Friday, October 17, 2008

Okay, I'll answer Anonymous...

Anonymous:

Ernest, far as I know, is working a lot this week, thus, he is busy. However, I’m chillin’ with a messed up toe not doing much of anything, so hey, I’ll give it a shot!

I am in the UK and therefore have had no opportunity to see this documentary. I do, however, have some questions for you Ernest which I hope you will have time to respond to.


I’m not Ernest, but hey, a visitor from the UK here at the BPPA? Let’s roll!

You state that 'not all pleasures are positive, healthy or morally defensible'. Could you give some examples of these?

Some people get off on murder (thrill-killers). Some people get off on having sex with children. Some people enjoy truly torturing animals and people. Some people get off on stalking people. Some folk enjoy some really vicious mind games. Some like orchestrating the social destruction of others. I think all these examples qualify.

I noted that you feel unable, as a white man, to offer any opinion of gangsta rap. I'm wondering why this same criteria does not apply to your critiques on pornography and it's impact on women. Is it your position that women do not face sexist discrimination and inequality?

Racism and sexism are not the same thing. Both exist, but they are different. Also, if (or any other person) is not versed in gangsta rap, it’s hard to talk about it from a place of authority on said topic. Ernest is partnered with and involved with women in the sex industry on a daily basis, he hears and speaks to them. He is not involved with rappers on a daily basis, and thus has no idea where they are coming from. Nor is he black. Me as a white identified woman, I don’t think I’m really an authority on gansta rap either. Yet I can still say this- I may not agree with what is said in a lot of gangsta rap songs, but the right to say it? Why yes, I absolutely believe they have that.

You make reference several times to POP being propaganda. Would you say, as someone who has made a living from the pornography industry for 25 years, that you are immune to engaging in propaganda to promote and defend your work in that industry and the money you make from it?

POP is propaganda, pure out. Now, I’ve not been in the porn industry for 25 years…I’ve been in the overall sex industry for almost 20 years, and yep, I’ve done and made porn, and absolutely believe people have a right to make and perform in porn, however…what I do not do (nor does Ernest so far as I’ve ever witnessed) claim to make something that is fair and non judgmental, as well as an unbiased look at top selling porn made in the year 2005, then fill it with porn that is not at all representative of top selling porn made 2005, spend the majority of the time speaking to known anti porn advocates and scant seconds talking to people actually involved in the industry- leaving much of what they’ve said on the cutting room floor, try to pass off people who are not industry insiders as such, or dramatically edit and film things with a decidedly anti porn stance. I also don’t make “documentaries” filled with 2257 non compliant images and use images of performers without their knowledge or consent. Do I engage in propaganda? Only if talking about my experiences, feelings on it, and taking issue with a lot of anti-porn stuff counts as propaganda.

You also express concern at the impact this propaganda could potentially have, stating 'collateral effects are far from funny'. Given the proliferation of pornography, might that not have some collateral effects also?

Of course it could. The difference is, pornography does not pretend to be anything but what it is. This film claims to be fair and non judgmental, unbiased, so on, in other words, the truth. And it isn’t. It’s not the truth at all. It’s a huge smear on the industry, and the people in it.

Other mediums being as bad as or worse than pornography also appear frequently in your writings here. I am aware of feminist critiques of wider media and culture as well as those on pornography. What is your position on the impact of media on culture and society? I ask because I am confused by your dismissal on the one hand of hypersexualised culture but your concerns about the potential influence of POP and other such critiques of pornography on the other.

Other mediums are discussed. Occasionally. They are given about .10 the attention that porn is given. I read a lot of feminist writings, a lot of them. There are the occasional discussions of music, or Hollywood films, or mass media, however they are not, at all, given the attention porn is. And porn is supposed to be entertainment for adults. Flat out. However, extremely violent television is accessable to anyone. Brutal rapes and murders are depicted on network television every night. I have yet, actually, to read a feminist critique of Law & Order SVU, or CSI, or The Sopranos. Do you truly think more people, even more young people, are watching porn, or mainstream nightly television? Porn has never caused a school shooting. Truthfully, the people who do bad acts are the ones who should be held responsible, but are you ready to go after Marilyn Manson because he’s been implicated in a reason teenagers shoot up schools or kill themselves or do drugs or worship satan? I’m not. How about other “bad influences”? More people have been hurt and killed by alcohol related things than by porn…yet…booze is still out there and abused heavily…most people can enjoy a drink harmlessly, but…? How about all religions? More people have been hurt by or killed in the name of God than anything in history. Yet the idea of policing it is something that chills most people and as seen as a huge violation of their rights.

You mention that you've never been invited to a secret gathering where sexist ideologies are formulated to guide the making of pornography, I wonder if you believe yourself, or individuals in general, then, to be immune to the influences of society at large; that socialisation has no impact on who we are or how we develop; that we are not influenced or impacted by our relationships with family, friends, lovers, partners. Is there no cultural hegemony?

I for one absolutely think all people, to some degree or another, are influenced by culture and society. I also think even amid that, most people can make their own decisions about things and exert some sense of individuality and reasoning. And once again, porn is far less prevelant and influential than a great many other forms of media out there. I suspect more girls end up with eating disorders due to the images presented in high fashion magazines than from porn. People are not immune to anything, but is the answer to get rid of everything…and I mean everything…which might influence them in a negative way? That would leave us with nothing. No form of art, or entertainment, or politics, or…anything.

On a related point with regard fantasies.. Do you think we pop out of the womb fully formed as.. sadists, say, or subs?

I think some people do, actually, if not fully formed- like Athena out of Zues’s head- with definite leanings. People start to develop sexually very early on, people have fantasies and such early on in sexual development. There are people who are into kink or what have you in societies where there is no pornography, and people had them long before pornography was prolific at all. What I do not believe is that porn or media can “make” anyone do anything.

You regard the statistics presented in POP as junk social science. Could you present more accurate figures on which titles and genres are most popular, including the internet? Pirates is mentioned frequently, I'm interested in figures for that but would like more general stats.

Pirates is the highest grossing porn film of all time. Other features like Island Fever and Bloodlines (a vampire themed porn feature) were also very high selling films. Feature films in general outsell gonzo films. The fact that the POP researchers had to go to like number 125 on the film list to find a title they could highlight says something. As for the net, that is harder to tell. I think it was once said on NBC that Playboy.com gets millions of hits a day. I seriously doubt “Women in Pain” rates nearly that high.

You question the categorization of violent acts by the researchers. Could you give your definition and, given your experience and knowledge of pornography, your own perspective on the prevalence of violence in pornagraphy.

Depends on the porn. Will there be more “violence” in BDSM or gonzo themed porn than feature films? Yep. Feature films, you might see a bit of hair pulling, a bit of spanking, and some hard…well…fucking. (things that people actually do in their own bedrooms). You will see more in gonzo and BDSM porn. However, you know what I did not see in POP? At all? Not once? A single female dominant in any of the BDSM clips, and within the subgenera of BDSM porn, women as the dominant figures is pretty popular. Yet, this was totally ignored. I also did not see a single female as a dominant figure in any of the gonzo clips, which also happens. It was also totally ignored. In all the BDSM footage they used, not a single female Top…which is not at all reflective of the BDSM porn out there.

Girls Gone Wild is mentioned as a 'favourite punchbag' for feminists. Isn't this, in part, because a prominant player has been accused of rape? Why is it ok for industry insiders that you mention to be critical of this and not feminists? You state that women are 'certainly more jovially mocked' in GGW than male participants in jackass. It appears that not only are they more jovially mocked but are raped and sexually assaulted too. What are your thoughts on why this might happen?

Joe Francis is an asshole and belongs behind bars (IMHO). He is also not every pornographer in the business.

Chyng Sun asked "Don’t you think, that much of the enjoyment of pornography comes from watching the woman’s pain and humiliation?”

I missed your response to this and am interested in hearing it. What is your take on, for example, why men are aroused by woman being ejaculated on her face by multiple men and then consuming it or having another woman consume it?


Do some men get off because it can be seen as humiliating, sure. Most men, no. And of course, not even a nod towards women who watch pornography in this film, but that’s nothing new. But to break it down…why are men aroused by a woman being ejaculated on (on her face)…the answers to that are legion. Vicarious thrill of having achieved an orgasm? Marking behavior? Thrill in the thought that a woman enjoys “wearing the evidence”? It’s sort of strange and thus there is a novelty factor? Why multiple men? More semen, bonding experience, the idea of sharing? Why consumption by one woman? Not sure really, still haven’t figured that one out enough to have a theory, and have not really asked. It’s neater, for one I guess. Why another woman? Well, hum, as many average hetero dudes enjoy watching girl on girl, two women making out/licking eachother with no semen involved, I doubt the enjoyment of watching that with semen involved lessens.

What is your take on the reasons why degradation, of women usually, comes to be eroticised and fethishized?

I am so the wrong person to answer that question. Yet, I note, very little concern on wondering why women might get off on degradation. Funny that. Once again, I will bring up the large subset of femme-dom porn that apparently does not exist (which hey, could have fooled me considering what I’ve seen out there in the porn shop and on the net!)

You state that 'anti porn cultists' are fixated on sex. Is your basis for this purely the one element of their lives - anti pornography activism - that you are aware of? Given your objections to what you see as poor research and generalisations on their part isn't this a questionable assertion to make?

I’d say their fixation on what is watched and goes on in other peoples bedrooms is a big indication. The mere idea out there that no woman, out or in porn, can actually enjoy giving a blow job, or anal sex, or group sex, or BDSM says a lot about that fixation too. Also, the fact that so much time, engery, money, and ink is devoted to porn, rather than videos of people being beheaded in Iraq or violence in mainstream media also indicates they are a bit fixated on sex.

'..it is not beyond the realms of possibility that performers like to play dirty..' - what percentage of women would you say are in pornography because they love sex/enjoy the sex acts on screen versus those there for a paycheck (and the other reasons they ended up in pornography).

”It’s nice to get paid for what you enjoy doing”. I’d say at least half. And yeah, the money matters, sure. However, when a woman says that, like Jessie Jane did in the film, they are not believed. When Joanna Angel, who started up her own company (a grad from a prestigious university who certainly had other choices) talks about her feelings on it in the film, she’s slaughtered. Truth is, any woman who says she’s in it for anything but the money or because she was abused speaks, she’s not believed and her words are twisted or ingored. I know that one from personal experience.

You opine that skull fucking to gag point is minor in comparison to some violent acts portrayed in mainstream shows. Can i ask if you see any differences in how violence against women is represented, why that might be, the cultural meanings behind it? Certainly my own critiques of pornography do not happen in isolation. Nor are those of any radical feminists that I know or have read. It is placed in the context of society and the world at large; the role of poverty, inequaltity and power.

