Perspectives on Porn: or, why it helps to know what the hell you're talking about

This week, Huffington Post featured an interview with Nona Willis-Aronowitz on her recent book Girldrive. For those not familiar with her, she is none other than the scion of the Aronowitz and Willis who's now making a splash in her own right as a writer and journalist. She has also apparently written a senior thesis on the social history of 70's porn, something I hope she sees fit to publish someday. Her book Girldrive includes a short interview with Rebecca Rosenfelt, proprietor of the one of my favorite blogs, Porn Perspectives.

Unfortunately, the interviewer, Chauncey Zalkin, basically takes this background as a starting point for an anti-porn diatribe and condescending dismissal of sex-positive feminism. She singles out as "ludicrous" Rosenfelt's statements comparing Jenna Jameson's position in the porn industry to Oprah Winfrey's in television. Aronowitz manages gets a few good points in, but its quite clear Zalkin is pretty much dominating the discussion, never a good thing if you're supposedly carrying out an interview. Its also pretty clear that when somebody writes stuff like "Porn is a mammoth industry and most of it is comprised of drug addicted young women without much if any support system," they're not exactly writing about the subject from the most informed point of view.

Not to be outdone, Rebecca has put together a response over on Porn Perspectives:

I really don't mean to pick on Chauncey. She doesn't position herself as an expert on porn, so I don't want to overanalyze her every word. She has not thoroughly researched porn or the porn industry, and is basing her ideas on second-hand information and stereotypes. That is totally normal. In fact, I'll make the rest of this post about "Porn Skeptic", which is a stand-in for people like Chauncey who mean well, but don't have the full facts about today's porn industry. I've heard her arguments a million times, and I'd really like to do what I can to take the stale half-truths out of circulation.

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Rebecca's response is a nice takedown of some of the more common anti-porn arguments one sees trotted out these days.

As an aside, I was kind of wondering just who the heck Chauncey Zalkin is and where she was coming from with her charge that porn is this monster industry who's media product was messing up women's body image and everybody's sexuality. A quick look at her prospectus reveals her to be a highly successful member of the advertising industry. Its only the first week of February, and I think I may already have a winner for my 2010 "Pot Calling the Kettle Black" Award.