When David Duke Meets Radical Feminism: The "Porn Stars Shouldn't Be Having Children" Debate

I've gone off at my own venue about the absolute fuckwadery of that pronouncement...but I will explain here why this shit really hits me hard.

It's not just because I've met and befriended (online) more than a few porn performers and erotic artists who happen to be mothers (and I mean REAL mothers, not just MILF's), and both they and their kids turn out to be as happy and healthy and normal (all of the usual stuff that goes with raising kids aside) as anyone else.

It's not just because of the general principle of not sticking your nose in other people's private lives and pretending to know how to live their life for them without even making an attempt to listen to them speak for themselves.

No....what really burns me up to the point of going "nucular" is the fact that a putative FEMINIST.....nay, a RADICAL FEMINIST, would have the unmittigated gall to make a statement that would be more telling of neo-Nazis against Jews, or Klansmen against Black women.

I am not that far removed from the time when David Duke was running for governor of my home state of Louisiana, and one of his might racist planks of his campaign was to pay poor (read that to mean, poor Black) women in exchange for them taking permanent drugs like Norplant to prevent them from having children.

How is this nonsense any different now merely because it comes from the mouth of a presumed "progressive"??

But, then again, all standards fade when it comes to sex, and the threat of a naked nipple, a soaked thong, a hard-on, a scream of orgasm....can do much to turn even the most putative liberal into a fearful, skirt-clutching, "Not in front of the children/ladies!!" spouting Mrs. (or Ms. Grundy).

Considering all the talk about how sexually free we have become, the old repressions and reactions are still as strong with us....ask Tristian Taormino or Audacia Ray or Melissa Gira, whom have seen how the long arm of sexual censorship can strike even in the most supposedly "liberal" venues.

Sex may be the last vector of social reaction, since race and gender oppression are slowly fading. It's about high time we took it seriously...and defended sex for its own sake, as well as the women and men who produce sexual media. They don't deserve to be treated like human beings; they ARE human beings by right. And so are their children.

It takes a lot to disgust me...

But it can be done.


Porn stars should not be able to have children...

Rantage here, here, and here, so far...

to say this shit angers me would be an understatement.

A nice little smackdown....

Of Robert Jensen, in an opinion piece in the UNLV Rebel Yell, by Marisa Christensen (who you might recognize from earlier piece critical of Melissa Farley).

Max Hardcore gets the book thrown at him

In the latest development in the Max Hardcore obscenity trial, Paul F. Little (aka "Max Hardcore") has just been sentenced to 46 months in prison. Not to mention, asset forfiture – MaxHardcore.com is now reduced to a single page with a big "Forfeited" stamp placed there by the Department of Justice and the Postal Inspector. Censorship doesn't get any more blatant than this.

Salon has a good article here on the hypocrisy and skewed priorities of an administration that has advocated for actual torture, but prosecutes someone for making images that are too sadistic. (H/T to Trinity for the news about Max Hardcore and the Salon article.)

No doubt many on the anti-porn side will hail this as a step in the right direction. The conservative anti-porn side, clearly, but there have been some on the feminist anti-porn side (notably Heart) who have also gotten behind the prosecution of Max Hardcore. I will point out that there's nothing in the prosecution that has anything to do with treatment of the actresses involved, since, so far, there are no allegations that there anything non-consensual has taken place in the production of Max Hardcore's videos. This is a case of censorship, plain and simple, and if one supports this prosecution, that is exactly what one is advocating.

I will also note, however, that many in the porn community consider Max Hardcore basically an embarrassment, and as this discussion on Fleshbot represents, and this one on AdultDVDTalk, there are plenty of people there who would be happy to simply throw MH to the wolves.

On a related topic, Sex in the Public Square has had some really good coverage recently of the recent wave of obscenity prosecutions. Elizabeth discusses a successful local obscenity prosecution in Staunton, Virginia, here and here, while Lou FCD has a post about obscenity law in general here.

