Emily Sander (aka Zoey Zane): Sex Hate Claims Another Individual

If you ever needed to know why this blog needs to exist, than this latest bit of tragic breaking news should make the issue as clear as ever.

This comes directly from the Zoey Zane website, straight on the heels of the report of her confirmed murder and abandonment (with a tip of the hat to James over at the Adult Sites Search Yahoo! group).

http://www.zoeyzane.com

We currently are working with a local bank in Kansas to setup a reward fund for the capture of Isreal Mireles. Please check back to this url for updated info.....

18-year-old Emily Sander was a college student from Kansas who was missing for nearly a week after Thanksgiving weekend. She was last seen leaving a bar in El Dorado, Kansas about 30 miles from Wichita, with a man identified by police as Israel Mireles, 24 years old, authorities said. El Dorado police found evidence of foul play after entering Mireles' hotel room where he was living. A nationwide hunt went on to find Emily. Emily was a beautiful, young spunky girl - 5'3" at 105 pounds. She had shoulder length brown hair and blue eyes that could light up the room. She had just started college and was looking forward to getting her degree so she could move back home to Texas where all her friends and family were.

Sadly, Emily's body was found 50 miles East of where she was last seen with Mireles, on Thursday, November 29, 2007 around 2:30pm near Toronto Lake in Kansas. Emily's life ended too soon. Her case was quickly updated to a homicide, and a nationwide manhunt is now under way for Mireles and his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend, who both started on the run just after Emily's disappearance, known to be heading South. Mireles was driving a 2007 Ford Taurus rental car, which turned up Tuesday, November 27 in Texas, just near where he had family. Authorities believe that he is either trying to cross the Texas border to Mexico, or have already crossed the border. He also has family ties in Mexico.

It truly saddens us to see, in this day and age, that we still live in a society that ridicules a women for doing something that is completely legal. There was some incorrect information leaked to the press yesterday by a unknown individual named "David Thomas" claiming to have information about Emily's "Porn" career. We want to set the record straight. Emily was a solo nude model whose site went live September,25 2007. She was exactly that - a solo girl. There was no interaction between Emily with any Male. It was just Emily, her fun-loving personality, and the camera. We decided, a day before the media reports came out about Emily's "porn" career, to take down her website out of respect to Emily and Emily's family. We were unaware if Emily's family knew of the site and didn't want to add any unneeded stress or burden to them. The last thing we wanted was for her case to turn into a "missing porn star" case, which is exactly what the media turned it in to, which sadly took away the focus of Emily's disappearance and the importance of finding Isreal Mireles.

Of course, it surprises me like not at all that the tabloid media is playing up the "innocent girl corrupted and killed by porn" angle, it's the only way they know how to get ratings these days.

And it doesn't surprise me one bit either that all the usual antipornradicalfeminist posse will exploit this case as a wedge to indict and convict all porn and all the men who consume it for the apparant individual crime of Isreal Mireles.....that is the only way THEY can seem to keep their myopias afloat.

And....no freakin' surprise that some will attempt as is the usual to try to pin the blame on Ms. Sander/Ms Zane for her own death...as if her chosen hobby, her body piercings, her love of sex, or her choice of drinking partners had anything to do with the nature of her far too premature death.

(Don't even try, ByrdBrain....this blog is not a free carrier.)

All I care about is that a woman who hasn't even begun to live her life has had it taken away from her tragically, suddenly, and horribly.....and the real culture of sexual fear and loathing and sex-hate -- the REAL culture of death -- has claimed another victim.

Only God and the criminal justice system will ultimately judge Isreal Mireles....but untill we get over ourselves and accept that young women should be fully free and responsible to make their own choices with their own bodies, sexually or otherwise, and have those choices respected and accepted....then the ultimate judgment will fall on all of us who watch all this happen and merely blink and nod in response.

This, ladies and gentlemen and 'ye of transgender, is what sex hate ultimately leads to.

Presente, Ms. Emily/Zoey.

[Crossposted also to The SmackDog Chronicles]

Thoughts, Prayers and Condolences to Vanessa del Rio....

...who just announced that her mother passed away last Thanksgiving after a long illness.

Thoughts should be forwarded to her official Yahoo! fan group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ViaVanessadelRio

BTW....Slightly Off Topic....Memo to "Da Henchwoman...

...ahhhh, Ren...you rock the house like no other, and I appreciate you giving me the time and the dime profusely....

