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I don’t know how to say how much her life and her work meant to women’s movement. I don’t know how to say how much she meant to my life. I don’t have the words. I could say that she is one of the most important, controversial, uncompromising, threatening, and brilliant women of Second Wave radical feminism. I could say that her works changed my life. I could say that every cruelty and every uncharitable swipe taken at her—by the pimps and the pornographers, by self-satisfied liberal men and by critics from within the movement—was a testament to how much she mattered and how important it was that someone was there to tell the truth without flinching, that that someone was her. All of these things would be true. But they don’t even begin to touch it. Nothing that I could say would.

---

And she was such a lightning rod for all kinds of energy, good and bad. She always reminded me of Emma Goldman in her passion and dedication.

For speaking uncompromisingly, she indeed drew forth an astonishing amount of hatred, and that is why so many of us will feel this as a cruel blow, that she had to absorb so much of the pent-up rage against all women, and that she so often stood almost alone.

I have never agreed with alot of Andrea Dworkin's work but she was an amazing person. I saw her speak at the Massey College at a very up scale academic event. It was then I realized that she was really a poet.

-snipppets-

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Last year, during a visit to London, she made contact with the Guardian and was given commissions to write on topics such as the trial of Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his pregnant wife, and living with disability. In the past few years Dworkin had been, she believed, cast into the wilderness as a writer because of her stance against pornography.

...She also had a brilliant, though wicked, sense of humour. Her kindness and humility surprised those who expected to meet a frothing Rottweiler.

The last time I spoke to her, a few weeks ago, we were talking about what it was that motivated her to carry on fighting for women, when she had suffered enough in her life. "Julie", she said in that famous, gravelly but soft voice, "I see it like this. All women are on a leash, because we are all oppressed. But those who get to adulthood without being raped or beaten have a longer leash than those who were. It should be that the ones with the longest leashes do more to help others. But it doesn't work that way, so we are the ones that fight the fight."

When asked in this newspaper how she would like to be remembered, she replied:

"In a museum, when male supremacy is dead. I'd like my work to be an anthropological artefact from an extinct, primitive society." She meant it.

---

I find this quote from her interesting, snipped from the Katherine Viner article:

quote:

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"She did concede, however, that her radicalism was too much for some: "I'm not saying that everybody should be thinking about this in the same way. I have a really strong belief that any movement needs both radicals and liberals. You always need women who can walk into the room in the right way, talk in the right tone of voice, who have access to power. But you also need a bottom line."

...It was this bottom line that Dworkin provided. She was a bedrock, the place to start from: even when you disagreed with her, her arguments were infuriating, fascinating, hard to forget. Feminism needs those who won't compromise, even in their appearance; perhaps I'm alone, but I find it pretty fabulous that, as a friend told me, Dworkin would "go to posh restaurants in Manhattan wearing those bloody dungarees". She refused to compromise throughout her life, and was fearless in the face of great provocation. In a world where teenage girls believe that breast implants will make them happy and where rape convictions are down to a record low of 5.6% of reported rapes; in a public culture which has been relentlessly pornographised, in an academic environment which has allowed postmodernism to remove all politics from feminism, we will miss Andrea Dworkin. She once said: "What will women do? Is there a plan? If not, why not?" And indeed, who is left to replace her?

---

[ 11 April 2005: Message edited by: baba yaga ]

[ 11 April 2005: Message edited by: baba yaga ]

quote:

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I won't miss her at all, she was a grating puritanical killjoy whose crusades against sexual expression only played into the hands of the religious right.

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quote:

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Reactionary, vigilante? That is a strange comment.

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Stockholm, what you wrote is utterly lacking in compassion. Saying someone who was an enemy of the religious right, of homophobia and oppression "objectively" shored up the religious right through her stand on pornography is most specious and controlling thinking.

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Stockholm, what you wrote is utterly lacking in compassion. Saying someone who was an enemy of the religious right, of homophobia and oppression "objectively" shored up the religious right through her stand on pornography is most specious and controlling thinking.

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Originally posted by Judes: I wouldn't bet on much in the mainstream media. Andrea Dworkin was way too radical to be recognized in the mainstream especially in her native country.

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Edited to add Slate and Yahoo news.