Okay, skull fucking in porn. I do that, as the fuckee. I’ve consented to do it, I don’t mind doing it, I walk out with a pay check. A point is made often when making porn to talk to me (or whatever performer) before and after the scene to insure why yes, I’ve agreed to do this. Yet, I was watching one of my favorite TV shows the other day…Heroes. I love Heroes. Heroes is very popular with a lot of viewers, including teenagers. Now, on Heroes, I’ve seen several female characters get the tops of their skulls sawed off (male characters too), there have been some steamy sex scenes, and some allusions to rape and molestation/abuse. One of the most off-kilter, screwed up, appears to, at heart, be a villain characters is, of course, the stripper/net porn performer. The main heroine is a teenage cheerleader who gets chased all over the place and subjected to incredible violence, in her cheerleader outfit. Or, I also watch Law & Order, where weekly I can see dead sex worker of the night. And brutal rape scenes. And violence against women, gays, and minorities. Or, I can turn on the Investigation channel, where I can spend five hours watching shows about serial killers (who are almost hero worshipped by some elements of society) who prey on sex workers, gay men, children, and women. And these shows are far more popular and generate more money and ratings than porn. Yet these things rate as practically nothing with a lot of folks as opposed to pornography. Also, people forget, male performers in porn make a fraction of the money female performers do.

Thanks for reading.

Anytime.

44 comments:

  1. Really well said, Ren.

    And thanks for sticking up for us unicorns who don't exist. I get so tired of that.

    You want to talk about "silencing?" I just find it so weird that, well, no female top ever has a voice at all in this, just a footnote that says we're fake men with fake women, no matter what anyone does.

    Why are we so threatening that we have to not exist? I really want to know THAT.

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  2. I have yet, actually, to read a feminist critique of Law & Order SVU, or CSI, or The Sopranos.
    Here are some that I know of:
    http://thehathorlegacy.com/tag/law-and-order/

    http://thehathorlegacy.com/tag/csi/

    Of course, many of them are criticized on an individual basis rather than simply as violent shows, and I don't think I have ever seen any detailed feminist critique of the plot of a single porn movie.

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  3. Trinity- Neither of us exist, female tops, or happy porn women. POOF.

    DJ- Thanks, now I can at least say I've seen a FEW feminist critiques of L&O and CSI.

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  4. Thanks, Ren, for picking this up. Excellent replies as always. I'm glad we're on the same team (although that could be a disaster if we were playing eight-ball).

    Trinity,

    Thanks for reminding me of something I somehow left out of a critique long enough to have included just about everything in porn.

    As the makers of this film were at such pains to show us examples of the most obscure, niche-market porn genres imaginable, we can only wonder how they happened to leave out pegging videos, in which men are the receptive partners in anal intercourse from women using strap-ons or other toys.

    Such videos have grown enormously in popularity over the past few years, as a visit to any porn chat site will corroborate. And if the filmmakers had studied the charts in AVN as carefully as they claim and believed in their accuracy as firmly as they assert, they must certainly have noticed the ever-increasing visibility of such material on the Specialty sales and rentals listings.

    But evidently, men who like being fucked in the ass by women are just as much unicorns as female dominants and male submissives.

    For that matter, while kink.com's fem-sub Web sites got plenty of running time, not a single frame from meninpain.com and other male-sub sites appears anywhere in the program.

    That many of the same female performers who work in the submissive role on fem-sub sites are dominant on male-sub sites must, I guess, make switches unicorns also. Who knew unicorns were so plentiful?

    When the facts don't fit the theory, the facts just don't count.

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  5. Ernest,

    You probably won't agree with me, but I've always thought that making female tops into unicorns thing was kind of... patriarchal, too.

    As in, people just go right on defining which kinds of power women can want or can be depicted as having. And even for many feminists, that power has to be gentle, not "hierarchical," not "rough." If they want power and are ambitious enough to be mean about getting it, they're shunned.

    I honestly also think this is *some of* why Hillary Clinton was so vilified. I don't deny she did some things that she shouldn't have, and completely lost it at the end, there. But... if you want power and aren't pretty about it, you either become The Unicorn and aren't in the room any more, or The Bitch, at which case "terminate without prejudice" is people's general attitude.

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  6. And if THAT didn't come from sexism/T3h Patriarkee, I'll eat my hat.

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  7. nods at trinity's observation.

    most I ever got paid for a porn shoot was one where I did the guy with a strap on, and, er, other things.

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  8. "But evidently, men who like being fucked in the ass by women are just as much unicorns as female dominants and male submissives."

    It's nice here in Magical Meadows. The sex is tons of fun.

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  9. For the record, Trinity, I completely agree with you. Feminist critiques of dominant women sooner or later get around to accusing them of "impersonating men," which is pretty lame thinking, as if any desire to wield power in any personal context is somehow inappropriate for women.

    Who gets to decide that? I truly recoil at the construction of dominant women as some projection of male fantasy into which deluded women are somehow enlisted against their own native desires.

    That's the kind of judgment made by strangers who have never actually met any of the individuals they attempt to categorize. I've known many, many dominant women in my life and, excluding those merely acting the part as a commercial proposition, not a one of them fit any popular stereotype of the sort thrown around in discussions of the type you describe.

    And yes, I regard such thinking as completely sexist. I find the othering of all BDSM people deplorable, but nowhere more so than in the false assumptions made about both dominant and submissive women, or that even more "problematic" group that identifies as both, depending on the situation.

    Fortunately, we do get to have all that fun sex in the magical kingdom with the other mythical creatures, which is not bad as consolations go.

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  10. Injured toe or not, you took the time out to answer this anonymous person when you could have been doing something way more fun with the rest of us Mythical Creatures (tm) ;)

    For me that shows your dedication to your cause and your beliefs, and that's admirable.
    I would have gone straight to the Playstation, hehe :P

    It's funny...up until a few years ago, the 'fixed image' (or, first thing I think of when hearing the terms) of BDSM activity was ALWAYS the 'woman-top/man-bottom'(even though I'm a sub myself). It's only recently that my head began producing other images. I find it strange considering that people seem to dismiss that dynamic very easily...

    Guess that's what I get for hangin' out with unicorns ;)

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  11. "Feminist critiques of dominant women sooner or later get around to accusing them of "impersonating men," which is pretty lame thinking, as if any desire to wield power in any personal context is somehow inappropriate for women."

    Yeah, that. Feminism is supposedly a movement to empower women, but ambition on the part of individual women is still unseemly.

    Or an illusion.

    What's up with that?

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  12. I think the irony is that feminists get really irate at the equivalent behavior on feminist blogs. I'm talking about somebody who's anti-feminist popping up on a thread on some feminist blog and then threadjacking, often in a very demanding tone, into an extended argument about core feminist beliefs. But apparently I'm supposed to be just thrilled to debate Free Speech 101 and Social Effects of Porn 102, and a dozen other issues, on any given thread on this blog. And while I'm certainly not against the idea of debating fundamental beliefs and assumptions, to basically troll, threadjack, and badger somebody into it is bad behavior, and I don't think any blogger should feel obliged to respond to it.

    I'll state just to get it out of the way that I don't have a high opinion of the Feminism 101 blog. I think its tone is very condescending at times, and it promotes a very narrow (rad-leaning) feminism as "consensus" feminism across some very contentious branches of feminism. But at the same time, the idea of having a faq or website or some other document that discusses the basics of one's beliefs, and directing people who demanding answers about the basics of your ideas there, is a good idea.

    Of course, in many cases, no matter what you have written for them, the trolls just want to troll, or attempt to score cheap debate points, which is where it seems like Anonymous was coming from. (I really think that when somebody says something to the effect that by refusing to engage them in debate shows that you don't really believe in free speech, that this is not somebody who's really has serious arguments to air, but just somebody who wants to talk shit.) For my part, my time is limited and valuable to me, and certainly nothing I'd want to waste responding to any extended, and mostly off-topic, line of questioning from somebody who doesn't even seem interested in serious discussion.

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  13. RE, thankyou for taking the time to respond. I think Ernest has openly stated he has reasons for not answering the questions which have little to do with time limitations, although he has now decided to comment on one particular question.

    In terms of morally indefensible pleasures in pornography, which is the context I took Ernest to be discussing them in, is there a line to be drawn somewhere? If so, where and how?

    What are the differences between racism and sexism?

    Ernest stated that he felt unqualified as a white man to raise questions about gangsta rap. If he knew a black gangsta rapper, or was partnered with one, would it then be ok for him to comment? That's what I'm getting from what you've said but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.

    I haven't seen POP so I am unable to comment whether it is propeganda or not.

    "Pornography doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is".. What does pornography claim to be?

    I, and other people I know, have participated in Women's Studies courses and pornography has not been part of the curriculum (I don't have any stats on how representative that is and no doubt there are differences depending on which country you're studying in etc.. also) Wider media and cultural criticism has been a major feature of those courses. Perhaps it depends on which texts you read and the information that you go looking for.

    We are in agreement in terms of the influence of culture and society, but what are the messages we get from culture and society? About being female? About being black? About being working class? About being disabled? About being gay? Which groups hold the most power? Are those influences and power dynamics not present in pornography? Does pornography in turn have no influence on society and culture?
    Did I state that we should get rid of everything? Did I state that we don't, as individuals, resist? Is there a price to be paid for being different, for resisting? What happens when we challenge the status quo? I would agree with bell hooks assertion that we live in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, how would you describe western society power structures?

    Did I state that pornography is the sole influence on our sexual development and fantasies? Yes our sexual development begins very early on, but this does not take place in a vacuum. We have primary and secondary socialisation influences, shaped by wider culture and society, and, shaped by early attachment experiences, as well as biological factors. Again, how does cultural hegemony impact our sexual, and general, development?

    Thanks for the stats info. I will continue to look for info from a range of sources.

    In pornography generally, how often would you say women are shown in dominant positions in comparison to men?

    Agreed on Joe Francis being an asshole, I don't think I stated anywhere that he was every pornographer in the business though.

    You say that most men don't get off on the humilation aspect of pornography, do you have some stats for that I could see? Thanks for your other thoughts on why men might be aroused by some of those scenes. Some of which I hadn't previously considered.

    Why do you think women might get off on degradation?

    It's my experience that there is a lot written on Iraq, violence in mainstream media (and media represenations of women in general), women's experience of positive sexuality and a whole other range of topics by feminists, radical and other. Perhaps you see what is written on pornography more often because that is what you're looking for and interested in. Do you think that sex, sexuality and pornography are irrelevant areas for feminists to explore, write about and critique?

    On your point on the reasons why women are involved in pornography, are you saying that at least half are there because they enjoy it (in addition to the wage). Are there any research figures I can see for that? What about the other half?

    I agree, there are representations of eroticised violence against women everywhere in the mainstream media. What is your analysis of why that might be? Do you think it has cultural and societal impact? Pornography takes those representations to the nth degree in many cases. Those representations don't fall magically from the sky, they are a reflection of cultural values, beliefs and norms, wouldn't you say?

    Why do you think that male performers, in contrast to the majority of other areas of work, are paid less than women in pornography?

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  14. Well, this went pretty much as I thought it would.

    Does anyone still doubt that we're being trolled?

    Here are things that trolls do:

    They appear suddenly, having never posted before.

    They reveal as little about themselves as possible.

    They often adopt polite personae, but their unfriendly agendas soon become obvious.

    They make lots of statements posed as questions.

    When their questions are answered, they return with lots more statements posed as questions. Repeat as necessary.

    They quote from the posts of others, just changing a word or two to skew the original meanings and then ... they make some more statements posed as questions.