..but, could you PLEASE, do me a big favor and update the BPPA blogroll link for the SmackDog Chronicles to my current blog?? You still have the old link put out, which is out of date.

http://ajkenn-rgclub.com/SDChronBlog2dot3/index.php

Wouldappreciateitokthanxcyabye :-)

How NOT To Win The Heart Of A Porn Girl'

One part of the nature of being a female sex performer is in indulging the fantasy of being sexually desirable and available. It's basically one of the base requirements for being successful, even after the implants get old and the quick-hit gigs slow down.

Obviously, men and women tend to respond to such sexual stimuli with the fantasy of wanting to have sex with their favorite performer. In most cases, when both sides treat each other with respect and understand that it's just a fantasy; it can be not only very fun, but quite arousing.

Unfortunately, for a few folks who have a...shall we say, twisted view of women who do porn and sex work, the fantasy tends to be taken a bit too seriously...and venture out into dangerous and threatening ground. Then it is less a harmless fantasy and more like verbal attempted rape, and even stalking....and has done much to not only sully performers' opinion of their fans, but also feed the typical stereotypes of antipornradicalfeminists.

Case in point: One of my favorite porn starlets recently recieved a particularly nasty (and not in the good way, either) email from a "fan" (the quotes are deliberate, for reasons that should be obvious) reacting to her MySpace blog. For her protection and safety, I have redacted her name from the email, and I will not give out the blog location; but if you know the women whom I have memberships with, I figure that you will obviously figure it out on your own.

U have a wicked Oral Fixation?? Yes u do...like no other dirty ass slut...u
are the fuckin Whore of Whores!! The fuckin Tramp ass Queen of this shit!!
Dirty..and nasty..and filthy..and just what I fuckin lust after.. I am going 2
make u lust me baby.. I am going 2 make u lose your fuckin mind.. u big titty
bitch.. u have had a lot of dicks..but u have never had mine.. Oral Fixation..?
My cock..in your mouth..spells the greatest face fuck this world has never
known.. get your asshole stretched..get your tits plucked..and get your tight
ass pussy torn 2 shreds when u fuck with me.. I am Blasphemy baby..do not think
I do not know who the fuck u are.. u are a star..and I am the sun.. and u will
not get any rest..even after I am done.. I am going 2 wear that pretty pussy of
yours out.. and when we cum..we will cum 2gether..and we will change the
weather..because I never..enter any pussy..and fail 2 make the bitch cum at
least twice! u are fuckin with the baddest [target of hate redacted]..I am
nothing nice.. and never will be.. now dream about me..u fuckin slutty ass whore
of a bitch!!

Now, this nonsense might play well at a JM Productions site/message board or with some other hardcore "gonzo" outlet, and there may be some women who might even dismiss such talk as classically over the top lust....but in this case, the targeted starlet was startled and frightened enough to ask the question, "Why is it that some people think that they can talk to women that way??" She noted that she has gotten similarly hateful emails before from such "fans"; even enough that she thought about pulling all her non-paid sites and blogs in protest. Fortunately, the men who are the regulars to her blog were quick to respond and repudiate this "fan" as a brute, an asshole, and a braggart who probably couldn't back up his harsh talk with action; and reassure her that most of her male fans do respect her as a performer and as a person.

But it does make me wonder as a sex-positive porn fan and activist what it is that makes people like this "fan" go so hyperagggressive and so over the top. Is it the lingering deep clash between the body being turned on by sexual images and the mind still caught up in such negative stereotypes of "bitches" and "whores" and the still popular myth that women who do porn have no worth other than the sum of their cunts and anuses?? Is it just that some men will forever turn into sheer asshats at the sight of a naked lady who shows off her love of sex?? It's one thing -- and perfectly normal, in my view -- to want to fuck a gorgeous woman who offers her body in public....but, "to wear that pretty pussy out"?? To "get your asshole stretched...your tits plucked...your tight-ass pussy torn to shreds"??? Kinda extreme, if you ask me.

Moe than likely, this fool simply picked the wrong girl to brag about his sexual "prowess" with; and hopefully he gets his sorry ass filled with buckshot so that he remembers not to make that same mistake again. I only hope that the men out there who happen to be real and genuine fans of porn and sex work will show a bit more respect for the women who make their desires possible. Just because they happen to enjoy showing themselves off doesn't mean that they aren't still human beings worthy of empathy and respect. Even if they do have "oral fixations."

