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

[Also crossposted to The SmackDog Chronicles (Ver. 2.6)]

It's one thing to witness the usual myopia of antipornography "feminists" on a daily basis.

It's quite another thing altogether to see it in as concentrated form, as in the following "essay".

It was originally posted on Thursday to a site called wickedlocal.com (unfortunately, the site seems to be out of service), then transferred to AdultFYI.com, where I discovered it. The "essay" is apparently in response to all the brohaha over college campuses across the country screening the feature porn movie Pirates 2: Stagletti's Revenge. The movie, whose original has won numerous awards for its theme and plot as well as representing what many critics see as the potential of erotica featuring high level art, has generated a bit of controversy; the University of Maryland at College Park cancelled a planned screening of the film due to protests from conservative activists and right-wing politicians threatening to cut off funding for the university. Not so with the University of California at Davis, which allowed Pirates 2 to be screened without much in the way of controversy there.

At least...not on campus.

However, someone -- more than likely an antiporn "radicalfeminist" activist -- took grand exception to UC-Davis allowing the film to be shown on their campus...hence, the following "essay". Normally, I wouldn't use this site for full fisking, but this article is so concentrated in its myopia that it more than deserves the in-dept treatment.

Plus...it features our favorite antiporn "feminist" activist, Dr. Gail Dines of Wheelock College, who brings her own special brand of wingnuttery into the mix, as you will see.

I will give some annotation as I go, as usual.

"Stench of eroticized violence": Actresses in Porn Have to Stop Working because of Damaged Genitals

I'm sure that you will get the gist of their point right away. But read on...

Students at several universities, including U.C. Davis and U. Maryland, recently planned to show a XXX “hardcore” porn film on campus, not as an educational event but as a form of entertainment. Maryland pulled the plug on showing the film for kicks and played a small part of it, instead, as part of an educational panel (albeit after the state legislature threatened to take away hundreds of millions in state funds). But U.C. Davis gave it the green light as a rip-roaring good time for students, citing “free speech” and calling the film a “safe alternative” to drinking.

I’m afraid to read the school’s definition of “safe.”

Now, the writer tends to ignore (or, more likely, wants the reader of his/her essay to ignore) the facts as to why UM-CP "pulled the plug" on the screening of Pirates 2...probably because it would have raised a particularly thorny question of collusion between antiporn "radicalfeminists" (of which the reader all but openly describes his/herself as) and more traditional right-wing Christian anti-feminist fundamentalists (whom mostly led the opposition at Maryland). And we all know that such collusion just doesn't exist, don't we??

And I'd say that compared to other hijinks on most college campuses, watching a basically moderate-core porn flick certainly does constitute "safe" by most people's definition. But, I guess that most people don't have the special perspectives that only radical antiporn "feminists" can offer.

Colleges well understand the multiple ways that porn is harmful. According to Oklahoma State Professor John Foubert, men who use porn are more likely to commit sex crimes than those who don’t.

No surprise there because porn normalizes and eroticizes violence against women. It hurts men, too. Porn addiction is a huge and growing problem that has destroyed the lives of many men — and studies show that men who use porn have worse sex than those who don’t. Other human relationships are also negatively affected. 75 percent of men in prison for child rape admit using child porn — and 75 percent of men in prison for child porn — admit sexually abusing numerous children.

I've bolded the more outrageous "statistics" put forth by our anonymous "essayist"....do they sound like they come from the same identical sources that gave Melissa Fairley her "95% of all 'prostituted women' want to get out of the business" meme?? How whacked out do you have to be to believe this crap??

I mean...isn't John Foubert kinda biased..and where does he get his "stats" that say that men who consume porn are more likely to commit "sex crimes" than those who don't?? Yeah...if you consider solo masturbation or seeking consensual sex with other willing adults to be a "sex crime". Or...if you merely consider getting an erection in the wrong place at the wrong time to be considered to be a "sex crime", too.

And how nice of our "essayist" to go the extra mile to interview all those child rapists in prison -- and all those pedophiles, too -- and trust their opinions that it was that evil PORN (especially the kind featuring consenting adults) that caused them to go after kids and rape young girls. Oh, wait, (s)he didn't do any research or interview any men in jail?? (S)He just lifted these "statistics" out of his/her as....piring ideology?? Oh, never mind...read on, MacDuff:

All these reasons explain why an “official” university showing of porn would violate Title IX as a form of sexual harassment. And while an “unofficial” presentation by students isn’t prohibited by federal law, schools can and should forbid all showings of such films on campus.