    Their purpose is usually to derail an existing discussion among like-minded individuals by nit-picking everyone to death until the original topic is hopelessly obscured.

    Any challenge to the legitimacy of the troll's claim to genuinely care about the topic is treated as a hypocritical attack on the troll's freedom of expression, about which we're always making such a big deal.

    The fact that the troll is allowed to continue to post regardless is never recognized as proof that no one is out to silence an opposing opinion.

    Of course, since trolls rarely state actual opinions of their own in their attempts to draw others into open-ended verbal wrangling that pulls the discussion further off-topic, their complaints in this regard are risible.

    Eventually, threads are buried under provocations and counter-attacks until nothing remains but the noise after the initial message has been effectively drowned out.

    Then they vanish just as suddenly as they appeared.

    As a former admin at the old nina.com forums before they were permanently silenced by a vicious DOS attack at the hands of Islamic extremists in Turkey, I had frequent occasion to deal with these tactics and the most effective means of dealing with trolls, at least until they become personally abusive, as they often do when they don't succeed in their efforts, is to ignore them.

    I devoted a number of days to creating a detailed 18,000 word critique of TPoP, and Ren is correct in stating that I am short of time now to devote to defending everything I said, but my refusal to allow my purposes to be subverted by a stranger who has come here with what appears more and more to be that objective, is less a matter of my convenience than it is a matter of my intention that the focus here remain on intellectually blunting a weapon with which a group of those who utterly oppose the stated convictions of the participants of this blog are targeting those convictions.

    We're talking about The Price of Pleasure and the lies it tells. I've illustrated to the best of my ability and at great length what those lies are and how they're employed to create a false picture of pornography, how it is created, what its purposes are and what its impact on society may be.

    I focused on the techniques used by the propagandists who made this junk. I did not open the floor for a generalized rumble on all aspects of pornography and culture at large. If someone cares to do that, that individual will find that there are plenty of people here down for such an exercise, but I consider it useless and that's why I've tried to keep my participation in this part of the follow-up discussion of my posts to a minimum.

    I will continue to respond, as I have, time permitting, to questions and comments raised by those who have either seen TPoP, intend to, have a direct interest in it or otherwise wish to maintain the intended focus on it.

    I'm delighted that Ren chose to respond as she did to our anonymous visitor, and I think her courtesy to someone who is visibly here with no good in mind, does credit to the principles on which this blog is built.

    But I'm not down for rumbling with strangers over every challenge they might hurl my way.

    Only in one or two instances have I detected anything in anonymous' (who I suspect may actually be more than one person, as anti-porn trolls tend to travel in packs in my experience) long rolls of questions that seem specifically relevant to what I spent so much time and effort putting into words here.

    I have addressed one, and I will address another one or two here.

    Then I will have done with this individual or group of individuals and go back to earning my living as a pornographer, from which the distractions of a troll will prove no more effective at obstructing me than the far more menacing attempts I've dealt with over the years.

    First, there's this: "in terms of morally indefensible pleasures in pornography, which is the context I took Ernest to be discussing them in..."

    Note carefully the rephrasing of what I actually said to suit the "questioner's" purposes. I made a broad reference to morally indefensible pleasures, but I was specifically not speaking in terms of pornography. That context was supplied by my antagonist here. I have no doubt where we'd end up if I went down the road on which this interpretation would lead us.

    I doubt that what I said was taken other than as intended. Instead, I believe it was deliberately distorted in an attempt to steer me toward addressing this or that sexual practice commonly seen in pornography that I acknowledge to be immoral. Yeah, right, like I'm going to supply anyone with that kind of bullshit ammunition. I might actually take offense at being so underestimated were I not such a good-natured kind of guy.

    When I speak of pornography, I speak of that which is lawfully made, and none of the morally indefensible pleasures I had in mind are to be found in lawful pornography.

    And what might those "pleasures" be in real life? The sexual abuse of children, rape, bestiality or any other satisfaction derived from imposition of any person's desires upon anyone or anything unwilling to or incapable of giving informed consent.

    Such activities, by definition, cannot be considered in the context of lawful porn, because their commission, recorded in any medium or not, is unlawful and any record of them would be evidence of a crime.

    Despite the incessant attempts of porn-bashers to conflate the sexual abuse of minors, rape, human trafficking and other illicit activities with legally made and distributed commercial pornography there remains, in fact, exactly no overlap between these activities and the products we create and sell.

    The fact that not a single criminal conviction involving any of the above in association with the production of the so-called mainstream porn with which TPoP claims to concern itself has been obtained in any court of law in the United States during the thirty years since sexually explicit visual content became legal here should bury these false and slanderous charges once and for all. Yet, like zombies, they rise again and again to drip slime over all of us, no matter how remote our own actions may be from such atrocities.

    Such argumentative tactics are unprincipled and deceptive, and that's why I pulled out this particularly blatant example by way of explaining my reluctance to treat anonymous as a sincere seeker of truth.

    Now, onto one point that, as it's been beaten on repeatedly and does have some bearing on how this whole topic may be viewed by passing strangers who haven't been following closely (and I don't blame anyone for that, BTW), I will take on this bit of business right here:

    "Ernest stated that he felt unqualified as a white man to raise questions about gangsta rap. If he knew a black gangsta rapper, or was partnered with one, would it then be ok for him to comment? "

    Ren answered this masterfully, and yet here it is, back again in slightly altered form. Could it be that no answer will satisfy? I strongly suspect that is the case, but I will validate Ren's assertions on my behalf.

    And BTW, please note that Ren made my credentials as someone who lives and works in the environment of commercially produced pornography everyday the centerpiece of her response, which was then reduced to knowing or being partnered with a single gangsta rapper.

    On the basis of knowing any single individual, even intimately, I would never claim the right to speak authoritatively to the commercial culture in which that individual makes his or her living. I don't just know and am partnered with a single pornographer. As anon notes repeatedly, I've been in the porn business for over two decades and know literally thousands of people in it.

    Now, if I were a music producer who spent years working with gangsta rappers, knew hundreds of them personally, understood the mechanics of how they make their livings and/or was partnered with one, I might feel qualified to say some things about the commercial culture of gangsta rap.

    One thing I would never do under any circumstances is attempt to speak to the experience of being African-American. And contrary to yet another distortion shived into this conversation by anon, I do not presume to speak for women in porn either, as I am not one. Bob Jensen and Gail Dines do, without shame, but I only comment on what they tell me and what I have personally observed.

    Of all the many sins against truth of which TPoP is guilty, their is none more heinous in my view than its silencing of the voices of porn performers, both male and female. In fact, I could even speak with some credibility to the experiences of the former, as I was a performer myself for many years.

    But Sun never asked me a single question about that aspect of my career, despite the fact that footage of me performing appears in TPoP. An objective observer might wonder why, in the three hours she had me in front of her camera, the subject of my own history as a performer never came up.

    Clear enough on the limits of what I consider to be my expertise? I'd like to think so, but somehow I doubt these waters will remain un-muddied for long.

    And this?

    "Agreed on Joe Francis being an asshole, I don't think I stated anywhere that he was every pornographer in the business though."

    No you didn't, but the construction of your original comment on the subject, which I have previously addressed, was clearly meant to imply that his conduct was somehow normal or typical within our community and you have thus far conspicuously failed to acknowledge repeated, readily verfiable claims to the contrary.

    And as to what pornography claims to be, it claims to be entertainment for adults, period. Others claim it's something else, but those others generally want to reify it into something they can readily target for destruction as a social evil rather than a form of entertainment. Gail Dines has loudly proclaimed (but I repeat myself) that she intends "to destroy the sex industry completely." Toward that goal, she and others do everything they can to make porn appear to be something other than entertainment, speech or expression.

    Despite these attempts, porn remains entertainment for adults. It has no political agenda, conscious or unconscious. That is something I can and do say with confidence as a result of 25 years of close observation. Anyone who thinks pornographers have motives different from those of mainstream entertainment providers are simply wrong. The object of the game is to make money by entertaining audiences, full-stop.

    And here's another rhetorical lulu, re the portrayal of violence against women. Anon claims that "Pornography takes those representations to the nth degree in many cases."

    The nth degree must be pretty extreme compared to the routine depiction of murder and mutilation of women characteristic of mainstream entertainment.

    I had hoped to avoid this, but I just can't help asking a question of my own. Just exactly what in lawful pornography could realistically be described as taking such representations of violence to the nth degree? Bit of an exaggeration there, maybe?

    Now, about the business of incessantly calling for stats about this and that: Dines admitted on national television that there are, in fact, no scientifically acceptable studies regarding porn whatsoever.

    It is a radioactive topic and no funding is available from universities, foundations or government sources for non-partisan research on this subject. You can get money to "study" it from sources whose agendas you're willing to serve, as self-proclaimed leftist radical Melissa Farley did from the Bush administration for her "research" on legal prostitution in Nevada. Not surprisingly, her "survey" came up with results entirely in keeping with the policies of that administration.

    But as for reliable statistics about anything related to pornography, basically, they don't exist anywhere. There is a vast body of anecdotal testimony accumulated since legalization, but academically speaking, that would be considered purely ethnographic study.

    Sales statistics for individual pornographic products do exist, and are generally closely held as proprietary information by the companies that make them, and general trends are observable from the multiple sales charts kept by various Web sites and trade publications, but those statistics are subject to various interpretations.

    For instance, contrary to what TPoP relentlessly insists, there appears to be a trend away from hard gonzo and back toward softer, more feature-oriented material in the X-rated video market. A quick look at representative sales charts from AVN, X-Biz, adultdvdtalk.com and adultdvdempire.com would support such speculation. But that's all it is at this point, speculation.

    One statistic I can provide is this: the sex education video line Nina and I produce for Adam&Eve, a company that subjects all its products to review by a board of therapists prior to release and has very strict standards and practices regulations, has sold just under a million units spread out through 38 installments. So apparently gonzo is not the only thing that does well in the pornography market. But that is only one statistic and its significance is surely open to doubt.

    For what it's worth, I've argued forcefully in the column I write for the trade journal X-Biz, that it would be in the industry's best interest to sponsor some research of its own, but that is not an economic priority for an industry that, despite claims about its vast wealth and limitless reach, is struggling in a difficult market environment, so I'm not expecting any action on this soon.

    Finally, there is this: If I deny that pornography is a social influence, and would therefore seem to be denying that media overall are social influences (an absolutely absurd position I have never taken and never would), why am I concerned about the possible influence of TPoP?

    While the influence of entertainment media of all sorts, and of advertising, journalism, commentary, etc. is certainly a reasonable topic for consideration, TPoP is none of these things. It is a deliberate attempt to manipulate the opinions of specific demographics for clearly discernible political purposes. If you go to its promotional Web site and check out the list of screenings already scheduled, you'll see that college campuses are the main venues at which it will be shown.

    It is also playing in some corners of the film festival circuit where it is likely to be viewed by commentators who might be induced to think differently about pornography as a result of seeing it.

    Clearly, an attempt is being made through the use of lies, misdirection and the manipulation of film techniques to undermine pornography's status as protected speech among current and future intellectuals whose defense of its right to exist under The First Amendment is critical to it's survival.