2008 Sex-Positive Journalism Awards Now Seeking Entries

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Chris Hall Dissects Bob Jensen's "Getting Off"

Chris Hall over at Sex in the Public Square has now posted his review of Robert Jensen's Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity;

A couple of excerpts follow:

Jensen, on the other hand, sees pornography as part of the “sexual exploitation industries” which include stripping, phone sex, and prostitution as well as the McPorn that comes out of the San Fernando Valley and the amateur sites that pepper the web. Jensen is a well-known activist and writer on other progressive causes, specifically racism and anti-war politics, and he sees his opposition to porn as the logical extension of that work (and vice versa). Men who are interested in social justice, he argues, can’t use pornography or patronize sex workers without betraying those principles at a fundamental level.

To Jensen, pornography is a mirror, a dark and violent one which few can bear to look into without flinching or deceiving themselves about what they see there: “Pornography forces women to face up to how men see them. And pornography forces men to face up to what we have become.”

The first two-thirds of the book are spent looking deeply into the mirror of pornography and the ethical problems that Jensen finds in its creation and its use. It is a personal narrative as well as a political treatise. For any man writing on pornography, either pro- or anti-, it could hardly be any other way; one thing that most men have in common is that we started out our sexual lives with porn. However we feel about that, it’s almost an inevitability, and now with the internet, is even more so than when Jensen saw his first pornographic magazine in the early sixties, or when, in the seventies, I found my dad’s Playboy magazines, filled cover-to-cover with naked Farrah Fawcett wannabes. It is, in a way, a language that we all speak, no matter how we feel about it, and so it’s even more urgent that we be able to speak honestly and openly about it.

[...]

Jensen starts immediately with some sleight-of-hand regarding pornography. In explaining where he wants to go with the book, he says very specifically that he's going to focus on a textual analysis of the content of mass-produced heterosexual pornography. In short, the main product of good old Porn Valley. In itself, that seems like a fair strategy. It wouldn't be illegitimate for a literary critic to write a book focusing on post-war hard-boiled fiction instead of writing about every subgenre of mystery fiction from The Murders in the Rue Morgue to Carl Hiassen's latest. But we would expect such an author to draw conclusions about the style of Jim Thompson vs. Raymond Chandler — not about Arthur Conan Doyle's place in Victorian culture. The conclusions that Jensen draws from his narrow survey, in contrast, are sweeping in nature about how sexually explicit imagery affects our views of ourselves and others. Jensen's conclusions are not a critique about the mentality of Porn Valley, or of the specific kinds of porn that Porn Valley pecializes in, but are an assault on porn as a genre. Porn isn't a good thing made bad by greedy and stupid people. It's just rotten to the core.

Thirty years ago, Jensen might have been able to get away with that. Both the production and the audience for porn were more homogenized before every American home was equipped first with a VCR and then with a PC linked up to the Internet. More importantly, the conversation about genders and sexualities was much more homogenized. In those days, there were men and there were women; there were gays and there were straights. But some remarkable things have happened in the last twenty years or so; sexual politics has become radicalized in a way that Jensen and his ideological allies couldn't have imagined back then, and seem unable to appreciate even now when they're staring those radical notions straight in the face. We're now faced with the notion that gender isn't just x and y, but z or xy or yz *x or any number of other combinations. The notion of orientation as binary and immutable is considered by many of us not only as antiquated but repressive. Sex workers now demand the right to call themselves feminist without calling themselves victims of their work. Queer and feminist activists now look at power play of all kinds as a part their sexuality that enhances, rather than opposes, their radical politics. And women actively create and critique porn, not just for men, but for themselves.

[...]

Robert Jensen's passion is reserved for visualizing women's sexual pain. Never once does he turn that passion the other direction to look at the possibilities for women's sexual pleasure. There is not, in the end, so much difference between Jensen and the most misogynist, exploitative porn director; neither can imagine the sexual role of men as being anything other than to fuck, nor can they imagine women's roles as being anything other than to be fucked. And that's why, regardless of my doubts about mainstream porn, I can never, never imagine aligning myself with Jensen and his ilk. Because at the heart of his arguments, I see the same misogynist bullshit that I want to excise from pornography.

By all means, go and see the full review ASAP.

If only she were naked...

Long time no post.

But I just ran across this, and am entirely creeped the fuck OUT now.

http://www.recl usiveleftis t.com/?p=685

(take out the spaces.) (poss trig -- the video shows graphic footage of verbal abuse and beating)

These people see a horrific video of a woman being degraded, insulted, and finally beaten, in which there is no sexual content at all, and all they can think of is "that's BDSM porn?" I quote from a comment quoted in the post:

Feminists would no longer be unanimous that scenes of him saying all those hateful things to a woman while doing specifically sexual violence to her on film were abuse. Some would defend it as sexual freedom. Some would praise it as transgressive BDSM erotica and therefore pro-woman.

