I made the (knowingly provocative) claim that:

quote:

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That is the point of a cultural politics. We are fighting to change men’s demand for women’s violation. Fighting to make it so that men are revolted, not turned on, by the sight or description of a woman gagging on a cock, being tortured, having her mouth, vagina and/or anus stretched to their limits with multiple cocks, being raped, being raped as a child, being raped by her father, brother or other relative, being beaten during sex, having her hair pulled and her head forcibly moved during oral sex, being pissed or shat on, etc. Fighting to ensure that men who aren’t revolted by these are treated as sick, dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs. This is only one front, but a crucial front, in the long and ongoing fight to make violence and coercion, domination and submission, unacceptable, inconceivable, unthinkable.

So, yes, andrean, we are fighting to ‘suppress thoughts’. We are fighting to make antidemocratic thoughts unthinkable and nonsensical. That may be the most horrific thought to a liberal (though liberals certainly fight hard enough to suppress the thought of real democracy!!), but that’s victory for radicals. When it makes no more sense to think of using a woman as a masturbatory aid than it does to think of burning her at the stake because she wears a crystal necklace, or even better, when it makes no more sense to think of so using her than it does to think of shaving with a banana – then we will have achieved something.

---

to which Mandos (seconded by skdadl) responded in two ways.

First, he strangely dismissed a bunch of points as "peripheral", "a digression" and "tangential", as "pedantic" and "empirical" (?!?), and as "further away" and "even further afield" from the Dworkin-Mackinnon proposal, despite the fact that the arguments I invoked were precisely arguments of the kind which were invoked by Dworkin and Mackinnon in defending their proposal.

Second, he accused me (and by extension Dworkin and Mackinnon, since they're who I'm defending) of "mind control" and "totalitarianism. He said:

quote:

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Whatever mechanism you are using, you are using it to limit communication in some way

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quote:

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The dream of being able to make thoughts, bad thoughts, impossible has been the dream of almost every totalitarian system (capitalism included) since, like, the dawn of time. When I hear the words "impossible" and "thought" in the same sentence, I get allergic, fast.

Now, of course, you're going to tell me that you're different. That the thoughts that you want to suppress really are bad. And I'm not going to challenge that, because some of them really are bad thoughts. But I'm not willing to give anyone at all the tools to make that happen in itself. Not tools through the courts and the existing systems of the state. These things have merits in that they help to temporarily relieve the pressure, but ultimately the way they're constituted is to support existing systems.

---

quote:

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You think that

1. you can take away their freedom to oppress "be it in speech, or press, or assembly, or what have you"

2. you can do so by using existing techniques in civil litigation law to control thought, without risking that they'll just...do the same thing.

1 really troubles me more than 2. Call me a liberal or whatever, but the reason why we give the oppressor those rights is because whoever has to power to limit them is the oppressor or is shortly about to become the oppressor. I'm really skeptical about that form of radicalism. It implies that you are pure.

---

quote:

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It is a victory for radicals when people are only able to think what they want them to think, in other words.

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Further to which, I questioned skdadl about what she sees as our option if neither judicial nor extrajudicial mechanisms are to be used to protect the rights of the oppressed. Her response, sensibly enough, was:

quote:

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How's about some political action and education?

---

Which sets the stage for my reply.

The point of political action and education (which are, one should note, extrajudicial actions) is to change minds -- to change the political climate, established institutions, and normal behaviour. We are trying to turn some behaviours which are currently normal and commonplace into behaviours which are absurd, ridiculous, nonsensical, passé, revolting. We are trying to turn some behaviours which are currently outré into behaviours which are normal, commonplace and everyday.

This is perfectly familiar from what we do on a day-to-day basis, and the case of witch-burning I cited previously is a good (if distant) example. Once upon a time, people thought it made perfect sense to burn women as "witches" for knowing something about anatomy and the pharmaceutical properties of herbs (or just for being disturbing). Today, this sounds fantastical. There are still many people who believe that "witchcraft" is a clear and present danger which must be actively fought. Yet even these people don't ever propose burning anyone (e.g., J.K. Rowling, Starhawk, Alyson Hannigan) at the stake. And most people consider these people to be wackos on the lunatic fringe (despite the power they've amassed in a few benighted corners of the United States).

Note, it's hardly "impossible" to think of burning a woman at the stake (read the excerpts above, I never said "impossible", whatever Mandos' allergies). The steps required to do so are quite obvious and don't even require an effort of the imagination. They are, however, nonsensical, indeed, unthinkable. It would be a grotesque wrong for anyone to do so, and even people opposed to witchcraft think so.

There are piles of much more recent examples of changed norms, around women's roles, gay rights, the propriety of discrimination, that will be familiar to us all.

Of course, we are still today arguing that same-sex love is perfectly normal, commonplace and desirable against those who want it to remain detestable, underground and grounds for violence. We are still today arguing that women and children do not "belong" to men, and that men don't have the right to beat, rape, buy and sell, or kill them. We are still today arguing that capitalism is not the only (much less the best) way to organize production and consumption, that other -- cooperative, non-exploitative -- worlds are possible.

There is nothing radical about this understanding of the point of politics. Tony Blair, in his recent speech to the Labour Conference in Brighton, declared that one of Labour's great victories was to have (finally) instituted a minimum wage in Britain and to have had it so embraced that no Tory could now attempt to repeal it. The Liberal sponsorship program in Québec, which has given so much employment to our chattering classes these last couple years, was intended (despite its utter failure) to win Québecois support for federalism. And I hardly need draw attention to the efforts of the Christian Right, so successful in the U.S., so unsuccessful here.

The success of any politics "limits communication" on opposing themes. There's a reason why there are no Leftist (and even few liberal) daily newspapers or television stations. There is an ideological fantasy in liberal societies that there are "no limits" to communication, that we live in "open societies". As all of us who are Leftists are painfully aware, this fantasy is only a fantasy. What makes it "ideological" is its use to defend the oligarchy and their limits. "We," they proclaim, "freely allow all speech, without limits. You, who challenge our speech and our limits, you are the totalitarian, the oligarch."

There are always limits, always norms, always ways in which things are done and ways in which things are not done. What it means to be on the Left (and I'm not saying this to be prescriptive, I'm saying this on the presumption that we all agree on this) is to want those norms to non-hierarchical and solidaristic. That oligarchic things (violence, coercion, exploitation, oppression) aren't done, and democratic things (cooperation, deliberation, sharing, creativity) are.

So, yes, I want it to seem ridiculous to think oligarchic thoughts -- what Mandos sees as "people ... only able to think what [we] want them to think" -- because I want to live in a democracy. I want our side to win. If I wanted to live in an oligarchy, if I thought white supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism were grand and ought to be continued and intensified, I wouldn't be here. I would be over on Free Dominion with the rest of them. I keep appealing to what democrats, radicals, feminists think not to be prescriptive, but because I'm appealing to what I take to be our common values. I criticize certain arguments as "liberal", because I'm taking it for granted that we're not liberals and don't want to be. I'm presuming that I'm here for much the same reasons you're all here. Because I'm a democrat, a Leftist, and so are you. We're trying to produce a particular kind of world, and to get rid of another kind.

When Mandos says that "1 [my desire to take away the ability of oppressors to oppress] really troubles me more than 2 [that I think there may be mechanisms to do so]", I can only wonder if he actually is a Leftist. Mandos, do you think it's OK for there to be an oligarchy? for there to be oppression? Or is it just that you can't possibly imagine democracy? imagine the defeat of the oligarchy? (Keep in mind that, in asking this, I'm presuming that the answer to those questions is "no".)

The upshot of all this:

Pornography is not a democratic thing, a feminist thing. It is the enactment of violence and hatred towards women. What I described above is not "extreme" porn, "illegal" porn, something "outside" of the mainstream. It's mainstream, ordinary, everyday porn. However violent and oppressive the women's everyday experience may or may not be (this is for CMOT Dibbler), porn is worse. Porn is the fantasy of women's total subordination to men. It's purpose is to make men love patriarchy, lust for patriarchy, and to give them models of how to live it out.

If democracy is going to happen, we have to defeat porn. We need to defeat it where it lives. We need to give men fantasies of a very different sort. This is not the whole of the battle, and never was. But it's a part of the battle, and an important part. The point of porn is to eroticize domination and submission: oligarchy. Our goal is to eroticize equality.

If you want to live in a world where the vagina monologues are banned for being "pornographic" and the good vibrations sex guide is banned for being "pornographic" that's fine, just don't expect me to want to live there.
I am sick to fucking death of this topic. Why won't you three leave us alone?

[ 03 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

quote:

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Dude, I can see there is absolutely no resoning with you. ...

If you want to live in a world where the vagina monologues is banned for being "pornographic" and the good vibrations sex guide is banned for being "pornographic" that's fine, just don't expect me to want to live there.

---

CMOT Dibbler, it would be a lot easier to reason with me if you actually read anything I said, rather than projecting onto me the terrors lurking in your imagination. I don't want to live in a world where the Vagina Monologues are banned. They aren't pornographic, they're feminist. So far as I'm aware, the Good Vibrations Sex Guide isn't pornographic either (though I can't say I've read it).

I don't mind being challenged on things I actually say. But I really hate being accused of all kinds of things that I don't support and that bear no relation to anything I've said.

fern hill asks:

quote:

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So, here in the Feminist forum, we're getting lectured by whom? If Chris Borst is a real name that I should know, I apologize. I don't.

---

Chris, by writing your position out so fully above, you have shown me where I, anyway, believe that we differ, and it is once again a classic split on the left.

I save here the passages I wish to respond to. I can't do that for a while, but I wanted to head off any further objections to this discussion in itself.

quote:

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The success of any politics "limits communication" on opposing themes. There's a reason why there are no Leftist (and even few liberal) daily newspapers or television stations. There is an ideological fantasy in liberal societies that there are "no limits" to communication, that we live in "open societies". As all of us who are Leftists are painfully aware, this fantasy is only a fantasy. What makes it "ideological" is its use to defend the oligarchy and their limits. "We," they proclaim, "freely allow all speech, without limits. You, who challenge our speech and our limits, you are the totalitarian, the oligarch."

There are always limits, always norms, always ways in which things are done and ways in which things are not done. What it means to be on the Left (and I'm not saying this to be prescriptive, I'm saying this on the presumption that we all agree on this) is to want those norms to non-hierarchical and solidaristic. That oligarchic things (violence, coercion, exploitation, oppression) aren't done, and democratic things (cooperation, deliberation, sharing, creativity) are.

So, yes, I want it to seem ridiculous to think oligarchic thoughts -- what Mandos sees as "people ... only able to think what [we] want them to think" -- because I want to live in a democracy. I want our side to win. If I wanted to live in an oligarchy, if I thought white supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism were grand and ought to be continued and intensified, I wouldn't be here. I would be over on Free Dominion with the rest of them. I keep appealing to what democrats, radicals, feminists think not to be prescriptive, but because I'm appealing to what I take to be our common values. I criticize certain arguments as "liberal", because I'm taking it for granted that we're not liberals and don't want to be. I'm presuming that I'm here for much the same reasons you're all here. Because I'm a democrat, a Leftist, and so are you. We're trying to produce a particular kind of world, and to get rid of another kind.

When Mandos says that "1 [my desire to take away the ability of oppressors to oppress] really troubles me more than 2 [that I think there may be mechanisms to do so]", I can only wonder if he actually is a Leftist. Mandos, do you think it's OK for there to be an oligarchy? for there to be oppression? Or is it just that you can't possibly imagine democracy? imagine the defeat of the oligarchy? (Keep in mind that, in asking this, I'm presuming that the answer to those questions is "no".)

---

As you say you assume, it isn't likely to come as much news to anyone here (except the trolls) that norms are socially constructed, and social construction of norms at the moment tends to be directed by whomever is in power.

What leapt out at me in reading your outline of how that works was your leap from "I want to live in a democracy" to "I want our side to win." Now, there, y'see, I think you are assuming greater speed and less depth than I am. In fact, that reminds me a lot of the sixties line -- "Revolution if you want it!" -- which I learned to think of as the Marxist sin of voluntarism.

Perhaps I am wrong, but you seemed to be implying there that if the left could just win a few elections, or take over a few newspapers or TV networks, that we could overturn the "norms," make the old ones unthinkable, almost overnight.

Well, y'know, Chris: good luck, eh?

Clearly, I don't think that that is going to happen soon, nor do I think it would be enough. I was taught to think of political and social change as rooted in social and economic realities. I think that it is important for the left to keep hammering away at democratic vision, at the specific changes we want and the ideals we are headed to -- but I also think it is important to keep recognizing where we are and what it would take to take the majority of people with us, heart and mind.

Your concluding line -- "by all means necessary" -- sorry, but I cut out there. Coercion ain't in my repertoire.

On a very few grounds, I accept the "grab-'em-by-the-balls-and-their-hearts-and-minds-will-follow" logic -- ie: change the laws and wait for minds to follow. I wanted such changes to, eg, family law because we had to do something about women and children being left indigent NOW as the divorce laws changed.