    There is nothing vague, indirect or diffuse about the influence TPoP attempts to exercise. It sets out to persuade the viewer that pornography is evil, and while it proposes no solution to deal with that evil, it certainly wishes to leave the impression that something ought to be done about it.

    The truth about anon's presence here is revealed in this statement:

    "I haven't seen POP so I am unable to comment whether it is propeganda or not."

    I have and it is, and that's the topic here. This is a space for people who believe the right of pornography to exist should be protected. TPoP seeks by unscrupulous means to undermine that right. This makes it an immediate concern of those who created this blog and who frequent it.

    Let's see if we can stick to the business at hand, though I'm ever so certain there will be further attempts made to broaden the conversation into meaningless generalities.

    After having put so much time and effort, not to mention having had to endure repeated replays of the dreary thing itself, into addressing the issues raised by TPoP RELEVANT TO THIS BLOG, I would prefer to see the follow-up comments direct themselves to the original topic, and not to the distractions engendered by hostile trolling.

    Having broken my own vow to avoid this trap, I can hardly insist others do better, but I would implore them to try.

    This is not all about anonymous and whatever anonymous has in mind.

    This is about The Price of Pleasure and the lies it tells about something that matters to those of us here on a regular basis.

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  15. "
    One thing I would never do under any circumstances is attempt to speak to the experience of being African-American. And contrary to yet another distortion shived into this conversation by anon, I do not presume to speak for women in porn either, as I am not one. Bob Jensen and Gail Dines do, without shame, but I only comment on what they tell me and what I have personally observed."

    You know, Ernest... I do sometimes wonder about the sort of intellectual pirouettes people do around "speaking for."

    On the one hand, there's the "speaking for" that's clearly bloody disgusting. The "speaking for" that happens when, say, someone like Jensen goes "I saw a video, someone winced, therefore I see torture" and ignores people saying "I like doing that and it's fine," or even hounds people on convention floors so he can make their weariness look like hatred of their job.

    But then there's what you're doing, which is "Wait, these women are my friends and my lovers. I talk to them every day. I work with them. I know them. When someone uses their names to make a point, I don't see the name and nod, I think of the person I know and what I know about her values and ideals."

    And that? That doesn't bother me. And I think sometimes people will try to turn THAT into "speaking for," just so they don't have to listen to someone they deem unsavory. I think it's yet another instance of theory trumping life. "Oh, he doesn't know what being a woman is like, he'd have to ask Trinity. [Tossed that in for slight irony; a few of my friends will get the pun there.] Oh, he's relating something she said? Or talking about what he suspects she thinks based on in-depth conversations? OH well that's still WRONG AND BAD."

    And, well, fuck that with a rusty spoon. If you were waltzing in saying "I know how women feel about everything, and coincidentally they think I'm always right. Isn't that splendiferous?" that would be one thing. But you're not. You're talking about people you know.

    Similarly, like you said, if you knew gangsta rappers as closely then yeah, I don't think you could know from the inside what it's like to live in their skin, but I think you could legitimately say to a Very Concerned, Precisely Theoryful Handwringing Whitey that he has his head up his ass, if he does.

    I'm not a woman in porn, so I could be wrong, but I really don't think that you "can't speak for them" in that sense. You know what a lot of them would, do, and have had to say, therefore you're not talking for them. Talking for is what happens when Jensen looks at three minutes of video and goes "who IS Candi? What do her few words, 'I'm your slut?' mean to us now?"

    Barf.

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  16. Thanks, Trinity, That's quite a compliment. I know you value the voices of others as highly as I do, and I'm glad you trust me to relay those voices as faithfully as possible.

    But observation is not the same as experience and I have to draw a line around my own as distinct from that relayed to me by others who have actually had it for themselves.

    I can and have talked about what it's like to be a male porn performer. Women in porn have their own stories to tell, and I do my best to report those stories as given.

    I am also aware, bitterly aware in fact, that many women have had very bad experiences in porn and tell very different stories than the ones I hear. I tend to meet and work with the performers who find this environment hospitable and do well here. The nature of the pictures I make, as others have pointed out to me, may well insulate me from the harsher realities some performers encounter.

    We need to hear about those realities as well. I've never favored trying to conceal them, or disguise them as something less damaging than they are. It's a mistake to do so for a couple of reasons. It insults the intelligence of outside observers to insist that nothing bad ever happens in any given branch of sex work. They instinctively know better and such claims undermine our credibility when we attempt to rebut demonstrably false accusations.

    And more importantly, denying the existence of those realities makes it impossible to correct them. Before the reality of HIV risk was spoken of openly in this industry, terrible chances were taken with people's lives and predictably terrible consequences ensued.

    Though some of us did try to get the industry to see the danger, we didn't get far until the damage was done. Then, of course, the industry went into full damage-control mode and some of us were fetched back from Siberia to be put in charge of that effort, but by then an avoidable catastrophe had already taken place.

    That's why all voices from the world of pornography need to be heard.

    And that is why, as you rightly point out, the presumption of outsiders, especially hostile outsiders, to usurp those voices to their own ends is, indeed, barf-inducing.

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  17. Ernest,

    You're welcome.

    And yes, I do think there's a difference between a friend relating something and a person talking about her actual experiences. I just don't like the way that turns, in some circles, into telling the people who DO try their hardest to be respectful to shut up.

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  18. Also, this:

    is something I admire hugely about both you and Ren. A lot of people can't admit their experience isn't the only one.

    I have a rough time with that one myself, when ex-BDSMers show up to tell the whole Internet what a cabal of abusers we truly are. It's easy for me to just go "Well fuck you too" rather than "Wow, who were those people? How can we best throw them out?"

    Though the type I'm talking about usually is for absolute abolition and sees fixing the problem as crazy talk, so... *shrug*

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  19. Also, this:

    "I am also aware, bitterly aware in fact, that many women have had very bad experiences in porn and tell very different stories than the ones I hear. I tend to meet and work with the performers who find this environment hospitable and do well here. The nature of the pictures I make, as others have pointed out to me, may well insulate me from the harsher realities some performers encounter.

    We need to hear about those realities as well. I've never favored trying to conceal them, or disguise them as something less damaging than they are. It's a mistake to do so for a couple of reasons. It insults the intelligence of outside observers to insist that nothing bad ever happens in any given branch of sex work. They instinctively know better and such claims undermine our credibility when we attempt to rebut demonstrably false accusations."

    is something I admire hugely about both you and Ren. A lot of people can't admit their experience isn't the only one.

    I have a rough time with that one myself, when ex-BDSMers show up to tell the whole Internet what a cabal of abusers we truly are. It's easy for me to just go "Well fuck you too" rather than "Wow, who were those people? How can we best throw them out?"

    Though the type I'm talking about usually is for absolute abolition and sees fixing the problem as crazy talk, so... *shrug*

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  20. Not to belabor the point, but:

    Anonymous said...

    "Since this will only go round in circles and dissension appears unwelcome - in the form of asking questions, or a certain amount of questions, or questions by someone who is anti-pornography (i'm still not sure of the protocols) - I won't make any further posts on this matter."

    Exit right on cue.

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  21. I never say die.


    Ernest, et all, I am not done, and I do think I am in a position to speak on the following:

    "RE, thankyou for taking the time to respond. I think Ernest has openly stated he has reasons for not answering the questions which have little to do with time limitations, although he has now decided to comment on one particular question.

    In terms of morally indefensible pleasures in pornography, which is the context I took Ernest to be discussing them in, is there a line to be drawn somewhere? If so, where and how?"

    No. The harsh me says no. If people consent, and why yes, I mean consent, to making visual MEDIA, and are of age to do so, then I say okay…and I say okay as a women who has done so.


    "What are the differences between racism and sexism?"

    Well, anony, I am a woman. I am also a Jew. I am also mixed enough that people ask me “What are you?” Most think I am Greek, but I’m not. I can say, me being a woman has never caused the strife in my life that the “What are you, Jew?” question has.


    "Ernest stated that he felt unqualified as a white man to raise questions about gangsta rap. If he knew a black gangsta rapper, or was partnered with one, would it then be ok for him to comment? That's what I'm getting from what you've said but I'm not sure if that's what you mean."

    If he was, he’d have more basis to comment on it…are you Jewish? Ernest and I are, would you presume to dictate anti Semitism to us?

    "I haven't seen POP so I am unable to comment whether it is propeganda or not."

    It is.

    "Pornography doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is".. What does pornography claim to be?"

    Sexual media for adult viewers.

    "I, and other people I know, have participated in Women's Studies courses and pornography has not been part of the curriculum (I don't have any stats on how representative that is and no doubt there are differences depending on which country you're studying in etc.. also) Wider media and cultural criticism has been a major feature of those courses. Perhaps it depends on which texts you read and the information that you go looking for."

    Perhaps, but much modern feminist writing is all about the porn. Oddly enough, I consider myself a strong, articulate, determined women, yet, I make porn…

    "We are in agreement in terms of the influence of culture and society, but what are the messages we get from culture and society? About being female? About being black? About being working class? About being disabled? About being gay? Which groups hold the most power? Are those influences and power dynamics not present in pornography? Does pornography in turn have no influence on society and culture?"

    Wrong question to ask me, Nony. I am female. I am a Jew/ Slav/ Asian, I came up working class, I have OCD and chronic insomnia…I am straight though…so now, I ask you, do you think sex has power? I admit my size 0 frame is a privilege, but fuck if I could do algebra. People with MONEY hold the most power...and sure, porn has an influence, which pales in comparison to so many things.

    "Did I state that we should get rid of everything? Did I state that we don't, as individuals, resist? Is there a price to be paid for being different, for resisting? What happens when we challenge the status quo? I would agree with bell hooks assertion that we live in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, how would you describe western society power structures?"

    Western Society? We’re all commodities, but answer me this, Nony… I strip, I do porn, I am “conventionally attractive”, but I do NOTHING that I do not want to do. I am extremely outspoken. I am an outsider, there are very few places I feel at home….yet, I am a sellout? Riddle me that.

    "Did I state that pornography is the sole influence on our sexual development and fantasies? Yes our sexual development begins very early on, but this does not take place in a vacuum. We have primary and secondary socialisation influences, shaped by wider culture and society, and, shaped by early attachment experiences, as well as biological factors. Again, how does cultural hegemony impact our sexual, and general, development?"

    I speak only for me….I knew I wanted brutal before I saw anything. You know what I advocate the most? Women saying what they want! My pain tolerance is high, my intimacy level is low…I think other women are different than me, and they should ask for what they want.

    "Thanks for the stats info. I will continue to look for info from a range of sources."

    You do that.

    "In pornography generally, how often would you say women are shown in dominant positions in comparison to men?"

    Once again, depends on the porn. Feature? I think it is typical of the way biology works- but you get all positions, including woman on top. Gonzo? Male dominant. BDSM? Half & half.


    "You say that most men don't get off on the humilation aspect of pornography, do you have some stats for that I could see? Thanks for your other thoughts on why men might be aroused by some of those scenes. Some of which I hadn't previously considered."