The one thing I want to ask these people -- really, really want to ask -- is why everything is porn to them. Why everything is BDSM. I don't get it at all. It almost seems to me like they *want* these things to be porn. Like they *want* them to be sexual.

And that terrifies me. It terrifies me much more than the thought even of someone unapologetically hoarding and collecting pornography depicting mock torture and watching it over and over.

Because these people are sexualizing real abuse. And for all their indignance, I don't know why they would do that. It's like they're wishing she were naked, wishing she were being raped here, because it would serve their ends.

And how creepy is it that if it were depicting rape and beating, they would be watching it (over and over if my hunch is right), commenting on it, reproducing it, linking to it, pointing at it over and over to prove them right?

The Rising Tide of "Leftist" Sex Hate: Bob Jensen's "Getting Off"

Those who have read this space know fully well my opinion about Robert Jensen and his antipornography activism, as well as his repeated attempts to slander and convict men of merely having sexual feelings and desires that he considers too “masculinic” and “antifeminist” (meaning the antipornradicalfeminism of the likes of Dworkin, MacKinnon, and Sam Berg).

What really galls me, however, is that far too many self-styled progressives and leftists, so unconscious of their own sex ignorance and loathing about sexuality, are so willing to fall for his sophistic analysis and deep guilt-tripping disguised as “feminism”.

Case in point: Jensen’s latest tome on the evil threat of porn as the tool of “masculinity”, titled Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity, recently recieved a major endorsement from the executive editor of the progressive news service Alternet.org, Don Hazen; who explained in an introduction to a posting of an excerpt from Jensen’s book how he was converted from a traditional liberal libertarian point of view to Bob’s APRF vision:

Part of my thin king on pornography has been shaped by seeing what is on the
Internet myself, and part, by reading Robert Jensen’s powerful and provocative
book, excerpted below: Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity.
Jensen has convinced me that something as powerful as the porn industry and its
sexual extremism must not be kept under the rug due to liberal
shoulder-shrugging about the First Amendment. The porn industry should not enjoy
our collective denial in terms of its real-world impact on women — and men —
simply because we might be berated by first amendment purists or be
uncomfortable grappling with complex issues of sexual expression.

Never mind the fact that the actual “real world impact” of explicit sexual expression might be a bit more diverse and much less “extreme” than what Hazen sees through Jensen’s rose-colored spectacles…or that there would be no mention of “First Amendment extremism” or fears of “First Amendment purism” when the subject turns to things like opposing federal snooping and wiretapping of innocent citizens, or opposition to the war in Iraq, or organizing unions or even gender discrimination…..nope, in the mind of Hazen and the others who run Alternet, Jensen and the APRF (aka, the “feminist”) point of view is the only logical and true vision.

And what a narrow and tunnelled vision that Hazen and Jensen support, too. To buttress his notion of how far low porn has become, Hazen whips out the old tired and true “gonzo” card, as if this is the only form of sexual expression that exists these days:

One phenomenon in porn is the ascension of Gonzo films. There are two
styles of films — one are features that mimic, however badly, the Hollywood
model of plot and characters. But the other, Gonzo, has no pretensions, and is
simply the filming of sex acts, which, Jensen writes, while also occurring in
features, are “performed in rougher fashion, often with more than one man
involved, and more explicitly degrading language which marks women as sluts,
whores, cunts, nasty bitches and so on.”

The Gonzo films, which have come to dominate the industry, also
emphasize the newer trend of sexual acts, which include: double penetration —
anal and vaginal — and ass to mouth, or ATM, where anal sex is followed by stic
king the penis in the women’s mouth. In addition, many of these films include
men, often in multiple numbers, ejaculating into the faces and mouths of the
women performers. The women usually swallow the semen, but also can share it
mouth-to-mouth with a female partner. For Jensen, the most plausible explanation
of the popularity of these acts is that women in the world, outside of
pornography, don’t engage in these acts unless forced. “Men know that — and they
find it sexually arousing to watch them in part because of that
knowledge.”

As Jerome Tanner, porn film maker explains, “One of the things about
today’s porn and the extreme market, the gonzo market, is so many fans want to
see much more extreme stuff that I’m always trying to figure out ways to do
something different. But it seems that everybody wants to see a girl doing a
double penetration or a gang bang. … It’s definitely brought porn somewhere, but
I don’t know where it is headed from there.”