[ 12 April 2005: Message edited by: bittersweet ]

quote:

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Absolutely No. 1 Least Likely tribute ... David Frum:

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I needed a good shudder today. I can hear Dana Carvey as The Church Lady in my ear, saying "Oh, isn't that ni-i-i-ce."

quote:

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We did not discuss her long history of angry denunciation of her ideological opponents. (A quick posthumous Google search even turned up one of me [Frum].)

Instead, we talked about her respect for the Christian conservatives who fought against forced prostitution and sex trafficking and her revulsion against Bill Clinton’s abuse of women. Politically she belonged to the far, far, far left, but she had little use for an antiwar movement that made excuses for Saddam Hussein or Islamic extremism. And in one respect at least, she shared a deep and true perception with the political and cultural right: She understood that the sexual revolution had inflicted serious harm on the interests of women and children – and (ultimately) of men as well.

---

I do not think she went beyond clear-eyed recognition of the tribulations of her own group, to make a more general critique of Western society. For example, she thought the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's was an overall negative, because of the porn 'n' violence trope.

But does she ever analyse how the sexual revolution opened doors for gay people who had to hide their sexuality?

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Andrea Dworkin's Death: No Small Cause for Celebration!

I'm a long time prostitute and sex workers' rights activist. The news of Andrea Dworkin's death is to me a cause for great celebration. This individual created a theoretical framework that has been used by radical anti-prostitution feminists worldwide to make it impossible for us, as prostitutes, to gain basic human rights or do anything to improve our working conditions and life circumstances. Her legacy? Having theorized while straddling the dead bodies of prostitutes, having appropriated our experiences of violence to further her own anti-prostitution political agenda... Her legacy? Having ignored the political directives and pleas of working prostitutes, having silenced the voices of women working in the sex trade. Andrea Dworkin was a twisted, manipulative, evil despot who has continuously lied about the reality of our work and lives and who has hurt us tremendously as sex workers. The negative, tragic impact that her writings and activism have had --and will continue to have-- on our ability as sex working women to work and live with dignity, on our ability to organize, empower ourselves and achieve basic human rights, has yet to be fully realized. If there such a thing as Hell, I hope her reactionary ass lands right on top of the burning coals! After 15 years in the prostitutes' rights movement, that's 15 years having to face the condescension, venom, and violence of anti-prostitution feminists, my feelings tonight --having learned of Dworkin's death-- are devoid of any compassion. My heart is rather filled with relief and my spirit burning with joy and hope for prostitutes everywhere! May all the other old 70's anti-prostitution feminist bitches who keep on ignoring us, silencing us, lobbying against us, lying about us and contributing to making our lives sometimes so unbearable, be consumed from the inside. May they all finally start to feel the sickness and violence of their filthy politics and actions within their own bodies. And may they all meet an early end --like Dworkin who was only 59 ...

Mirha-Soleil Ross

---

Once her ideas were brought into the structured, hierarchical university setting they became as reactionary and conformist as those put forward by the right. It is no accident that Frum and Dworkin found common ground. Frum is a product of American education post-1980, and Dworkin helped setup that framework. The two represent how shrill and mendacious American culture has become.

I am not sure about connecting the degradation of Abu Grahib or Guantanamo with contemporary pornography. I have seen 'erotic' work collected in Taschen (so its cool) from the 18th and 17th century which would be banned now. I don't think that torturers in those times referred to line drawings to get their inspiration. They did a pretty good job all on their own.

Being against forced prostitution and sex trafficking and being against sex work altogether are two entirely different things. I intuit that Frum is being slippery here because Dworkin spoke out against all sex work, not just women enslaved into it, as far as I can tell. I could be wrong. She had a very complex way of writing and I can see how her work could so easily be coopted & twisted to cause anger against feminists, porn and sexual expression in general. This was back in a time when few people were talking about sex workers' rights to a safe work place, dignity and all the things mentioned in the email from Mirha-Soleil Ross, supplied by spatrioter above (thanks for that). This doesn't excuse her from denying her sisters' cries for basic human rights, which I'm sure were quite obvious to her.

