where every possessor is a potential distributor.

China can’t stamp out democracy movements, even with beheading as a tool of social engineering.  Singapore can’t even stamp out littering with a threat of flogging.  If we tried to impose censorship, we would destroy everything that makes our culture worth saving, and STILL fail.

Sarcastro @36: How many 13-year-olds eagerly repeated to their pals the line about how “He would ravish her and slit her throat at the moment of climax”?  No, I didn’t do that, but I was present when it was done.

Atheist @37: Bravo.

@Dr. Psycho: The same arguments could be used against prosecuting child porn, but our governments still try. As they should. So I don’t see that as the best argument.

Why is porn so effective at selling things?

“I don’t see anyone arguing for Stagliano’s free speech also arguing that critics of his stuff be silenced.”

Not here, no.  But, as AnglScarlett rightly points out, in virtually ANY other forum, the moment you say anything less than celebratory about porn, you’re shouted down as a prude, frigid, unfuckable, repressed, etc. 

“You ask to get rid of the stuff, you’re portrayed as a prude by his audience; you expose that audience as losers with screwed-up attitudes toward women and minorities, they have to explain why they’re not. “

I think this is a wildly generous attitude to take toward a society with such deeply ingrained misogyny.

“The same arguments could be used against prosecuting child porn, but our governments still try.”

Not really.  Child porn has a much, much, much smaller userbase, and the vast majority of society firmly down on the side of it being terribly wrong.  It’s also pretty inarguable that there’s no way to produce real child pornography without said real child being harmed—there’s no way better wages, better working conditions, better protections, and more stringent enforcement to all of the above are going to make child sexual abuse okay for the child in question.  The arguments in favor of allowing it under free speech are uncompelling at best, a lot of people are going to report it to the authorities if they see it, and the overwhelming majority of the populace are okay with said reporting and the penalties stemming therefrom. 

Regular porn?  None of the above.  You make headway arguing for worker protections, stringent enforcement of model ID requirements, better filters to keep it away from minors, etc.  Anything past that, and it’s going to be the War on Drugs Mark II, with the state apparatus redirected toward selective enforcement of laws broken too frequently by too many people for global enforcement.

Not here, no.  But, as AnglScarlett rightly points out, in virtually ANY other forum, the moment you say anything less than celebratory about porn, you’re shouted down as a prude, frigid, unfuckable, repressed, etc.

Well, the sort of loser Internet trolls who like “Buttman”‘s stuff are always gonna try to do that. Their so-called arguments can be demolished pretty quickly, in my experience. People observing the argument in good faith can generally see who’s full of it, and it’s not our side.

I think this is a wildly generous attitude to take toward a society with such deeply ingrained misogyny.

True, but the generosity emerges from the same place that inspired the Framers to write the the First Amendment to the Constitution (despite their own society’s even graver imperfections).

I mean, really, in the market of free discourse that Jefferson and his fellows created, who wants to be the one making a serious argument that degrading racist and misogynist acts in porn, though Constitutionally protected, are hot and sexy. These guys end up looking like clowns, and not the awesome kind Cris links to at #45.

@ Gypsy #47, well, that has been my experience anyway.  Obviously you have been subject to it as well.  It crosses ideological lines.  I should have been documenting my experiences, as well as debates I only witnessed, since I first came to the internet in January of 2002.  It have been able to be organized into something worthwhile.  My first experiences were on the decidely not-feminist netscape rate bush board.  It’s really what I credit my feminist awakening to, though I have always held feminist opinions and I never shied away from answering “yeah, sure” if someone asked me if I would call myself a feminist, I didn’t read or understand feminist writings until I sought them out after being exposed to such pigs on both sides of the aisle on political boards.

The porn issue in particular has garnered me much the same response from the liberal side of the aisle as it has from the libertarian right, and even just the right.  You really are shouted down.  I will admit that the Libertarians, in my experience, are the most aggressively vile on this subject.

If I sat around soul-searching maybe I would find that it’s a matter of being tough enough to take the abuse and keep fighting and maybe I’m just not that tough.  I don’t know.  Amanda is, I first discovered her in the comments section of Matt Yglesias’ blog, where she was having abuse heaped upon her as an “anti sex feminist”.  Isn’t that ironic, that just came back to me now, but I can’t remember the subject.  I wonder if it was porn.  Anyway, I did jump in but had no idea who she was, and eventually her name just kept coming up and I found Pandagon.  But she’s widely hated and abused in the blogosphere as most here probably now.  Even when I disagree with her I give her props for being able to withstand that and keep coming at them.  I don’t have that, after a while it wears me down.  ANd then I need a break.  But that’s not an argument for censorship of course.  There’s a lot of grey here, and it’s a debate that will probably never end, but I think it’s ended prematurely in the United States.  In some other countries they have less of a near-religious commitment to free speech and are far more willing to take into consideration the effects of hate speech.

there doesn’t seem to be ANY pornography out there that isn’t about degrading or abusing women.

Well, gay porn isn’t usually about degrading or abusing women . . .

OK, rea. You got me.

Also, preying mantis @ #16: I think this one was just way more graphic and hardcore than she was expecting from her “romance novel”.

#50

Even when I disagree with her I give her props for being able to withstand that and keep coming at them.  I don’t have that, after a while it wears me down.  ANd then I need a break.