So Now That I've Seen It ...

Nina and I watched The Price of Pleasure in its uncensored entirety last night.

I'm sure you won't be surprised to know I've got lots to say about it, but I'll save the details until tomorrow when I have time.

One thing I can say thus far is that at least twenty percent of its running time includes stolen, undocumented material that is 100% non-2257-compliant. And they are giving public screenings of it around the country, which blows away the fig-leaf of the "noncommercial or educational distribution of such matter, including transfers conducted by bona fide lending libraries, museums, schools, or educational organizations" exemption. It may be a lot of things, but lawful isn't one of them.

Coming Soon: The Spoofing of Sarah Palin

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

SPC Slide Show Back up

Those lovely folks at Stop Porn Culture!, after a brief retreat no doubt occasioned by all the attention called to the blatant violations of 18 U.S.C 2257 contained in their porn-bashing slide show, are once again making this odious pack of lies, complete with all 88 non-compliant images, available to anyone who visits their site with just the click of a mouse to indicate that the user is over 18.

Still no compliance statement. Still no legal language on the front conforming to 2257 regulations. Still no keeper of records information. Still no disclaimer asserting that all the performers whose stolen likenesses appear in the presentation are over 18 (which the producers couldn't prove if they had to since they pirated the content and have no records to substantiate such a claim).

In other words, they've gone back to flagrantly flouting federal laws that the rest of us obey on pain of fine and imprisonment.

There is a comment section on their Web site. Perhaps someone should bring it to the producers' attention that they are committing numerous felonies for which they may later face charges, and that they rightly should because they still have no evidence that minors do not appear in any of the images used in the finished product.

Let's make them aware that we're still watching them and that the heat is still on. If they don't take those non-compliant images out of their line-up, sooner or later, they'll get to find out what lawful pornographers already know, which is that throwing your defiance of federal statutes in the face of law enforcement is a very good way to end up a criminal defendant.

More on "The Price of Pleasure"

I'm lazy, so, well, here...

Nina Rides A Vette Now (With Update)

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

Just one question...

This isn't going to be a long and intellectual post, as I'm rather tired from working hard this week and playing hard this weekend. But, since I know from recent posts that some people from the anti-pornography crowd are watching this blog at the moment, I've got a question for them.

I understand that you feel that some sexual acts and interests involve degrading people, usually women. But what do you think is happening when someone who likes rough sex is begging for more -- or even getting irritated with his or her partner because it's not rough enough? Because last night I heard a whole lot of "More!" and even "That's not enough."

Is this only a problem if it's a depiction in pornography? Is this only a problem if the person who wants to be treated more roughly is female? A woman? Transfeminine?

It really puzzles me. I don't understand what the word "degradation" means when it's connected to acts or to kinds of sex or fetishes. To me, one person degrades another if he regards that person as lesser and intends to treat her in a degrading way.

Can that happen on a porn set? Sure. Do some people have fantasies about very harsh treatment? Sure, and yeah, there are genres of porn centered around it. (Though I do have to say I've used porn for a fairly long time and I didn't know about the very rough stuff the anti-porners always mention until I met Ren. Was I aware it existed? Yeah, but only vaguely. While it's true that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I do find myself wondering just what percentage of consumers are big fans of that subgenre, what percentage occasionally use it, and what percentage don't.)

But, well, Ernest mentions in his response to the Price of Pleasure trailer that the scene on which he puts a collar on a woman is affectionate because that's where they were in their relationship at the time. Porn revealing something about an actual relationship? Smiley affectionate tenderness and D/s? Say it ain't so!

Anyway... is that "degradation?" If we take what Ernest is saying at face value -- that they were in a relationship, that this was intimate nice stuff for them -- where's the "degradation?"

I can't engage with the worry that pornography is degrading -- or the definition of pornography as depictions of degradation -- until I know what we mean by degradation in the first place, and why degradation doesn't depend on context.