Gail Dines' Allies: Judith "Bat-Ada" Reisman Goes WingNut Daily Against AHF, Condom Mandate

[Originally posted to Red Garter Club Blog, condensed and edited for posting here.] 

There is a saying; Be careful of who you lie with, because you just might get bitten in the ass. Unless, of course, ass bites are one of your most cherished fetishes.

Remember the name "Judith Reisman"? She had recently joined forces with sister fundie Shelley Lubben in a You Tube video taped at a recent porn convention, where Shelley was actively trolling for new fresh recruits to scam for her Pink Cross faux ministry or ex-porn starlets.

Before then, "Dr." Reisman was well acclaimed as a crackpot right-wing "scholar" who focused her antiporn activism on the calamitous impact of porn on the synapses of its user through "erotoxins", as well as her usual crackpot opposition to any form of sexual activity not approvable to her Christian fundamentalist sensibiities.

You may also remember "Dr." Reisman from her legacy of going from being a script writer for the old-school children's TV show Captain Kangaroo (an eye-roller of its own, considering that Mr. Captain himself, Bob Keeshan, was a openly activist liberal) to becoming an antiporn "feminist" activist who blamed adult sexual speech for causing child sexual abuse, pedophilia, rape, and other degradations to women and children. In an essay that was posted to the 1970's antirape radicalfeminist anthem, Take Back The Night, she maligned the three founders of print porn media -- Playboy's Hugh Hefner, Penthouse's Bob Guccione, and HUSTLER's Larry Flynt, in no particular order, as "Hitler, Stalin, and Goebbels". She then parlayed that pub into an appearance giving testimony to the 1980's Meese Commission On Pornography, where she got to pontificate on the cosmic danger of Playboy pushing child porn to impressionable youth through its...cartoons.

So...how does this connect with Gail Dines?? Well, Reisman's "scholarship" on the negative impacts of porn has been used, reused, and used over and over again by Dines and her associates over at Stop Porn Culture to make their case for censorship of all sexually explicit material. Also, Shelley Lubben has often used Reisman as a go-to source for some of most classic rantage about the destructiveness of porn on those who perform it.

Even better than that, Dines and SPC have been more frequently using Reisman's "scholarship" as a means to unite the antiporn "feminist" and traditionalist Religious Right "obscenity" movements with the anti-sex work "abolitionists" in connecting porn and prostitution/escorting/oncall sexual services/sexual commerce as "sex trafficking".

Plus (and here's the kicker to all this), Dines has been attempting to glam her way into the debate over mandatory condoms in porn by positively citing the efforts of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation to force performers to use condoms and other "barrier methods" as a means of containing an alleged STI/HIV "pandemic".

Never mind that the efforts of AHF come from a fundamentally different paradigm of making money off condom sales....ahhhh, I mean, protecting the jobs of crossover HIV+ performers who would be otherwise prevented from performing in the "straight" porn industry due to the current screening/testing regimen imposed by the Free Speech Coalition's PASS protocols. And, never mind that AHF's core constituency happens to be the very gay male community that has been truly wrecked by the HIV pandemic, albeit there is vast opposition even there to what some feel is AHF's hamfisted approach to selling condoms as "behavior modification", as opposed to treatment or development of a vaccine to cure HIV. To Gail Dines, anything that can be used to slam porn as "corporate capitalist" mass rape and abuse of women is a good thing.

Except, with Judith Reisman, she may have bit off just a bit too much.

Michael Whiteacre of The Real Porn Wikileaks alerted me to an article which ran today over at the very, very ultra right-wing site World Net Daily, which most folk would much prefer to call "WingNut Daily" due to its predisposition to the most bizarre conspiracy theories known to mankind. You know...Birth certificates? Madrassas? Agenda 21/ACORN? "Obama is a Muslim Socialist"??

Anyways..the article pretended itself to be an attack on the notion that condoms are the most effective means for gay male folk to protect themselves against STI's, including HIV/AIDS. It preferred the old tried-an-true method of gays giving up their nasty, sinful, disgusting "buggery" and coming home to Jesus Christ and the joys of heterosexual monogamy and procreative marriage..or facing the full brunt of criminalization through anti-sodomy laws. The article also called for good, God-fearing families of people suffering from HIV, and/or the relatives of people who actually succumbed to HIV/AIDS, to be able to file class action suits against "pro-gay" organizations for lying about the true nature of condoms failing to protect their users from contracting HIV.