I’ve admired this about Amanda too.

@rea: Well… I haven’t seen much gay porn, but if it carries on tropes where the bottom is humiliated, then one could see it as being cast as ‘the woman’ and thus that type of porn being degrading to women by proxy. I mean, there’s no inherent reason why being the recipient of a sex act means you’re inferior, while whoever is poking is superior, unless you assume that Vagina Americans are inferior and that the act of being a receptive anal bottom makes you ‘like a woman’.

There’s a reason why the insult is ‘cocksucker’ and not ‘cocksuckeed’.

I was thinking about a frequent response to trolls, i.e. “no one owes you a platform”.  He can think this way, he can make movies like this, but does anyone else owe him a platform to continue, i.e. profits?

Agreed.  Which is why I don’t give him money or host his stuff.  No one is suggesting that we owe him money.

What we’re saying is the government should not censor, or come up with cute legal regimes that are basically license to censor.

Which is the case I’ve made for arguing with trolls - the point isn’t to change the troll’s mind, it’s to show the audience how to counter. 

That’s a little different.  Banning a disruptive troll isn’t the same thing as censoring his right to speak freely. If the “women suck” troll gets banned here, starts a blog somewhere else, and the government tries to shut it down, I will resist that government action.  He has a right to say what he wants.

What he doesn’t have a right to is an audience.  That’s the difference.  Trolls are basically demanding that they get to have your audience that you’ve built up, and they get to shut down your comment threads and dictate the conversation on your website.  That is an anti-free speech stance they take, actually, because saying they have a right to shout anyone down is to say those people don’t have a right to have a decent conversation.

Not here, no.  But, as AnglScarlett rightly points out, in virtually ANY other forum, the moment you say anything less than celebratory about porn, you’re shouted down as a prude, frigid, unfuckable, repressed, etc. 

Because the anti-porn forces in the past used censorship as a major strategy, making them the bad guys.  The only way to create a grown-up conversation about porn, one that accepts that there is hateful stuff and we can admit that it’s hateful, is to put censorship to rest.  Every time censorship comes up, this effectively shuts down a grown-up conversation and leads to what you mention—-even the nastiest pornographers get to paint themselves as freedom fighters and the slightest criticism of pornography is associated with censorship.

Quite apart from the abstract ethical issues, the problem with censorship for feminists and other progressives is that it gives the power to censor to the people who run our governments now, people who are at best well-meaning but ill-informed, and at worst actively misogynistic, racist and homophobic. For example, here’s what happened in Canada when Catherine MacKinnon and the Canadian Taliban (i.e., the religious right) convinced the government to step up its suppression of porn:

“In 1991, MacKinnon and her Canadian followers entered a censorship case to urge the Canadian Supreme Court to adopt their expansive, amorphous definition of “obscenity” as sexual material “degrading to women.”  The results of the ensuing decision in “Butler v. The Queen” were swift: obscenity raids immediately and exclusively targeted gay and lesbian bookstores across Canada, seizing materials like the radical lesbian journals “On Our Backs” and “Bad Attitude”.  Customs officials launched a censorship spree, and eventually seized Dworkin’s own books “Pornography” and “Woman Hating”, along with works by bell hooks, Marguerite Duras, Langston Hughes, Oscar Wilde, and numerous other acclaimed authors.

This outcome was entirely predictable, if not intended.

Confronted with the practical effects of her doctrine in Canada, MacKinnon responded, “Big surprise.”  Dworkin actually applauded the criminal conviction of the Glad Day Bookstore, because “Lesbian porn is an expression of self- hatred.”“

Think for a minute. Do you really want to give the Texas State Legislature the power to limit access to materials it finds nauseating?

I’d rather moon the KKK.

All I have to say is Racism is not a kink.  Period.  It’s Racism. 

That goes equally for that Buttman movie, and for the woman who feels that the most “degrading” thing that could happen to her in a scene is to submit to a black man.  And I get real sick of people trying to excuse their racism by calling it kink. 

It isn’t kink.  It’s fucking racism.

Patrick what do you mean MacKinnon’s reponse was “big surprise”?  Was she happy about the outcome or not?  Did she make any attempts to agitate and write against that outcome?

I feel reasonably safe in saying that no sane porn producer (at least in 2010, especially since the last HIV crisis) is going to want talent who isn’t enthusiastic about being there; there’s too much at stake to even consider playing ball with someone who isn’t actually into it. That said, that doesn’t make the exploitative stuff any nicer—no matter how much the (female) talent is actually into it, the point is that it doesn’t look that way on camera, and therefore really only appeals to the aggressively misogynist to begin with. You can’t really object to it if nobody involved in the production had a problem with it, but you can sure as hell refuse to buy it or view it.

Having said that, the interracial part bothers me almost as much—I have no problem with interracial sex as such; I just don’t want it to be marketed to me as *interracial*. I want it to be marketed as *sex*. “Interracial” is a category for people who think of it as a step above bestiality, and if it makes me think of the word “chiffarobe” at any point, ur doin it rong.

What do you want to bet he kept his handcuffs and nightstick?

What do you want to bet nobody wanted to touch them?