From the short clips of her later ideas included in The Guardian articles, it appears that she adjusted her earlier reactionary words in order to dovetail more easlily with developments in the larger feminist movement. Was this a woman evolving quite publicly throughout her life, living with so many violent attacks & abuses (physical and intellectual)? I still think it took courage for her to be so public about the subject of sexual abuse of women, so early and for so long. If she is still perceived as blaming sexual expression for sexual abuse of women, maybe it was a high price to pay for bringing attention to our suffering in this instance. I don't agree with that thesis at all, if that is what she believed. I don't see her using this idea in a puritanical way, rather as a way to bring attention to abuse. I agree with mayakovsky, but Dworkin wasn't a torturer or perpetrator of crime:

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"Porn/violent movies/video games influenced me" is an easy excuse for the perpertrators. It holds resonance in our society and is a good deflection on responsibility.

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FRUM AND DWORKIN: They agreed on one important thing: the need to roll back sexual freedom:

And in one respect at least, she shared a deep and true perception with the political and cultural right: She understood that the sexual revolution had inflicted serious harm on the interests of women and children – and (ultimately) of men as well. She understood that all-pervasive pornography was not a harmless amusement, but a powerful teaching device that changed the way men thought about women. She rejected the idea that sex was just another commodity to be exchanged in a marketplace, that strippers and prostitutes should be thought of as just another form of service worker: She recognized and dared to name the reality of brutality and exploitation where many liberals insisted on perceiving personal liberation.

And she shared with Frum a deep suspicion of people who believe they are free and act accordingly.

......

BTW, Sullivan highlights with delight a gay Canadian conservative site today;
http://www.gayandright.blogspot.com/

[ 13 April 2005: Message edited by: Geneva ]

The AFN did it to Rodney Bobiwash. That's the most personal experience I had of that. Take the devil and make them into a saint, and prove your open minded at the same time. Hopefully some the good will come off. Sick, really.

[ 13 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Oh yes, and:

I would just like to say that Dworkin was some artist to have inspired such intense feelings, both for and against her. That's important and rare these days.

quote:

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Andrea Dworkin Assumes Room Temperature

Ladies and gentlemen, I got an e-mail from a friend last night advising me of the passing of that great feminazi Andrea Dworkin and this note came to me saying, "I never heard of this woman." I said, "Well, maybe I better tell people about Andrea Dworkin today."

---

rushlimbaugh.com

quote:

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Originally posted by -=+=-:

I would just like to say that Dworkin was some artist to have inspired such intense feelings, both for and against her. That's important and rare these days.

No its not. Look what happened when Reagan died.

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Yeah, but Reagan wasn't an artist. (Even when he was acting, he wasn't an artist.)

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I am not sure about connecting the degradation of Abu Grahib or Guantanamo with contemporary pornography.

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Neither am I. That argument is too close to the right-wing's claim that the tortures were simply the work of a few renegade hillbillies, acting out their porn-fueled fantasies. But the bulk of the evidence now strongly suggests that the torture was mandated by the highest levels of the US government, with the specific intent of humiliating the captors through the violation of Muslim cultural norms. Quite likely, anyone with a knowledge of those cultural norms could've concocted the tortures, with or without pornogrpahy as an inspiration.

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Originally posted by -=+=-:
Are you suggesting Dworkin was acting?

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I think that both Susie Bright's blog entry linked above, and David Frum's eulogy linked above, show grace. Despite ideological oppositions that might have turned to animosity in a live encounter, they're able to remember her with some respect, and more importantly they're able to restrain any glee they might be feeling in order to do so.

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"I don't hate men," she once said. "Not that they don't deserve it. It's just not in my nature."

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Andrea Dworkin

[ 13 April 2005: Message edited by: TemporalHominid ]

quote:

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Originally posted by -=+=-:
thwap wrote:

Yeah, but Reagan wasn't an artist. (Even when he was acting, he wasn't an artist.)

Are you suggesting Dworkin was acting?

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No, I'm suggesting she was an artist. Reagan's claim to "art" was his acting. But he was never much of one. He was competent, but flat.

Reagan's policies (or the policies he implemented at the behest of others) were what enraged or gratified people.

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Originally posted by Sharon:
As It Happens alert for those in the other time zones: I didn't hear Mary Lou Findlay's interview with Catherine MacKinnon yesterday but there are several reactions/responses to it on the program today which some of you might wish to listen for, in case you too were annoyed/incensed by the questions Mary Lou asked. It's in the first half hour.

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I'll try to listen to the responses today. Thanks!

[ 13 April 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

quote:

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Originally posted by writer:

rushlimbaugh.com

Hope all of those who disagree vehemently with the term feminazi let Rush hear about it. What a guy.