Further, the WND article claimed that anal "sex" (yes, the fright quotes are included, because to the author of the piece, penises should never, ever attempt to even touch the tender anal passages of any other person, especially not another man) is not subject to the wonderful protection of more Godly acts like "natural" vaginal sex, because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allegedly never approved the use of condoms for anal penetration.

The author's evidence for this?? Citations from a "study" from a right-wing Hawaiian state senator named Bob McDermott, attempting to oppose a sex education program in that state that was used by a whopping 12 schools, which called for the usage of condoms as a barrier protectant for PIV and anal penetration. That study took note of the disclaimer that the CDC had not endorsed the use of the original condoms for anal sex due to the risk of breakage and the inflexibility of anal passages.

A single line quote from Rep. McDermott condenses the point concisely:

“Genitals are sexual reproductive organs,” McDermott told EAGnews, “and the a– isn’t that.”

Don't you just love how fundie rightwingers are so quick with cursing, and just as quick with masking it?

The payoff paragraph in this is whom the author recommends to be sued:

A class action lawsuit by AIDS victims and their loved ones would rock the world – a suit based on the fact that condom pushers have for years dispensed false, deceptive claims about how the product protects – or fails to protect – the health of sex participants. The reality is that everyday condoms are manufactured and approved for natural, vaginal sex, not anal “sex” – they are not effectively designed to protect from disease those people who engage in sodomy.

Such a lawsuit should target the AIDS Heathcare Foundation, Planned Parenthood and a myriad of teachers and school systems, too many to count, that have taught that anal “sex” (traditionally termed “sodomy” or “buggery” under British-based legal codes) as not so different than natural coitus.

A right-wing antigay organization targeting AHF for representing HIV+ gay folk isn't really news, of course. Until you find out that the author of that piece happens to be.... (screenshot, please)


[click on thumb to link to article]

Yup....you read right....THAT Judith Reisman. Gail Dines' go-to source for "feminist" analysis against porn. The artist formerly known as "Judith Bat-Ada" who was so trusted by radfems that she scored a essay in one of their classic anthologies. The one connection between the whacked-out Hard Right and the radfem antiporn "Left". THAT Judith Reisman.

And now, the same Judith Reisman who is now attempting to ride the wave of antiporn/anti-sexwork activism, and link it with the anti- "sex trafficking" and "porn addiction" movements, and bring her old-school historic antigay bigotry into the mix.

Gee...I wonder what Michael Weinstein would be thinking once he reads this? Or, the "radicallesbians" now totally committed to this "alliance"? Or, for that matter, Professor Dines herself, since she constantly rails about her movement being nicked falsely as palling around with reactionaries. Or...is World Net Daily now simply her newest ally in the fight against The Great Porn Capitalist Conspiracy, and any talk of a "progressive" antiporn "feminist" movement merely just a ruse to cover up the usual sex-hate against anything not linked to procreation or "mutual love"?

I suppose we will all have to see for ourselves, right??

The Rebuttal Too Smart For CounterPunch To Publish: Whereas I Rebuke Gail Dines' Bullshittery

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

Gail Dines Raises The Bar Of Mount St. BS To New Heights: The #2257 Issue

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

Euro Porn Ban Update: Cooler, Smarter Heads Prevail; Porn Ban Language Striken Down....For Now

Well, maybe the European Parliament might not be so bad after all.

Here's the breaking story from C|Net:

Today, 625 members of the European Parliament voted 368-159 in favor of passing a report aimed at stamping out gender stereotypes in the region, with 98 abstaining. However, the controversial "porn ban" section of the proposal was rejected.

This vote forms a majority opinion based on Europe's voting politicians, from which the European Commission can form legislation. Such a law would again be voted upon, and become legally binding in the 27 member state bloc of the EU.

Because the opinion of the Parliament has now been made, it will be extraordinarily difficult for the Commission to draw up similar porn-blocking legislation only to pass it back to the Parliament for another vote.

Unfortunately, while the attempt to directly ban porn was defeated, there still remains some controversy over the interpretation of what was passed, and how it could potentially spawn future attempts at censorship of sexual media. Again, quoting C|Net:

These porn-blocking proposals, initially introduced by Dutch Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Socialist Party Kartika Tamara Liotard, were buried within a report titled "Eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU," which was first submitted to the Parliament in early December. The report no doubt had positive intentions as a bid to close the gender inequality gap in the region by developing awareness and effective measures to reduce the prevalence of gender stereotypes in education, employment, and the media.