Zifnab:

It’s a cultural difference. We’ve embraced freedom of speech ever since the beginning, primarily because the ancestors of modern European cultures didn’t. Light a candle rather than curse the darkness, etc. Besides, it hasn’t worked so well in Europe because it feeds into neofascist persecution fantasies.

Brian, I want to ask you something without putting you on the defensive, so to be clear, this is not an accusation.  Do you believe that there is going to be some blurring of the very concept of consent, and willingness, never mind enthusiasm, in porn?  I mean, I kind of view it as similar to prostitution.  A lot of the women may be “willing’ which is to say, they aren’t being held against their will the way Linda Lovelace was, but, what have their lives been like that they view this as a choice, and just how desperate of a choice was it for them?

You know, in these economic times, we are going see the percentage of people in this country who simply have no other choice but than to, for example, join the military, grow.  And as someone who is very anti war, and also frankly, pretty anti military, this is something I have had to work to take into account myself.  How many young kids are joining the military because they are not going to school, and there are no jobs, and they have no fucking future period? 

And so I wonder the same about porn.  How many of those women are desperate and then I have to also ask, how many have childhood sex abuse in their backgrounds? 

I mean, I understand that the less women-hating man who does like porn, is going to be really highly motivated to believe that these women are really into it.  ANd i"m not judging men, or women, who view point and who don’t hate women and who struggle with this.  I am just wondering if the strong desire to believe that the actors are enthusiastic is coloring reality a bit.

@zifnab, those are the concerns I have as well.  I do think that free speech abolutism has gone too far in this country.

I once read a man write his experience talking to a holocaust survivor.  He was a free speech absolutist, but that conversation changed him.  NOt that he was against free speech after it, but his views were much more shaded, much less black and white. And when he wrote about it, it really moved me.

Apples and oranges, Zif.  The comparison between other regulation and porn is straightforward—-we should heavily regulate the industry to stop worker abuse, trafficking, and health violations.  But censoring political arguments—-and “Women are dirty cunts who deserve abuse, and and black men are animals,” are political arguments, make no mistake—-is not good our a free society.

The Nazis haven’t gone away because of censorship.  The most effective strategy against them is arguing against them.  Nazis in Europe are still there, and they seem more powerful than Nazis—-or the KKK—-is here, because social stigma is infinitely more persuasive than the law.  When you create a class of thoughtcrimes, you allow the people who commit them to think they’re heroes struggling against oppression.

Mark @ #11, as an illustrator and a visually oriented woman, I like porn. But, like you said, there’s almost nothing out there that I’m comfortable with. So I illustrate my own porn. I used to put this online in a community of other illustrators. It was nice because a huge chunk of them were women and there were a surprising number of men who weren’t put off by my open identification with feminism. I also shared it with my partner.

I actually only took it down because I’d stupidly not used a pseudonym and I was worried that potential employers would find it… >>

I realize that “create your own” isn’t a solution for everyone, but it’s how I learned to deal with all the snuff/rape/degradation out there.

Brian, I think you’re overly optimistic about consent in porn.  Our society has no regard for sex workers, and they are raped without recourse or compunction all the time.  Currently, the only recourse a non-minor raped on camera has is to press charges.  Since sex workers are treated as rape-able in our culture, that means that a woman who is raped on camera functionally has no recourse.

Instead of focusing on censorship, we should find ways to regulate porn by creating higher bars than “she didn’t say no” for consent.

Also, there’s a lot of technical consent in porn without it being enthusiastic consent.  Someone signs a contract,and then when she gets there, she’s surrounded by men who are raising the bar on what she’s being asked to do well above what she initially agreed to.  In that situation, you can have problems escaping with your safety, and sometimes you fear you could be sued for breaking a contract.  Legal infrastructure to protect sex workers is the answer in all the above situations.  Aggressive enforcement instead of waiting for someone to complain is they methodology.

It isn’t kink.  It’s fucking racism.

It’s a kink AND it’s also fucking racism. Just so it’s clear, I don’t subscribe to the “every kink is OK” newsletter. But I very much doubt you can compartimentalize kinks and personality traits/belief systems into separate boxes and not think one is going to leak into the other somehow.

I feel reasonably safe in saying that no sane porn producer (at least in 2010, especially since the last HIV crisis) is going to want talent who isn’t enthusiastic about being there

That’s really fucking naive. I can point at least to performer Belladonna as one rather public example of someone who is *at best* conflicted about her participation in porn (she had a public breakdown on a national news show special about pornography). And there’s some reality TV shows about the porn industry (who by definition are going to be a lot more sympathetic towards the industry than neutral, if only because participation in the show is ‘opt in’) and you can see a lot of the nastyness peak up from underneath (if you can read between the lines) even in such a pro-porn media setting.

AnglScarlett, Amanda:

As I said, the key should be enthusiasm, not mere consent. If someone doesn’t want to be there, then she shouldn’t be. The larger porn companies have been known not to respect that, but the smaller producers should know better. And if I’m looking at it through excessively rose-colored glasses, that means there needs to be tighter controls on who is and isn’t involved, and if someone is raped on camera, there should be punishment.