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No don't it only makes him believe he is relevant.

[ 13 April 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Maybe you should ask the question: was Dworkin in a position of political power?

She was just a voice. You could listen, agree, disagree or just tune her out. Reagan, the Pope and others like them had the power to make decisions that actually affected people's lives.

Like Frum -- who did it for neo-cons like Reagan -- she created an ideology that when used in a power structure negatively affected people.

Another post in this thread indicated her ideology, again when used by those in authority, set back the efforts of advocates to improve conditions for sex-trade workers.

Dworkin didn't enable people to invade Grenada, but her ideas did have a negative impact on a significant group of people.

[ 14 April 2005: Message edited by: -=+=- ]

[ 14 April 2005: Message edited by: -=+=- ]

[ 14 April 2005: Message edited by: -=+=- ]

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Larger-than-life warrior armed with the R word and a righteous fury

Germaine Greer

“THE WAR,” Andrea Dworkin used to say, “is men against women.” Her weapon in the war was a tough staccato prose that raked the frontline of the enemy, who was either inveighing against her as the archetypal ugly feminist or ignoring her altogether.

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Greer has absorbed more than her share of primeval hostility to female power, but she had more defences, I think, not that she mustn't have felt damaged by the hatred often.

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...I didn't always agree with her, but cripes, I loved to read her stuff. She challenged me and pushed me and made me a better pro-feminist, even when I rolled my eyes at her purple prose. I'll give my students something of hers to read soon.

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[ 14 April 2005: Message edited by: Contrarian ]

quote:

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Which would be one source of her empathy for Dworkin, and the power of this essay.

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Her use of the R-word upset people of both sexes, who interpreted her basic premise to be that “all men are rapists”. What she was actually pointing to was the fact that throughout the mammalian world penetration is synonymous with domination; the penetrated individual, whether male or female, must lose status. To be feminised is to be degraded, no matter what the context.

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quote:

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...What she was actually pointing to was the fact that throughout the mammalian world penetration is synonymous with domination...

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quote:

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SUBJECT TO DEBATE by Katha Pollitt

Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005

Like the temperance movement, antiporn activism mistook a symptom of male dominance for the cause. Nor did it have much to do with actually existing raped and abused women. "For God's sake, take away his Nina Hartley videos" is not a cry often heard in shelters or emergency rooms. If by magic pornography vanished from the land, women would still be the second sex--underpaid, disrespected, lacking in power over their own bodies. Rape, battery, torture, even murder would still be hugely titillating to both sexes, just as in Shakespeare's day, and women would still be blamed, by both sexes, for the violence men inflict on them. What made Dworkin's obsession with pornography so bizarre is that she herself should have known it for a diversion.

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quote:

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Originally posted by writer:

The Nation

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This kind of article is very close to what I had in mind in my first post. This writer is real eager to keep liberal men on her side, saying in effect that their porn is OKay with her. But then she wants feminists to accept her too, by saying that she still admires Andrea's courage.

Well, I don't think Andrea would admire the author of this article one bit!

I can recall when the Red Hot Video stores in Vancouver were struck with actions that were clear and forceful. And I can remember seeing one of the store owners on the TV news, shaking in fear, pleading "Does someone have to get killed over this?"

quote:

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Originally posted by Mandos:
The problem is that the identical argument is used by people who have agendas quite diametrically opposed to Andrea Dworkin's agenda: that pornography is responsible for social degeneracy of one form or another, and hence it is time to become censorious...

---

this may be the best position, I'm not sure

but the American liberal & European centre Left have accepted both, even urging that "sex workers " be integrated into the service economy

repeat: Dworkin opposed this totally, calling it an unmitigated evil

you can't square the circle on this, the Left is divided in its response to both pornography and prostitution

[ 16 April 2005: Message edited by: Geneva ]

the latter has been the de facto policy choice of northern Europe, with the Netherlands providing health and security services for prostitutes, and to some extent tax and income legitimacy to the institution of prostitution, concluding that since it cannot be eliminated, it has to be regulated

many people Left and Right oppose this approach -- it supports exploitation! -- and feminists, I would say, are divided, with Dworkin strongly opposed to legalization/regularization

anyway, MacKinnon on Dworkin:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16mackinnon.html

[ 16 April 2005: Message edited by: Geneva ]

quote:

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Do you mean that Andrea and Catherine, in their uncompromising opposition to all porn, not just videos but men's magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, were somehow teaming up with the religious conservatives? I have heard this accusation before, and it's always galling to have to deal with it. Andrea and Catherine weren't concerned about moral propriety, they were targetting real harms -- rape, violence, injuries, deaths. This has nothing to do with Victorian morality, it has to do with the gut reality of women's lives and the reality of male violence that is encouraged and legitimized by porn of all types.