But I am usually much more a serious believer in the logic of social history. I think that the changes that have made a difference have been made by large groups of people finally moving because moving made sense in their lives. I have limited tolerance (and sometimes even more limited respect) for leaders and/or legislators, and I don't read left history in terms of its Great Men or Women either -- at least, I don't think that is the most interesting or useful way to read it.

quote:

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I don't want to live in a world where the Vagina Monologues are banned. They aren't pornographic...

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I know very little about theories and philosphies of the feminist Generals who are waging the war for equality. But one thing I am fairly certain about, (and this is born out by what skdadl, and other feminist activists have said in the other two threads about this topic) is that no one has been able to come up with a really solid(read objective) legal definition of what porn actually is. Until that happens,( and I hope the women who frequent this forum will forgive me for this) I think we are safer having issues of penthouse and playboy on our store shelves.

[ 03 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]
edited because the militaty analogies were exceedingly dumb.

[ 03 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

I agree more with your point about offering alternatives

quote:

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We need to give men fantasies of a very different sort...

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quote:

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antidemocratic thoughts unthinkable and nonsensical

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[The only other thing missing in this analysis, as some others have pointed out, is that porn is not just straight porn. Gay porn may have different dynamics to it. But if the latter is true, then perhaps gay "porn" is simply not the same porn we're talking about.]

[Edited to remove problematic citation of Camille Paglia, who I need to re-read anyway.]

[ 06 October 2005: Message edited by: jas ]

quote:

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But if the latter is true, then perhaps gay "porn" is simply not the same porn we're talking about

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I move in circles in which porn is considered unproblematically, unambiguously good. Porn is sex. Sex is pleasure. Pleasure is good. So, porn is good. That's the whole thing.

Porn = sex = pleasure = good

You can point out that rape is sex, and rapists take pleasure in rape. You can point out any number of complications to pleasure = good or sex = pleasure. You can point out that a lot of possible ways of doing sex don't appear in porn, and that porn sells a very specific view of sex. But it doesn't matter.

Porn = sex = pleasure = good

If you think porn is a problem, then you are anti-sex and anti-pleasure, which makes you a conservative Christian fundamentalist. If you think maybe something should be done about porn, then you want to "ban" it and you are a totalitarian mind-control fascist.

You can say anything you want, and one useless idiot after another will tell you how if you "ban" porn then it necessarily means that this, that, or the other thing (presumed to be good) will go with it. Even if you never talk about "banning" anything. Even if you think "banning" things is a useless fantasy and not worth talking about, since it can't be done.

You get people talking about how "I'll do what I want!" You can nicely point out to them that if what they want to do hurts people or depends on other people getting hurt, then maybe it's not such a good thing to want. And the best you'll get is "You can't tell me what to do! You aren't the boss of me!" Even though you aren't bossing anyone, and are just pointing out how their desire to not hurt people and their desire to do whatever they want may sometimes conflict.

I'm sick of all the crap arguments.

Take a look at what porn sells, people. At the endless pictures of "stupid/innocent/naive/horny" "bitches/cunts/sluts/barely legal teens" getting "ripped/reamed/torn/pounded/assaulted/humiliated/abused/exploited" by one or two or a dozen "massive cocks" - sometimes "shocked", sometimes "violated", sometimes (regardless of what's shown) "loving it" (these aren't my words, these are the words from and promoting the sites). Look at this stuff and tell me it's "sex positive".

Porn has a simple line. Rape = sex. For women, pain = pleasure. So, for men, rape = good.

quote:

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Originally posted by Rumrumrumrum:
I don't know who the rest of you associate with but I have never worked with or assosiated with or met another man who expressed approval of or a desire to rape, beat, smash or in any way humiliate or hurt women in general or particular.

---

They informed me that they were protesting Child Pornography.

I asked them whether Child Pornography was not, in fact, already outlawed in Canada, and in fact considered one of the most heinous and despicable crimes one could commit.

Yes, they replied, it's illegal, but they wanted to "raise awareness".

I asked if maybe, just maybe, their "Child Porn" protest was 30 feet from the door of an Adult video shop on purpose.

This invited a stream of bad logic, conflation, insinuation and hyperbole that makes Fox News look the ancient Greek philosophers.

And that, my friends, is exactly what happens whenever one discusses porn. The slippery leapfrogging from Child Porn to Playboy, back to rape, and then over to the Spice Channel before hopping over to snuff films and so on.

I don't mind discussing rape, because it's easy: I'm not in favour of it, just like anyone else here.

And I don't mind discussing sex: I'm in favour of it, just like almost anyone else here.

But I get the distinct sense that when someone like Chris or Thalia says "rape" they're not talking about the same thing most of us mean when we use that word. And that only muddies things. Same with "violence", "harm", etc. I asked for some clarification of these terms on a couple recent threads, and got no response.

Would it be possible to discuss topics like porn using ONLY COMMONLY ACCEPTED USAGE of terms like "rape", "violence", and the like?

Even in the case we were to assume that Mr. Borst were capable of creating the society he invisions, the idea that it can be achieved by socially engineering degrading ideological constructs out of the human mind by eliminating porn, fails in the manner of a teenager dobbing excessive amounts of pimple cream when breaking out, as opposed to reduding the amount of chocolate bars comsumed.

At the heart of Mr. Borst facist campaign is the supreme error of an absolute belief in an "ideal," as an achievable objective, as opposed to a work in progress contextualized in a fallible human social construct. The result of such absolute idealizations can be found in the killing fields of Cambodia, and in the torture chambers of the inquisition.

The problem with modernist-essentialist reductionism as found in some Marxism, wherein all human discourse can be reduced to the essentials of economics, or some radical feminist critiques, wherein all human discourse is reduced to the essentials of patriarchal opression, or to the christian belief that everything is reduced to matters of faith and sin, is that all are mutually exclusive and perforce excelude from their internal logic the truths the others reveal.

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Mr. Magoo, nothing exists in isolation and all pornographic media live in a world with all other pornographic media. There are cartoons joking about raping kids in Playboy just as there are rape victims used to make pornography just as porn theaters displayed a film called "Snuff" just like men have been sent to jail for sexually violating and killing women and filming it.

Here's an article critiquing the actual contents of Playboy to determine if sex with children is portrayed as acceptable.

http://www.theportlandalliance.org/2004/july/playboy.htm

From the article:

For decades Playboy Magazine has published child pornography and incest materials which could cause “copy-cat” crimes, wherein consumers criminally act out sadosexual and child abuse scenarios. This is not my declaration, but the ruling of an Amsterdam court in 1994 which defended these statements made on a Dutch television station. When the station reported on a study by the U.S Department of Justice and said Playboy was facilitating child sexual abuse and incest en masse, Playboy Inc. sued for libel and defamation. Presented with the evidence of photographs, illustrations, cartoons, letters, and stories depicting positive portrayals of sex between adults and children as well as incest, the court ruled against Playboy in a case widely reported in the Netherlands but conspicuously unreported in the United States.

Playboy sued a Dutch tv station for libel and defamation and lost but Playboy Inc. has spent a lot of money making sure no woman can sue them for libel or defamation. Corporate personhood and rights are more real than real persons.

I think Chris said it very well that, "The point of political action and education (which are, one should note, extrajudicial actions) is to change minds -- to change the political climate, established institutions, and normal behaviour." All that is happening on this discussion board is dicussion, and it's a discussion that could do without gratuitous comparisons of radical feminists to homocidal maniacs perpetrating holocausts. Women control almost nothing on this Earth, feminists control even less, and radical feminists control even less than that. Fears that "women are taking over!" have been heard by suffragists, women's liberationists and feminists ever since women dared to ask for the right to vote and it's really not happening.

It takes all sorts to make a world, and some of those sorts need to be the envelope-pushers, the people who dare to press the edges of what we as people consider possible. Used to be women voting was considered absurd, as was the idea of educating all children and the 40-hour work week. I'd like to put an end to the desire to see women humiliated in sexualized minstrel shows into our possible future, and I believe that's a worthwhile goal. Susan B. Anthony, a heroine of mine, never got to cast a vote that counted but American women after her did, and that's where my hope lies.

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Thalia ]

quote:

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For decades Playboy Magazine has published child pornography and incest materials which could cause “copy-cat” crimes, wherein consumers criminally act out sadosexual and child abuse scenarios.

---

The insinuation that a reasonable and rational adult is going to be "driven" to child rape or incest because of a cartoon in Playboy magazine is absurd in the extreme.

And it's this kind of bafflegab to which I refer. An intentional blurring of the lines.

And I am responding in some deep frustration. I took the trouble to write out a political argument about means and ends, and you responded with a cry of pain about pornography -- as though you assumed that the kind of pornography you describe doesn't bother me.

That's not the point, Chris. To me, your argument is a direct parallel to that of the imperialists who argue that we have to invade whichever third-world country is up next on their list because women in those countries are not going to have full civil liberties yesterday.

So if that's the way this discussion is going, I'm out. In all these threads, I have never wasted my time fixating on the content of the porn, so you don't actually have any idea what I know of it or how I feel about it. I have been arguing that no ends justify the coercive means you support, and what do I get back? Sheer sentimentality.

Thalia is, to my mind, being entirely disingenuous to play the privilege card when what we have been discussing is legislation, or maybe worse -- in your terms, "any means necessary." Legislated thought is the medium of the banal of this world, the cold-hearted bureaucrats, and if they don't set out to be Eichmanns in the first place, the crusaders of thin culture keep heading in that direction, depressingly.

Cueball writes:

quote:

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The problem with modernist-essentialist reductionism ... is that all are mutually exclusive and perforce exclude from their internal logic the truths the others reveal.

---

quote:

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we are fighting to ‘suppress thoughts’. We are fighting to make antidemocratic thoughts unthinkable and nonsensical. That may be the most horrific thought to a liberal (though liberals certainly fight hard enough to suppress the thought of real democracy!!), but that’s victory for radicals.

---

The idea that "antidemocratic thoughts" are to be rooted out is inherently totalitarian. Some "radicals" are in fact totalitarians, as the history of the 20th century makes utterly plain.

And, given all the contempt for "liberals" in these posts, we can all be sure that no one with any commitment to civil rights would be seated on the Committee of Public Safety conducting the proposed inquisition.

I'm not saying a cartoon in Playboy makes men rape, I'm saying there's a continuum that reaches through all aspects of pornography and Playboy has had a lot of sexual child imagery AND articles from convicted pediphiles saying child rape is a figment of kids' imaginations AND articles saying commercial sexual exploitation is a non-issue AND the existance of widely available real child porn AND global trafficking in children for labor AND Chester the Molestor cartoons AND...

Nothing is ever one thing and one thing only, it all contributes. If you read the article you'll know Playboy reduced the number of sexualized images of chidren after the release of the Dept. of Justice report. Saying the Dutch are not known for ruling against pornographers is a huge understatement, but the evidence that Playboy was consistantly showing child-adult sex in approving ways was overwhelming. If you think I am absurd in the extreme than the Dutch court that agrees with me about the harms of sexualizing children in any media context is equally extremist.

Edited to respond to skadl's "I have never wasted my time fixating on the content of the porn"

It is not a waste of time to become familiar with contents of the media being discussed, and this is such a sad, difficult problem for people against hate speech to overcome. I want to show people some of the pornographic images I've seen, want to show them the crying, distressed-looking Asian woman hovering over a penis, want to show them the picture from a porn magazine showing two male figures and a baby of indeterminate gender being held between them by one penis in its mouth and another penis up its backside, no hands. I could go on and on...

But I can't show you that. I can't inflict these horrors on people because I'm not into traumatizing people to make a point (also why I never joined PETA). No one wants to see some of the sick shit that's being sold as sexual entertainment and I can't in good conscience force anyone to see them, but God how I wish you would choose to see them. Abstract theory is fun to play with but it's no substitite for material reality. The reality is it is Playboy Inc. dragging Dutch people making "free speech" statements on Dutch media into court while victims of the prostitution industry have no where to turn for justice.

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Thalia ]

The court did not rule that Playboy ought not to publish those images, but that when someone points out that they do, they can't lie about it.

In fact the whole cited article is about applying critical analysis to Playboy and its ilk. This is not the thrust of this thread.

Arguing for the protection of vulnerable people is not the same as saying thoughts should be unthinkable (yes, that was another poster).

If you want to be effective at dealing with an issue, being upset is no excuse for not thinking clearly.

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: jrootham ]

quote:

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Originally posted by jrootham:
The court did not rule that Playboy ought not to publish those images, but that when someone points out that they do, they can't lie about it.

---

The question wasn't Playboy's right to publish them (this is the Netherlands, that's a given), it was the accuracy of the statement that Playboy promotes acceptance of incest and child rape when it publishes them. It's like that case of protestors who handed out fliers saying McDonalds food is detrimental to health- you can't make up lies about companies and hide behind "free speech". Similarly, the Dutch people making the speech had to prove they weren't making up lies about Playboy condoning child-adult sex and the social ramifications of such approving images. They had to prove to the court's satisfaction that these images really do contribute to child rape. That they proved it successfully in the country most open to accepting child pornography as legit is very important.