Oh, really??? I didn't know that Title IX could be used as a form of censorship?? I always thought that that was a mandate of protecting discrimination against women in college campuses...and that showing porn on campus in restricted areas didn't quite reach the level of discrimination. (And what about the women involved in the actual making of the film, or the women who flocked to see the movie...shouldn't they have the same rights of non-discrimination to see the film themselves??

We're not talking about “Sex in the City” here. According to Wheelock College pornography expert, Professor Gail Dines, the vast majority of “mainstream” porn sold in this country depicts women being brutalized — often by multiple men — with objects and weapons. And it isn’t “fantasy.” Real women are really hurt while men experience sexual pleasure. “Actresses” in the “industry” often have to stop working after only weeks because their genitals are so damaged and their bodies so mutilated they are no longer “valuable” in the business. If this is what “mainstream” porn is like — just imagine the “hard core” stuff they showed at U.C. Davis.

Ahhh, yes...Gail Dines....such an unbiased and openminded authority on pornography and its impacts on women. The woman who says that interracial porn is innately racist merely because it depicts Black men with huge penises. The woman who says that even "mainstream" girl-girl porn is harmful and must be banished because it reflects "male-centered" values imposed into female sexuality. No surprise that she would just as thusly label any and all depictions of porn as "women being brutalized" by men....because in her cracked mind, a man with an erection is one small step removed from a rapist...if not an actual rapist. Therefore, by definition, any sexual contact between a man (or group of men) and a woman depicted in porn automatically counts as "brutality" and "women being harmed while men experience sexual pleasure".

Oh....and I'm guessing that UC-Davis doesn't show "hard core" stuff at all, since most students there can easily get enough of that online through their own damn laptops.

But, it's this "actresses" in the "industry" being "brutalized" with "weapons" and "objects" (gee, you mean that dildos and vibrators are weapons of mass destruction more dangerous than even knives and guns????) meme that deserves special mention. Now, it's clear that women in porn are more than suspectable to personal injury on occasion; that's the occupational hazard of their job. Anal tears, anal lapses, vaginal tears, yeast infections...all are the possible hazards that come with the occupation. (The threat of STD's is not too far from the horizon, either...though thanks to the modern regimen of standardized STD testing, it is far less of a threat than assumed by outsiders.)

How this is that much different, however, from the possibility of physical injury from other athletic endeavors that are far more socially accepted than porn is, is a legitimate question. After all, football players, basketball players, ballet dancers, gymnansts, and even bowlers are just as much of risk to injury to their person, but I don't see anyone calling for the banishment of Football Division major college football or baseball or basketball..let alone calls to ban ballet. But, you know...sex is different.

This has nothing to do with morality or censorship — it’s about the serious damage caused to an entire society when sexual degradation of women is celebrated as pleasurable entertainment.

Instead of knee-jerk free speech excuses, universities should use this controversy as a teaching moment.

Yeah. Nothing at all to do with morality at all....despite the claima of "sexual degradation" of women. No claims of censorship, either....disregarding three paragraphs earlier, where our "essayist" directly calls for college campuses to simply not allow such films to be shown on their campuses.

And of course, none of those "knee-jerk free speech excuses"...that's only reserved for radical antiporn activists who are totally "censored" and overwhelmed by the full financial power and weight of "pornographers" and their evil puppets in the media.

Institutions of higher education enjoy an honorable place of leadership in this country — and they’re not the government — which means they aren’t beholden to the “real world” laws that allow the systematic degradation of women through the lawful proliferation of even the most vile pornography.

Schools should take this opportunity not only to rise above the “real world” but also to collapse the ugly hierarchy of isms that too often allows hateful material directed at women to be protected as free speech — while similar “speech” directed at other “types” of students is prohibited.