If I’m being naive, I’m being naive. Fair enough. But just because I’m not aware of it a) does not mean there is not a problem that can be solved, or b) that the idea is in principle wrong. I mean, I also support legalization of prostitution, but along with that a serious ramping up in protections against human trafficking and sex worker abuse. It’s all a matter of consent, and if consent (in the sense of “yes, I want to do this”, not “oh well, it’s not like I have another choice”) is not being respected, it’s time to drop the hammer on the abusers. (And yes, I do realize this could potentially mean a drastic reduction in the size of the adult industry. If that was what it would take to fix the coercion issue, so be it.)

In the business world, when you’ve got a coal fired power plant dumping mercury into the water supply or a sweet shop paying some six year old to stitch shoes, we condemn that behavior and demand heavier regulation.  (We don’t get it, but liberals typically would support it.) We don’t shrug our shoulders, mouth “laisse-fair” and wander off.

The plant dumping mercury is creating a hazard to the public’s physical health. The sweatshop is creating a hazard to the physical health of a minor. These are clear-cut issues of fact—it’s not really a matter of opinion whether mercury in the water or back-breaking child labour are good things.

[That’s not to say that attempts aren’t made to change matters of fact into matters of opinion—the tobacco industry pioneered this practise in the 20th century, and the American right picked up on it quickly]

But when it comes to racism and pornography and other offensive media content, we’re reluctant to regulate.  We give this sort of verbal and visual filth a pass.

Extending the health issue, is racist and pornographic expression threats to mental health? Whose mental health? Which particular [removed]s)? In whose opinion? Not so clear cut.

Why is it that in America, you can throw up a billboard emblazoned with the n-word and have the most left of the left leap to your defense.

To roll out the old saw: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” (misattributed to Voltaire). In other words, I will leap to your defense to express your opinion freely, and you’d better well do the same for me.

The European situation shows us what happens when government gets selective about censorship. One might argue that limiting the speech of Nazis is justified, because Nazis enshrine limiting the speech of others in their programmes. However, so do Stalinists, and there wasn’t much censorship of hammers-and-sickles in Europe in the post-war period.

BlackBloc:

I misthought on the use of the term “sane”. What I should have meant was “porn producers who actually respect their performers”—if you remember the Kendra Wilkinson tape incident, the big producers like Vivid frequently behave no better than any other large corporate operation, and it’s well established that the corporate world tends to reward outright sociopathic behavior above all else.

[Note: I’m not a lawyer, so please correct me if anyone knows better about this stuff.]

Somewhere upstream there was some discussion of child pornography and why it does get censored and why that’s okay.  I’d just like to flesh out a little that it’s impossible to create legal pornography with minors because they are, by legal definition, unable to make responsible choices for themselves about their sexual interactions with adults and are therefore being raped any time they engage in sexual activity with adults.  This is true regardless of whether or not they appear to enjoy it and regardless of how they are paid or otherwise treated off-screen.  The result is that child porn necessarily involves violations against a person’s civil rights, labor rights, and basic bodily autonomy.  So from a legal perspective, censorship on the basis of moral revulsion to the images never even has to come into play.

At the same time, I have a strong suspicion that an awful lot of adults in the porn industry are also getting, well, screwed in a lot of other ways.  They do have the ability to make their own decisions, but they can still be tricked by people who understand contract law better than they do, people who will say they’re going to use a condom and don’t, etc., and they generally can be the object of the same labor violations that anyone else can.  Amanda has repeatedly pointed out, for instance, that there’s a particularly vile strain of pornography that seems to actually revel in the pickup artist’s ability to find a random woman and coerce her into sex on screen.  The audience doesn’t see what happens offscreen: She may be a paid actress who’s only pretending she doesn’t know what’s going on, or she may actually be scared shitless that the gang of dudes around her are going to rape her anyway and decide that going along with it will be the less painful option.  I suspect that the latter is more often closer to the truth.  And that, to me, sounds like a basis for a legal investigation.

Anyway, this is getting rather long winded now, but to summarize: Censorship on the basis that “it’s porn and duh” isn’t actually even practical much less constitutional, but it seems awfully likely that there may actually be a number of other legal violations involved in the production end of some/a lot of porn.  I don’t know if production is difficult to monitor, but porn actresses/actors should benefit from the same level of legal protection that any other worker does.  If cracking down on day to day labor and contract law violations would amount to a kind of censorship, then I can’t say that it would bother me too much.

And so I wonder the same about porn.  How many of those women are desperate and then I have to also ask, how many have childhood sex abuse in their backgrounds?

I’d expect there are a lot of women in porn who are abuse survivors. A small percentage may even go into porn to perpetuate that abuse on themselves.

That said, most adult citizens enter into degrading or dangerous or soul-killing jobs out of economic desperation and/or greed. Looking at the entire labour market, I’d imagine a relatively small percentage of workers are earning money doing something they enjoy and would consent to doing without getting money for it.

Amanda, Zif, that’s where my mind went immediately. There’s nothing more intoxicating than the victim mentality. It’s a very useful political position, and it’s why Christian Fundamentalist groups try to so hard to call themselves victims every time Christopher Hitchens appears in front of a camera or behind a microphone. It strengthens the sense of unity and determination of the group.

It was like I was saying to my boyfriend a couple of nights ago, “Everyone wants to be a victim, until they are.”

Seems reasonable, Brian.  And yes, I’m not going to stay up crying at night if the infinite amount of porn out there is dramatically reduced because there are new regulations that require treating the workers like human beings.

the big producers like Vivid frequently behave no better than any other large corporate operation

I’m an avowed anti-capitalist. My beef with Vivid is pretty much the same as any other corporation. I wish for sex workers to organize for better conditions (forcing studios to stop the practice of barebacking, and force them to use condoms in all films, would be a good start).