It's more than strange to me that my verbal support of people being able to sue pornographers for defamation has been poo-pooed as totalitarian thought control before it even gets to be heard by any court, but Playboy has actually abused existing laws to try and squelch the freedom of speech of naysayers to its business practices and no one has called them on their fascist abuse of power to try and shut people up. The hypothetical power to sue some are afraid to give to women like Linda Lovelace and Carol Smith is the real power, backed by $$$$$, global corporations like Playboy are already using to suppress free speech but still most progressive people consider Playboy a multinational corporation working for freedom and liberty for all.

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Thalia ]

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Thalia ]

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
The idea that "antidemocratic thoughts" are to be rooted out is inherently totalitarian.

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Then every activist is a totalitarian, and every social worker, every criminal rehabilitator, every ethics teacher, every parent who admonishes their kids to affect their behavior. I don't think it's wrong or totalitarian to try and make racists less racist, sexists less sexist, homophobes less homophobic, violent criminals less violent.

We could get postmodern for a minute and suggest you trying to tell me I should change my mind about educating people on prostitution is itself you trying to root out the "antidemocratic thoughts" you think I have in my mind, and this would make you totalitarian for insisting I change what I believe to accord with what you beleive, but pomo isn't my thing. Anymore.

Playboy Inc. has clearly tried very hard to do the totalitarian quashing of the free speech of others but no one has yet called them totalitarian or acknowledged their power to supress free speech. I've never sued anyone for anything. I'm writing on an Internet message board. I don't have a millionth of Playboy's power but I'm the one being cast as Pol Pot here. I'm about as powerless as a young woman can be and Playboy is one of the most powerful brands in the world. It doesn't make sense.

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Thalia ]

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Thalia ]

Normally in systems based on Roman law, as is the Dutch case, the plaintiff (here, Playboy) must prove that the statement complained of is categorically false.

If the court believes a proposition to be possibly true, or uncertain, the libel cannot be proven.

So, in this example, the anti-porn people would not have to prove anything at all. It would be up to Playboy to show the falsity of the statement.

Then, there is usually a requirement that the speaker KNEW the statement to be false, and made it anyway.

So, until we get an actual link to the case, or an authoritative discussion of it, I am going to assume that it didn't decide anything like what our posters claim.

quote:

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Originally posted by Thalia:
You know I sympathize with your frustration, Chris. It's as if Cueball didn't read your last post before alluding that you're just like state-sponsored genocidal mass murderers out to "ban" 100% of degrading, dominating thoughts from everyone's head. This is far removed from the dialogue you're trying to have. Anyone involving themselves with educating others on any topic could be called fascist or accused of "engineering society", and it's a bunk discrediting tactic.
[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Thalia ]

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I have been watching this debate with jaundiced disbelief for numerous days. I was quite well aware that you, and others like you would have absolutely no idea what I was saying when I said what I had to say. Yet, sometimes things need to be said.

It is quite obvious that this whole discussion is really about protestant moralizing posed as "left" analysis, and nothing more. What is obviously at issue is peoples discomfort with sex, not sex exploited as a means of producing wealth.

Is filming someone giving a massage pornographic? Hardly. Is someone giving a massage for money prostitution? Not at all. As soon as a dick enters the the picture we are being enjoined to condemn the whole thing as some form of economic rape, based on highly tendentious and abstract theoretical ideological constructions.

The problem is that once we assume that the state has the right to define what thoughts are correct and which are not, and condemn people on this basis alone, we have enshrined this principle in all areas, and this principle is far more devious and dangerous than boys looking at pictures of girls "on their knees" sucking other boys dicks.

In other words:

quote:

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We could get postmodern for a minute and suggest you trying to tell me I should change my mind about educating people on prostitution is itself you trying to root out the "antidemocratic thoughts" you think I have in my mind, and this would make you totalitarian for insisting I change what I believe to accord with what you beleive, but pomo isn't my thing. Anymore.

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This is not actually post modern but it is definitely tautology.

She would be engaging in totalitarian activity if she conived to create ways to institute state policies specifically designed to manipulate you and force your ideological compliance, and punish you if you did not comply. Your argument is so strange, given that manipulation of women into ideological compliance, is the key aspect of the production of porn to which you object, and which undepins the charge of rape through economic manipulation by threat of punishment in the form of poverty.

[ 05 October 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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want to show them the picture from a porn magazine showing two male figures and a baby of indeterminate gender being held between them by one penis in its mouth and another penis up its backside, no hands. I could go on and on...

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Well, the rape of babies in the same short post as Playboy.

However, deciding that because you can't prove yourself right you'll just assume I'm wrong anyway is specious.

I'm not a lawyer, but if anything about me sticks as true to you it should be that I'm not unknowledgeable about what I'm speaking of. Because you can't prove my account of the procceedings is wrong, you've translated that into the assumption that you're pretty sure I'm wrong anyway, somehow, but you just lack what you need to prove it. But I can't be right, oh no, I couldn't possibly be right about Playboy's un-fascist, un-totalitarian lawsuit against Dutch reporters, of that you're sure.

I'd really like to continue this discussion but it seems no matter what sources I bring up or what evidence I've collected I can never provide enough to swing the pointer any further than "she's probably wrong but we don't know for sure so we'll just assume she's wrong anyway." This is how little one-woman feminist me is received while Playboy Inc. gets every benefit of the doubt that they're the real feminists, the real champions of the downtrodden, abused and poverty-stricken citizens who need the centerfolds, strippers and pornography Playboy provides out of a commitment to freedom, liberty and justice for all.

I expect people to say it's not "what" I'm saying they object to, it's "how" I'm saying it. For a while I believed maybe there was truth to that, but then I saw that anyone saying women should have the right not to be seen as objects for sexual use through prostitution or pornography got treated this way no matter how apologetic or how softspoken, neutral and academically dry they tried to be. I've watched sweet old ladies with 20+ years of experience working with rape victims shouted down and told they need to get laid because they said prostitution is a harmful cultural practice. Most feminists have encountered this at some point or another on one topic or another, but it's especially potent when it comes to questioning men's right to treat women as sex toys.

Sorry, skdadl. My message was not a response to your post. I had hoped my opening might make that clear, but evidently it didn't. You're offering me arguments and I fully intend to respond in kind. My message was in response to some things I'd read in other threads about how this discussion was all theory-heavy and bookish and over people's heads. Now, I don't apologize for reading books and understanding them, but I thought I'd try posting something that spoke directly to that group. To judge from the trebling of messages since, I suppose it must have worked.

'We must defeat porn.' Hokay. How we gonna do that?

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:

The insinuation that a reasonable and rational adult is going to be "driven" to child rape or incest because of a cartoon in Playboy magazine is absurd in the extreme.

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I couldn't care less, unless that also led to an increase in those heinous things.

In other words, I'm considerably more concerned with the actual, measurable, on-the-ground results than I am with worry about what's possibly going on inside people's brains.

quote:

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posted by Mr. Magoo: Have you ever been to King St. in Hamilton? Like, on a nice summer afternoon 16 years ago maybe?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Thalia:

Edited to respond to skadl's "I have never wasted my time fixating on the content of the porn"

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Wow, Thalia -- way to misquote and misrepresent, eh?

skdadl said:

quote:

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What leapt out at me in reading your outline of how that works was your leap from "I want to live in a democracy" to "I want our side to win." Now, there, y'see, I think you are assuming greater speed and less depth than I am. In fact, that reminds me a lot of the sixties line -- "Revolution if you want it!" -- which I learned to think of as the Marxist sin of voluntarism.

Perhaps I am wrong, but you seemed to be implying there that if the left could just win a few elections, or take over a few newspapers or TV networks, that we could overturn the "norms," make the old ones unthinkable, almost overnight.

Well, y'know, Chris: good luck, eh?

---

To which my response is, "No shit, eh?" I completely agree that I'd be being awfully naive IF I were suggesting that taking over a few newspapers or TV networks, or even winning a couple elections, would be sufficient. Heck, if that were all it took, it would be perfectly possible within the framework of a liberal state, and I wouldn't even have to argue the need for democracy.

I actually completely agree with skdadl's point:

quote:

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I am usually much more a serious believer in the logic of social history. I think that the changes that have made a difference have been made by large groups of people finally moving because moving made sense in their lives.

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That means that the task is to make "moving" make sense in the lives of large groups of people, and there are all kinds of different ways to do that.

I should note that, the way I mean it, there is no leap from "I want to live in a democracy" to "I want our side to win." The two sentences say the same thing. Their side is the oligarchs, our side is the democrats. So long as we haven't won, we aren't living in a democracy.

This is actually part of my response to the argument of people like Mandos or Jeff House. They seem to be saying that to want the hegemonic norms to be democratic norms is being totalitarian. Since being totalitarian is presumptively bad, that seems to mean that they want the hegemonic norms to be oligarchic norms. In other words, they want our side to lose and the oligarchs to win. Now, I don't actually think that's what they really believe. However, that's what they seem to be saying. To which the obvious response is: if that is what you want, then why are you here?

skdadl also wrote:

quote:

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I took the trouble to write out a political argument about means and ends, and you responded with a cry of pain about pornography -- as though you assumed that the kind of pornography you describe doesn't bother me.

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I am actually quite happy to have a discussion about means and ends, about strategy and tactics, but I'm afraid I haven't been able to clearly distinguish in the many posts on this topic, by many hands, who accepts the end and is debating the means, and who is actually debating the end. Frankly, a good lot of it sounds distinctly like contesting the end in view. This is relevant in that, as I mentioned:

quote:

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I move in circles in which porn is considered unproblematically, unambiguously good.

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I have heard many, many people making exactly the arguments presented here, not as tactical disagreements about means, but as fundamental disagreement about ends: they want to say that porn is good, period. That's my context for this discussion, and if some of that spills over onto others working from a different context, well, I can only offer my regrets. That's also why I don't consider it to be "sentimental" or "fixating" to keep in mind the content of porn, i.e., what we're really talking about. So much of the discussion of porn is dominated by liberal "freedom of speech" arguments that what that "speech" is "saying" seems to get forgotten. It turns it into this antiseptic topic, and loses the concrete blood and guts of why we think the issue matters.

However, I'm looking at the clock and a post about tactics (amongst other things, skdadl, I want to address your note about extrajudicial tribunals) will have to wait as I need to get back to work.

More to follow.

[Edited to add one quick point I'd forgotten to include]

[ 06 October 2005: Message edited by: Chris Borst ]

quote:

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And the point of this comment is ...?

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To say "I can see what you're trying to do here — I already mentioned it in my Hamilton story — and it won't work."

quote:

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in my opinion, trollish observations such as the one above are not respectful and do not contribute to a better understanding of the issues.

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quote:

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An aside, as part of trying to understand this discussion, I hit the profile icons on the contributors to this thread in the feminism forum. My count: 3 female (including moi who has nothing but questions, leaving only skdadl and Thalia), 11 male and one undisclosed. ]

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Does it bother you that there are so many men in this thread(I'm not trying to be snotty just asking.)

I also find it odd that there are so few women posting in this thread. After all, there are many sex positive feminists who are in favour of civil liberties(like nonesuch, Legatta and Michelle) but they have all stayed away. I think the rhetoric has just become so poisonous, and the discussion so pointless(good god, we've already had two screeds on this subject, why do we need a third!?) that they have just said to hell with this, and gone home to feed their cats.

Firstly, thank-you Chris for attempting to lower the level of your discourse to accommodate those of us who are having trouble with the 'theory' of what you are saying. I've been reading all of these threads, and learning a lot, and still not quite grasping all of what is being said. But this is what I've got so far.

I agree that we need to change attitudes such that violation and abuse of women and children is seen as abhorrent and unfathomable, rather than common place. But I don't see this as being limited to the sexual/porn realm, and including, for example, economic exploitation of women and children outside of porn. I'd be much more willing to buy into a 'the porn industry is bad' argument than an 'all porn is bad' argument. And since the porn industry is just providing what it's consumers want, then the issue becomes one of educating the consumers, or education of society in general. But that is more of the 'means' discussion, and I'm still not comfortable with the 'end'. Now, maybe that is just a misunderstanding, as I am all for the end of expliotation, but I don't see that encompassing the end of all porn.

I am one of those 'I'll do what I want' people mentioned earlier, but I am not an anarchist, and I realize that my personal choices are limited to ones that will not cause others harm, or, facing the unfortunate realties of our current available choices, cause the least harm. In the case of porn, although not an avid consumer, I can agree that the majority of what is out there is not "sex positive" or "women positive". But not all of it. And that's why I can't get my head around the 'all or nothing' stance some people are taking. Yes, the porn industry, like many industries, has become extremely wealthy through the exploitation of its workers. Yes, we do need to change the mindset of consumers to view this exploitation as unacceptable. But laying a broad charge against porn, which is only one medium that benefits from the harm it inflicts on the more vulnerable in our society, will not solve this.

I don't agree with the statement by Chris B. that "[pornography] is the enactment of violence and hatred towards women". Sadly, that statement might apply to a large percentage of the porn out there. But, there is also porn that is an enactment of love, eroticism, and mutual pleasure between consenting adults. And I see nothing to gain by trying to eliminate the latter in a quest to make 'unthinkable' the former. I don't think that all porn is inherently bad OR good. I think one needs to look at what is being depicted and how it is presented in order to make that determination.