Mitchell Spinelli, interviewed while filming Give me Gape, adds:
“People want more. They want to know how many dicks you can shove up an ass.
It’s like “Fear Factor meets ‘Jackass.’” Make it more hard, make it more nasty,
make it more relentless.”

Now, aside from the total fallacy of quoting porn producers and insiders as the literal Gospel in saying what men who buy these videos (or who simply download them, legally or not, for free) really want from them; there is the total and complete ignorance of what exactly “gonzo” really is. Actually, the term simply describes sex videos that feature sex unemburdened by plot; nothing about the particular acts involved. A film featuring a single couple engaged in conventional sex without plot would be considered “gonzo; as much as a video of an mulit-person orgy featuring traditional fucking and sucking.

Now…there certainly in within the genre of “gonzo” the more extreme and exotic subgenre which does include some of the acts that so inflame (arouse???) Jensen and Hazen; including double anals, double vaginals, bukkake, creampies, facials, and AtM. It is certainly open to debate whether women performers are being ”coerced” into performing them, or whether these particular acts are being promoted as things women should do in private (forgetting, of course, the possibility that some women might even — horrors — LIKE such acts done to them in private). But to conclude from that that fans of such acts are merely expressing their total hatred for the women performers — nay, heaven forbid, ALL women — merely by watching and getting off on viewing such acts is simply bizarre. The “extreme” market is just that; one market in a field of many in sexual media; and hardly representative of the majority of the hardcore sex genre. The overwhelming majority of sex videos are those featuring either (1) single women stripping and masturbating, usually with sex toys; (2) women having sex with one or two other women (i.e., “girl/girl” or “Hot Lesbian Action”, never mind if they are really lesbian or bi, or merely curious); or (3) a single woman having sex with her significant other (boyfriend, husband) or a male friend that she already knows and respects enough.

Of course, since Jensen has already clearly stated that he considers even the more conventional images of women in porn to be innately “misogynistic” because even the softer images degrade and dehumanize women by reducing them to “sex objects” and “fucktoys”, I guess that any discussion of the heavier and kinkier brands of “gonzo” are basically totally moot…or simply agitprop to convert the more gullible liberals and “leftists” to his agenda.

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a Robert Jensen essay without the obligatory detailed description of a “typical” gonzo scene, as well as him (and by proxy, Hazen) imposing his (their) ideology on the performers, whatever they may actually think. Quoting again from Hazen’s intro:

Jensen clearly decided in writing his book that the often overwhelming
reality of the behavior and values of the porn industry must be experienced by
the reader, at least in written form, to understand what the issues are. Thus,
in the book, he describes porn scenes, quotes dialogue in the porn films, and
includes interviews with porn actors to help capture what they are thin king.
Some of this is a little hard to take. Here is one example:

Jessica Darlin tells the camera she has performed in 200 films and she is
submissive. “I like guys to just take over and fuck me and have a good time with
me. I’m just here for pleasure.” The man who enters the room grabs her hair and
tells her to beg the other man. She crawls over on her hands and knees, and he
spanks her hard. When he grabs her by the throat, she seems surprised. During
oral sex, he says, ‘Choke on that dick.” She gags. He grabs her head and slaps
her face then forces his penis in her mouth quickly. She gags again.The other
man duplicates the action, calling her a “little bitch,” Jessica is drooling and
gagging; she looks as if she might pass out. The men slap her breasts, then grab
her by the hair and pull her up. Later in the scene, “One man enters her anally
from the rear as she is pushed up against the couch, The other man enters her
anally while his partner puts his foot on her head. Finally one grabs her hair
and asks here what she wants. ‘I want your cum in my mouth,’ she says. ‘Give me
all that cum. I want to taste it.’ “

Jensen writes, “In researching the porn industry, one of the most difficult
parts is writing about the women who perform. Men see women in porn films as
objects of desire (to be fucked) or ridicule (to be made fun of.) When porn
performers speak in public they typically repeat a script that emphasizes that
they have freely chosen this career because of their their love of sex and lack
of inhibition.” Nina Hartley is one former porn star who frames her experience
in the porn industry as empowering — a feminist act of a woman ta king control
of her own life. But Jensen notes that while “we should listen to and respect
those voices, we also know from the testimony of women who leave the sex
industry that often they are desperate and unhappy in prostitution and
pornography but feel the need to validate it as their choice to avoid thinking
of themselves as victims.”