Every time censorship comes up, this effectively shuts down a grown-up conversation and leads to what you mention—-even the nastiest pornographers get to paint themselves as freedom fighters and the slightest criticism of pornography is associated with censorship.

Comment #57: Amanda Marcotte

We suffer from this here in Seattle.  Larry Flintt has teamed up with the conservatives in the suburbs to shut down competition and refuse entry of new strip clubs in the area.  Meanwhile down in Portland patrons and performers can choose which venue they would like to be in.  The performers are less likely to be abused because they have other places to work for.

jTuba, I think you’re right, and that’s a better use of everyone’s energies than demanding the censorship of porn.  In general, you don’t improve labor conditions by denying the right of an industry to exist at all; you empower the workers in it.

BlackBloc:

I’m not anti-capitalist, but I am very, very pro-union, so I pretty much agree with you there. Capitalism is in and of itself, IMHO, an economic necessity, but one that cannot be allowed to run unfettered. Too many people seem to see the idea of a free market as a one-way thing.

Excercise your right to free expression and tell us why, lonnie. Either way, I doubt it’s gonna end well for you here.

Zifnab at 64, speaking as a Jew, I do not support the European laws against hate speech. Besides fueling a terrible persecution complex, the laws against hate speech do not actually eliminate hate speech. All they do is force the haters to modify their hate speech into protected political speech by using code words. So rather than get a bunch of people rambling about Jews controlling the press, we get treated to a bunch of people rambling about how the Zionists control the press. The former would be considered hate speech because its targeting a specific group but since the latter is only targeting people possessing a particular poltitical ideology, in theory, its allowed as free speech. They aren’t against Jews you see, just Zionists.

Personally, I think it’s a crime that guys like this get away with their videos while comics and games that try to explore crazy or adult themes are quashed.

do you have study on this you could point to?

Workers are abused in poorly regulated or illegal industries all the time. Any study of sweatshop labour or the drug trade, past or present, will bear that out. Do you think that sex work is an exception?

“Extending the health issue, is racist and pornographic expression threats to mental health? Whose mental health? Which particular [removed]s)? In whose opinion? Not so clear cut.”

I’m pretty sure the targets of such expressions could easily answer these obvious questions.

Like I said, all of Amanda’s points make perfect sense. Yet, the next time I met a girl who was choked, punched, and had a plastic bag forced over her head until she passed out after which her boyfriend and a few of his friends rape her and shows me the porn flick where they got the idea, it’s going to be pretty fucking hard to sit there thinking “well, at least the porn producers had free speech!”

This shit does real world harm to real people.  Frankly, a hate pornographers free speech is a bit lower on my priorities list.

Even that said, i understand the slippery slope that posits.

For none to subtle troll:  http://iambecauseweare.wordpress.com/2007/03/17/some-statistics-on-sex-work-and-sexual-assault/

http://womensissues.about.com/od/rapesexualassault/a/Wuornos.htm

Crissa, I don’t know, there seem to be plenty of comics and games that explore adult themes. Although by ‘adult themes’, I’m thinking of ‘people having sex’ or ‘too much violence, really’. Although Kodomo no Jikan wasn’t release in America due to cultural differences. i.e. we don’t really like reading about ‘sexy’ 10 year olds.

Here you go asshole:

The CIR study showed that 21.4 percent of women working as escorts had been raped 10 times or more, with comparable rates for other types of sex work. Meanwhile the rapes, beatings and other abuses male and female sex workers suffer are rarely prosecuted.

“Crimes against prostitutes usually go unpunished,” says the New York study, authored by Juhu Thukral. “There is a tacit acceptance of this form of violence, usually committed against women. The overwhelming majority of sex workers did not go to police after they experienced violent incidents. Others who attempted to report violent crimes were told by police that their complaints would not be accepted, that this is what they should expect, that they deserve all that they get.”

Your tone disinclines me to think that you agree that sex workers are human beings, so I figure it’s just a matter of time before you break one of the two major rules here.

Porn is legal industry Gracchus.

All porn performers are engaged in sex work, but porn isn’t the only category of sex work. Furthermore, the porn industry is self-regulated, which until recently translated into poorly regulated.

Want to keep going with your BS? It’s early in the game, and already you’re running out of inconvenient facts and questions to ignore. This is why I don’t support censorship: much more fun to feed the dopes (even weasels like lonnie) enough rope to hang themselves.

I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong here and I’m being attacked ( called a dope and an asshole). Thank you for the link.

Well, first you come in here saying “I think this is all the white man’s fault. ” When I asked about this odd statement, you pretend you never said it. That is the action of a dope or an arsehole.

Continuing the pretense, you express doubt that sex workers are often abused, and then try to weasel out of it by trying to conflate the porn industry with the sex industry when challenged. That is the action of an arsehole or a dope.

In short, you’re being mocked for your transparent trolling, and for the fact that you’re not clever enough to fool a child, let alone the people reading this forum.

We can smell trolls a mile away.  Don’t play stupid.  But no worries—-I’m sure it’s just a matter of time.