Ahhh...hate to break this to 'ya, Mr./Ms. Sparky, but most institutions of higher learning are publically owned and financed by the state, which means that they are still bound by the laws of their state's constitutions...the very ones that protect the right of their students as citizens of America and of their respective states to view certain media and content. And that would include even the right of material that some would consider to "allow the systematic degradation of women through the lawful proliferation of even the most vile pornography". Of course, we could debate whether Pirates 2 even comes close to the level of "vile pornography" or whether it promotes "the systematic degradation of women"...but that would require an actual debate, which seems not to be on the agenda of this "essayist".

And about those "other types of speech that are prohibited"...if by some chance (s)he is referring to "hate speech" codes used against particular kinds of speech directed at racial minorities (Blacks, Latin@s) or GLBT folk; well, we can also debate whether these codes really do protect such people, or whether they merely provide a crutch for those who are in power (and BTW, the latter still tend to be White men) to play divide and conquer. Besides, there is a fundamental difference between targeting actions directly going against certain groups and censoring individual thoughts....not to mention the idea that thinking about women (and men) as free and autonomous sexual beings is somehow at the same level as, say, burning a cross in a Black student's yard or marching around a Jewish neighborhood wearing Nazi gear. Most of us are capable of seeing the difference. Most of us, that is.

This point cannot be overstated. U.C. Davis thinks the brutal abuse of women in film is protected speech — but presumably they don’t feel the same way about films that celebrate the violent abuse of blacks, Jews, Muslims, etc.

Any school that indulges such a hierarchy should prepare itself for an uprising. Women are tired of the unequal enforcement of free speech principles on college campuses. It’s time to showcase this injustice by demanding that schools also show other movies that celebrate the violent abuse of blacks, Jews and Muslims.

If schools forbid these other films, women will at least have successfully unveiled the pernicious ways universities have participated in the subjugation of women in higher education and larger society.

Oh, now wait a minute.....hold the fuck up here. OK....so the alternative to simply not showing such "degrading" and "damaging" porn flicks as Pirates 2 on college campuses is to simply have supposedly progressive radicafeminst women on campus rise up and demand that schools show....Birth of a Nation?!?!?! Oh. now I get it....better to have racism, anti-Muslim bigotry, homophobia, and all the other isms to thrive so that "women" can get rid of the evil that is porn, right??? How mightily progressive of you, Sparky. NOT.

And what delicious irony....universities who open their campuses to women, who give out scholarships to women, who, thanks to the aformentioned Title IX, have given so many oppurtunities to women, and who contain all those nice Women's Studies curricula which produces such "radicalfeminists" as Gail Dines....they are all just part of the evil Male Conspiracy. All due to one feature porn flick.

The remaining option is for schools to allow all styles of violent, hate-filled movies to be shown as entertainment — in venues where core American values such as civility and equality are forming roots in newly developing minds. And then what will happen to our communities of young people — when campus air becomes a pungent fog of “hatred as pleasure,” seeping into the brains of our next generation of leaders as they learn about politics, science, business, the arts, law and human behavior?

“Safe” alternative to drinking, indeed.

Yup, yup, yup....we must not allow impressionable minds to be polluted by bad ideas...especially the idea that consensual sex can actually be an enjoyable thing to ease the burden of college life. Especially the idea that anal sex is something other than the main transmission of HIV/AIDS among gay men. Especially the idea that women might just discover that sex -- especially sex with men -- could be an actual pleasurable and mutually satisfying experience. Or that explicit sex can be reconciled with high art and thematic values.

Such evil, hostile beliefs must be purged from our universities pronto, so that our women can be raised with integrity and honor, and with the total ignorance and blindness and wilfull repression that only pure radicalfeminists can provide.

And this is why "we" must prevent films like Pirates 2 from being screened at college campuses. And why people like Sasha Grey must be outed for the dirty slut and perverted trollop she really is.

Congratulations, Professor Dines...you've created another Frankenstein.

Now..pardon me while I take a cold shower to wash the stench of horseshit off my body. Ugh.

(Much props to our fearless Henchwoman God Emperor for discovering this essay mountain of crap first, for giving it the business it deserves, and for issuing the challenge.)

Two Significant FTW's From AVN: Mark Kernes on "Sexting", And Adelia From Digital Playground on College Censorship

With all respect to the Iowa Supreme Court for the most progressive decision this side of Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, I found two articles today that really give me some hope for this world.