    I do gonzo porn, where I get called all kinds of shit. I shake hands with the guys, we say “great scene” and there is NO indication that they think of me as a lesser.

    "Why do you think women might get off on degradation? "

    I get off on it. Big time. Most easy reason? People have dark and not so civilized sides.

    "It's my experience that there is a lot written on Iraq, violence in mainstream media (and media represenations of women in general), women's experience of positive sexuality and a whole other range of topics by feminists, radical and other. Perhaps you see what is written on pornography more often because that is what you're looking for and interested in. Do you think that sex, sexuality and pornography are irrelevant areas for feminists to explore, write about and critique?"

    I think writing about sex and sexuality is great, really, the problem is, so many people assume universals. I bet my idea of a smashing good time would send you screaming from the room. My thoughts on positive female sexuality is whatever female saying what she wants. So yeah, write on porn all you want, but remember, not all women feel like you do.

    "On your point on the reasons why women are involved in pornography, are you saying that at least half are there because they enjoy it (in addition to the wage). Are there any research figures I can see for that? What about the other half?"

    Yes, I am saying half are there because they dig it, or prefer it to anything else. As for the other half, I am all for helping to get them out…please, do see my creds. When I say I do it because I love it, do you beleive me?

    "I agree, there are representations of eroticised violence against women everywhere in the mainstream media. What is your analysis of why that might be? Do you think it has cultural and societal impact? Pornography takes those representations to the nth degree in many cases. Those representations don't fall magically from the sky, they are a reflection of cultural values, beliefs and norms, wouldn't you say?"

    NO! Porn does NOT. Women are NOT gutted and KILLED on porn sets. Women are not BEATEN TO DEATH on porn sets. Women do not have their heads sawed off on porn sets! In mass media, that happens, so lay off the fucking porn. As for the draw of sex and violence? Both are visceral emotions: Fight, flight, fuck. Back in the day, when men were hung? They ejaculated. Humans ARE animals, after all. Sex can be emotional, but it is always physical.

    "Why do you think that male performers, in contrast to the majority of other areas of work, are paid less than women in pornography?"

    Because more men watch porn than women, if women demanded erotica and porn, the industry would take note and accommodate that market.

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  22. Ren,

    Excellent as always. Blisteringly honest and genuinely informative. You pull no punches. You never claim that your experience is universal. You answer as you believe without calculating for effect.

    As you know, I share many of your beliefs about the "nature" part of the phrase "human nature." This can be counted on to make us both unpopular in many circles, but I think it is the denial of these less comfortable truths about ourselves that results in the worst outcomes.

    When we rationalize our darker desires and attribute them to the evil influences of others, we handily diffuse our own responsibility for the manner in which they find expression, which they surely will, one way or another. Nature, as the saying goes, bats last, and if we recognize this, we can exercise our ethical discretion at the moment of decision, rather than ceding that authority to others.

    I think one of the reasons you're often treated with such venomous cruelty by doctrinaire radical feminists (whose ugly behavior toward you has left me breathless on more than one occasion) is because they feel free to make everything somebody else's fault.

    In the classic logic of the abuser, they project onto you the onus for their own viciousness. After all, they would never have done such-and-such to you if you hadn't said so-and-so. Spend any time in family court and you'll hear that kind of argument over and over. The abuser's accounts often start out with descriptions of something the victim said or did that made what happened next inevitable.

    Personally, if I were a judge, anyone who started from that point would be looking at the statutory maximum.

    On the other hand, there is hope for the person who says, at whatever risk, "I did this because I was angry and it felt good at the time."

    There is at least a rudimentary self-awareness in such an admission that might someday evolve into personal responsibility.

    Yes, I understand that there are mitigating circumstances in the lives of all of us. We are products of our time, place and personal experience. But in the end, there is only one finger on the trigger. What matters, finally, is who actually did what, a subject that ideologues never care to address directly.

    Robert Louis Stevenson (who ought to know after all his struggles with cocaine and morphine addiction) once observed that every human being has "thoughts that would shock hell."

    It's less important how those thoughts arise than how we choose to act or not act on them.

    In short, you speak the emmis. And yours is the very kind of truth that this abominable movie attempts to erase with all its interminable theorizing and analyzing. In its parallel universe, only pornographers, and the patriarchy they represent, make real choices and bear real moral responsibilities.

    For everyone else there's nothing but victimization and excuses.

    Thank you, as usual, for declining erasure.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Ernest, as it was you to whom my questions were directed I will make this last post in response to some of your words.

    I have to say, firstly, that I'm pretty flabbergested by the hysteria and melodrama of your post(s). For example, if you felt I'd misconstrued your words (eg the question about indefensible pleasures) why not simply clarify instead of letting loose the hounds. Polite personae with an unfriendly agenda? Well, I usually do try to be polite, even when I disagree with someone. RL and interwebs. I don't always succeed. Unfriendly agenda? What exactly? It was obvious, and I didn't try to disguise, that I am anti-pornography. My agenda was to have you respond to my questions, explore your opinions, and have you account for some of the statements you made.
    I don't care about the topic? That's quite an assertion to make. Can you back that up with any evidence about who I am and what my passions and interests are or the work I am involved in? You couldn't actually be more wrong.
    Some of my questions were answered by Ren, which I took the time to respond to. I'm not allowed to ask anything further if I want clarification? Need I remind you also that the questions were directed at you, Ernest, and you chose not to respond. Or to respond partially. Or to bury responses - eventually - in a long winded, pious, personal attack. There, I have stopped being polite. Is that better?

    You've set it up nicely to put me in a position where I can't win, excellent manipulation skills. The questions are an outrage, I'm a troll, I'm not to be responded to, when you respond to me I'll just come back for more, when you respond to me i'll disappear off into the sunset.. Covered all bases.
    Here are the facts. I read your piece on POP, I had some questions from there that I wanted to ask and I framed them in a manner obvious that I was anti pornography.
    I'm a troll because.. you've made it so. I love that you mention me in the same breath as terrorists. That is truly priceless. Are you sure you're not the George Bush supporter here?

    Perhaps I would have gone on to reveal more of myself and my opinions but it appears that those with opinions different from yours are unwelcome in the extreme. Given the intial responses I received, why would I? Why would anyone? May I remind you that so far, because I asked you questions from an anti pornography perspective, I've been accused of/been called:

    a troll, a coward, making an ass of myself, slanderer, dripper of slime, engendering feelings of having bathed in slime for some, horrible, an asshole, lacking in basic common sense, shitty and disruptive of manner, talk shit, badgering,
    unprincipled, deceptive, no serious points to make on the issue of pornography, manipulative, insincere, hostile, an abuser(?), half assed, risible, disingenuous, baiting, dishonest, an unprincipled demagogue, making accusations of.. i'm not quite sure what toward one and all, gutless, a generalised rambler, no good in mind, cross examining ernest like a criminal, maker of scurrilous and false claims, lacking in credibility, asking too many questions, asking questions in the wrong way, nit pick everyone to death, madame ( :) lovin that one), ranting, drive by smacker, entrapment, contemptuous, allied with the religious right (how would they react to my alternative sexual orientation i wonder), snide, condescending (Ernest, you may be right in your accusation there, but really, you are the world champion when it comes to condescension) and, of course, acting not alone but as part of a crack team of trolls.

    The floor is open for debate only under the specific parameters set out by you. I would have had more respect for you if you'd simply stated that you were not willing to answer the questions because they made you angry or uncomfortable or whatever your real reasons were, instead of stoking the fires of indignant outrage among your disciples. No regular poster in this blog is in any position to take the moral high ground on fair and honourable behaviour in interwebs debate, I feel it is my duty to remind you.
    Lastly, one of your many jibes at me is that I have not yet seen POP. That didn't seem to stop you, and a few other regulars here, passing comment prior to viewing it. I didn't make any comment on the documentary, I asked you broader questions on the topic of pornography which, given many of the statements you made more broadly on the issue, I thought was fair enough.

    Pretty weak of me to respond when I'd decided I was not going to contribute further, but there we are.

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  24. Likened to islamic extremists rather than terrorists, I should say. Big difference. Apologies.

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  25. Actually, an apology is insufficient. This was an inaccuarate, to say the least, conflation to make. Despite having undertaken anti-discriminatory practice and equalities training there are still clearly unconscious processes at work that require challenging on my part. No excuses.

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  26. Oh, please, Anonymous...spare us.

    You came on here to ask specific questions of us.

    We answered your questions directly and fully.

    You don't like the answers we give?? Sorry...it's still our space.

    And to whine about how the deck is stacked against you as an antiporn activist??? My dear, this blog isn't called Blog of PRO-Porn Activism for nothing. We are as passionately in defense of porn's right of existence as you are against it, and we make as much an apology for our collective beliefs as Maggie Hays, Heart, and the producers of TPoP do for their beliefs. (At least, we, though, allow for opponents an opportunity to respond and post comments.) But I believe you knew this going in; and your attempt to reduce us to your strawpepole stereotypes.

    Oh....and one last thing, Anony....you talk about how Ernest gives himself the right to pass his judgement on TPoP, while dissing you for your attempted defense of the movie without ever seeing it. Well, madame, I have a confession to make: I have not seen the film either, and probably like you, are basing my personal opinion on review from others who have (like Ernest and SerpentLibertine and Aspasia). However, I do know enough about antiporn feminist theory and practice and from past attempts at anti-porn propaganda (I do remember "Not A Love Story") that I can make an educated opinion on the movie....just as I can cede to you your right to make your own opinions even if you don't see the movie. That's not the issue here; your tone and direct leading of your questions to fit your personal ideology, as well as your thinly veiled drive-by insulting of Ernest and me for our own beliefs, is the main issue here.

    I'll tell you what, Anony....let me propose a deal. You persuade your antiporn allies to open up their sites and blogs to those of us on the "pro-porn" side who feel slandered and distorted by their stated words and beliefs about their chosen profession, and we will consider giving you full access to a even and fair debate. Until that time comes, however, you come here on your own accord and at your own risk; we are not required by law to give you free reign to denigrate us. As my friend Shag over at Wear Clean Draws is fond of saying: "This blog is not a free carrier."

    But, thank you for the effort and the attempt at discussion, anyway.


    Anthony

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  27. "As you know, I share many of your beliefs about the "nature" part of the phrase "human nature." This can be counted on to make us both unpopular in many circles, but I think it is the denial of these less comfortable truths about ourselves that results in the worst outcomes.

    When we rationalize our darker desires and attribute them to the evil influences of others, we handily diffuse our own responsibility for the manner in which they find expression, which they surely will, one way or another. Nature, as the saying goes, bats last, and if we recognize this, we can exercise our ethical discretion at the moment of decision, rather than ceding that authority to others."

    I agree as well. I think some porn depicts cruelty as fun for the same reasons some movies or books depict cruelty as fun: because there is a side of human nature that's like that.

    Thing is, though, I don't think that's just sexual. And I don't think it's just aimed at women.

    Forgive my geekery here, but think of the Star Wars movies (the good ones, though the same theme is in the bad ones.) Think of Luke: Very Good Kid. But yet there was an entire subplot of that about how even good people are tempted by the Dark Side. Hell, as bad as the prequels were, that's what happened to Vader.