Ha, lonnie is worried first about children being exposed to the filthy filthy bodies of sexually active women, and second that maybe it kinda isn’t so great for the women either. Quelle freakin suprise!

Stick rule on lonnie?

No, he’s a perfect example of the disease I’m pointing out—-porn is bad because people might think sex is pleasurable.  The misogyny is irrelevant, and in fact, I guarantee he agrees with the messages in misogynist porn in other contexts (i.e. when banning abortion and preventing sexually active women from getting decent health care).

I thought porn workers and escorts fell under the catagory of ‘sex workers’ .Sorry, I was wrong.

No, you addressed Amanda’s point about abuse of sex workers in general. Then you claimed you were really talking about the subset that works in the legally protected (but poorly regulated) porn industry. It’s understandable that someone as ignorant as you would not make the distinction between “legal” and “regulated.”

All that is beside the point, though. You’ve provided those who advocate for censorship of porn with a wonderful example of exactly the sort of prudish, right-wing, and usually religion-addled authoritarian hands into which censorship regimes inevitably fall.

lonnie is worried first about children being exposed to the filthy filthy bodies of sexually active women, and second that maybe it kinda isn’t so great for the women either.

Somehow I’m guessing that lonnie, who loves the children and hates the filthy and shameless harlots, isn’t pro-choice.

@103 Fair enough.  I suppose it is a little enlightening to watch the trainwreck currently happening in Trollville.

do you really think shooting milk out of somebody’s ass is pleasurable?

Don’t know about milk, but I have it from a good source that a lot of men are willing to pay good money to shoot water out of theirs.

The real question here is, do these women in these videos find it pleasurable, or are they forced into it (directly, or from economic conditions)? And the answer is probably the later.

Lonnie at 106: People come in so many varieties that it wouldn’t surprise me that if somebody thought that milk enemas were pleasurable. Personally, my tastes and fantasies in sex tend towards the pedestrian and boring; so I wouldn’t find it pleasurable but I wouldn’t be surprised that if some one, somewhere fond it pleasurable. Generally my rule about pleasure is to each their own as long as you don’t hurt anybody, physically, emotionally, or mentally, to achieve your pleasure. Unless consent is involved because consensual BDSM is fine. Pleasure is a complicated thing but if it involves more than one person there needs to be true consent among all involved.

  I think you are also ignoring Amanda’s point that a lot of men aren’t attracted to videos of milk enemas because they find it pleasurable. Rather they are attracted to the demeaning of women that goes along with it. Thats where the pleasure lies.

People come in so many varieties that it wouldn’t surprise me that if somebody thought that milk enemas were pleasurable.

Butts are sexual for a lot of people, a lot a lot. Enemas are sexual for slightly fewer people but I think probably more than most people would guess. Milk enemas? I think Amanda’s right and the milk is a specifically degrading touch representing large amounts of semen, but my point is, Lee is right and lonnie is, oh how shocking, clueless: enemas are highly sexual and pleasurable for a lot of people.

And I apologize for assisting in lonnie’s attempted derail of the thread, since Lee is also right that lonnie is willfully ignoring the more relevant questions, like who watches this porn and whether women are suffering to make it.

It’s just that I’m tired of hearing “Nobody could find that pleasurable anyway, so how could it possibly be a legitimate form of sexual expression?” argument trotted out against porn. It asks all the wrong questions and none of the right ones IMO.

I’ll just repeat what I said earlier in another forum: I’m very conflicted about this kind of stuff. Free speech is really important, but violent/degrading porn (which, of course, describes most porn) perpetuates and normalizes hatred of women.

I guess the goal to work toward is to continue fighting and educating and raising people’s consciousness until there just isn’t an audience for this kind of hateful shit anymore. I don’t think it’ll happen in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t mean it’s a vain hope.

What if the women found it pleasurable to slice their wrists on camera?

And what if you were a beautiful prancing pony? What then?

(Since you seem to like to discuss abstract non sequiturs.)

No, lonnie, I don’t.  Like I said, I think it’s hate speech traded for that purpose.  But it’s clear from your posts here that if the same message was delivered in other ways—-say, by suggesting that women who have sex are dirty sluts and don’t deserve the right to abortion—-you’d have no problem with it.  Your problem is clearly with the sex, and not the hate.

I’m amused at Lonnie’s affected innocence, as though he/she just wandered in and honestly doesn’t understand what’s going on and why, of course I’m pro-life!

I would have an ounce of respect for you if you’d just meet these issues head on and make a freaking argument, but the wide eyed “who me?!” isn’t fooling anyone.

If we get to live in your implied world of censorship of unpleasant truths and realities, can I start with yours?

“Not here, no.  But, as AnglScarlett rightly points out, in virtually ANY other forum, the moment you say anything less than celebratory about porn, you’re shouted down as a prude, frigid, unfuckable, repressed, etc.”

Because the anti-porn forces in the past used censorship as a major strategy, making them the bad guys.

Um, no.

It is true that anti-porn forces in the past have used censorship as a major strategy.  And it’s true that this was a bad move on their part.

That’s so very not why many people start crying “prude!” etc. when others critique porn though.  They say it for the same reasons they usually use those terms: to try to shame people (usually women) into denying their own desires in favor of someone else’s.  Much like rapists blaming their actions on skirt lengths, people don’t use the terms because feminists gave them the opportunity to do so, they use those terms because that’s what they do.