However, controversy quickly stirred because the report included such wide-ranging and ill-defined measures as calling on the European Union to reaffirm its position on an earlier resolution for a "ban on all forms of pornography in the media," as well as giving Internet service providers "policing rights" over their subscribers.

Amendments to the report removed certain explanatory text, but not the references to the previous resolution that was passed by the Parliament, which called for a blanket ban on pornography in the region in 1997.

While the explanation was removed, the effect was not, according to Swedish MEP for the Pirate Party Rick Falkvinge.

He explained that a "split vote" was called on to delete the sentence -- "which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media" -- but in spite of this, the 1997 resolution remains referenced, and therefore the call to ban "all forms of pornography in the media" remains intact.

Falkvinge said that striking out this text "has no other effect than deliberately obscuring the purpose of the new report."

But to make matters worse, when a handful of MEPs called on their citizens to e-mail their representatives in protest, the parliament's own IT department began to block these e-mails en masse from arriving in politicians' inboxes.

Pirate Party member Christian Engström, who first brought the news to light, called the move an "absolute disgrace", and said that he would complain to the Parliament's president about this "totally undemocratic practice."

The irony was that the method used to block the opposing emails was to label the phrase "gender stereotypes" as spam....on International Women's Day. In a proposal supposedly geared to attacking "gender stereotypes".

It'll be pretty interesting to see the response from folk like Gail Dines on this one. She's not known to take rejection too kindly.

The rest of Europe, at least for now, can freely exhale a sigh of relief.

Because Nothing Cures Economic Failure Quite Like....Banning Porn?!?!? The European Parliament's Grand Folly

It is usually typical that governments who have failed to serve their people with adequate polices will turn to scapegoat campaigns designed to target some group of people or some speech that the majority of citizens might find objectionable. That particular group of mode of speech might be harmful in some contexts, but totally neutral in most...but, nevertheless, the few and limited harmful effects are greatly exaggerated by the new commisars to push for censorship of the entirity of that speech or expression. All of this, of course, done for the protection of the defenseless "victims" of such speech, who need such "protection" because apparently they are incapable of speaking for themselves and need the full force of the State to enforce their stated will.

Except, of course, that it turns out that the "stated will" doesn't represent the actual beliefs of the public, but rather the expressed drive of an interest group who is more motivated with imposing their vendettas and personal myopias on everyone else...and getting themselves paid and power in the process.

It is not too surprising that adult explicit sexual media (aka "pornography") has been a standard scapegoat for governments and special interest groups alike who want to exploit confusion, shame, and self-loathing about sex to invoke socially reactionary policies. Usually, it's been the traditional forces of the Right -- religious conservatives -- who have been the most vocal and strident in calling for wiping out sexual speech and expression that they see as a threat to God/Allah/Yawheh, Country, Tradition, Family, Property, Capitalism, and all other shibboleths of "family values". They haven't gone away by any means, but now it seems that there is a similar breed of antisex censorship and sexual fascism building...but this time it comes from the putative "Left": from certain elements of the more radical fringes of the feminist movement, which have now apparently infused their ideology onto the dominant Left parties in Europe.

Most people by now know about the proposals now being enacted in Iceland, where a left-of-center majority party is attempting to impose extreme limits, if not outright bans, on the availability of adult explicit sexual media in that country. Most of you have also heard of the collorary group of laws known as the "Nordic Model" or "Swedish Model", which attempts to regulate sex work out of existence by targeting the (mostly male) clients and managers (aka, the "johns" and the "pimps") for punishment. All this comes from the same school of radical feminism that was founded by the likes of Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Kathleen Barry, Shelia Jefferys, and Catherine MacKinnon during the 1980's; and is now being further enhaced by the activism of folk like Chyng Sun, Robert Jensen, and (especially) Gail Dines today.

And this week, they got a fundamental boost, through a proposal put forth to the European Parliament that would basically expand what is now being proposed in Iceland to the entire breadth of Europe.

It would do so under the guise of not only "protecting" women from what they see as the deliberate harms of porn, but also raising the notion that the very existence of porn (especially the "violent" and "degrading" kind) in and of itself is a "violation of the human rights" of women.