I've always believed that left civil libertarians, if they are going to stand firm on defending freedom of expression, even abhorrent expression (and I pretty much do), then have the responsibility, once that freedom is secured, to critique or even to denounce -- in the agora, the site of citizenship, not in the courts -- the content of expression with which they disagree, or perhaps even find abhorrent.

If the issue of the MacKinnon ordinance had not come up in these threads, I might have said a lot of things I haven't said. I'm also aware that a lot of women (and maybe some men) have remained silent because they struggle with nightmarish reactions, not to sex but to, eg, the sensations of being smothered or strangled or gagged, the very real experiences of great numbers of women (and you don't even need to be raped or to be participating in making porn to have those experiences). There hasn't been a safe forum for women to talk about those reactions to this -- obviously -- complex topic without facing some ridicule.

I realize that those who are arguing strenuously for the sex-positive aspects of porn also feel that they have been facing some ridicule, although in my (admittedly) unscientific estimation of the last week's discussions, they have done rather better than the other group.

And, of course, I don't presume there are only two groups.

Of the worst of the porn that Thalia and Chris have detailed above, I would say that I certainly see some crimes being described there, so my first reaction is to say that we should be tracking down the criminals. I realize that that is easier said than done with the real rot-gut -- which is, of course, why any public legal measures against erotic literature always hit the stuff whose producers have a public profile, the stuff that is not real rot-gut and is often in fact art.

quote:

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This is actually part of my response to the argument of people like Mandos or Jeff House. They seem to be saying that to want the hegemonic norms to be democratic norms is being totalitarian. Since being totalitarian is presumptively bad, that seems to mean that they want the hegemonic norms to be oligarchic norms. In other words, they want our side to lose and the oligarchs to win. Now, I don't actually think that's what they really believe. However, that's what they seem to be saying. To which the obvious response is: if that is what you want, then why are you here?

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You are misunderstanding: the objection is not to democratic norms but to the idea of norms, at least, of enforceable norms.

I took from your statements that what you are after is close to the manufactured consent concept. Things become unthinkable when they lose currency in the mainstream media, rather than explicit thought police.

There are a couple of problems with this as it applies to this issue. In political and economic spheres a few dissidents are not threatening because they lack the power to make mass changes which are the core of those areas. In the porn and sex arena that is not so true, even a small number of dissidents can create considerable pain because the relationships are individual and so small numbers of people can wield considerable local power.

quote:

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If the issue of the MacKinnon ordinance had not come up in these threads, I might have said a lot of things I haven't said. I'm also aware that a lot of women (and maybe some men) have remained silent because they struggle with nightmarish reactions, not to sex but to, eg, the sensations of being smothered or strangled or gagged, the very real experiences of great numbers of women (and you don't even need to be raped or to be participating in making porn to have those experiences). There hasn't been a safe forum for women to talk about those reactions to this -- obviously -- complex topic without facing some ridicule.

---

quote:

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Jeff House. They seem to be saying that to want the hegemonic norms to be democratic norms is being totalitarian. Since being totalitarian is presumptively bad, that seems to mean that they want the hegemonic norms to be oligarchic norms. In other words, they want our side to lose and the oligarchs to win. Now, I don't actually think that's what they really believe. However, that's what they seem to be saying. To which the obvious response is: if that is what you want, then why are you here?

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Wha?????

Yes, totalitarianism is "presumptively bad".

However, I have argued for norms based on freedom of conscience and freedom of the imagination.

I thought those freedoms were being dissed as "liberal"; now I see they are "oligarchic".

So, wheeeeee, support of those freedoms quickly becomes the allegation: "If you support the oligarchy, why are you here?"

I don't know what the poster thinks is "the oligarchy", but certainly countries with traditional oligarchies are much less likely to allow porn than say, Scandinavia.

In fact, I hereby propose the Law of Porn, which states:

quote:

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There hasn't been a safe forum for women to talk about those reactions to this -- obviously -- complex topic without facing some ridicule.

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I don't mind discussing the darker aspects of porn. As far as I am concerned, Masterdebator, Thalia and Chris can discuss the more vile aspects of Big Porn until the cows come home. It's when they started discussing( In very silly and prudish ways) things that have nothing to do with their main topic, (Short skirts, thongs and gay porn) and dragging what could have been a fruitful discussion on the exploitation of women and erotic expression into a fascistic psudeo feminist Morass of thought control experiments and presbyterian sexual intollerence, that I felt I had to speak up, and that I had to be hard on the people who are ruining the discussion, regardless of their gender.
They have polerized this forum.

'Dadl, I know I'm not part of the problem, but this whole debate has been frustrating for me, (and addictive too.)
I have come to the conclusion that you can't really have a rational, reasoned debate about porn, sex work or rape. These issues cut to the very core of what it is to be female. The discussions of these topics often turn into an ideological hall of mirrors, in which the participents only want to see their own rage and frustration reflected back at them, Which is reasonable, many women have been so damaged by the patriachy that they deserve a chance(in fact quite a few chances) to vent. It is not however conducive to constructive debate about the important issues which face the feminist movement.

[ 06 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 06 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

quote:

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posted by skdadl: ... left civil libertarians, if they are going to stand firm on defending freedom of expression, even abhorrent expression, ... then have the responsibility, once that freedom is secured, to critique or even to denounce -- in the agora, the site of citizenship, not in the courts -- the content of expression with which they disagree, or perhaps even find abhorrent.

---

My personal opinion regarding why discussions about the porn industry are so fricking explosive is that the "product" being commercialized is NOT a simple, basic commodity.

In practice, it is possible for food, shelter, water, energy, childcare or the environment to be wrangled in terms that make the bean-counters happy. However, when sexuality is reduced to a joke, an entry on the stock market, an item on one's "to do" list, recreation, sport, and ultimately, a minefield of social and religious taboos that are either shamefully painful or charged with titillation, all hell breaks loose.

Women know what "bad" sex is all about. It is sex that is smothering, toxic, coercive, nauseating, lethal, degrading and abhorent. And a lot of porn is that, even the stuff that is not criminal.

quote:

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... Anyway, I don't know what to do about this either. I know that a lot of people are really turned off, for different reasons.

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I own erotic material - books, bandes dessinées, art books, videos. To some, this would be vanilla stuff, to others, pornography. À chacune et à chacun son goût - to a point. Pornography is, on so many levels, the lightning rod for many of the original challenges of feminism: Is the personal always political? Where does privacy stop and concerns for public good start?

(once more, came back to edit typos because Babble is too cheap to offer its members 'previews ' of their posts before they go online )

[ 06 October 2005: Message edited by: deBeauxOs ]

quote:

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reduced to a joke, an entry on the stock market, an item on one's "to do" list, recreation, sport...

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quote:

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posted by CMOT Dibbler: Ma'am, I'm not trying to judge you, but am I to understand you have an objection to recreatonal sex?

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quote:

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Originally posted by deBeauxOs:
Yes. Freedom of expression is a given, and everyone who exercices that freedom is responsible for the content and the manner of that expression. Accountability could take many forms: a public challenge, a boycott led by those who are being harmed, legal proceedings if criminal activity is involved. BUT... there is no one-size-fits-all solution or strategy for dealing with those who misuse the privilege of freedom of expression.

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All of that is fine. What is not fine is developing a blanket legal definition, which could potentially be used to attack an entire genre of art, entirely based on the tastes of a presiding justice determining what is and is not degrading.

The potential for that definition to become an elastic catch all used by prosecutors to persecute people for presumed deviance, or even political deviance, is far to great.

quote:

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Originally posted by deBeauxOs:
Recreatonal sex? Is that for people who have no musical abilities?

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quote:

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Is the personal always political? Where does privacy stop and concerns for public good start?

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quote:

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
I don't mind discussing the darker aspects of porn. As far as I am concerned, Masterdebator, Thalia and Chris can discuss the more vile aspects of Big Porn until the cows come home. It's when they started discussing( In very silly and prudish ways) things that have nothing to do with their main topic, (Short skirts, thongs and gay porn) and dragging what could have been a fruitful discussion on the exploitation of women and erotic expression into a fascistic psudeo feminist Morass of thought control experiments and presbyterian sexual intollerence, that I felt I had to speak up, and that I had to be hard on the people who are ruining the discussion, regardless of their gender.

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First of all, I have no idea what CMOT stands for.

Second, I like your passage about "a fascistic psudeo feminist Morass of thought control experiments and presbyterian sexual intollerence". Its kind of refreshing, even exhilerating to hear from someone who is so certain of themselves, it almost makes me feel young again!

And let me say, for the umpteenth time that any woman who claims to be wearing high heels or thongs for "comfort" is telling you a little white lie. She is wearing them for fashion. Period.

quote:

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Ma'am, I'm not trying to judge you, but am I to understand you have an objection to recreatonal sex? Feel free to give me a tounge lashing if you like....

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quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
However, I have argued for norms based on freedom of conscience and freedom of the imagination.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Borst:
I am actually quite happy to have a discussion about means and ends, about strategy and tactics, but I'm afraid I haven't been able to clearly distinguish in the many posts on this topic, by many hands, who accepts the end and is debating the means, and who is actually debating the end. Frankly, a good lot of it sounds distinctly like contesting the end in view. ...
...
I have heard many, many people making exactly the arguments presented here, not as tactical disagreements about means, but as fundamental disagreement about ends: they want to say that porn is good, period. That's my context for this discussion, and if some of that spills over onto others working from a different context, well, I can only offer my regrets. That's also why I don't consider it to be "sentimental" or "fixating" to keep in mind the content of porn, i.e., what we're really talking about. So much of the discussion of porn is dominated by liberal "freedom of speech" arguments that what that "speech" is "saying" seems to get forgotten. It turns it into this antiseptic topic, and loses the concrete blood and guts of why we think the issue matters.

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Chris, I have been really happy to see you entering this debate with so much intellectual background. I wish I could help out more, but while I have strong feelings on this issue, my homework and sources are a bit lacking, my chronic disorganization largely to blame.

Still, I did manage to engage our resident legal scholar in a discussion around the attitude of the late Rosemary Brown on this issue. My latest message on that subject is in the thread on titled Dines and Jensen article in this forum.

quote:

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I have argued for norms based on freedom of conscience and freedom of the imagination.

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I am entirely willing to presume that what you have in mind by such norms is a situation in which no oligarchy, no ruling class, determines the content of the demos' thoughts. That's a desire for democracy, for the institution of democratic norms, the abolition of oligarchy. Would I be safe in reading you that way?

Now, I prefer to talk in terms of "democratic" norms, because "democratic" describes a set of power relations, a distribution of power, a character of rule -- a political economy. It also prevents one from conflating defense of oligarchic rule with defense of resistance to oligarchic rule -- which conflation is what I have castigated as "liberal".

There is a further critical piece, perhaps best reflected in jrootham's claim that "the objection is to norms". There are always norms. There are always limits. The only thing that's in question is what kind of norms they are to be. As I said in my post at the beginning of this thread:

quote:

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There is an ideological fantasy in liberal societies that there are "no limits" to communication, that we live in "open societies". As all of us who are Leftists are painfully aware, this fantasy is only a fantasy. What makes it "ideological" is its use to defend the oligarchy and their limits. "We," they proclaim, "freely allow all speech, without limits. You, who challenge our speech and our limits, you are the totalitarian, the oligarch."

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Even when that fantasy is not used to defend oligarchs, it remains a fantasy. It is not just a fantasy in liberal oligarchies, but would remain one in a democracy. There are always limits. Certain things happen, other things don't. The determinate content of the "conscience", the "imagination", matters. Vague abstractions about defending "imagination" are useless. Most people's "imagination" and "conscience" contain some part of what it is normal in a given regime to imagine and believe. That's what makes norms norms. Changing them requires changing the regime, but changing the regime requires changing them -- the whole being moves together.

-------------

P.S.

quote:

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certainly countries with traditional oligarchies are much less likely to allow porn than say, Scandinavia

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Certainly, at least to some degree. Liberal oligarchies are friendlier to porn than non-liberal oligarchies. In liberal oligarchies, run by business for business, porn is just another business. Their biggest worry is over its productivity effects on other industries (if their workers are looking at porn, they aren't doing their jobs). Non-liberal oligarchies approach it differently.

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I have come to the conclusion that you can't really have a rational, reasoned debate about porn, sex work or rape. These issues cut to the very core of what it is to be female.

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So, we're irrational about our lived experiences. So, we're little women not able to reason once we've been hurt. So, you untainted guys can talk about it intelligently, while we cry, emote and pout.

quote:

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Originally posted by MasterDebator:
And let me say, for the umpteenth time that any woman who claims to be wearing high heels or thongs for "comfort" is telling you a little white lie. She is wearing them for fashion. Period.

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quote:

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The truth is that a gadget as silly as high heeled shoes simply wouldn't be developed for male use.

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Point of information: High heels were invented by and for men, and in fact I think that men had a considerably longer run wearing high heels than women have had -- at a minimum, from the mid-C17 (although it may have been earlier in France?) to the mid-C19.

Yes, there are norms and limits. The question I have for you is: What do you do with the dissidents? We have skdadl's approach: confrontation in the speech arena. I don't know what yours is.

quote:

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And let me say, for the umpteenth time that any woman who claims to be wearing high heels or thongs for "comfort" is telling you a little white lie. She is wearing them for fashion. Period.