    Humans have been writing about the seductiveness of being cruel, being harsh, being mean as long as they've been writing. I don't think the fact that sexy cruelty shows up in subsets of porn means anything more terribly important than the fact that a lot of Hollywood movies have sexy villains that seem like they'd be more fun in the sack than the heroes does.

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  28. As in, people just go right on defining which kinds of power women can want or can be depicted as having. And even for many feminists, that power has to be gentle, not "hierarchical," not "rough." If they want power and are ambitious enough to be mean about getting it, they're shunned.

    As you would say:

    YES! That!

    :)

    Serious... spot on.

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  29. Trinity,

    I quite agree that the appeal of cruelty extends well beyond anything directly related to sex, though I often suspect that there is an underlying element of sexual arousal, however indirect, in the expression of cruelty in non-sexual situations.

    I can think of many historical and current examples where that sexual subtest could be interpreted to exist in actions that, of themselves, don't appear sexual, such as the mass public executions they carry out in China every so often.

    But whatever the motivation, Sade noted long ago that human beings are drawn, overall to what he called "the voluptuousness of cruelty."

    It is now, has always been, and will always be with us. We must deal with it, or be dealt with by it.

    I liked your Star Wars example. It's direct and to the point. Everyone with an opportunity to abuse power experiences, at least briefly, the desire to do so in some situation.

    It is the resistance to that temptation that is the signature of cognitive morality.

    Bad as those prequels were, there is a moment of brilliant clarity when young Anakin succumbs to his vengeful rage over the brutal murder of his mother and slaughters an entire village. We know that this decision sets him irrevocably on the path toward becoming Darth Vader.

    That is the moment of decision I was talking about, and it is the true test of which side of your humanity will prevail in such moments from then on.

    Everyone will experience similar trials, though not so dramatically, and they will reveal their deepest nature in choices they make when those trials come along.

    One of the reasons I am always suspicious of utopian ideologies is my belief that there are limits to the perfectability of human nature, and that no just and decent society can be constructed without taking those limits into account.

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  30. "I quite agree that the appeal of cruelty extends well beyond anything directly related to sex, though I often suspect that there is an underlying element of sexual arousal, however indirect, in the expression of cruelty in non-sexual situations."

    I'd say so too, but then again, both you *and* I are big old sadomasochists, so... does everyone's brain work that way?

    My guess is yes, to an extent, but humans do surprise me. And there are some cruelties that I'm not sure are sexual at the root. I've seen people I know get angry and work themselves into lathers with obvious relish, but relish that didn't always strike me as directly sexual.

    I think that *can* be sexual -- I tend to think that, for example, Jensen is probably getting off in some weird way on his crusade against porn. But I think that sometimes the pleasure of aggressiveness, even to the point of viciousness or cruelty, isn't necessarily sexual.

    Then again, well -- I remember one of my and my friends' first reactions to Sept. 11 being exactly how viciously and cruelly we wanted to *rape* Bin Laden with rusty sharp things and *then* kill him, despite that there was no sexual violence in that crime. So whether it's always there or not, I do think sexually tinged sadism worms its way in to a lot of aggressivity.

    I actually also noticed this in a campaign *against* sexual assault. One of the flyers up around my college read simply

    "if a man thinks it's his right to rape a woman

    maybe he should experience

    what it's like

    to be penetrated"

    Which is rather appalling, as I remember distinctly that it said "to be penetrated" rather than "to be penetrated without consent" and that either reveals a very weird idea of what sex is, or a very weird assumption about whether men can/do ever consent to being penetrated.

    But I remember seeing that, and it stopping me short -- probably mainly because the idea that one of the things I like to DO consensually was flat-out equated with rape. But also because for a flyer that was supposed to be roundly condemning rape, it literally said "These people should be raped instead." Revenge, sadism, sexuality... all there, on a black and red poster.

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  31. Anonymous,

    Okay, I'm super-busy today trying to catch up on work deferred while spending my time here, but I since you came back, clearly in a personal context, to respond to my previous comment, I'll reply in kind.

    Let me do so by first stating that, odd as it may seem, this final post of yours inspires a certain trust and respect none of your earlier visits here have. However angry you may be, I get the feeling for the first time that you're talking with me instead of at me, and that changes things. If the whole conversation had begun this way, the results might have been quite different.

    Before I go any further, though, I have to remind you and other readers that the topic here is still TPoP, which i continue to consider a very important matter, and I hope this will be viewed as, at most, and addendum to that conversation.

    A big problem I have with all your posts here is that, somewhere within them, you almost always get around to saying you haven't seen this movie and probably won't, but that you'd like to.

    If the topic of a thread on some blog you frequent for other reasons had nothing to do with my general views on pornography, but I repeatedly and insistently logged onto that thread and tried to steer it in the direction of my concerns instead of those stated by the thread-starter, would that behavior not arouse some suspicion in you?

    And I can't help pointing out that if you don't get to see TPoP as you say you wish, it may be because it won't make into the U.K. as a result of the "extreme pornography" laws recently enacted there with considerable lobbying by radical feminists.

    I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss such a possibility. When Canada adopted content restrictions shaped to a great degree by the influence of Andrea Dworkin's writing and activism, her own books were among those banned in Canada.

    I know you've taken no position in favor of censorship here, but I do think that censorship under whatever guise is what anti-pornography propaganda like TPoP eventually hopes to inspire, and I only wish that that those who so ardently aspire to eliminate the legal protections that enable porn to exist could see the danger such views could eventually pose to their own freedoms.

    Now then, here's what I propose to do. I'm going to paste in your entire final post and address what of it I can, point by point, in as civil a manner as possible. I plead guilty to condescension, but that is the way I respond to what I see as veiled, rather than honest and direct, challenges to my opinions. Since you've now de-cloaked to some extent, I think you'll detect a distinct change in my approach.

    I remain, however, an ideological opponent and a debater who plays to win, so I wouldn't expect that none of what you say will be challenged and challenged hard. I hope you're down for that, as we say over here.

    "Ernest, as it was you to whom my questions were directed I will make this last post in response to some of your words."

    Okay. And I won't hold you to your pledge to make this your last post. No one here will. We haven't stopped you from posting anything thus far and by now you must know that this is unlikely to happen.

    "I have to say, firstly, that I'm pretty flabbergested by the hysteria and melodrama of your post(s). "

    Hysteria is a word rarely applied to me, but often applied to women angered at what they see as deliberate denigration of their ideas and feelings. It's a gendered dismissive derived from the Greek "hystera," meaning uterus, where Hippocrates believed that strong emotional responses from women originated. I'm surprised you'd use it here. Knowing its origins, I consider it a value-laden term and try to avoid using it.

    Melodrama is in the eye of the beholder. If my writing comes across to you as such, well, as the saying goes, everybody's a critic.

    I've been the object of some fairly vicious and personal attacks in the feminist blogosphere recently, I suspect because unlike most men in my line of work, I take radical feminist critiques of what I say seriously and respond to them as such.

    Want to see an example of the kinds of reviews I get on the other side of the fence? Check this out:

    "One thing I'll also address is this: re: greene. of course he's human. of course he has family and friends. duh. But people who do a various assortment of awful/bigoted/racist/misogynist/etc things are, according to those close to them, often the "fine upstanding citizens who are too lovely to do such a thing"--from pornographers, to men who rape their daughters, to KKK members, to Nazis, to abusive johns, to gay bashers, etc. Nazis have family who love them, fer christsake."

    This from the LJ of someone who has made a point of hammering me for all the alleged sins of pornography, even to casually assenting to the stated opinion of one of her posters that "pornographers should be killed," and was said in response to a post by Trinity attempting to defend my humanity.

    Comparing a Jew to a Nazi? That's not only melodramatic, it's also vaguely anti-semitic and frankly, out of bounds.

    Yes, I know you weren't the one who said it, but when we get down to the part where you express your anger at what you perceive to be insulting treatment here, I hope you'll look back on that quote and consider how the standards of civility differ here from many other places. Likewise, I suppose, the standards for melodrama.

    "For example, if you felt I'd misconstrued your words (eg the question about indefensible pleasures) why not simply clarify instead of letting loose the hounds."

    Here again, I must point out that your use of language spins what I actually said. I don't think you misconstrued my remarks and I didn't say so. I said you distorted them, and I responded to the distortion. I cannot clarify what I did not say. Instead, i responded by clarifying what I did say, which was that my reference to indefensible pleasures was not porn-related. I suppose the "letting loose the hounds" thing was re my mention of bestiality (it's a joke, okay?). Otherwise, I hardly think that's what I did.

    "Polite personae with an unfriendly agenda? Well, I usually do try to be polite, even when I disagree with someone. RL and interwebs. I don't always succeed."

    You have observed a strained politeness in some of your responses to some comments here. In others, you most definitely have not succeeded. I will grant that you have plenty of company in this behavior. I don't take responsibility for any comments but my own, which have been challenging and not always polite either. I do regard good manners as important, but I also recognize that in confrontational situations, of the type you've created here, good manners sometimes come into conflict with necessary candor. I vote for candor when that conflict arises.

    " Unfriendly agenda? What exactly? It was obvious, and I didn't try to disguise, that I am anti-pornography. My agenda was to have you respond to my questions, explore your opinions, and have you account for some of the statements you made."

    Account? Another interesting choice of words. Nothing very friendly about it. As Gail Dines stormed out of our booth at AdultEx after an hour of unfriendly interrogation of my spouse and me by Dines and Jenson, she turned back to me with narrowed eyes and said: "I've seen your movies and you have a lot to answer for."

    I am not accountable to her or you. When you come to a place meant to be safe and supportive to people like me, and this applies here as much as it does at AdultEx, and pound away with question after question that leads further and further away from the intent of my actual work, I suspect that doing exactly that is the agenda.

    Again, this thread is about TPoP. Again, you haven't seen it. Again, you want to address everything in the world about porn except the thing about which I started the discussion. That has a strategic appearance characteristic of the kind of trolling behavior anyone who moderates blogs comes to know too well.

    If you want to engage me in a wider discussion of porn, I would be willing to do so on a thread not dedicated to a specific issue of immediate importance to our community.

    In fact, given a little time for the discussion of TPoP to unfold in full, I will actually open a thread expressly inviting you to return and ask whatever questions you like, which I will attempt to answer as truthfully and completely as I can. That seems a fair enough offer.

    All I will ask in return is that you state your own opinions as specifically and personally as I will mine. There is a difference between conversation and interrogation. I am always open to the former, never to the latter.

    "I don't care about the topic? That's quite an assertion to make. Can you back that up with any evidence about who I am and what my passions and interests are or the work I am involved in? You couldn't actually be more wrong."

    I don't question any of that for a minute. I'd like to know more about you, frankly, and your unwillingness to share these things here hasn't helped with your credibility much. Many of us reveal highly personal details of our lives and work and your resistance to doing likewise has no doubt fueled the suspicion with which you've been received here.

    However, I will say again that the topic of this thread is TPoP, not porn in general, and that actual, stated topic has played a very small role in your lengthy posts in this space.