The proclamations are part of a much larger proposal which seeks to undermine and eliminate "gender stereotypes" in the workplace and generally increase the number and strength of women in European society. Most of the proposals are simple common sense goals that no progressive person would object to, such as comparable pay, paid sick leave, and increasing the number of women in more powerful economic and political entities. The problem is, though, that through their radicalfeminist ideology, the creators of this proposal decided to stick in some of the most corrosive attacks on free expression via these initatives:

17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism(10);

18. Calls on the EU to conduct research into the links between child pornography and adult pornography and the impacts on girls, women, boys and men, as well as the relationship between pornography and sexual violence;

19. Calls on the Member States to establish independent regulation bodies with the aim of controlling the media and advertising industry and a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls;

20. Calls on the Commission to assist Member States in combating the sexualisation of girls not only by compiling the necessary data, promoting good practices and organising information campaigns, but also by providing financial support for measures taken in the Member States, in particular for women’s organisations fighting against sexualisation and violence against women and girls;

In other words, straight out of the Gail Dines/Melissa Farley hymnal. And...straight out of the Old Testament of St. Andrea and Mother Catherine.

You may also notice that this proposal was also propsed back in 1997, but strong opposition from civil liberties groups did manage to dampen support enough to kill it back then.

And, it appears, opposition is mounting to this latest proposal now as well. One such MEP, Christian Engstrom of PiratPartiet (the Pirate Party), today posted at his own blog his reasons for opposing this initiative. He emphasizes that while he supports the concern of gender stereotyping and favors strengthing the power of women, this latest proposal sets a dangerous precedent for civil liberties and for privacy protections, especially regarding the Internet:

Magazines and cable television would presumably be considered to be ”media” by most people, but what about the internet? Without any definition of ”media” in either of the two resolutions, the answer is not obvious from reading just those two articles, at least not to me.

But the resolution we will be voting on next week has other things to say about the internet. Article 14 reads (again with my highlighting):

14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere;

This is quite clearly yet another attempt to get the internet service providers to start policing what citizens do on the internet, not by legislation, but by ”self-regulation”. This is something we have seen before in a number of different proposals, and which is one of the big threats against information freedom in our society.

The digital rights organisation EDRI has produced a booklet called The slide from ”self-regulation” to corporate censorship, where they point out that:

…now, increasing coercion of internet intermediaries to police and punish their own consumers is being implemented under the flag of “self-regulation” even though it is not regulation – it is policing – and it is not “self-” because it is their consumers and not themselves that are being policed.

In the battle against the ACTA treaty, the fact that ACTA contained similar ”self-regulation” proposals to get internet service providers to start policing their customers was one of the reasons why the European Parliament rejected the treaty in the end.

Many members of the parliament (including me) felt and feel that this kind of ”self-regulation” is nothing more than an attempt to circumvent the article on information freedom in the European Convention on Human rights, which says that everyone has the right to receive and impart information without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers, and that any restrictions to this right have to be prescribed by law and be necessary in a democratic society.

Next week’s resolution is a so-called ”own initiative report” by the parliament. This means that it does not automatically become law even if it is adopted, but is just a way for the European parliament to express its opinion.

But the purpose of these own initiative reports is to serve as the basis for the Commission when it decides to present legislative proposals to the parliament. If this own initiative report is adopted by the parliament, it will strengthen the Commission’s position if and when it wants to propose various ”self-regulation” schemes in the future.

Although I completely agree that eliminating outdated gender stereotypes in the EU is a worthwhile goal, I will be voting against this resolution next week.

 Of course, the proposed censorship regulations now under consideration in Iceland, which the proponents of this initiative would love to impose on all of Europe, hardly reflect the desire of "self regulation"; they exist to use the power of the state to force ISP's to filter out sexual content that would violate extreme radfem principles of 'proper" portrayals of sex involving women. And, those standards could be used just as easily against any kind of sexual speech or expression that some radfem deems to be "degrading" or "promoting violence" or otherwise "enhancing gender stereotypes".

 And when I say "any kind", I mean ANY KIND....even the type of "feminist porn" produced by the likes of Candida Royalle, Ms. Naughty, Tristian Taormino, or Cindy Gallop which actually challenges the traditional genres of male-oriented porn; or even gay male porn (which, in case you don't know, contain NO women to abuse or degrade).