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Maybe you should say it for the dumbteenth time.

I'll be frank: at this point I'm quite fascinated watching you insist, quite stubbornly, that babble women are liars. It certainly sets an interesting tone in this forum: "Sorry honey, I know better than you, and I'm telling you you're a liar". I'll be interested to see the response to the first man who follows your lead and calls women liars, right to their face, when they're making a claim about their personal experience.

"Any woman who tells you there's such a thing as PMS is telling you a lie!"

"Any woman who claims that she was depressed after childbirth is telling you a lie."

"Any woman who says she's afraid going out alone after dark is telling you a lie."

I also find it interesting to see just how alienating this attitude of yours is, how it's affecting reaction to the other things you want to say, and how you just can't seem to stop yourself despite it. Your point is lost in among your arrogant moralizing, and that doesn't bother you, it seems. I almost wonder whether porn is your enemy, or whether it's really thongs.

Adult porn and child porn are two different issues. Child porn is illegal and any adult involved in it should be prosecuted. I feel the same way about animals. Neither children or animals are capable or defending themselves or of making sound decisions.

Women on the other hand can say no. If they do and their wishes aren't respected then it is called rape. Which is also illegal.

quote:

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Is recreational sex related in any was to STDs? I just thought I would ask.

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But I couldn't let this stand:

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Originally posted by Madkins:
The truth is that no one is holding a gun to the heads of these women that allow themselves to be exploited by the likes of Hugh Hefner and others. [QUOTE]

Actually, that's exactly what Linda Lovelace (fried brain, real last name Margolin? something like that?) contended -- that a gun was held on her.

And this:

[QUOTE]If we are going to change the world's perception of us.... perhaps we ought to start with ourselves.

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Spoken like a true Amerikan. See, up here in Frozen Hillbillyland, we have a more communal outlook. When our Charter of Rights and Freedoms was instituted, there was allowance for the government to pay for legal representation for groups to test the law. 'Magine that.

One of the things that bugs me about this thread is the title. The Point of Politics is to outlaw porn? To restrict free speech?

Another thing is the hectoring tone of many of these posts. And the shifting 'definitions'. The intellectual dishonesty.

Well, I could go on, but I feel silly enough participating in this.

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First of all, I have no idea what CMOT stands for.

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Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler at your service!

It isn't my real name of course.

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Originally posted by Madkins:
Yes STD's and recreational sex are related and yes AID's can be transmitted through marriage and yes one can be married and raped.

Your point is?

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(*aside* I've often thought that if somebody reads some of these threads months hence, s/he won't really get the real flavour of them, not seeing what else is going on at the same time)

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One of the things that bugs me about this thread is the title. The Point of Politics is to outlaw porn? To restrict free speech?

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Um, no. The Point of Politics is

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to change minds -- to change the political climate, established institutions, and normal behaviour.

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Some people seem(ed) to be suggesting otherwise, by arguing that actually trying to achieve such changes would be "totalitarian".

Now, I wanted to make some points about tactics.

First, skdadl, your point about extrajudicial tribunals. Your concern with them, straightforward enough, is that they don't offer the accused the "classic protections" of the courts. From your replies, you were, as I thought, thinking particularly of the tribunals instituted in academia. As MD mentioned in a follow-up, I'm not actually sure your concern is accurate -- at least, anymore. My understanding is that these tribunals have taken on an increasing resemblance to the courts. But be that as it may, I really wanted to address the concern, and to do so in the context of "political education and action".

I drew attention to the fact that this was "extrajudicial" not because I wished to equivocate, or because I was equivocating and didn't realize it, but because the concern you raise is one that applies directly to political education and action. In fact, it applies even more directly to political education and action than it does to disciplinary tribunals.

If a student or students stand up in class and start challenging the instructor ("disrupting the class"), or a group of students walk into a class to challenge the instructor, or they stand outside the classroom demonstrating, chanting, handing out leaflets, or do so standing outside the building where the class is held, or outside the instructor's office, there's no "due process". The instructor doesn't get a rebuttal, there's no calling of witnesses, there's not even a fully spelled out statement of charges. We don't invite racist or sexist or capitalist speakers to our teach-ins to offer a defense. We don't make room in op-eds we write for the press to ensure their side is represented. We don't invite them to address our rallies or demonstrations, though we do (sometimes) hang them in effigy for their crimes.

Political education and action is fought in the "court of public opinion", a court in which there are no procedural rules, no due process, no Charter protections. It's as "extrajudicial" -- in the specific sense that concerned you -- as it gets. But, clearly, that doesn't stop you from advocating it ...

Well, that was intended to be a "first", but it looks like the "second" will have to wait. Damn clock is passing back to work legislation.

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Originally posted by blake 3:17:

Many of us are reading it in the here and now, and have little clue as to what's being discussed.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Borst:

If a student or students stand up in class and start challenging the instructor ("disrupting the class"), or a group of students walk into a class to challenge the instructor, or they stand outside the classroom demonstrating, chanting, handing out leaflets, or do so standing outside the building where the class is held, or outside the instructor's office, there's no "due process". The instructor doesn't get a rebuttal, there's no calling of witnesses, there's not even a fully spelled out statement of charges. We don't invite racist or sexist or capitalist speakers to our teach-ins to offer a defense. We don't make room in op-eds we write for the press to ensure their side is represented. We don't invite them to address our rallies or demonstrations, though we do (sometimes) hang them in effigy for their crimes.

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The difference is, see, that all of these things, see, (protest actions and so forth) that you are talking about, see, are about the creation of norms as casual acts of social intercourse see. But what you would have, see, (what you are aiming at) is taking these casual processess and investing them with the authorizing power of the state, rather in the manner of how Maoist Red Guards went from being mere manifestations of casual social relations and making them official organs of state power, witless overwrought facist dumb fuck that you are, see.

Here for instance, on this web site, see, it can be seen that we are engaged in producing "norms," as part of a casual social intercourse, right here and now, wherein one group of casually aligned persons are making one case, and another roughly aligned group in opposition, in a private forum, wherin people have gathered voluntarilly to discuss issues within the parameters of generally agreed to principles. Everything is entirely voluntary, and open, with very little social control other than rather general principles outlined by the board as a private institution, not a state institution.

This is quite unlike your description of social activist activities wherein "we don't invite racist or sexist or capitalist speakers to our teach-ins to offer a defense," but the ultimate implication of your view would have us shut down part of this process of discussion, (one of the sides that is creating the "norms") as implicitly "sexist or capitalist," simply because it speaks in opposition to your view, and authorize that determination with state power.

I can not begin to tell you how creepy I find your mode of thinking.

[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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So, we're irrational about our lived experiences. So, we're little women not able to reason once we've been hurt. So, you untainted guys can talk about it intelligently, while we cry, emote and pout.

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Sorry, I should have altered that statement to get rid of the the paternalisim.
Sex is held sacred in our society. It is so loaded with cultural and spiritual meaning that it is impossible for most peeople to discuss its sale or theft without people getting their feelings hurt.

deBeauxOs expressed exactly the same sentiments much more intelligently in her post.
(Now, if you'll excuse me I need to extracate myself from this dog's breakfast of a thread and do my sociology homework.)

[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:

...witless overwrought facist dumb fuck that you are.

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So, what IS porn again?

'All Material Of An Explicit and Sexual Nature Designed to Provoke Arousal' or 'Generally What You See in the Adult Videostore' or 'Anything Exploitative Is Porn and Everything Else That's Explicit is Erotica'?

And, what's bad about porn again?

The conditions of production?
The content?
The outcomes?

And, is porn the symptom or the disease?

[Edit]
That looks like trolling without my two cents. So here it is:

1. To my mind, porn is any explicit depiction of something of an erotic nature where the purpose is to incite sexual arousal and other purposes (art, empathy, politics) are secondary.

2. Conditions of production: I don't think they're NECESSARILY ridiculously exploitative, they just can be in our current system. I mean, I have friends (college-educated white female friends) involved in internet porn and they like the money. And what about anime (hentai?) or written stroke stories?

3. I really don't mind any material of an explicit nature where the purpose is to arouse, except 'violent porn' outside the specific context of S&M, that is, material that depicts nonconsensual violence. That I MIND, but I'm not sure I want to ERADICATE.

And my definition of violence might be less broad than someone else's, as I am pretty interested in fast, hard, non-raindrops-on-roses-and-whiskers-on-kittens type sex.

4. The purported outcomes: sexual violence, sexual aggression and misogyny. The link hasn't been shown to my satisfaction between national consumption of pornography--even violent pornography--and trends in sexual violence. I think the evidence is still equivocal. Cross-country comparisons seem to indicate 'no.'

[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: pollyperverse ]

quote:

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler at your service!

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Originally posted by skdadl:
Point of information: High heels were invented by and for men, and in fact I think that men had a considerably longer run wearing high heels than women have had -- at a minimum, from the mid-C17 (although it may have been earlier in France?) to the mid-C19.

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quote:

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Cut Me Own Throat Dibbler at your service!

It isn't my real name of course.

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That's interesting.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Um...That question was 100% rhetorical. Master Debater was repeating one of the main planks of George W.'s "abstenence until marriage" programs. That kind of thinking is currently causing an epidemic of STDs in the US. It must be challenged wherever possible.

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Well, not exactly, no. I certainly owe none of my thinking on this or any other issue to Bush, or Cheney, or Rove, or any of them.

However, you should know that for many years Whistler BC has had the highest rates of STDs in BC. Recreational sex, perhaps? There's quite a difference between sex in committed relationships and people who are having sex with, say, a dozen or more partners in a typical year. In the latter case, the risk of STD infection is greatly increased, and not just because such behaviour is positively correlated with alcohol and drug use, though that certainly doesn't help.

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
The difference is, see, that all of these things, see, ... see, ... see. But ... see, ... witless overwrought facist dumb fuck that you are, see.

Here for instance, on this web site, see, .....

I can not begin to tell you how creepy I find your mode of thinking.

[ 07 October 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by tarot:
Well I'm a woman and I LIKE porn....

I don't victimize the actresses and ACTORS in pornography. I respect the MEN and women and their choices to do pornography for work if that is what they choose to do!

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Originally posted by Cueball:

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quote:

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Originally posted by pollyperverse:
1. To my mind, porn is any explicit depiction of something of an erotic nature where the purpose is to incite sexual arousal and other purposes (art, empathy, politics) are secondary.

2. Conditions of production: I don't think they're NECESSARILY ridiculously exploitative, they just can be in our current system. I mean, I have friends (college-educated white female friends) involved in internet porn and they like the money. And what about anime (hentai?) or written stroke stories?

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I agree with your first point, it's the only practicaly approach.

Your outraged shock at my vitriolic characterization of Mr. Borst's facist musings, is underscored by the fact that you completely ignored the argument in which that appeared about the role of the state in enforcing cultural norms, and the horrible results of previous attempts at mass cultural engineering, at the behest of bright eyed idealists enamoured with their own genius.

But of course even a pig exists only within the confines of its limited intelligence, and consequently understands its conclusions as masterpieces of logic. Well enough for pigs. But among people it is the truly witless who latch themselves to sweeping ideological constructs (such as "the market is infallible and just," or that all human intecourse -- history itself no less -- can be reduced a matter of "class antagonism," or that all "inequality results from patriarchy," and now apparently porn is more or less "the primary agent of patriarchy" and so therefore the primary agent of all inequality -- talk about putting the money shot before the fluffing) that eases the way for the average idiot to feeling the self-assured narcisism necessary to morph themself into a truly dangerous agent of the moronic.

[ 08 October 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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In any case, like Chris Borst, I think one intellectual challenge here is to burst the almost catatonic Sex Is Good bubble to which so may Babblers pay such slavish obeisance.

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Ma'am, are you sure your in the right party?

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But like an invigorating risk sport it carries risks, real risks, that cannot be successfully minimized when people are more concerned about appearing to be sophisticated than in acting safely and responsibly.

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Who says premiscous(sp?) people can't be responsible? Haven't you read the ethical slut?

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There's quite a difference between sex in committed relationships and people who are having sex with, say, a dozen or more partners in a typical year.

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That's true. However, Women in committed relationships can catch STDS. Many aristocratic ladies in fuedal england caught siffalis(sp) when there "loving" husbands came back from there various military adventures. Many women in southern Africa are in comitted relationships with HIV positive men with whom they have to have sex. To believe that the bond of matrimoney and/or common law romance alone is enough to protect women from vinerial disease is absurd.

[ 08 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 08 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

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But suppose the conditions under which that pornographic magazine or video was shot were exploitive and abusive. Would that disturb you in any way?

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I'll tell you the problem I have with this type of rhetoric. Any person who lives in a culture with massive consumerism is a hypocrite to single out porn as having a possibility for exploitation and abuse. Do you drive a car? Have you ever been inside a car factory? I have. My mother worked in a car factory (still does) for 30 years. In the summer, it's about 120 degrees. In winter, it's below 30. She has burns on her arms from machines that spit out metal. Are you going to stop driving a car now? Or better yet, let's make cars illegal. I mean hasn't oil crises caused enough problems? Wars, death, exploitation, abuse?