First off, there is the irrepressible Mark Kernes over at AVN, who just released a column that basically smashes the debate about teen "sexting" and cuts through the bullshit arguments for censorship thereof. Snippage:

There is a growing segment of society that is creating pornography involving children. Children in underwear. Children partially or completely nude. Children having sex with other children.

That growing segment of society is ... children.

The first reports of "sexting" have been making the news pretty consistently recently, and while adult companies have been providing cellphone downloads of adult content for at least five years, the concept has only now captured the mainstream public's imagination because a growing number of those doing the sexting are minors. Kids in Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah have all been busted for it. And there's even been one suicide reportedly traced to "sexting remorse."

MySpace, Facebook and other personal contact sites have found that an increasing number of minor teens - 54% , by one study - have been discussing sex, drugs and posting sexually explicit images to their pages. Sexting, because it's a bit newer - the first news reports of it surfaced in 2005, though a pair of underage teens were busted in '04 in Florida for emailing photos of each other having sex - hasn't attracted quite as many followers; just 20% of 13- to 19-year-olds , according to a survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which sadly includes legal sexters with the underage ones.

[...]

Conservative writer (and anti-porn activist) Maggie Gallagher posed what may be the most important question on this subject in a recent Townhall.com column - and in the process, admitted something that conservatives spend their entire careers trying to deny: "Right now we have a decision to make: Is underage porn (these aren't really children) a crime or not? If so, how do we treat girls and boys who engage in it 'for fun' and not for profit?"

First, the admission: "these aren't really children." Aren't they? The law says they are. Various religions have long claimed that kids are too "innocent" to think of doing such things. As for the "crime": When it comes to "adult porn," using a performer who is 17 years, 11 months, 30 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes old gets you busted, but if the producer waits one more minute to shoot her, she's perfectly legal. That's clearly insane.

If there's one thing that this "sexting" brouhaha ought to teach us, it's that "18" is even less of a magic number now than it's ever been. Kids don't suddenly become sexual at the stroke of midnight on their eighteenth birthday. They become sexual when their bodies start producing estradiol (in girls) and testosterone (in boys), and when something called the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) starts pulsing from the hypothalamus area of their brains. For girls, that can be as young as 9; boys take a year or so longer. The kids may be unclear what to do when that happens (gosh, thanks, abstinence-only education!) but they'll figure it out soon enough. That's why sex is an instinct, not a learned behavior. Nobody had to teach the first humanoids how to mate; they figured it out quite easily for themselves, and even though modern humans' instincts have atrophied, they still procreate well enough to (over)run the whole fucking planet.

It's this instinct that the Deeply Religious deny, even as they themselves produce families with ten or 15 kids. They know that sex is so pleasurable that unless they invent a God to decree that sex can take place only between certain people of a certain age (and gender) under certain conditions, it would be (is!) humanity's favorite pastime ... and then who'd milk the cows and build the widgets?

(Emphasis added by me .)

The full column by Kernes can be found here.

Quick shoutout to Vicky Vette: What's that you say about raising the age of eligibility in porn?? How will that work when we already have 15 and 16 year olds who probably know more about sex and making sex flicks through "sexting" than most 25 year olds??

FTW #2 is also from AVN, but on a similar but different subject....here, the big controversy is over an aborted screening of the feature porn flick Pirates 2: Stagnetti's Revenge at the University of Maryland-College Park due to objections from right-wingers and fundie conservatives.

Yesterday (Thursday), CNN's Prime News took on the controversy, featuring the state senator (Andrew Harris who threatened to cancel state funding for the college unless they canceled the screening, and Adelia, the marketing director for Digital Playground, the production company for Pirates 2.

Considering that the moderator of the "debate" happened to be a right-winger, Adelia might have felt double teamed...but it must not have deterred her from doing some serious damage, according to this roundup from AVN:

CHATSWORTH, Calif. — Digital Playground marketing director Adella appeared Thursday evening on CNN's "Prime News" to discuss the controversy surrounding a canceled student screening of Pirates II: Stagnetti's Revenge at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Right-wing anchor Mike Galanos moderated the face-off between Adella and state Sen. Andrew Harris, the GOP politician who pressured the school into canceling the show by threatening to deny state funds to any school showing a porn flick outside of a classroom setting.