    The movie was the topic to which I was referring, and based on what you've said so far, having not seen it by your own admission, you avoid taking a position on it. It's not unreasonable to conclude that the topic of this thread matters less to you than your wider issues with porn, which you've spent most of your time here attempting to raise.

    So no, I don't think you care much about TPoP and why we're concerned about it. Fair enough?

    "Some of my questions were answered by Ren, which I took the time to respond to. I'm not allowed to ask anything further if I want clarification? "

    Clearly from the evidence at hand, you're allowed to ask anything you please. And you admit that I have the right not to answer.

    "Need I remind you also that the questions were directed at you, Ernest, and you chose not to respond. Or to respond partially. Or to bury responses - eventually - in a long winded, pious, personal attack. There, I have stopped being polite. Is that better?"

    Well, thanks for letting me know when you've stopped being polite. I'm not being sarcastic when I say that, from reading your comments, it's not always easy to tell. If that's your worst, I think I can handle it. I have been called long-winded before, though I admit I'm starting to tire in the ring a bit with this bout, but I've only once before been accused of piety, oddly by a fellow pornographer who disliked my stance on safer sex in porn. If we ever get around to that open thread, I'll be happy to amplify on that.

    Otherwise, I would characterize my lengthy response to you as indignant in places, but I'm really not the pious type.

    "You've set it up nicely to put me in a position where I can't win, excellent manipulation skills. The questions are an outrage, I'm a troll, I'm not to be responded to, when you respond to me I'll just come back for more, when you respond to me i'll disappear off into the sunset.. Covered all bases."

    Yes, well, I did warn you that I debate to win. And while you deny that you have been debating us here, I don' t think many of our readers have that impression.

    I never said your questions were an outrage. Again you put words in my mouth and I don't care for the taste. My question to you is what part of my description of your behavior here, other than your surprising return, is factually inaccurate?"

    "Here are the facts. I read your piece on POP, I had some questions from there that I wanted to ask and I framed them in a manner obvious that I was anti pornography."

    The fact that you are anti-pornography is not now and never has been my issue with your participation on this thread. I am confronted by those who are anti-pornography regularly and don't hesitate to address their various questions, concerns, accusations or whatever.

    My issue with you in this one instance and at this one time is that you've made yourself and your wider concerns about pornography the business of an existing conversation related to a particular film. I'm sorry to be such a broke record on this point, but it's the sticking point between us. "

    "I'm a troll because.. you've made it so. I love that you mention me in the same breath as terrorists. That is truly priceless. Are you sure you're not the George Bush supporter here? "

    I have no power to "make" you anything. I drew certain conclusions from observing your behavior, which is consistent with that of Internet trolls as I've experienced them in the past.

    Since you've already apologized for accusing me of making some implied association with terrorists or extremists or whomever, I'll just accept your apology, and have a chuckle about the Bush thing.

    You in no way resemble those guys from Turkey and my reference to that episode ties back to lengthy discussion of it in this space at an earlier time.

    "Perhaps I would have gone on to reveal more of myself and my opinions but it appears that those with opinions different from yours are unwelcome in the extreme."

    Not one word of yours has been censored or deleted.

    If your idea of a welcome is an unchallenged acceptance of your actions and motives on this blog, you have the wrong idea. We do some challenging in these parts, including amongst ourselves. Sometimes the action gets rough. That's to be expected when people feel passionately about their beliefs.

    Ironically, if you had revealed a bit more about yourself at the beginning, your motives might have been less suspect and your reception friendlier. You're obviously under no obligation to adopt that approach, but if your purposes are as you claim, it would have served you better to start out with statements instead of barrages of leading questions. You must surely be aware that such tactics from a total stranger with an avowed antipathy toward the prevailing opinions here will raise questions from our side as well.

    " Given the intial responses I received, why would I? Why would anyone? May I remind you that so far, because I asked you questions from an anti pornography perspective, I've been accused of/been called:

    a troll, a coward, making an ass of myself, slanderer, dripper of slime, engendering feelings of having bathed in slime for some, horrible, an asshole, lacking in basic common sense, shitty and disruptive of manner, talk shit, badgering,
    unprincipled, deceptive, no serious points to make on the issue of pornography, manipulative, insincere, hostile, an abuser(?), half assed, risible, disingenuous, baiting, dishonest, an unprincipled demagogue, making accusations of.. i'm not quite sure what toward one and all, gutless, a generalised rambler, no good in mind, cross examining ernest like a criminal, maker of scurrilous and false claims, lacking in credibility, asking too many questions, asking questions in the wrong way, nit pick everyone to death, madame ( :) lovin that one), ranting, drive by smacker, entrapment, contemptuous, allied with the religious right (how would they react to my alternative sexual orientation i wonder), snide, condescending (Ernest, you may be right in your accusation there, but really, you are the world champion when it comes to condescension) and, of course, acting not alone but as part of a crack team of trolls."

    Well, I said some of those things and not others, but the way they're all jammed together I can't offer a very coherent response. I do think you've taken the low road as a debater, and that some of your tactics have been unprincipled. I do find you a hostile cross-examiner, and whatever you may think of me, I've never employed that approach with you, which as you must know by now, I could to great effect. As to condescension, I was unaware that it had become a competitive sport. If so, I want my trophy, damn it! Anyway, as one condescender to another, I'd say you hold your own.

    I'll withdraw the accusation that you're working in concert with others here, although I remain skeptical that you have no mission beyond that you admit to in this exchange, but it's clear from the more emotional tone of this post that you are on this thread on your own, and I have to commend you for your determination. I really did wonder how one person could devote so much time and energy to what you finally conceded was a circular argument from which nothing constructive was likely to emerge.

    "The floor is open for debate only under the specific parameters set out by you."

    As I've said before, the floor is open for debate on pretty much any terms, I set the terms only for my own participation in it. You wouldn't deny me that right, would you?

    "I would have had more respect for you if you'd simply stated that you were not willing to answer the questions because they made you angry or uncomfortable or whatever your real reasons were ..."

    This is a proposition of which I prefer to remain dubious. I did state my reasons for initially declining to answer your questions and there have been moments, of which this may be one, at which I've wished I'd stuck to that decision. Your questions don't make me angry or uncomfortable. I find them a distraction from the central theme of this discussion, to which I continue to return as my main objection to your attempts to broaden that discussion to suit your own concerns."

    "...instead of stoking the fires of indignant outrage among your disciples."

    Disciples? That's a good one. Anyone here regard him or herself as a disciple?

    I've already disclaimed any right to piety and inspiring religious devotion just isn't my thing. We're all independent thinkers on this bus and you'll find no cult-of-personality worshippers in these environs.

    " No regular poster in this blog is in any position to take the moral high ground on fair and honourable behaviour in interwebs debate, I feel it is my duty to remind you."

    Thanks for doing your duty, but I think you're wrong about both Ren and Trinity, who have tried to engage you respectfully. Others, myself included, have been more harsh in our responses, but you haven't been particularly high-minded in some of yours. Like everyone, you clearly have a temper and we've seen bright flashes of it here. Others have exhibited similar flare-ups.

    And I still maintain that the most dishonorable thing is to deny that you have come to debate and then to do exactly that, which finally you admit to doing in the paragraph above, with characteristic indirection.

    "Lastly, one of your many jibes at me is that I have not yet seen POP. That didn't seem to stop you, and a few other regulars here, passing comment prior to viewing it."

    You forget that I was interviewed for this project at great length, as were many others I know, and that we had full access to its promotional materials prior to its release, from which its biases are readily apparent. Go to the promotional Web site and check it out yourself, which you can readily do from where you are. You needn't answer me, but I would ask you for the sake of your own intellectual integrity to view what's on there in detail and see if you think the picture itself is likely to present the "unbiased and non-judgmental" exploration of "mainstream" pornography it promises. That shouldn't be too much to ask.

    " I didn't make any comment on the documentary, I asked you broader questions on the topic of pornography which, given many of the statements you made more broadly on the issue, I thought was fair enough."

    And I thought otherwise, which is the root of our fundamental conflict. Thread-jacking is anything but fair.

    "Pretty weak of me to respond when I'd decided I was not going to contribute further, but there we are."

    On the contrary. For what it's worth, and at this point I won't speculate on that, by coming back here and speaking as an individual, offering your own opinions and reactions, you've demonstrated a strength I hadn't previously seen and that raises you in my esteem considerably. Likewise, your no-excuses apology for what you recognize to have been an error on your part reinforces the impression of you as an honorable person.

    In retrospect, I'm sad about the way this has come out. I don't think blame-laying at this late date serves any good purpose, and there's plenty of it to go around.

    But for the future, and this goes for anyone and everyone including myself, I think the best starting place for any discussion is with full disclosure of intentions and beliefs. Personal details aren't necessary, but ideas plainly stated work better than leading questions. They allay suspicions of bad motives and allow others to respond in a more specific and useful manner.

    Frankly, I hope you'll check in here again, and come back for that open discussion. If you do, I'll withdraw my accusation of trolling entirely and we'll have a very different kind of conversation.

    I would look forward to that.

    And now, back to making porn, as I promised I would before and must do now if I'm to remain able to pay for my high-speed connection.

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  32. Though It seems impossible that anything remains to be said in response to your final post, anonymous, I did go back up the thread and find my reference to abusers.

    I was speaking very specifically of the rad-fems who have attacked Ren personally. They have been abusive.

    You have not. That was clearly not intended as an accusation against you and if you re-read it in context, I think you'll agree.

    It's a terrible accusation and I don't make it lightly or often, and certainly not against someone who merely disagrees with me or a friend.

    I do make that accusation against the loud claque of regular critics who make it their business to attack Ren for something everyday before breakfast.

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  33. "Thanks for doing your duty, but I think you're wrong about both Ren and Trinity, who have tried to engage you respectfully."

    Thanks for that, Ernest.

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  34. "Bad as those prequels were, there is a moment of brilliant clarity when young Anakin succumbs to his vengeful rage over the brutal murder of his mother and slaughters an entire village. We know that this decision sets him irrevocably on the path toward becoming Darth Vader.

    That is the moment of decision I was talking about, and it is the true test of which side of your humanity will prevail in such moments from then on.

    Everyone will experience similar trials, though not so dramatically, and they will reveal their deepest nature in choices they make when those trials come along.

    One of the reasons I am always suspicious of utopian ideologies is my belief that there are limits to the perfectability of human nature, and that no just and decent society can be constructed without taking those limits into account.


    Same here, really, in spite of being fairly left myself. Its one of the reasons I have such little common ground with the other side in the porn debates – in the overwhelming majority of cases, the animus behind it seems to come not just from differences over interpretation of the social effects of porn, but from a totalistic and perfectionistic religious or political ideology that will simply brook no opposition or even noncompliance.

    And historically speaking, such movements have a very bad record of slipping over to "the dark side". Stalinism and its offshoots are the best known examples of a totalistic utopia turned living hell for those who had to live under it. And, yes, in the 1980s "Sex Wars", there were a number of cases of radical feminism turning violent, the worst case being the crowbar attack on a London BDSM club. A case of a group of people going out and breaking bones in the name of stopping "sexual violence" surely has to be one of the great examples of people unthinkingly giving in to their darkest impulses in the name of pursuing the good.