Do you eat food? Who do you think grows that food? Isn't it possible that somewhere in the production of food there's abuse and exploitation of the workers? What about clothes? I'm assuming you wear them, you don't strike me as a nudist, do you make sure every article of clothing you wear is made by workers who are treated properly? Not some sweat shop? I bet...

I could go on and on...the point is everything we use, buy, more than likely at some time caused abuse somewhere for someone. Even this computer I'm using right now, I guarantee you at some point in the production of this computer, whether it be at the factory or gathering its raw materials, someone was exploited or abused. But I'm not going to stop using computers, wearing clothes, eating, or looking at porn.

Who doesn't at some time feel like the conditions of their job are below standard? Do you think the guy at the McDonald's ever feels a little abused? Exploited? I bet he does. But you still buy those cheeseburgers, don't cha?

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posted by MasterDebator: ... However, you should know that for many years Whistler BC has had the highest rates of STDs in BC. Recreational sex, perhaps?

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Porn destroys / Abortion kills. This assumes that all involved are powerless and/or stupid and/or coerced in participating.

Criminalize/Ban/Prosecute. This drives the activity underground, with the result that participants risk their lives - but then, the wagon-riders would feel that they 'deserve' this punishment.

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There's quite a difference between sex in committed relationships and people who are having sex with, say, a dozen or more partners in a typical year. In the latter case, the risk of STD infection is greatly increased, and not just because such behaviour is positively correlated with alcohol and drug use, though that certainly doesn't help..

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In any case, like Chris Borst, I think one intellectual challenge here is to burst the almost catatonic Sex Is Good bubble to which so may Babblers pay such slavish obeisance. Yes, sex is good. But like an invigorating risk sport it carries risks, real risks, that cannot be successfully minimized when people are more concerned about appearing to be sophisticated than in acting safely and responsibly.

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(sigh. edited because there is NO preview feature on this board, that allows one to catch typos, etc.)

[ 08 October 2005: Message edited by: deBeauxOs ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:
... cheap unininformed prejudices, such as that men would never "invent high heel shoes" or wear them as the King of France is doing above. ... enforce your backward protestant-fundamentalism upon the rest of us. The fact that you dress it up as feminism is of no interest to me.

Your outraged shock at my vitriolic characterization of Mr. Borst's facist musings,

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I am sorry Cueball, I didn't look at the photo closely enough, I didn't see that this person was wearing high heels. Hell, I didn't even recognize him as the King of France! (Which one? What year?)

I am not a Protestant or a fundamentalist. My family are agnostics/atheists and humanists. I am as appalled by Muslim and Christian fundamentalism as anyone, and by what I would call humanist fundamentalism too. I was a bit worried about the reaction to the Ontario Sharia law proposals which seemed to be a kind of massive venting by many people. Some people I know personally at work who were vehemently opposed to them are the same people who make excuses for the treatment of Maher Arar and Ahmed Al Maati, and, even worse, are still making excuses for the wartime interment of the Japanese Canadians and Americans. Now that's fundamentalism, as in fundamentally wrong and don't give a damn.

quote:

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Originally posted by tarot:
MasterDebator
I'll tell you the problem I have with this type of rhetoric. Any person who lives in a culture with massive consumerism is a hypocrite to single out porn as having a possibility for exploitation and abuse. Do you drive a car? ... Do you eat food? Who do you think grows that food? .. What about clothes?

I could go on and on...the point is everything we use, buy, more than likely at some time caused abuse somewhere for someone.

I think the real problem isn't porn, I think it's sex. You're not comfortable with sex. You even called it "slummin"--well let me tell you something, sex is NEVER slummin for me, it's about pleasure. The real reason you're uncomfortable with porn is because you're uncomfortable with sex. You think sex is dirty.

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First of all, I have no problem with sex. This is just a standard rhetorical barb used by people like yourself who are pro-porn. They believe, or at least they say they believe, that anyone who is opposed to pornography must be opposed to sex. I have three children, all my own, how could I be opposed to sex?

As for your earlier remarks on how many other goods are produced, I couldn't agree more that many things we buy are made under lousy conditions. But you must know that people protest and boycott goods of all kinds because they object to how they are made. Why should porn not be subjected to a similar analysis and critique based on its manner of production, why should it be exempted from this kind of scrutiny?

quote:

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Originally posted by deBeauxOs:
quote:
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In any case, like Chris Borst, I think one intellectual challenge here is to burst the almost catatonic Sex Is Good bubble to which so may Babblers pay such slavish obeisance. Yes, sex is good. But like an invigorating risk sport it carries risks, real risks, that cannot be successfully minimized when people are more concerned about appearing to be sophisticated than in acting safely and responsibly.
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Those are gratuitous and silly comments, typical of your approach to "debating" issues. So people are drawn to high-risk activities for 'bad' reasons? If I were to extend your judgemental and moralistic posturing to this issue, I would imagine that you would want to round up those undesirable individuals who engage in certain sports, practices, activities, events because they want to appear sophisticated and send them to their own little gulag where they can bungee-jump and drink and carouse themselves to death?

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Well I'll be damned. I thought I made it quite clear that I was not moralizing, that I saw this as being on a similar plane to a person's decision to take up downhill skiing or rock climbing. Because sports like that have certain ability requirements you don't really get the totally inept player involved. When sex becomes a sport, ... well, ... unfortunately the talent threshold is a bit lower, there can be all kinds of people involved who have no clue and who are prepared to be reckless because the unwanted consequences are not as visibly connected as, say, going off a cliff and being immediately demolished.

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[QUOTE] ...are agnostics/atheists and humanists.

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First of all, I have no problem with sex.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Atheism is no gaurantee of liberal attitudes about sex, or anything else.

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heehee ... oh, this one is just too obvious ... um, but we're not liberals, CMOT. We're leftists, democrats, radicals, feminists. We're not trying to have liberal attitudes about anything. We're trying to fight oppression ...

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Originally posted by Chris Borst:

heehee ... oh, this one is just too obvious ... um, but we're not liberals, CMOT. We're leftists, democrats, radicals, feminists. We're not trying to have liberal attitudes about anything. We're trying to fight oppression ...

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While at the same time paying into the hands of puritanical fuckwits who would set the women's movement back 80 years! Your doing a splendid job of it too. Bravo!

[ 08 October 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

They say that freedom of speech and communication is a "fantasy". That is why they don't have any problem with restricting it.

They don't care for "liberal" conceptions such as due process either.

I had thought that we had progressed beyond the Stalinist idea that rights are simply "capitalist rights". Rights are HUMAN rights, and they were generated out of struggles within capitalism. They are a CONQUEST by progressives, women, unions.

Chris seems to thinks that a model form of political action is to disrupt professors who stray from the Correct Line, and give them no chance to respond, to debate.

He thinks politics involves "changing minds", but the methods he would use reek of oppression. And those methods are FAR more likely to be used by the right, outside of the protected little enclave of university politics, to achieve rightist goals, including the destruction of feminism and of women's equality.

quote:

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Lenin was an athiest. He was a puritan
Mao was an athiest. He was a puritan.
Atheism is no gaurantee of liberal attitudes about sex, or anything else.

Oh, right.
That's why you want to impose a ban on all porn.

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Lenin and Mao? What do they have to do with anything I have said?

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Yes, it is clear that Chris B. and friends do not have liberal ideas about anything.

They say that freedom of speech and communication is a "fantasy". That is why they don't have any problem with restricting it.

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Well Jeff, perhaps you didn't notice but I had asked your opinion on the criminal code sanctions against hate literature. Do you find them disagreeable?

On tactics, skdadl, you were put off by my invocation of the BAMN principle. As far as I can see, all politics works on the BAMN principle. But we act BAMN to achieve our ends, while they act BAMN to achieve their ends. Because we have different ends, the "MN" aren't and won't be the same. You object to "coercion", which is an even looser and more nebulous term than that media favourite "violence". On one rather obvious reading, ALL politics is "coercive" (just listen for a second to the profs who've found themselves on the receiving end of student protests). I could discuss some more specific issues around "violence", but let's leave those aside here (at least for now), since they're not terribly germane to the case at hand.

When I talk about BAMN, I am thinking principally of the need to pursue - simultaneously - idealist, reformist and revolutionary measures. Traditionally, these have been treated as mutually exclusive alternatives. Part of what aligns me with the "new left(s)" rather than the "old left" is that I see no need for any such choice. Different parts of such a BAMN program would serve different purposes, but the idea that we can just dispense with some set of tactics (either because they're "too revolutionary" or "not revolutionary enough") seems to me stupid.

Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't know what kind of tactic we're talking about when we propose a measure, or that we should suggest that that measure by itself would, as it were, be the revolution. This is where something like the Dworkin-Mackinnon model ordinance comes in. It is, unquestionably, a reformist measure. It attempts that very familiar little piece of political judo of trying to turn a bit of state power (an oligarchic mechanism) to democratic ends. It would not, by any stretch of anyone's imagination (including that of its original drafters), secure the liberation of women. The idea is that it would be a mechanism by which specific women, harmed in specific ways, could seek some measure of redress -- and do so in a way that advanced the cause of (a democratic interpretation of) human rights, rather than the cause of (propertarian) tort law. It is mitigatory, not liberatory.

If I may be forgiven a bit of digression here, part of what is so strange (it would be noxious if weren't also so amusing in its desperate, panicky self-contradictoriness) about much of the rhetoric aimed at this measure is that the people most appalled by it are the very people who are most in favour of state action on other questions of mitigating systemic injustice. Somehow, I don't think that, if I was suggesting that we need broader and more generous welfare, EI/UI and CPP/OAS payments, that we need more demanding, more pro-worker employment standards legislation or more demanding, more pro-ecology environmental legislation, that I would be being called -- by supposed leftists -- a, what was it? oh yes, a "witless overwrought facist dumb fuck" (nice turn of phrase, that, I suppose I shall have to adopt it as an eponym).

Unlike some who have posted in this and the related threads, I'm neither so naïve nor so uninformed as to think that we are not, each and every day, subjected to the enforcement of cultural norms and "mass cultural engineering" by the regime in all its manifestations (including the state, including pornographers). While cultural enforcement (by some party) is necessarily a part of any and every order that has or could ever be, "cultural engineering", "social engineering", is more particularly a development of the 20th century. More resources were poured into this field than into any other, and all of the great innovations of the century were in this area (information/communication/management). It is silly, backwards, neoliberal rhetoric to suggest that on the one side we have the inviolate individual -- perfectly formed out of nothing, with a complete, rational and fully-informed set of preferences (beliefs/desires) -- and on the other we have the pernicious forces of "the state" and "society" who must endlessly be fought off in order to preserve "the integrity of the human mind". (That last phrase being skdadl's, I do want to note that I don't attribute such rhetoric to her. She noted early on that "norms are socially constructed, and social construction of norms at the moment tends to be directed by whomever is in power." Though, unfortunately, contrary to her suggestion at the time, it would seem that that does come as news to most of those here.) This is why I'm not terribly concerned that somebody's "imagination" or "conscience" might be "limited" by an action under an ordinance like the Dworkin-Mackinnon one. People's "imagination" and "conscience" are always being limited, are already being limited, as a routine matter. The only questions I consider relevant are what those limits are going to be, and how to get them to shift.

On which point, let's return from this digression to the question of tactics. I don't actually think that the feminist critique of porn should end with the Dworkin-Mackinnon ordinance. That proposal was only one proposal, and it was a proposal whose viability depended on factors specific to its time and place. In the early 1980s, the feminist movement was sufficiently strong and the backlash sufficiently weak that there were corners of the U.S. in which some agents of the "conservative" wing of the oligarchy were prepared to try, as an experiment, backing a feminist measure in hopes of scoring some points against the "liberal" wing of the oligarchy amongst the female members of the demos. What reformist feminist measures had been coming forward were being carried mostly by liberals (with predictable benefits amongst the voters), and here was an opportunity for them to try one that the liberals wouldn't touch. From a feminist point of view, both sides are patriarchs, so the only relevant question was how can we use their internecine quarrels to promote democratic reforms? Today, of course, the balance of forces in the US is very different. The backlash there won, hands down. The liberals have abandoned even their pretence of support for women, and have been testing the waters to see whether they could win some backlasher support if they propose the right fascist measures. What "radicalism" they can muster is restricted to promoting marriage (!!!) of all things. In this climate, new feminist measures don't stand a chance.

Matters are not so bleak here in Canada. We seem to have stymied the worst of the backlash, forced the liberals to keep up their pretence, and forced the conservatives into making choices between advancing capitalism and advancing racist patriarchy. On porn, the courts succumbed at least so far as to change their rhetoric to one of "harm-based" analysis. Yet, the law remains one phrased in terms of "obscenity" and "community standards", and included in the criminal law. It remains enforced by the police, customs and film boards, rather than by women. Women who are abused in the industry still have no recourse whatsoever to act against the industry -- the women appearing in pornography still have no right to control when, where or whether their own bodies will be displayed once their image has been committed to film. From a reformist point of view, this sets out a rather clear agenda of tasks still to be accomplished. While it won't stop the bleating of the liberals about "free speech", certainly the most obvious move is to get pornography recognized as one possible type of hate literature under the hate crimes provision (something that would be done in the courts, not the legislature). Another, crucial, move would be to establish - whether through the courts or by new legislation - that any contract provision limiting a woman's right to control her image after it has been taken is null and void. These wouldn't, obviously, accomplish the whole even of the reformist agenda, but it would at least be productive.