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quote:

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lagatta:
Actually, much (I'd say a majority offhand) of the feminist left in Europe rejects prostitution and takes an abolitionist stance - abolitionist like slavery - against the networks and traffickers, not the prostitutes. This is no doubt due to the omnipresence of trafficked women from Eastern Europe (and the Third World) and the dismal conditions and violence in which they are held, often parallel to legalised prostitution.

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This of course has caused feminism to be a four letter word in the minds of European sex workers.

Europe needs more Ovidie's.

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Do you mean that Andrea and Catherine, in their uncompromising opposition to all porn, not just videos but men's magazines like Playboy and Penthouse, were somehow teaming up with the religious conservatives? I have heard this accusation before, and it's always galling to have to deal with it. Andrea and Catherine weren't concerned about moral propriety, they were targetting real harms -- rape, violence, injuries, deaths. This has nothing to do with Victorian morality, it has to do with the gut reality of women's lives and the reality of male violence that is encouraged and legitimized by porn of all types.

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Edited to fix link.

[ 17 April 2005: Message edited by: brebis noire ]

quote:

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Originally posted by skdadl:
That left me in tears, brebis noire.

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And me too.

At that time, and in this time, violence against women was/is seen as individual acts of violence by individual men and therefore not really a political or cultural problem. Andrea Dworkin gave me a political and cultural context to frame the violence I was seeing women and children go through every day of the year, every hour on the clock. I can say that without her larger perspective, without her rage against the machine of violence, I could have come to deeply mistrust all men for their individual acts of violence against individual women.

The CBC As It Happens interview with Ms Frum with Ms Dworkin’s associate was, disgusting. I do understand that reporters want to get all the myths about Ms Dworkin on the table but to make those myths the context of her life was not useful. Ms Dworkin identified herself as a lesbian, a women who loved women, Ms Frum wanted to know if that meant sexually, I think because they only framework she had, in this culture, for women loving women is sexual. Then there was the question about Ms Dworkin as man hater, when Ms Frum received a clear answer, she kept going back to it because it seemed she wanted to confirm that Andrea was a man hater. What saddened me the most however was the idea that they only way she could develop her theory was because she was a battered woman, rather than it being just one thread that informed. It was sad because instead of talking about her work, her analysis, it was only framed within an individuals act of violence to an individual woman.
Ms Dworkin might have been radical, filled with rage at violence against women and all the rest, but she helped make rape in marriage illegal in both Canada and the US, she provided a political framework to explore violence against women and because she was such a flash point, her life is witness to the violence women experience when they stand up and say no. I have heard feminists talk about her weight as though that made her irrelevant, people have picked away to find all the errors and flaws within her analysis, again to make her irrelelvant. It seems that only body perfection and perfection of analysis are acceptable when Andrea's work is evaluated.

I am so saddend by Andrea's death, I am sorry that the only place she was so often allotted was not perfect, therrefore not relevant, I am angry at the sickening and so often deliberate misreading of her work, the misquoting, the gleeful joy some have taken in her death.

For all her flaws, she was a woman who loved women enough to want their conditions, politically, culturally and economically to change. she loved enough to rage against the violence and the machine of cultural violence.

May she be at peace.

quote:

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Ms Dworkin identified herself as a lesbian, a women who loved women, Ms Frum wanted to know if that meant sexually

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quote:

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...the feminist who, in the debate about pornography - all that chatter about morality and freedom of speech and representation - insisted on reminding us that the sex industry took real women and abused and usually destroyed them.