Galanos made his position clear when he proclaimed that X-rated movies are worse than crack cocaine. He leaned heavily on the argument that porn is "addictive" and "ruins lives" of innocent viewers.

Harris compared watching porn to smoking cigarettes. If smoking is banned on a campus where porn is screened, then the school's priorities are clearly askew, Harris argued.

Adella handled this hysterical blast of outraged rhetoric with pointed out that contrary to the knee-jerk attitude that porn degrades women, Pirates II does not cater to fantasies of degradation.She went on to mention that the movie is the product of a female-operated company.

Adella also pointed out that neither of her ideological opponents had seen the movie, making their arguments a clear case of contempt prior to investigation. Galanos dismissed this argument by claiming that he'd "seen the trailer".

"I had a great time on CNN and relished the opportunity to engage in a discussion with those responsible for censoring consenting adults," Adella said. "It was empowering to educate the senator on the modern era of adult entertainment, including female owned and operated studios, female viewers, and the need to embrace sex.

[full story here]

More folk like Adelia would only be a good thing.

Now You Can Buy Your Very Own Copy of The Price of Pleasure

That's right folks. You too can own a DVD of The Price of Pleasure for just 29.95, complete with all its stolen, non-2257-compliant sexually explicit footage. No proof of age required. You don't even need a credit card. They'll happily take your money with all the convenience of Paypal.

Don't let this stirring example of bullshit agitprop ... er ... courageous documentary film making get away. All you have to do is mouse-click on over to The Price of Pleasure promotional Web site at www.thepriceofpleasure.com and you'll be able to order your DVD, regardless of who you are and what your interests might be, directly from the producers. You don't need to be affiliated with any educational or research institution such as might conceivably qualify for exemption under 2257 record-keeping requirements or even have to state that you are over eighteen to see the hardest XXX images the producers were able to acquire.

All you need is a Paypal account and a strong stomach and this baby's all yours. So hustle on over right now and add this to the collection of stuff you hide under the bed.

The Price of Pleasure - you know you want it and now it can be all yours for not much more than a copy of Grand Theft Auto.

And you'll be supporting a noble cause. An unspecified portion of your payment will be used to defray the expenses of the producers and their associates as they travel the nation decrying the evils of the kind of material they're peddling to the general public. You too can enjoy the satisfaction of feeling morally superior to the creators and consumers of the stolen material contained in this movie while being horrified, titillated and shamed all at the same time.

Don't miss out. Order your copy of The Price of Pleasure Today. Just $29.95 while supplies last, or until the producers get busted by the feds.

"Sexting": The New Sex Moral Panic...or Web Porn 2.0??

Much has been made in the media recently on the supposed dangers of "sexting", the phenomenom of using cellphones using "3G" wireless technology to send and receive sexually explicit images and text to each other. It has particularly become grounds for recent well-publicized prosecutions of individuals (especially teens) under "child pornography" laws for sending such images over their wireless phone lines. One such prosecution in New York State drew the unexpected disapproval -- of the prosecution, not the child -- of the mother of the child who inspired "Meaghan's Law" (see story here).

And then there was the story (which I documented here) of Jessie Logan, the young woman who ended up committing suicide last year after being severely harrassed and bullied by her classmates after one of her nude photos ended up being "sextexted" over the Internet. That particular case has been unsurprisingly exploited by the dominant MSM and by "child security experts" as a crutch to ban "sexting" as a means of "protecting children" from the apparent harm of sexual images.

Fortunately, though, saner and less ideologically motivated voices have come forth to debunk the scare tactics and excessive panic over teen "sexting". Dr. Marty Klein, the emminent sex therapist and social commentator, has recently come forth (via here, h/t to Aspasia at LaLibertine's Salon) )to defend "sexting" as a form of simple adolescent human interaction that should not be prosecuted.

Arresting these kids for the creation, possession, or distribution of child pornography is a perversion of the law. It turns the 15-year-old who poses into both a victim and a perpetrator (what kind of law does that?). It defines a stupid boyfriend as a snarling predator.

And by watering down the definition of “child pornography,” it undermines our attempts to reduce the actual sexual exploitation of children, and to catch and treat those who would really harm our kids. Real child pornography is a record of child abuse. “Sexting” is a record of adolescent hijinks. Lumping the two together reflects adult anxiety about young people’s sexuality, not a sophisticated understanding of it.