There are other tactics to consider, from other points of view, but I think this is already getting long enough.

skdadl, I don't think that the "site of citizenship" is limited to the agora (most particularly not in that word's actual Greek meaning, namely, "the marketplace"). I think everywhere is the "site of citizenship", all the time. But I think the more pressing problem is this: if, as you say,

quote:

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left civil libertarians ... have the responsibility ... to critique or even to denounce ... the content of expression with which they disagree, or perhaps even find abhorrent

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then where is the denunciation from any of these many apparent civil libertarians here? Could it be that they don't find the thought of women raped, tortured, abused, to be disagreeable or abhorrent? That they, in fact, as they keep insisting, "like" it? That they don't care that her body is being treated as his "speech", because they approve of what he's "saying"?

[edited to correct two typos]

[ 08 October 2005: Message edited by: Chris Borst ]

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
They don't care for "liberal" conceptions such as due process either.

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Actually, jeff, I didn't say that. I said that political action and education doesn't involve due process. Would you claim that it does? This is a question of fact. Do we follow due process rules in organizing political actions or do we not? I think the answer is pretty clear, and it puts limits on concerns of the sort expressed by skdadl.

quote:

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Chris seems to thinks that a model form of political action is to disrupt professors who stray from the Correct Line, and give them no chance to respond, to debate.

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Actually, I was providing a summary list of some of the actual actions that have been taken at various times in response to racist and sexist content in the classroom -- none of which involve due process, and all of which have been castigated by the Right as restrictions of their "freedom of speech". Academic tribunals, to which skdadl was objecting, were in fact instituted precisely in order to offer professors a "chance to respond, to debate", and one more amenable to due process than the pages of the student newspaper.

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Rights are HUMAN rights, and they were generated out of struggles within capitalism. They are a CONQUEST by progressives, women, unions.

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And just like any and every other conquest by progressives, women, unions, rights can be, are, and will be used AGAINST us whenever we let the Enemy twist them to that purpose (anybody here ever heard of Iraq?). I support human rights. But I won't let human rights be used to defend the anti-human monstrosities of capitalism, damn it! And I'm especially concerned when supposed leftists do the capitalists' dirty work for them, in the putative "defense" of human rights!

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Is it so hard to understand that "liberal" rights and freedoms are not just "capitalist"; and that arguing for their lack of importance simply throws the baby out with the bathwater?

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In the meantime, I would like to offer these two suggestions to those who are attacking me and, more importantly, the position which I and others defend:

(1) If you wish to establish (as some have claimed) that the Dworkin-Mackinnon model pornography civil rights law could, in fact, successfully be used to restrict the availability of some book, magazine, film, etc., that we, as Leftists, specifically would not want restricted, then demonstrate it. This doesn't mean flailing about in general with pontifications about "bans" and "mind control" and "totalitarianism", and it doesn't mean bland assertion. It means 1. look up the law, 2. select some provision of it, and 3. develop a hypothetical case under which, on a reasonable interpretation, that provision could be used to restrict some text that we wouldn't want restricted. Then I'll take your claim more seriously. I don't say it's impossible to do this, btw. But I've certainly never seen it done -- and I have looked.

(2) If you want to defend pornography, as many of you seem to want to do, then defend pornography. Don't rattle on about free speech or the state or how I'm a fascist or just need to get laid. Don't tell me that you like it (a. why should I care? b. lots of people like lots of things that are bad for them, bad for others, or both). Don't tell me about why sex, taken in some utterly general and abstract way, is good. Tell me why pornography -- the specific, actual content of actual texts or images -- should be defended, considered good or positive, even promoted by Leftists. Tell me why you think pornography should be part of the world which we, as Leftists, are trying to create, or why you think it would play a useful role in creating that world.

"That is the point of a cultural politics. We are fighting to change men’s demand for women’s violation. Fighting to make it so that men are revolted, not turned on, by the sight or description of a woman gagging on a cock, being tortured, having her mouth, vagina and/or anus stretched to their limits with multiple cocks, being raped, being raped as a child, being raped by her father, brother or other relative, being beaten during sex, having her hair pulled and her head forcibly moved during oral sex, being pissed or shat on, etc. Fighting to ensure that men who aren’t revolted by these are treated as sick, dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs. This is only one front, but a crucial front, in the long and ongoing fight to make violence and coercion, domination and submission, unacceptable, inconceivable, unthinkable."

I'm against any forms of coercion and violence naturally, but none of what you described here is exactly the "norm" for porn either and I doubt they're the norm for "men" either. I believe violent and overtly degrading porn used to be illegal for sale in Canada until fairly recently when the internet made it almost impossible to regulate. So has it gotten worse or better since? I don't even know what those broad kind of questions mean.

To conflate all forms of erotica or amateur videos with that kind of shyte (as others have pointed out already) not only confuses the analysis of this problem for me (and I'd tend to agree that it is a problem on some levels) but it also appears to be arguing that *any* explicit form of erotica inevitably leads to other nastier forms, or supports it somehow. Worse, it looks like it assumnes that the average viewer is unable to judge the difference for themselves and may even be helpless to resist acting out on it. Male see = male do. That just confuses it further IMO, and doesn't allow for any other practical ways to approach the question of exploitation. Just my own two cents to the mix.

[ 08 October 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]

“(we are) Fighting to ensure that men who aren’t revolted by these are treated as sick, dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs.”

or

“We are fighting to ‘suppress thoughts’. We are fighting to make antidemocratic thoughts unthinkable and nonsensical.”

are revolutionary statements. They are revolutionary because they call for the overthrow of pervasive norms that are currently condoned by the state. Furthermore, these are revolutionary statements that identify certain thoughts as antagonistic to your revolutionary ideal, therefore, necessitating harsh penalties.

You are identifying yourself with a revolution that will not be satisfied until all people are either converted or, I assume, incarcerated.

You probably are somewhat familiar with revolutionary movements that have enshrined their revolutionary practice in state law so that it might never die but continue to march forward always. The National Socialists of the 1930s in Germany as well as the Bolsheviks in Russia around the turn of the last century each managed to institute a state machine that would maintain the revolution. (Perhaps, in the case of the National Socialists, it would be best to refer to them simply as a movement)

Critical to the state machine in each case, was the mission to purge counter-revolutionary thoughts from the minds of the people by “any means necessary”. Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia did not stop merely at the mission to drastically alter state power. They understood it as essential to their movement, that each and every mind be in full congruence with state revolutionary goals.

In her book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” Hannah Arendt, uses the two examples of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia to illustrate how totalitarianism operates. She is the same woman who also wrote “Eikman in Jerusalem” and coined the phrase “the banality of evil”. Arendt illustrates that for a revolution to operate through the mechanism of the state, and be maintained by the state, that state must become totalitarian. If you are talking about overthrowing one state and replacing it with another, that is different. But you Chris, are talking about ensuring the maintenance of certain thoughts and feelings in all human beings forever.

You are fighting to see that every man who is not revolted by counter-revolutionary thoughts is treated as sick and avoided at all costs. In other words, your revolution will always be in a state of threat. The fight will never be over and therefore, the revolution will never end. Always, the state must be on guard against perverted thoughts. There always will be a threat. Stalin had the same problem.

The up-side however, is that even though you will never win the War Against Perversion, the state laws established in the name of that fight, will always require an impressive and terrifying bureaucracy. Stalin liked this part and you may also.

You never know, you might get to become the head of this bureaucracy! Imagine the perks!

You will have to develop a sophisticated intelligence agency that can spy on its own population and report to your office any suspicious behaviour. Since what you are fighting against is thought crime, you cannot wait until someone has committed a physically observable act before placing them under surveillance. You will need to develop some sort of manual outlining the observable habits and characteristics of one who is thinking perverted thoughts. Make sure that your domestic spies are fully versed on these subtle habits and characteristics.

Make sure also, that your domestic population is fully versed on how to observe suspicious behaviour in someone close to them; a co-worker let’s say, or even a family member. I repeat; you cannot wait until someone has committed a perverted act. By then, it is too late. The state must root out perversion in the place where it breeds, in the crevasses of the mind!

Now, if you’ve read Freud or been in a sexual relationship with anyone, you are already aware that the seeds of perversion exist in every mind. ANY mind can think a perverted thought!

Since your fight is very much focused on sex, you may find that your state structure needs to resemble Medieval Europe more than Stalinist Russia. You certainly would be well advised to borrow some of the state mechanisms employed by the Catholic Church in Medieval Europe. They too addressed the problem of perversion. I think in Medieval Europe, interrogation sessions were more common than the use of spies, when it came to fighting perversion in the minds of the peasantry. Clergy members would ask people in their parish questions to determine if they had been fantasizing sexually. Now, your state may be more permissive in what one is allowed to think about sexually but the same style of questioning I’m sure would be useful, since like the Medieval Catholic Church, you are fighting to root out perverted thoughts and desires. You may want to research that.

Now, earlier, I mentioned perks. This is where things get good. Did the Catholic Church manage to root out perversion in all its crevasses of the mind? No. People remained about as perverted as they ever were. Since, however, society was so vigilantly on guard for behaviour that may betray this perversion, people had to develop coping mechanisms. Either people suppressed their deepest darkest desires (which seems to be in keeping with the society you envision, since you talk about how you are seeking to “suppress thoughts” that are sexually undemocratic in nature) or they became consciously hypocritical.

Usually what happens is that the people with the least political power end up suppressing their thoughts, only to encounter their most disturbing desires at night in their dreams or occasionally, in hallucinations or through the form of paranoid delusions that the “devil” is planting perverted thoughts in their mind. Those with real political power however, the priests of the society, have far too much state responsibility to be fettered with this kind of internal turmoil. They are the ones responsible for monitoring the thoughts of others. They have enough power themselves that nobody is going to question them. In any society that is governed by strict ideology, a person needs to have a lot of power before they can begin to break the codes. Once they have that power however, they usually go right ahead. If you’re powerful, you don’t need to keep things in your mind in order to keep them secret. You have enough power that you can actually DO the things that you desire and still be safe. In order to carry it off however, you need to go around condemning other people for thinking or possibly doing what you are doing. This helps to keep you above suspicion. It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.

The stories that have come out about sexual molestation in the Catholic Church, I think offer a clear illustration of this dynamic at play. Those who police the sexual deviance of others (a very powerful position to be in) are usually afforded enough power through their job to be able to do whatever the hell they feel like doing. George Orwell provides very clear depictions of this in his critique against Soviet Russia, the book, “1984”. The society in 1984 was very sexually repressive and those who actually got to do all the things that were forbidden were the ones who railed the most against sex. The character Julia, actually rails against sex so that nobody will suspect her of any deviant acts herself. Then she is somewhat free from scrutiny and can take her boyfriend off to the countryside and fuck him. (She’s my favourite character.)

The most common criticism that I hear thrown at devout Christians is that they are hypocritical. This is a criticism that can be made of anybody surviving in a totalitarian system.

Totalitarianism is not like regular dictatorship. In a dictatorship, nobody cares too much what you think. Chances are that if you live in a dictatorship, you’re so poor and so powerless that your thoughts don’t make much of a difference anyway.

Totalitarianism is a phenomenon that tends to immerge in modern industrialized states. This is something that Hannah Arendt talks about in “Origins of Totalitarianism”. Control is less physical and more psychological. Yes, there are still state military police and they are feared but they are not feared just because they may shoot you. They are feared because they are the enforcers of a powerful state bureaucracy that is WATCHING YOU.

Dictatorship says, “Try anything against the state, and we’ll shoot you.”
Totalitarianism says, “THINK anything against the philosophy of the state, and we’ll make you disappear.”
The latter I regard to be institutionalized state mind-rape. Your thoughts and personal feelings become business of the state, and your mind therefore, becomes the de facto property of the state.

I’ve wondered before whether I consider Europe under the Catholic Church, to be a simple dictatorship or also totalitarian. I think that it was totalitarian as well as dictatorial but there is probably an interesting paper that could be written on that.

Anyway, back to the Borstian Revolution and its role within the State. You have stated your intent to establish policies against what George Orwell in “1984” calls “thought crime”. I am going to borrow a quote from one of your earlier posts for the purposes of outlining this “thought crime”.
______________________________________________
“That is the point of a cultural politics. We are fighting to change men’s demand for women’s violation. Fighting to make it so that men are revolted, not turned on, by the sight or description of a woman gagging on a cock, being tortured, having her mouth, vagina and/or anus stretched to their limits with multiple cocks, being raped, being raped as a child, being raped by her father, brother or other relative, being beaten during sex, having her hair pulled and her head forcibly moved during oral sex, being pissed or shat on, etc. Fighting to ensure that men who aren’t revolted by these are treated as sick, dangerous, and to be avoided at all costs. This is only one front, but a crucial front, in the long and ongoing fight to make violence and coercion, domination and submission, unacceptable, inconceivable, unthinkable.”
________________________________________

This is an amazing quote. You have here a clear manifesto, excellent for the purposes of establishing a totalitarian state enforced revolution. Two of the most essential elements are: 1) thought crime and 2) the assertion that the fight will be ongoing, kind of like Stalin’s ongoing fight against the enemies of the revolution or George Bush’s War on Terror.