One of the most interesting ironies is that the week that this initiative came to light, there was also news that the principal trade organization for supporting the British adult sexual media industry, AITA (Adult Industry Trade Association), announced that they were shutting their doors for good come March 31 due to lack of financial support. It is possible that a group like the Free Speech Coalition here in the US could ultimately fill in the gap and provide needed support for European porn performers and producers...but until that happens, the situation will remain in total flux.

The best reaction to this madness I could find at this time comes from sex worker activist Amanda Hess, who also blogs for the sex worker collective Bound, Not Gagged, who wrote this editorial for Slate today. Her comments bear special witness, especially given the tedencies of radfems to silence and make invisible the voices of women who actually do porn for a living and don't feel like they need such "protection" from their own desires and actions.

The belief that pornography, as a genre, discriminates specifically against women is one still favored by leading anti-pornography activists like Gail Dines, Shelley Lubben, and Catharine MacKinnon. In an interview for the MAKERS series, MacKinnon reiterated her view that “exposure to [porn] makes life more dangerous to women” and “promotes a range of atrocities and violence” against them. When we find gender disparities in other sectors—from literary journalism to tech—we urge industry leaders to assess the problem and encourage women to lean in. But when it comes to porn, the impulse is to just shut the whole thing down.

That’s unfortunate, because it reinforces the expectation that women can only ever be innocent bystanders to sexual material, never producers or consumers in their own right (banning all porn would mean negating the contributions of proudly feminist pornographers like Tristan Taormino, Nina Hartley, and Cindy Gallop). It glides over the experiences of female porn viewers (who have leveraged the Internet to find and distribute porn that appeals to them, even when it’s not marketed that way). It totally ignores the men who are "sexualized" in porn (if pornography discriminates against women, can we all keep watching gay porn?). And it curtails discussion about the challenges faced by some men in the industry (like Derrick Burts, who contracted HIV in 2010, and Erik Rhodes, who died from a heart attack at 30 after heavy steroid use).

Enforcing a government ban on pornography won’t actually rid the world of smut (and the proposal, which has been raised before, is unlikely to lead to a legitimately enforceable ban). But the effort does make it a lot harder to talk about porn honestly, and to advocate for better representation of women in the industry. In a misguided effort to advocate for women, these activists are negating the sexuality of women, gay men, and all the straight guys who’d like to see more diversity in the porn they’re watching, too.

And you thought that the condom mandate was the worst that could happen.

A Lesson In Anti-Porn Liberal Hypocrisy From AlterNet

It is pretty funny to see how liberals who are the most exercised about the innate evils of "mainstream porn" (or, as they also put it, "male-oriented porn") attempt to square their personal squicks with their political rhetoric.

Lately in some portions of the liberal-left press, much has been written or posted online about finding the perfect "alternative" to "mainstream porn", as a means of avoiding or sidestepping the heated issue of censorship, while attempting to replace such allegedly harmful, disgusting, and misogynistic material with content regarded as more "progressive", more "humane", and more "sexy".

As usual, the repository AlterNet is among the primary boosters of this strategy, allowing for the likes of Robert Jensen and Gail Dines to go off on the evils of porn, while simultaneously allowing others to promote "alternative" forms of erotica.

Unfortunately, to that end they sometimes will tend to cut corners and undermine the original founders to their political agenda.

Such a case I discovered today, when going through my Twitter account and discovering a reccommendation to an article that was posted last week to AlterNet titled "Is Hardcore Porn Played Out? A Site Showing Real People's Orgasms Give A Sexy Alternative".

The article, credited to a writer named Cherry Trifle from SeXis Magazine, consists of an interview with the owners and founders of a site called Beautiful Agony, which features basically porn shot from the neck up, promoting "real people having real orgasms", and specifically emphasizing shots of the performers/participants's faces when they come. The site basically invites participants to submit for pay their own videos, which are then published at their paysite.

In the interview, BA's founder, Richard Lawrence, explains why he developed his site and how he feels it to be different from "mainstream porn":

Cherry Trifle: You say that these videos are documentary, rather than performance…

Richard Lawrence: I think one of the biggest problems with the porn industry is that it doesn’t do a good job with its responsibility as a sex educator; which it is, regrettably—and not just for adolescents. Plenty of grownups have more sexual experience, in fact way more, through porn than with partners. As hardcore porn becomes more mainstream, people are developing these ridiculous notions of what women like, or what men like, and what people look like, or what is acceptable sexual behaviour.