After all, WTF does “unfuckable” and “frigid” have to do with (governement) control of speech anyway?  The only “logic” that connects those two ideas in any way to censorship is the logic that buys into Fruedian ideas of frigidity in the first place.

(Now, if the discussion had been over people who cried “censorship!” rather than “unfuckable!” you may have a point - although, it should be noted that far too many people respond to any sort of critique with “censorship!” - even absent the kind of history you bring up.  So I’d argue that the problem is more that history makes such claims resonate better, not necessarily that it dramtically increases instances of such claims.)

Kristin: Thank you. These things seem so common-sensical that I can’t believe that some people do not get it.

Edmund Burke was a wanker. He would have loved butt porn. As long as it was poor people and lesser races like women being degraded. Which is totally the point.

Rumblelizard at 112: My opinion is that censorship doesn’t work. Porn existed even at times when very serious efforts were made to censor it and eliminate it. The same goes for making the sex trade and drugs illegal. It just increases the involvement of criminals in the enterprises. If something doesn’t work, don’t do it. Its best to have the sex and drug trade legal and under government regulation and licensing.*

*We can solve most of our drug problems by legalizing them, writing up relatively restrictive licensing requirements for selling things like pot and cocaine and using social pressure, like the type used against drunk driving and excessive drinking, to go against the more moronic instances of drug use. Same goes for the sex industry.

As going to comment on Edmund Burke being an ass who opposed the French Revolution but decided against it. Sure they got a bit excessive at times but they had a lot of rot to go through.

That’s so very not why many people start crying “prude!” etc. when others critique porn though.  They say it for the same reasons they usually use those terms: to try to shame people (usually women) into denying their own desires in favor of someone else’s. 

Agreed, jenny, but of course the reason they get away with it is that they have just enough evidence that feminists are quick to censor.  If we don’t given them a reason to get away with it, all so much the better, don’t you think?

Unrelated by why is MSNBC airing something about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding during Countdown? Does it really matter? Don’t we have more pressing things to talk about?

Re: Comment #94: lonnie on 07/20 at 04:03 PM

Of course there are.  And since comics can be anywhere, they often fall afoul of the ‘two consenting adults sold obscene material within 1000’ of something we determined’ laws.  See http://cbldf.org/ for more information.

MacKinnon issued a statement with Andrea Dworkin denying that Butler (the court case) had the effects her opponents claim. I’d link to it if I knew how on this device.

She does not seem upset at any of the results she will own.

She’s a serious scholar. If anyone wants to see an argument laid out that advocates restricting access to porn in the most challenging way, they should read her. Some of her allies are no friends to feminism in any form. Lonnie, maybe?

Agreed, jenny, but of course the reason they get away with it is that they have just enough evidence that feminists are quick to censor.

Surely you mean “quick to censure” more like? I’ve seen a lot of feminist finger-wagging and statement-of-disapproval-making (which I’ve agreed with or not) but not a lot of actual censorship. I think that pretending like feminists as a group have the power to censor anything is playing too much into the victim mentality of the misogynists. It would be awesome if the government would support feminists a little more but I don’t think that it currently does, much—certainly not to the extent that it starts banning things like porn.

There is a community of people who find these films hot, erotic, joyful and even beautiful.

Milk enemas treated by John Waters could be beautiful.  But milk enemas in a John “Buttman” Stagliano movie?

The essential problem with censorship is that no censorship regime can reliably make this distinction.  I prefer a world in which both Waters and Stagliano can make movies to a world in which neither of them can.

there doesn’t seem to be ANY pornography out there that isn’t about degrading or abusing women.

No, there’s a lot! I mean, in terms of percentage, it’s still no doubt a drop in the bucket. But it exists, and the amount has skyrocketed in the past few years. Google for Shine Louise Houston, Tony Comstock, “Beautiful Agony”, Tristan Taormino, Madison Young…

(If BDSM between people who genuinely & enthusiastically consent still counts as degrading or abusive to you, you’ll need to tread carefully, but there’s still stuff there. Also, Madison Young has been *in* mainstream sleazy films, but the things she’s directed are worth looking up.)

“Agreed, jenny, but of course the reason they get away with it is that they have just enough evidence that feminists are quick to censor.  If we don’t given them a reason to get away with it, all so much the better, don’t you think? “

O.o

I think you tread rather dangerously into “but omg if feminists shaved the legs anti-feminists wouldn’t call them fugly!” territory there.

We should do it or not do it - whether “it” is advocating/not advocating for the censorship of porn or pressuring/not pressuring women to shave their legs - simply because it is the right thing to do.  Arguing that we should or should not do something because OMG! it might feed into stereotypes! is just…NO.

And, quite frankly, arguments like that make me rather want to side on the censorship side rather than the side I actually agree with - partly because idiotic arguments and ridiculous insults tend to make me want to be contrary just for the hell of it.  But also because in my experience the boogywoman such people are conjuring up is rarely as scary as they are making it out to be; reality tends remind/show people that, for example, even if they still think women who don’t shave their legs are weird, such women do not suddenly become man-eating monsters simply because they have leg hair.