And what about the supposed “dangers” of “sexting”? School counselors, police, even Bill O’Reilly all agree that kids’ lives could be ruined—by insane laws making them lifetime criminals, not by any actual harm. “These photos will be on the internet forever,” we’re warned—yes, and quickly forgotten. And in twenty years, everyone’s physician, accountant, and local sheriff will have nude photos of themselves somewhere on the web. Welcome to the 21st century.

Ironically, the campaign against “sexting” holds kids to a higher standard of judgment than adults. With adults, we generally don’t criminalize poor judgment unless it involves coercion or demonstrable harm. If you take nude photos of your wife, and send them to her friends the day after your divorce, she can call you a bastard (which you would be), but she can’t sue you. She certainly can’t get you on a sex offender registry that lumps you in with rapists and child molesters. But that’s what angry adults like Cynthia Logan want.

And this week, the alternative online daily CounterPunch posted an essay by author David Rosen which basically repudiates the entire argument for censoring "sexting" on its face, as well as dissecting concerns about the Obama Administration adopting such censorship. An excerpt:

These are but a few examples of a new and growing social phenomenon known as sexting. Adolescents are sending and receiving explicit snapshots or video clips of themselves or other teens from their cellphones or handheld PDAs like a Blackberry. The original image is then often resent to an ever-expanding universe of viewers.

Sexting is a post-modern form of flirting, a game of sexual show-&-tell; so far, it hasn’t involved sexual predators. A recent study indicates that one in five teens have either sent or received such images. [see “Nails in the Coffin: Last Gasps of the Culture Wars?,” CounterPunch, January 30-February 1, 2009]

What makes these incidents most troubling, especially the ones on the Cape and in Greenburg-Salem, is that the participants can face felony child pornography charges. The Greenburg girls, who are 14- and 15-years and allegedly took nude or semi-nude photos of themselves, face charges of manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography; and the boys, who are 16- and 17-years and distributed the images, have been charged with possession.

Each generation re-imagines the erotic. In this process, notions of the pornographic or the obscene are challenged and changed. And in the process, the generation is changed, its erotic sensibility remade, thus shifting the sexual landscape. The eroticism of today’s teens is not that of their grandparents, let alone their parents.

Today’s popular culture is based on aesthetically rich, Web 2.0 digital connectivity. This digital culture engenders a new erotic sensibility. CDs and streaming video extend traditional forms of erotic representation of a book or a film-TV program. Web 2.0 social networking opens communications to two-way exchanges, group associations and shared experiences. Sexting extends the functionality of mobile communications by adding images and, in the process, expands popular erotic sensibility.

The entire essay is a rich history of how sexual imagery and media is transformed through technology and personal demand, and how attempts to control and/or censor such media simply end up being as much ineffective as it is damaging to the principles of free speech and expression.

Some words about sex and the pubic square

An interesting post over at The Legal Satyricon on pubic shaving and "porn culture". The article gives a much-needed and historically-informed smackdown to the idea that shaved pubic hair is solely driven by the porn industry or that there is a ubiquitous "porn culture" that is dictating how women present themselves sexually:

With the long history of pubic shaving packed into a few paragraphs, lets look at that term — “porn culture.” What a deliciously expedient rhetorical tool. I think that the good professor is perhaps a bit under-exposed to what “Porn Culture” really is. The fact is this:

There. Is. No. Such. Thing.

One of the wonderful things about the internet is that it completely democratized porn. Back when you needed a lot of money to run a porn company, and only a few companies controlled the market, you had “porn culture.” The marketplace demanded that porn companies aim at the bulls-eye of sexual preferences, which usually followed along with body types and body images that Madison Avenue and Hollywood fed to us. Therefore, most porn actors and actresses looked relatively similar.

[...]

How we dress, adorn and decorate, and yes, groom ourselves may relate to our personal feelings on hygiene or religious practices. However, when it comes to pubic hair in western culture, it largely has to do with sexuality and the many varieties of things that flip our perverbial switches. So, while one person’s approach to pubic hair maintenance may be largely pragmatic, others may do it to attend (however minimally) to their particular erotic ideal. Unless you believe that attending to any erotic ideal is bad and oppressive, there’s no reason that pubic grooming is any better or worse a practice than the many other erotic ideals out there.