She rubbed our faces in reality, in the ugliness of the world; she made sure that we understood that porn could only exist if women suffered to make it exist. She was prepared to examine what most of us are too squeamish to think about - the horror of life.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Bacchus:

Given that Ms Dworkin was married to a man, its almost a reasonable question

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Once maybe, but repeated, no. Shortly after I first moved to Canada,the women were murdered in Montreal. CBC TV were covering the massacre and a women, I do not remember her name, but a well known reporter chided feminists for pointing out that this event was the logical conclusion of the mysogyny so prevalent in our culture. Women were meant to see this as an individual act of violence done by one man. The outrage the country demonstrated was I think in part numbers, because individual women are killed in alarming numbers by lovers every year and so few are outraged and I fear accept that it will happen. Ms Dworkin never accepted that, she did not accept the violence. I would have preferred that the interview focused on her work and her passionate belief that change was possible, rather than whether or not she was a lesbian who married a man. Apparently just saying she was a woman who loved women could only be in the context of a sexual relationship.

quote:

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Originally posted by shaolin:
Thank you, brebis noire.

I often feel myself stuck in some sort of time-warp where although it seems I should be some sort of liberated, pro-porn (it's free speech you know), hip, third-wave feminist, I'm still hurting and consumed by these things like pornography and prostitution that everyone else debated and got over years ago. I get the arguments, I understand logically that we shouldn't rely on the patriarchal state to decide what we can see, that women need to make their own choices, that the best option is to regulate prostitution to give women protection...but this knotted-twisted feeling at the bottom of my stomach just won't let me accept it. I think this quotation really helps to explain it for me.

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Shaolin, I have a similar feeling and however logical or rational porn and the sex trade arguments seem, i cannot agree or accept them. I know that freedom of speech is critical, but I also believe that sometimes the good of the many outweigh the good of the few or the one. I think Canada is built on that premise, which is one of the reasons I came here.

I would like to see for once the best interests of women outweigh the economic health of the porn industry or the sex trade industry. I would like to see the 13 year old whose turf is close to where I work be valued enough that she would never believe that the sex trade is helping and protecting her so she does not have to go home and live with the abuse there.

Thank you for your knotted-twisted feelings.

micaila

[ 19 April 2005: Message edited by: micaila ]

[ 19 April 2005: Message edited by: micaila ]

quote:

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At that time, and in this time, violence against women was/is seen as individual acts of violence by individual men and therefore not really a political or cultural problem. Andrea Dworkin gave me a political and cultural context to frame the violence

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I find this an interesting comment. I agree with Micaila that violence against women was not conceptualized as a political problem, or a cultural problem, while I was growing up or during university. (Say, until 1970 or so).

Do other Babblers think Andrea Dworkin was the first one, or one of the first ones, to conceptualize it as a political problem? I mostly think of her as someone who opposed porn.

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:

I don't find it very covincing that porn significantly contributes to violence against women, because I am aware of too many porn-free societies where it is still endemic. But I DO think violence against women is far more than a series of individual cases.

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Is there any definition or standard that distinguishes porn from erotica? I'm quite sure I can tell the difference (it's visceral - like the knotted, twisted feeling shaolin mentioned), but I don't think I could explain it in a few words.

quote:

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micaila:
I would like to see for once the best interests of women outweigh the economic health of the porn industry or the sex trade industry. I would like to see the 13 year old whose turf is close to where I work be valued enough that she would never believe that the sex trade is helping and protecting her so she does not have to go home and live with the abuse there.

---

quote:

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Is there any definition or standard that distinguishes porn from erotica?

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quote:

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Originally posted by brebis noire:

Is there any definition or standard that distinguishes porn from erotica?

I happen to think that porn does contribute to violence, or violent attitudes against women, so I don't think your statement is very logical, jeff.

---

The difference between porn and erotica is something that lawyers cannot be left to do, it needs to be done by women, for women, and for children too. One area, and it's just one, where I think the Conservatives are ahead of the NDP is in their completely uncompromising resistance to any kind of phoney "artistic merit" defence being available for child pornographers. The NDP shouldn't put up with any BS stories from so-called artists on this issue either.

I don't have the time to go into everything here, but certainly anything involving degradation, such as bondage or sadomasochism is clearly porn. And in another thread I belive that Mavis Davis mentioned another savagely misogynist act, "double penetration", which is clearly violent porn. I am sure we can all think of other examples.