(again, this is in regard to refraining from advocating from censorship in order to avoid being called prudes and unfuckable - it’s a little silly to argue that we should refrain from advocating for censorship in order to not be called advocates for censorship, after all.  Or, on the flip side, that such people don’t deserve to be called what they are.)

And with that, I’m also going to add that I think that it’s a little different to hash such ideas out here - where one can work thorough it all out loud and without any danger of being called unfuckable - than it is to advocate such ideas to the world at large.  Not that I think you don’t see the difference, I just feel the need to mention it because I think that it’s part of the reason why some feminists - especially even now - tend to respond to porn with arguments of censorship.  I may be projecting here, but I think that acting as if accusations of frigidity is a reasonable argument - even with feminism past - does nothing to help women/feminists come to grip with the tension between how most modern porn makes them feel/the problems with how most modern porn is made and whether or not the ideals of feminism are aided by censoring speech.  That’s what I saw the quote about conversations elsewhere partly referring to - the fact that it’s actually really hard in most spaces to actually talk through all this and come to a conclusion that doesn’t betray either one’s own sense of self-worth or one’s democratic ideals.  You end up being forced instead to defend oneself against often pretty nasty sexism - which isn’t really the best environment for convincing oneself that free speech is better than the alternative.

Lee @ 120, that’s what I was saying, although reading back, I realize I didn’t say it very clearly: despite the fact that violent/misogynist porn has a pernicious effect, censorship doesn’t and can’t work as a remedy. 

My hope is that through continued education and consciousness-raising from feminists and our allies, the audience for hateful/misogynist porn like Buttman’s will erode as fewer and fewer people see women with sexual agency as sluts who must be punished.  It’s the only, only way to fight this kind of hatred, for all of the very good reasons that Amanda posted in the follow-on post to this one.

Crissa, were you replying to comment #93? I’m Shannon, not Lonnie. And yes, there is more policing of comics than there ‘should’ be, although I don’t notice as much since I can get the shockingly pornographic Black Bird[yes, it’s so pornographic that I call it porn and they don’t even show nipples] and the very good, but still with the nudity and the sex Nana at a Borders which is close to a school, church,etc. *everywhere in Memphis is close to a church*

I’m going to quote(ish) Twisty Faster from IBTP here, she being a well known anti-porn internet feminist, in the hope that it might be illuminating at this point in the discussion:

“The point is not to ban porn, the point is to make it obsolete.”

If the “unborn” are indeed drawn and quartered, I’m curious how they draw the body when there are no genitals or bowels to speak of. And for the quartering, I have to imagine that it’s a bit prohibitive and difficult to keep those horses around for the ripping apart of such a small mass of tissue. It just seems a little unnecessary and showy.

actually, i’d have a lot more respect for someone who just said “look, i make this crap for the money, period. if you don’t like it, don’t watch it, no one’s twisting anyone’s arm here.”

of course, that could well be said of a lot of non-porn stuff too.

Late to the party, I know, but I just have to say:  Best.  Headline.  Evar.

And for the quartering, I have to imagine that it’s a bit prohibitive and difficult to keep those horses around for the ripping apart of such a small mass of tissue.

They use those adorable little miniature ponies that are like 3 ft tall. Cutest drawing and quartering EVAH. :D

В порту минут двадцать разыскивали рекомендованный ресторан и даже его нашли! Но он, к великому разочарованию, оказался закрыт L А часы показывали уже половину третьего HP0-Y23, большинство ресторанов и кафе (судя по вывешенным объявлениям) закрывались в три. Безусловно, разыскивать еще один ресторан (который на набережной) было уже совсем некогда.

Пришлось обедать в первом попавшемся кафе традиционной кастрюлькой мидий 70-640 braindumps, а пробу буайбеса отложить до лучших времен (я упоминала, что в Ницце его тоже кое-где подают). Вообще, чтобы было понятнее: ресторан или другое заведение общественного питания может поставить в меню буйабес (специфический марсельский рыбный суп) только после стажировки шеф-повара и сдачи им специального экзамена кому-то из нескольких марсельских поваров JN0-331. По-видимому, это требует времени, а может, и денег (ну, как лицензия на что-либо), поэтому далеко не каждый ресторан в Провансе (и в мире, вообще) может себе позволить такую позицию в меню. Отсюда – наше маниакальное стремление попробовать эту штуку «по месту», т.е., аутентичный вариант JN0-350.

I’m a bit late coming to this thread, and maybe someone has already noted this, but Amanda wrote:

Yes, Gypsy, I would say that a person has a right to say what they want, and if they can get paid for it, even better.  I’d really hate to see a censorship regime that says, “You can say what you want, but if someone pays you for it, we can start censoring you.” That would mean, realistically, a law that made it possible to ban people like me from making a living.

With that point, you’re getting very close to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, which threw out most of the McCain-Feingold Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, as an unconstitutional restriction on speech, in that case, corporate speech.

Dana, the problem with your analogy is that Amanda is talking about directly censoring the ideas themselves, while you’re talking about a court ruling that declared a monetary limitation on political spending by a corporation to be a restriction of speech even if the ideas themselves aren’t at issue in the first place.

Please keep posting to remind some of the newbies here how you got the position of the premiere troll on pandagon.net in the first place, and don’t deceive yourself that you contribute anything when you do post here, because last time I checked, lying, even to oneself, is still a sin in the RCC.