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  35. That's how the perfect becomes the enemy of the good.

    The last time I had a real rumble in the old Nina forums was with some college-kid Maoist, very smart at that, who was still defending the refusal of the German communists to join forces with the SDP to stop Hitler from coming to power.

    To be sure, there was the meddling hand of Stalin in the background, but I don't doubt many young reds believed that the socialists were sell-outs and that nothing less than a true proletarian revolution could turn Germany into a workers' paradise.

    The guy got pretty hot with me about it, raised all kinds of old sins the SDP had committed, etc. but the bottom line is that millions of Europeans died because merely good wasn't good enough.

    It's thankfully not always true, but the inability to accept progress with some limitations leads to the reversal of that progress altogether.

    I like to point out that women have enjoyed tremendous gains in this society since I was young. I grew up in the Mad Men era, and I can tell you that show is no exaggeration. Abortion was illegal. Divorced women were suspect. Getting pinched on the butt at the office just came with the job. The idea of a woman partner, much less a woman C.E.O. was unthinkable at most major businesses.

    Colleges were networking opportunities for the guys and finishing schools for the girls, with notable exceptions, of course. Married couples had kids, and if they didn't the wife was usually to blame. There was lots of cheating, but it was usually the woman who lost out if the infidelities were exposed.

    Spousal rape wasn't even a crime in many states, and without rape shield laws, flawed as they are, women were reluctant to press charges even in blatant stranger rapes because they knew the defense counsel would put them on trial instead of the rapist. Rape is down 85% in this country from where it was thirty years ago, and I think that's more a direct result of feminist activism and consciousness-raising than any other single factor.

    Does this constitute complete liberation for American women? Of course not. The pay gap hasn't narrowed nearly as rapidly as expected. Women C.E.O.s of large corporations are still very, very rare. And for poor women life is arguably worse than it was two decades ago. As government programs withered, they lost ground economically and in an economically polarized environment of winners and losers, they lost out the worst. When upper-middle-class women got divorced, their standards of living often went up. When poor and working class women got divorced, their living standards went down.

    Still, I've posed this question to many feminists, including Gail Dines, and I've never gotten a good answer: Is there any time or place now or in human history where you would enjoy greater security, opportunity and personal freedom than you do here today? Dines said she was more at home in Western Europe, which given the demoralizing gains in influence by rad-fems over the SDP in many European countries is neither surprising nor much of an endorsement for the E.C., but Europe is very much a part of the industrialized West and the progress women have made there, which is tremendous, has benefitted from the same forces at work in this country.

    It's disappointing that radical feminists, in their insistence that nothing less than the complete overthrow of the patriarchy, a thing that is defined subjectively by those who believe in it more than by any objective standard, is worth a shit.

    Even if I had no dog in the fight over pornography, I would still see it as a matter of opinion and not a thing that should cause the deep, bitter and lasting divisions that it has on the left. It has become yet another ideological litmus test that shrinks the already tiny community that identifies as progressive even further.

    Two weeks ago, I was very distressed to see Randy Cohen, who writes "The Ethicist" column for The NYT Magazine, characterize strip clubs as offensive to women in the same way that minstrel shows would be to African-Americans. Aside from thinking that the column should now be re-named "The Moralist," I was saddened by the realization of how deeply this kind of warped thinking had penetrated into the brains of ordinary East Side liberals like Cohen.

    Some people will undoubtedly cheer him on for this taking this position, but I fail to see what women it benefits. It certainly does nothing for those who work in the clubs to be stigmatized as minstrels in this country's most influential newspaper, and it's unlikely to impact the daily lives of any other women to any degree they'll notice.

    And even if we buy that these are gains of some symbolic nature, at what price are they bought?

    That is the question I really have for Chyng Sun and Robert Wosnitzer. The thing that triggered the whole exchange between Sun and Nina was Sun's suggestion on AlterNet that Alberto Gonzales, who was up for confirmation at the time, should not necessarily be condemned by liberals and/or progressives for his anit-pornography stance.

    I don't think anything could have stopped Gonzales from getting the job. but the suggestion that he might not be so bad just because he opposed pornography is odious. This is a man who, it was already well-known, had helped the Bush administration construct some legal sophistry to legitimatize torture, and I don't mean "torture-like treatments" either.

    Would Sun be pleased to think that she might have helped create the atmosphere that begat Abu Ghraib more than whatever porn has been so frequently blamed for it? I doubt it.

    What TPoP seeks to do, at the end of the day, is make it seem hip to be anti-porn and be un-hip to like it, or even defend it. That is as much power as the so-called left wields in this society, but it's not to be entirely underestimated because its targeted at a future ruling class.

    Some of that class is already in positions of authority, which accounts for why books with the "wrong" ideas about sex and movies that show the "wrong" kind of eroticism don't get picked up. Somebody in middle-management makes the decision that these things just aren't good for women and therefore, whatever their other qualities, shouldn't get to the public.

    Meanwhile, in the darker dens of media culture, as we've discussed here, no such scruples prevail and prurient violence against women is shown with a graphic realism unheard of two decades ago. You couldn't get Pretty Baby made today. But you can make Saw Three. Some things are clearly progress, but that ain't one of them.

    No, this is how the perfect is the enemy of the good. This is what happens when individual moral choices are delegated to committees. This is really how we ended up where we are today, which is looking out our own collective navels at a society in the midst of sinking down onto its rims.

    Nobody among all those bankers and brokers had the guts to step up and say: "What we're doing is wrong and I'll have no part of it."

    Because we all know that everybody has been conditioned to be as they are and that nothing will ever change until kingdom come.

    Thankfully (I hope but don't assume) a number of millions of Americans are getting ready to show they don't care to wait that long, and I hope they get something back for it.

    But I know it won't be long before the gang on the left starts griping that the New Guy just won't drink their Kool-Aid either. Unlike the man he might replace, he does not seem the drinking kinf from what I see. But he'll be dealt some very bad cards if he gets to sit down at the table, and some of those cards will have been dealt him by people who believed things about human beings that are not true and will never be true.

    Take this as a post-script to a whole lot of other talk, but it's not not about TPoP. It's about the atmosphere in which such meretricious garbage can be taken seriously. This movie is the credit default swap of docu-ganda.

    Much as I wish I could blame it for the economic emergency, I can't really do that, but I can and do blame it for contributing for the ethical deficits that have created so many distortions in our national priorities.

    Tomorrow night Nina debates Pastor Greg of the XXX Church in front of a class full of college students. I asked her to ask them what role porn played in the unavailability of student loans, and of the two things, which concerns them more?

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  36. will we g et video of nina and the pastor?

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  37. "But I know it won't be long before the gang on the left starts griping that the New Guy just won't drink their Kool-Aid either. Unlike the man he might replace, he does not seem the drinking kinf from what I see. But he'll be dealt some very bad cards if he gets to sit down at the table, and some of those cards will have been dealt him by people who believed things about human beings that are not true and will never be true."

    It does concern me a bit that one of Obama's legal policy advisers is Cass Sunstein, one of Catherine MacKinnon's biggest supporters in the legal mainstream. And somebody who's fairly lukewarm on civil liberties issues in general. I still regard Obama much more highly on civil liberties issues than Bush, definitely, or even Hillary Clinton (don't get me started on the Clinton/Gore/Lieberman wing of the Democrats and their record on civil liberties), but I think a lot of where his administration might go depends on what his legal policy advisers have to say on issues like policies around unpopular speech, whether they aggressively conflate all sex work with human trafficking, etc.

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  38. Hi Ren,

    Don't know about that. We assume someone will video, but I'm not sure if we get copies. I'll be in touch on this further as information becomes available. Should be interesting.

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  39. IACB,

    I've previously voiced concerns that an incoming Democratic administration might bring along some elements of the lefty/liberal/rad-fem anti-porn crowd, which is why I made such a big fuss over the whole Don Hazen/Bob Herbert thing. As we know, the SDP/Labour parties in Europe are significantly sensitive to that element.

    I think First Amendment supporters have lost a lot of ground within the liberal community, in part due to relentless guilt-mongering by Jensen and his pals.

    That's one of the reasons I spent so much time ripping TPoP apart. While I can't imagine it will have a wide impact on the public, or on public opinion, I am worried that its message may reach into a new administration at some levels, and that would not be a good thing.

    On the other hand, Obama has no history of using porn as a political football, and I don't think it will play for him necessarily. He owes nothing to the Christian right, though he tries not to alienate them, and likewise a lot of the most ardent feminists in the party were Hillary all the way, so he may not be inclined to give that component of the coalition too much attention.

    Overall, with the state of the nation being what it is, I can't foresee going after porn in any manner as much of a priority. But I do think, like centrist Dems before him, he may sign off on some bad legislation from The Hill just project an image of concern with "The Problem." And with the current Supreme Court, those laws are likely to withstand challenges.

    Looking on the bright side, I do think he'll resist any pressure for criminal prosecutions of so-called adult obscenity on the grounds that they waste resources needed elsewhere. The FBI is going to pretty busy with bankers for the next couple of years and I don't think porn investigations will be on their radar to any great extent. I wouldn't be surprised if some existing cases were either settled out of court, dismissed or dropped by the prosecution on purely pragmatic grounds. They really do have more important matters to deal with just now.

    Overall, I'm somewhat wary that Obama may have to prove he's mainstream by exhibiting some conservative positions on certain social issues. Those won't include abortion or gay rights, but pornography could be on the table.

    We'll just have to wait and see who has his ear.

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  40. "I think First Amendment supporters have lost a lot of ground within the liberal community, in part due to relentless guilt-mongering by Jensen and his pals."

    Yes, that and the whole... movement is probably the wrong word... but the "sex, porn, and love addiction" crowd. I'm really leery of them, and leery that Senate subcommittees have listened to, and presumably been swayed by, them. I mean, they're probably more likely to appeal to the right in general, but there are definitely moves being made to appeal to leftists as well, "oh, we're not religiously based" etc. As well as the idea of this stuff being therapy, which I think is a very lefty-appealing idea. Leftists tend to be OK with social control as long as it involves "taking care of people," which is exactly what Carnes and his crony-goons are angling things for lately.

    And this despite people I respect telling me I should think they're right. Eh. I agree with Marty Klein: see what happens if you treat these people for compulsiveness or for sexual shame issues before you decide to put a special new addiction in the DSM-V, please.

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  41. WOW, look, Nony chose NOT to answer MY questions...there's a shock.


    pfft.

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  42. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  43. I doubted she would, but perhaps she'll prove us wrong.

    I'd like to be wrong about something like this, at least once.

    So far, not much luck with that.

    What makes this so fucking frustrating is that she may have succeeded in her goal of making this discussion all about her and her "questions" at the expense of the original thread.

    Of course, these tactics merely obscure the truth, but can do nothing to prevent it from jumping up and biting them. What will happen, whether anony and her pals like it or not, is that people will see this hokum for what it is and reject it.

    True believers, who they've already got, will believe it. And the liberal fence-sitters I worry about may start dragging it into conversations among smarter people. But I'm sure I won't be the only one to ask much harder questions of the producers than anonymous asked of any of us.

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