The fact that Jessica Darlin is actually an actresses enacting a scene in a movie, which involves a particular theme, and openly states that she has no problem whatsoever doing such scenes (of course, she must either be lying or under the spell of that evil male choking and spitting on her!!); seems to be lost on both Jensen and Hazen; certainly they would not think that when Michael Douglas and Glenn Close did that sex scene in the elevator in Fatal Attraction, they were really representing the real feelings of women and men, would they???

And we all know about how Jensen and other APRF’s really feel about Nina and other women who do happen to defend their right to make porn…right, Sam???

Oh….and Nina’s not a “former porn star”, Bob…she is still quite active in making and producing video; and has even enjoyed a sort of renaissance in the subgenre of older mature sex performers (also known as the “MILF” and “Cougar” subgenres). But I’m sure that she can defend herself better than I ever can….if you would ever allow sex-positive criticism of Jensen in your site, that is.

Moving along, we see Hazen practically spill his own seed in tribute to Jensen’s brilliance:

So that you understand, Robert Jensen is a true radical. His positions on
masculinity, race and pornography are way out of the mainstream. He thinks that
concepts of masculinity make men less than human and should be junked. “Men are
assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a “real man” is
therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest and domination. A man
looks at the world, sees what he wants and takes it.”

In writing his book, he turns to one of the most vilified feminists,
Andrea Dworkin, as his guide. One of Dworkin’s books, Intercourse,
enraged many readers. “In it, Dworkin argues that in a male supremacist society,
sex between men and women constitutes a central part of women’s subordination to
men. (This argument was quickly and falsely simplified to “all sex is rape” in
the public arena, adding fire to Dworkin’s already radical persona.)” But Jensen
embraces Dworkin for best understanding pornography and notes that “her love for
men was so evident.”

[…]

Jensen’s book is a serious effort to deconstruct pornography and
connect it to the society in which it grows and, in some ways, dominates. He
addresses in detail the arguments that justify porn and the research that may
connect porn to violence. His narrative, interwoven in the book, is about a
lonely journey to shed the straight jacket of masculinity, and the pain and lack
of acceptance that goes with the territory as he relentlessly pushes his ideas
into the public domain.

In the end, the book grapples with a fundamental question. “If pornography
is increasingly cruel and degrading, why is it increasingly commonplace instead
of more marginalized? In a society that purports to be civilized, wouldn’t we
expect most people to reject sexual material that becomes ever more dismissive
of the humanity of women? How do we explain … increasingly more intense ways to
humiliate women sexually and the rising popularity of the films that present
those activities?” Jensen concludes: “… this paradox can be resolved by
recognizing that one of the assumptions is wrong. Here it is the assumption that
the U.S. society routinely rejects cruelty and degradation. In fact the U.S. is
a nation that has no serious objection to cruelty and degradation.”

Robert Jensen is on a quest. And he has taken a major step forward in
his journey in producing a book that the reader can’t run away from or casually
dismiss. It is filled with facts, data, intelligent observation and analysis, as
well as examples of the raw product of an industry gone gonzo. I know this may
sound like a cliche, but I guarantee that after reading this book, almost no one
will think about pornography in the same way again.

I’ll just let you wander through and behold the magnificance of such bullshit for a while. You wonder then why progressive activism in the US is in such horrible shape???

And then, Hazen turns the floor over to Bob for an excerpt from his book….and it it so typical classic Jensen sex-hate and loathing. And well deserving of another fisking….but that will be anon.

[Crossposted as well to The SmackDog Chronicles]

And For An Added Pile-On.....

....I reset an earlier debate involving myself and Nina Hartley to add to the piling on of discussion on Sam Berg and her latest treachery:

The SmackDog Chronicles: Sam Berg: Stalker of Women (Especially Women Who Don't Share Her Sex Fascist Vision)

Ren on Sam Berg

Rather than repost the whole thing- I'll just go with the link.

FOXNews Porn: Right-Wing Hypocrisy Meets Left-Wing Puritanism

There are a great many ways to hate on the FOX News Channel if you happen to be a political progressive like I am.

There's the consistent browbeat of right-wing propaganda thinly cloaked under the brand of "Fair and Balanced News". The revolving door between certain luminaries and commentators of that network and the Bush/Cheney administration-cum-Mafia. Bill O'Reilly. Sean Hannity. Tony Snow. Bill O'Reilly. Bill "Bomb the shit out of Iran and Syria" Kristol. Neal Cavuto. Bill freakin' O'Reilly.

But...for some progressives out there, that alone isn't quite enough....they would like to expose Fixed Noise (to use Keith Olbermann's classic gloss....although for this particular story, Bina Becker's acronym of "FUX Snooze" would be more appropos) for something entirely different.