I recently met a woman in her late 20s who told me she didn’t like anal sex, but had been doing it for years because she thought it was expected of all women, just as she’d seen in all the porn DVDs. And isn’t it incredible that not all women like to have five guys come in their face at once? In gonzo porn, it’s shown that all sex acts have their price, and so does every woman, as the host picks up a “random girl” from the street and peels off $100 bills in the back of a van. In fact, through running Agony, I have come to despise [traditional] porn rather than just be bored with it; porn could do so much to enhance sexual relationships, yet overwhelmingly, [porn] works against them through the depiction of sexual practices without context or informed consent.

There is a whole other side to Beautiful Agony that many people overlook, the section called “Confessions.” In these interviews or self-filmed revelations, the “Agonees” tell us—usually very frankly—all about their sex lives, and their stories are often remarkable.

One of my favorites is the well-spoken 20-something who decided to try out her new sex toy on the commuter train home, only to find that the lock on the bathroom door didn't quite work, much to the astonishment of an older lady passenger… After listening to a few of those stories you start to take a bit more notice of, well, things.

Notice how Lawrence simply restates most of the antipornfeminists' major critiques of "mainstream porn": that it disregards emotion and "love" for the quick facial; that it depicts sex outside of "context" (presumably, of love or emotion, as if lust or sexual pleasure isn't a legitimate emotion in and of itself);  that it degrades the performers by not requesting their "informed consent" to perform those acts; and that it reduces sex to a commodity to be exchanged for quick cash.

The only difference between Lawrence and Gail Dines, though, is that rather than censor porn outright as Dines and other antipornradfems would support, Lawrence would rather people discover and find his site as a supposedly healthy, "progressive" alternative that would improve human sexual relationships...though with the implied hope that if enough people do cross over, "mainstream porn" would wither away and die on its own.

Now, there's nothing wrong with encouraging alternative visions of erotica or supporting alternative means of sexual media, and I begrudge Mr. Lawrence nothing on his vision of erotica. What bothers me, though, is that like the antiporn radfems, he takes a very distorted view of what "mainstream porn" actually is and consists of, taking the widely maligned "gonzo" style as representative of the ONLY popular form of the genre of explicit sexual media.

Apparently, Mr. Lawrence wasn't around when Candida Royalle came out with her "feminist porn" label of hetero hardcore (via her Femme Productions series) which featured very real performers having very real orgasms and the same deemphasis on facials in favor of PIV shots (although, she had plenty of below the waist shots). And what about the recent rise of "alt.porn", which also bucks the trend of "gonzo" by offering girls that defy the supposed "male-oriented" stereotypes of big fake boobs and fake orgasms?

My real issue, though, is in the distortion that was used by AlterNet in posting the article at their site to begin with.  The actual SeXis site is far, far, more inclusive regarding sexual ideology....in fact, none other than Nina Hartley has a regular Tuesday podcast there.....and last time I checked, she was still taking facials and doing at least some anal. Indeed, the original title for the interview was slightly different from the spin that AlterNet took: Capturing The Face Of Orgasm: In & Out With Robert Lawrence, Founder of Beautiful Agony.

Whether it was the AlterNet publisher's decision to use the more...shall we say, direct byline for reproducing that interview, or whether Ms. Trifle gave them the approval to alter the title; it certainly sounds as if AlterNet distorted the article to support their agenda of going after "mainstream porn" while sidestepping the calls for "censorship:.

And the AlterNet agenda is not so veiled by other articles referenced in the piece, with titles such as:

"There's More To Sex Than Just A Cum Shot: What Men Need To Unlearn From Hardcore Porn"

"Why Men Fake Orgasms"

"You Like That, Baby, You Like That? Has Porn Made Men Bad At Sex?"

"Why I Quit Working In Porn"

Not exactly the "men are beasts and rapists" rhetoric of Maggie Hays and Kathleen Barry, but not that respectful of their free choices and ability to respect women, either.

Perhaps the folks at AlterNet would prefer to actually talk to and listen to a few men who are into "mainstream porn" before they decide to pass their judgments.

A "Stench" of Anti-Porn Myopia: Starring Gail Dines and Featuring: "Damaged Genitals"?!?!

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