[more]

(A note on one thing that did make me wince a bit about the article is toward the end – the emphasis on the word "empowering" in a way that now seems a bit dated for those of us who have been around the block in debates about choice and empowerment – in a word, issues like this are a typically far too nuanced to fit into simple "empowerment vs. exploitation" rhetoric.)

Prohibitionism marches on

More bad news from the legal front – the long-running Extreme Associates obscenity case is drawing to a close, with EA owners Robert and Janet Zicari (aka Rob Black and Lizzy Borden) copping guilty pleas. Story here, here, and here. Reason magazine provides further background here.

Black and Borden face up to five years in prison for the "crime" of producing extreme porn that included violent imagery. (Though at least they're not facing a potential 50 years each, as they were under their original counts.) And unlike the earlier Max Hardcore conviction, this is entirely about the content of their videos – to the best of my knowledge, in this case there are no rumors of non-consensual incidents on the production end which some people offered up as a round-about justification for Hardcore's obscenity prosecution.

Whether or not this round of obscenity prosecutions is just a bad hangover from the Bush years remains to be seen. As the Reason article points out, Mary Beth Buchanan, the right-wing moral crusader who's leading the EA prosecution, is asking to keep her job under the current administration. And the dual choices of Eric Holder and David Ogden for the number 1 and number 2 spots in the Justice Department show no clear indication of what federal obscenity policy will look like for the next 4-8 years, though hopefully the fact that the nation is facing much bigger issues will reaveal moral crusades like this for the waste of resources that they are.

In other news, Iceland is poised to become the first country in the world to impose a blanket ban on the entire sex industry. Pornography is already completely illegal there (at least in theory), and the new Left government there is about to put in place Swedish-style laws against buying sex, and goes one further by also banning strip clubs. Thus, in one country at least, achieving the anti-sex industry trifecta that prohibitionists have been shooting for. All, as usual, justified by rhetoric claiming that all sex work drives human trafficking. Further background here. It is interesting to note that in the story I just linked to, Iceland is considered a desirable enough place to work that strippers were coming to Iceland of their own volition from places like the Netherlands and Puerto Rico. However, the fine upstanding social democrats now in charge of the country have decided that this is all exploitation without bothering to ask anybody who actually works in that industry whether they are being exploited.

Sasha Grey Speaks Out

(H/T to Aspasia and Fleshbot):

The Daily Nexus, the UC Santa Barbara student paper, just published a response by Sasha Grey to an article by Jenni Perez, that paper's sex columnist. The article was in many ways a kind of a "Female Chauvinist Pigs" rehash and a description of the authors prior experiences of self-objectification, but it needlessly singled out Sasha Grey in particular as representative of a kind of inauthentic female sexuality the Perez once suffered from. Sasha responds:

Sex on camera is performance. While I enjoy the same pleasures at home, I’m not attempting to “keep the train moving” in a sex scene; I am there for myself and for my audience…not to stroke the egos of my male counterparts. At home, I am there strictly for my partner and myself.

I am neither ashamed or reluctant to admit what I do is performance art; I have also expressed that at times I come prepared with dialogue. This resonates two of my primary objectives in the adult business (in which the supermodel’s show cut out of my response) one: challenge the idea of what women are supposed to like or be like in bed, and two: most of the porn I used to watch was boring and I wanted to make it more fulfilling for myself and viewers. These statements were made in order to challenge the one dimensional, romanticized Hollywood-idealized perception of “couples friendly sex”.

Aside from my objective, I also enjoy many facets of sex that most people can’t fathom.

I fetishize psychological play; I enjoy perverse “disgusting dirty talk” and improvisational fantasy of such acts. This also allows me another area of exploration in a business where many men are jaded by the sex they are having, it gives me the opportunity to push them for an honest reaction, an animalistic response if you will, that you don’t see in many adult films.

Entertainment often makes satirical references to dirty talk, and as we all know satire/comedy is derived from real life experiences-people enjoy it but are afraid to talk about it without making a joke, as are most sexual exploits. As human beings we often make fun of what we don’t understand, personally I refuse to live a fear-based life. Like insensitive gay jokes of bygone and present generations, bdsm and rough sex are the new black.