As a peddler of porn.

What's that, you say??? How can a right-wing media outlet like Faux News be even remotely involved with an industry that most of their base viewers would find beyond the pale???

Easy, says Robert Greenwald, who was the producer of the documentary Outfoxed which was one of the first exposes of FOX News' corrosive impact on the public at large: They use gratituous sexual images and "misogynous and innapropriate" sexual media to attract their audience to their news and information programs.

Greenwald has been a busy man of late pushing his "FOX News peddles indecency while attacking it" meme: he has released film clips over at YouTube (one example of which appears here) depicting how everyone there from BillO to Neal Cavuto to the regular news programs splatter gratituous T&A (and even the occasional blurred XXX image) into their news coverage. He has developed a spoof website (foxnewsporn.com) to promote his efforts; He recently wrote an article for the "progressive" daily Alternet.org promoting his efforts (and claiming that his video clips were "censored" by both YouTube and Digg by not being linkable; kinda not true since I just linked his clip two sentences ago); and he has gotten significant airtime, even to the point of scoring an interview segment on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Most of his case consists of replaying clips of where some FOX luminary prattles on about the "sexual decline" and "moral decay" of the country...while images of pretty risque and suggestive sexual activity (or merely sexy images) fill the background screen.

For instance, there is BillO moaning and groaning about the infamous Carl Jr's hamburger ad featuring Paris Hilton doing her Jenna Jameson imitation and nearly mounting her car and having multiple orgasms over their hamburgers....while Paris winds and grinds uninterrupted in the background.

Or, in another BillO segment, another attack on "secular progressive San Francisco (read, "homoSEXual") values", as represented by the annual sex freakery known as the Exotic Erotic Ball....complete with detailed coverage and footage of said acts of freakery from a journalist who was there. (Apparantly, BillO skipped last years Folsom Street Fair, so he wasn't able to report on that particular alleged atrocity of "secular progressive" values.)

Or...there is a "breaking" story about an alledged sexual assault over at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles...a perfect excuse for gratituous T&A shots at Hugh Hefner and his stable of bikini beauties frollicking about nearly nekkid.

Or...how about another "breaking story" scaring the viewers about rapists running amok during Spring Break....featuring strippers and thong-clad dancers flashing their naughty bits (pertinent parts electronically covered, of course).

Or even today, on Cavuto's program: a warning about strip clubs "enticing pre-teens"...complete with some pretty saucy pics of said patrons to entice....errrrrr....scare them.

All this, Greenwald asserts, proves how corrosive FOX News is to the body politic; and they must be stopped by any means possible, up to and including media boycotts.

Now, being a prime Fixed Noise hater myself, I normally would be willing to add my support to anything that piles them on. But I just can't hitch myself on this campaign, for the following reasons.

First: This is nothing new with Rupert Murdoch. He is well versed in the art of using skin and sex to bait the trap to get consumers; how else did he make his millions with his tabloids in Great Britain (see the Page 3 Girls) or with his FOX cable network (Married....With Children, anyone???). And as for BillO....well, we'll just leave him to Andrea Mackris' tell all book (which probably won't appear on FOX News anytime soon).

Second and more importantly: Although it is certainly right and proper to spell out the hypocrisy of Fixed Noise playing both sides of the sex media street (remember, Murdoch paid Judith Regan big bucks to sell Jenna Jameson's tell-all biography two years ago, even as he also paid BillO and other assorted columnists to diss her as an ignorant slut), I'm wondering whether Greenwald's real beef is with FOX News or with the sexy images they appropriate...for he doesn't make too clear that he's really not more offended by the behavior of the images than he is by FNC. There are loads of loaded commentary about "indecency" and "gratituous sex" in his documentaries, and there is a not-so-subtle plea for the viewers to "do something" about the images...as if Fixed Noise's more normal political crimes aren't worthy of censure enough.