I think Jeff's posts while very intellectual and sophisticated take an anti-feminist view and I hope other, more experienced babblers will call him on it.

quote:

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MasterDebator:
I don't have the time to go into everything here, but certainly anything involving degradation, such as bondage or sadomasochism is clearly porn. And in another thread I belive that Mavis Davis mentioned another savagely misogynist act, "double penetration", which is clearly violent porn. I am sure we can all think of other examples.

---

I think women who like that stuff would be insulted by what you are sAying. I get very cynical when someone claims to speak for sex workers in this way. Obviously those acts that more and more women are getting into are based on horrible patriarchical things. However, people have adapted. I go back to the porn industry. Porn is comodified in money you have people doing acts such as DP and BDSM that they rather would not do. But do not discount those who like it, and DO NOT DENY THAT THEY EXIST! I guarentee you if there is ever a system where money is gone and people are all free this sex on camera stuff will continue. We've been too infected by civilization for it not to.

quote:

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There was research done in the US by Professors Malamuth and Donnerstein that clearly showed that men were not only sexually aroused by porn, it made them more tolerant of violence towards women. This was not some essay material that Andrea and Catherine wrote based on their own feminist theorizing, this was scientific, laborotary type data about real men and how they react to porn.

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quote:

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I don't find it very covincing that porn significantly contributes to violence against women, because I am aware of too many porn-free societies where it is still endemic.

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quote:

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I think Jeff's posts while very intellectual and sophisticated take an anti-feminist view and I hope other, more experienced babblers will call him on it.

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I am having this poster arrested.

Skdadl asked whether there are any societies which have no porn.

El Salvador or Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua all include large portions of the countryside where it is simply impossible to purchase a book or magazine, or see a film or television.

Porn is not a big factor among those who spend their lives toiling on a small plot, 100 km from any electricity.

I think porn must be rare in many Muslim parts of the world, too. Do we really think that small-town Iran or Tadjikstan, even Turkish Kurdistan, have significant porn?

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
I doubt if any society is "porn free" right down to the last sock drawer, but try buying a copy of Hustler in Saudi Arabia.

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Y'see, I think this is quite wrong, although I admit that I am running mainly on literary gossip.

And I take jeff house's point about any subsistence-level rural society.

I can't stand Dworkin's writing - and though she never said per se that all heterosexual sex was rape, she came very close to that conclusion in things I did read by her (but it is so long ago that I don't remember all the details - I remember how much she pissed me off ... though as Linda Grant said in her comment on Dworkin, our "socialist feminism" can have issues of its own, as "radical feminism" or "liberal feminism" do.

I'm ill at ease about a ban on pornography, but I think there is a hell of a lot of debasement of the participants in that industry and in the prostitutional system. I think some of our libertarians are wilfully turning a blind eye to that systematic violence.

BUT

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jeff, I would guess the countries you mention have a lower level of literacy.

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Uh, what does reading have to do with it??

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No one says porn is the only cause of violence against women; but it may be one of the causes.

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It may be.

It may also just be fun (and politically advantageous) to say so whether it is or not.

Or you could look at American popular culture which includes much violence in TV shows, movies, computer games. Does pornography refer only to explicitly sexual imagery or does it include just plain violence?

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jeff, I would guess the countries you mention have a lower level of literacy. Maybe there the culture of violence against women gets transmitted orally? As in one man bragging to his friends, "Any woman gives me lip, I knock her around till she acts respectful" kind of thing?

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Yes, that is precisely what happens, I think. But that isn't porn.

While I am sure there is some porn in the Holy City of Qum, Mecca, and Tehran, I have no doubt that it is considerably less than in Manhattan or Toronto.

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Porn should be seen as one way to convey cultural attitudes, but not the only one.

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Originally posted by audra trower williams:
Let's not have a pornography debate in this thread. I can't deal with it.

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I can understand your wishes Audra and naturally I totally respect them. From your wording I assume that you too have a "knotted feeling" about porn.

But I think that some of the precising done above, especially in lagatta's posts, bear thinking about.

Most of all, though, I didn't want to let this pass without comment:

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Originally posted by jeff house:

I think that is correct. So, it is the SINGLING OUT of porn as a medium for conveying curtural attitudes which needs to be explained.

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Aha! I have caught jeff house in a postmodernist thought!

Delish.

Further, though, jeff house, I suspect that you are as wrong about the Muslim holy cities as you would be about the Christian or Jewish holy cities. So they've got puritanical police. That tells us precisely what?