I am a very sexually healthy young woman and I take pride in the liberation of female sexuality, I have a cause, I am determined, and I am a hard worker (pun intended). As a sex symbol, with an intellectual stance, I am and will continue to be vilified, and I am ok with that…in fact I am content; it gives me the opportunity to shed the light on the darker areas of sex and validate the insecurities of sexually repressed women. The days of victimized, disturbed porn stars (and civilian women) are fading away… I am the new breed.

How Does An Ageless Sex Goddess Celebrate Her 50th Birthday??

If you happen to be Nina Hartley, you....

1) reflect on your impact on the world at large. (Which would be, on the subject of sex and pleasure and women's sexuality, and bringing progressive values into the hardcore erotic medium, pretty much HUGE.

2) You have lots and lots of sex. (Ahhh....duh.)

3) You debut at the Huffington Post with a killer essay depicting a fictional brunch with another legend and world changer who has had her own share of ups and downs....and has managed to persevere through it all with strength.

What's that you say....Barbie's a doll, and she can't speak??? Well. let's pretend that she can, and that she and Nina decide to have a gettogether where they shoot the breeze about their lives.

Fortunately, Nina can speak, and type, and write. Based on the results, pretty damn well, too.

Show her your love by going there and reading..and then drop her some birthday wishes and some thanks for...well, just being, talking, and doing the sexy for so long.

Nina Hartley: My Brunch With Barbie (from The Huffington Post)

More Hot Air from the Windy City

So last month I posted about the meeting between Robert Jensen and Tom Dart, the Chicago-area sheriff and anti-prostitution crusader. This grandstanding prick is now making headlines suing Craigslist in federal court in an attempt to force them to drop its "erotic services" section entirely. Story here and here. Bound, Not Gagged posts a response from SWOP Chicago here.

His argument is that advertising prostitution online is promoting a "public nuisance" and should be banned on that basis. Evidently driving more prostitution back out onto the streets (which is what is likely to happen if internet prostitution is curbed) doesn't come under this guy's idea of "nuisance".

I also notice from one of the videos of Dart's press conference that the anti-prostitution group CAASE was part of it. And CAASE, in turn, is a group that has worked quite closely with Melissa Farley in the last few years and who's "Alliances" page is pretty much a laundry list of the usual suspects from the "progressive" anti-porn and anti-prostitution milieu.

I point to the latter, because I'm so sick of hearing how anti-porn radical feminists are a marginalized group that doesn't exercise real political power. Once again, very real links to powerful players in politics and law enforcement who are doing their bidding is revealed here. The antis, both Right and "Left", have real power in the real world (power that in the opinion of those of us here at least, does real harm to real people). Its about fucking time they owned up to that power.

On Proof

Short and sweet, here.

Recently I was talking online in a thread that turned to porn and trotted out the old "Porn causes addiction, and people seek harder porn as they might seek harder drugs" line. I mentioned that this was never the case with me. I don't look at porn nearly as much as I used to, for one, and for another, I'm not hopelessly obsessed with gonzo (which is where I'd definitely be these days if the theory were true.) I've also observed similar things in my lovers: we like certain things and go looking for those things, rather than "graduating" from our own preferences to those of our porny overlords.

The response was pithy snark:

Dude, over time everyone’s fantasies are dictated by porn. They may seek their own fantasies out at first, but porn use tends to escalate in nearly everyone.

Bleak indeed! I guess I'll be jilling off to Max Hardcore when I'm sixty, then. Maybe the process is just slow.

Of course, I asked for the proof, and got an answer: Simply consult the almighty Google!

There have been so many studies about people’s porn use “escalating” that I’m sure you could Google a few thousand. Porn is more like drugs or booze than books; it’s a taboo, it’s tied to pleasure, etc. That means escalation is very, very likely. And I can tell you that every dude I know who is willing to discuss his porn use will admit to escalation.

You can't make this shit up.

That's the thing that gets me, really. These people feel totally comfortable stating something as fact, but when pressed can't even remember the name of any study that even supposedly proves them right.

Where I come from that's called believing old wives' tales, and about as silly as thinking that waving dead chickens over warts will cure them, but apparently it's been proven to them...