And thirdly: most of the "pornographic" images that so grieves Greenwald aren't really that porographic or even softcore: they range from refined Girls Gone Wild video excerpts of young girls carvoting, to women lounging in bikinis, to brief titty flashes and thong-clad booty shaking, to women kissing (the Madonna and Britney Spears liplock at the 2002 American Music Awards is featured as one example of FOX "indecency"); to the occasional interview with porn starlets. One wonders from watching this whether Greenwald is really condemning FOX for being right-wing hypocrites...or for showing such evil "misogynistic" and "objectifying" images in the first place. I tend to think more of the later..which would make him only one step removed from antipornfeminist "leftist" fanatic Nikki Craft, who attacks more hardcore porn with pretty much the same theme (though with Larry Flynt as her primary Great Satan rather than Fixed Noise).
The way I see it, why is it that some liberals and "progressives" are so willing to play the Puritan protectionist card as a means of promting themselves and their pet causes?? The notion of attempting to split your enemy amongst genuine Puritan populist and "libertarian" lines may be one attraction (read that to mean getting the real religious Right folk foaming about the "conservative establishment"); perhaps Greenwald really wants to attract authentic social conservatives to progressive causes as well; and sees attacks on establishment outlets like FOX News and their "indecency" as a bridge to such a right-wing populist constituency.

But this is a dangerous game of tit for tat that not only legitimizes and reenforces the most reactionary sexual beliefs as "progressive"; it also mistakes scapegoating of legitimate consensual and harmless sexual imagery and expression with more effective political analysis and organization.

All this campaign proves to me is that conservatives have no monopoly on using sexual fear and loathing as a wedge to import their particular ideology; and that some progressives and liberals need just as much to check themselves and their antisexual myopia. FOX News is bad enough as a politically obtuse, racist, right-wing media organization as it is; there is no need to pile on at the expense of innocent sexual expression.

[Cross-posted over at The SmackDog Chronicles (BTW, memo to Ren and Belle: Update the SmackChron link in this blogroll..please??? OKThanxbye. :-)]

Right ON

I linked to Dacia’s latest post about “feminist porn” in my del.cio.us links yesterday, but I had such a “yes yes YES that’s IT!” reaction to it that I feel compelled to quote liberally here…

To me, making feminist porn is not about what is actually shown on screen and much more about what is happening on the production end of things. This is very clearly an expression of my years working in the sex industry and working for sex workers’ rights, but like Petra says in the beginning of this paragraph, “our tastes on what we find sexy in the bedroom or on film differ.” We can have a whole argument about the nurture and nature of “taste” - but I don’t think liking or not liking specific acts can make or break a feminist.

I don’t care if porn shows a woman masturbating by herself (like in many of the Abby Winters photo sets and videos), a woman fucking a guy with a strap-on (like in The Bi Apple, a woman enthusiastically sucking cock (like in Erika’s films), or a pregnant woman getting fucked up the ass with a baseball bat (like in Belladonna’s Fucking Girls Again). What I do care about is: does that performer want to be there? Is the director/producer respecting her needs and paying her appropriately? Did she get blindsided by requests for acts she doesn’t want to do?

The answers to those questions determine whether or not the porn is feminist, sex-positive, and ethical for me, not what is happening on screen.

Do you get it now, people? Do you? I still do not know why this is a difficult concept, but clearly it is. And so these things must continue to be said, emphatically.

I might write more about this later. I need to crawl into bed now, though, because I got up at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday.

[Cross-posted at Being Amber Rhea]

The New APRF [Maoist] Meme: Buy Porn, Kill a Muslim

I'm sure that you have heard about how the usual right-wing antiporn groups are now targeting the US Military for apparantly defying Congressional laws against porn being sold at military bases.

It got me to thinking, though....how would the antipornradicalfeminists on the "other" side attempt to spin the issue to their advantage??

Well, I need not wonder any longer.....get a load of this pamphlet which equates consuming porn to killing Muslimwomen...courtesy of APRF whackoid Phyllis Chesler the Maoist International Movement:

http://www.imperialismkills.org/fliers/islamofasc2.pdf

I suppose that the many Muslim (and other non-religious folks in Iraq and other Middle East countries) who were victims of "Amerikan" imperalism don't really count for these MIM whackjobs....nor the fact that most of those who finance and support the killing of "Muslims" are as violently and militantly antiporn as they apparantly are.

Oh....and "wimmin" jill off to porn too...will they be held accountable for their role in genocide?? Oh, I forgot...most of those women OPPOSE the war. Too bad....it's the jerking off that is the real issue, I guess.

Just one more standing monument to APRF extremist collusion and ultra-Maoist lunacy, me thinks.

[Tip of the hat to Doug Henwood over at the Left Business Observer mailing list (lbo-talk) from where I got the link to Chesler's MIM's lunacy.]

UPDATE (11/8/o7) I owe a sincere apology to Phyllis Chesler for originally attributing the pamphlet to her; following the links provided at the bottom of the pamphlet let me to the Maoist International Movement site, which featured an attack on Chesler for being not "radical" enough and too "Western" for their particular sectarian tastes. I have made the proper revisions in this post to correct the record.