Now, I’m going to point out something that I find really distasteful. You list sex acts between grown men and women and sex acts between grown men and children without making any clear distinction between the two. Children are FAR more vulnerable physiologically than adults. When adults have sex together, sure they effect each other psychologically, but no were near to the degree that an adult can impact the mind of a child. This is why child abuse and molestation are such horrible crimes.

Any adult who is close to a child has a role in raising that child and shaping that child fundamental psychological make-up. When that power is abused for personal gain, the child then builds his or her life upon a traumatized sense of self. Child abuse is a very particular type of abuse. Adults too can be traumatized, but the vulnerability of a child is far greater. Children do not have the physical or emotional power that adults have to defend themselves. Do NOT lump children in with adults when you are talking about sex legislation. The two are not to be compared.

Grown women are not children. When it comes to sex, a grown woman can consent. A child cannot. Chris, not only does your declaration fail to recognize that children require special protection under the law, but it also fails to acknowledge that grown women have rights different from those of children.

I oppose your revolution, not only because yours is an ideology that would lead logically to a totalitarian regime enforcing thought crime penalties but because your political philosophy does not recognize my right as a woman to engage in whatever kind of sex I feel like with another consenting adult.

Your political philosophy seeks to protect me as though I am a child without the power to consent.

If I like giving a man a blowjob, that’s my own fucking business.

If I like rough sex, that’s my own fucking business.

You graphically describe some sex acts between adults that do not turn me on, but if I should change my mind, and decide that I want four cocks inside me at once, that’s my own fucking business too.

I’m sick and tired of “feminists” going on and on about how women are too weak and “brain washed” by patriarchy to make any of their own decisions.

Feminism has fought hard to establish laws that protect my right as woman to consent or say no. If a man tries something I don’t like, and he persists after I say no, I can have him charged. Now I understand that I may face great obstacles if I choose to charge a man who has violated my right to refuse sex. At the same time however, feminism has won some real victories in this arena. If I say that a man raped me, I can make his life a living hell in his neighbour hood and place of work. There is great stigma attached to being a rapist. I’m glad there is. It’s that stigma that gives me power when I say no. No man wants to be accused of rape.

Feminism has won some real victories. One of the victories that I enjoy most is that my words get taken seriously in the bedroom. Because I have the right and the power to exercise NO, I also have the right and the power to exercise YES.

Now, when it comes to YES, some feminists seem to have a problem. Nobody will say that I’m brainwashed if I make the decision to pay money to ride a terrifying rollarcoaster, or go bunji jumping. These are actions that are thrilling and may even result in physical harm (depending on how well the equipment is maintained). The are, in fact thrilling because they may result in physical harm or at least, create a feeling that physical harm may be immenant. Lost of people get off on that and it’s not your business to tell them that they shouldn’t.

In university, I made a minor study of BDSM for essays that I wrote. One thing that I found interesting was that lots of people (men even) with real political power and responsibility in their places of work really get off on having that power stripped away in the bedroom. In fact, when I think about the men I’ve dated, I’ve known more men who wanted me to tie them up and whip them, than have wanted to do the same to me. In fact, I’ve reached the conclusion that having a dominant or submissive preference in bed is not actually correlated to gender.

I would like to assert at this point, that the men I’ve known who enjoyed having power taken away from them in bed, were by no means submissive in the public sphere. On the contrary, the two men I am thinking about had very strong charismatic personalities.

So, I don’t really know why some people enjoy getting tied up and why other people enjoy tying people up. And I don’t know why some people get off on both. I don’t know that that is the business of state legislators.

What IS the business of legislators and law enforcers in a democratic country, is to protect the safety of a person from REAL abuse of power, not IMAGINARY abuse of power like in a fantasy sex game.

If a man rapes a woman and videotapes it, he has REALLY abused his power and deserves to be prosecuted under the law.

If what you’re interested in is protecting people’s rights, than propose legislation that punishes abusive ACTIONS.

quote:

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Originally posted by Saber:

If I like rough sex, that’s my own fucking business.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Saber:
If a man rapes a woman and videotapes it, he has REALLY abused his power and deserves to be prosecuted under the law.

If what you’re interested in is protecting people’s rights, than propose legislation that punishes abusive ACTIONS.

---

You know what Saber, I'm going to go back and check everything I've written so far on this topic just to make sure, but I'm pretty sure that this is, in fact, the ONLY thing I have advocated making a LAW against.

I did, it's true, say that we need to "defeat" porn. I did NOT say, however, that that was some task to be done by the state, or even led by the state, be it through laws or some other mechanism. In fact, in response to the endless repetition of the word "ban", I'm quite sure I said that "banning things is useless, because it can't work".

What I have advocated is that women who are abused in pornography (and the sex industry more generally) have available some recourse against their abusers.

quote:

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What I have advocated is that women who are abused in pornography (and the sex industry more generally) have available some recourse against their abusers.

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Currently our laws do not describe each and every case in which someone could harm another, to the exclusion of any not cited. They simply say, "present your case and we'll hear it". Your welcome to charge, for example, that the jackhammers outside your apartment have harmed your poodle's hearing. Or that the aspartame in your diet soda has caused you to become impotent.

quote:

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Originally posted by MasterDebator:
To me, the same principle applies, that it's not right for liberated people to pleasure themselves using symbols of oppressions, be it a Confederate Flag, ... or shackles and riding crops.

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And who the fuck gave you the right to decide what is or isn't right for consenting adults people to do in their bedrooms - or dungeon/playroom? Where the fuck do you get off thinking you have any right at all to make such pronouncements?

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You graphically describe some sex acts between adults that do not turn me on, but if I should change my mind, and decide that I want four cocks inside me at once, that’s my own fucking business too.

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quote:

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Originally posted by MasterDebator:

Lenin and Mao? What do they have to do with anything I have said?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Saber:

If however, what you are interested in is establishing your right to snoop into the bedrooms and minds of your fellow citizens, than I can see why you might enjoy the kind of philosophy you have outlined.

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Great Post. Ting.

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Borst:
[QB]So, on more serious matters.

On tactics, skdadl, you were put off by my invocation of the BAMN principle. As far as I can see, all politics works on the BAMN principle. But we act BAMN to achieve our ends, while they act BAMN to achieve their ends. Because we have different ends, the "MN" aren't and won't be the same. You object to "coercion", which is an even looser and more nebulous term than that media favourite "violence". On one rather obvious reading, ALL politics is "coercive" (just listen for a second to the profs who've found themselves on the receiving end of student protests). I could discuss some more specific issues around "violence", but let's leave those aside here (at least for now), since they're not terribly germane to the case at hand.

[followed by some confused hypothesis about "New Left and Old Left]

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What is absurd of course Chris is that the difference between "New Left" and "Old Left" is that the old left was entirely committed to BAMN, on the principle that the ends justify the means, usually as part of the idea that there was an identifiable "end" in the inexonerable march of progress and history (This idea is the modernist idea that Saber has so eloquently disected above as totalitarian.) This is not in fact the case, as there actually is no "end" to history, and no finite point at which you can conclude a final perfect historical outcome.

This falacy of the achievable historical "end" creates the endless but apparently necessary struggle that is favourtie of totalitarians, such as yourself, and incidentally people like George Bush who have asked us to be handmaids to his never ending "War on terror," is much the same manner as you would have us applaud your never ending "war on porn."

Let me you tell you these two things; there will be no end to "terror" and there will be no end to porn. In fact it is very likely that the first human pictographs, that eventually evolved in to complex written languages were quite simple pictures of people fucking, and various other fertility symbols. Your idea of eliminating it is like suggesting people not fuck at all, and join the ASL.

The reality is that history has no end, and is actually all about the means not the end and what is most important of all in revolutionary activism is not the end you intend but the means you use to achieve them. The means actually should be the end, so to speak, or in other words, the means through which social consensus is constructed is the primary concern of the revolutionary, not the abstracted ideal.

Above all revolutionaries should avoid immitating the coercive forms of thought that inform the political landscape of totalitarian idealist fantasies you say you oppose, by justifying them in zero sum quantifications such as "we act BAMN to achieve our ends, while they act BAMN to achieve their ends."

In other words Chris, you have rejected some of peripheral content of Old Left thought, but subsumed in entirety its central philosophical oulook and methodology, (which is in my view its core error) and are applying it to different content, thinking (I guess) that the the change in venue indicates the play is different.

It is not, the play is still Bulgakov's "the Day of the Turbins."

*I use the phrase Old Left and New Left, simply for the sake of simplicty, since the multitude of mused definitions that float around your writing seem to do so at your the conveniance of your whims, as opposed to the traditional understandings generally shared by others.

[ 11 October 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 11 October 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]

quote:

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Originally posted by obscurantist:
BAMN = "By All Means Necessary" (this may be evident to people who've been following this discussion more closely than I've been, but I had to search through the thread a couple of times to figure out what the acronym was referring to).

---

Your initial post on this thread was actually a very valuable post. You said yourself that you knew your statements would be contentious. Never the less, I think you recognized that you were articulating views that other people held but were not coming right out and saying.

The question of whether or not to institute thought crime legislation is always in the air during discussions on pornography. Somebody actually had to put the question out for debate.

quote:

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When it makes no more sense to think of using a woman as a masturbatory aid than it does to think of burning her at the stake because she wears a crystal necklace, or even better, when it makes no more sense to think of so using her than it does to think of shaving with a banana – then we will have achieved something.

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First of all, let's get something straight. Freedom of thought is an absolute right and no one is suggesting that we try to suppress it- because to try to do so would be both wrong and impossible. Freedom of expression, on the other hand, is not absolute- it can be and sometimes should be limited and Western society is already doing this all the time and acknowledges it. We prohibit child pornogrpahy, hate speech, and other forms of obscene material in large part because they violate the rights of others. So the freedom of expression of pornographers is not sacrosanct and people should stop playing the "censorship is evil" card because it is misleading and too black-and-white an argument to be counted as a valid contribution. Freedom of expression, while it is a highly important and fiercely proteted right, is NOT an automatic trump card.

The arguments that "porn is good" or even the more tempered version- "censorship is bad so whether or not porn is good we must allow it"- are not valid. But neither is the argument that all porn is bad. These are far too simple arguments. That is precisely why porn is so difficult to discuss- because it is complex, there are large areas of grey, and people's emotions and experiences are so closely involved.

But simply blaring partisan-style party lines at one another is not truly discussing the issue. We all need to be willing to at least accept the possibillity that some forms of pornogrpahy may be sex-positive and at the same time we should be willing and able to condemn and restrict those forms which are degrading, violent, etc. But more importantly, we as a society need to be able to discuss porn's legitimacy and porn's role in our society, especially because of the accessibility of internet porn. Many, if not most, young men these days experience porn before sex. Is it really so hard to believe that these young men's approach to their own and to women's sexuality might be heavily influenced by this exposure to porn, and in not so favourable ways?

I see little no no discussion of this issue outside of forums like these. Canada's obscenity laws are based on so-called "community standards" of what is acceptable, but for the most part no one seems to be canvassing the community on its opinion, and from what I have heard from people from all walks of life is that many of us are uncomfortable with porn and would most definitely object to many of the images found in even mainstream porn. And even if a mojority of people were definitely ok with porn, a true democracy means more than simply "the majority rules". The rights and opinions of the minority must also be heard and respected, if not enforced.

And yet, there is this sense of entitlement to it.
Those who are against porn (or certain forms of it) generally seem to be told to simply get used to it, to "be cool" about it, to watch it WITH their partners if they are so upset about their partners using it, etc. The knee-jerk reaction of those who are porn-positive is to automatically label the women who oppose it (and in my expereince it usually IS women who oppose it which is why it is refreshing to see the well-reasoned comments of men on this issue) as prudes, puritans, "femin-nazis", totalitarian censors. These arguments have been disturbingly effective- many people are afraid to object to porn for fear of being labeled, of being attacked, of being accused of being fascists, when all they were trying to say is that we should assess the validity of certain forms of porn which might have serious repercussions for women, for men, for relationships. That is what I find most ironic about the freedom of expression argument- it is often used to silence the speech of those who would object to porn.

The other go-to argument is that the women in porn have the choice to be there and who are we to question those choices or say they aren't valid simply because we disapprove. Whether or not the women in porn are there of their own free will is entirely besides the point. I don't object to most porn on behalf of the rights of the women actually in it (although in certain cases, I most definitely would- ie. Linda Lovelace). I object on MY behalf, because I believe that much of porn normalizes unhealthy views of sex and of women, views which violate MY right to equality, to non-discrimination, to freedom of expression, to security of person.

I believe that porn is both a symptom of women's continuing inferior status in Western society AND a cause to the extent that it perpetuates that inferiority in the minds of men and women, to the extent that it conditions us to view women's sexual subordination as necessary and sexy. I believe that in a society that was TRULY equal, images of women being debased and humiliated for another person's sexual gratification would not be the norm and they would be loudly objected to by men and women alike. They might not be "unthinkable" (that is too much to hope for), but at the very least expressions of such thoughts would not be so widely and easily accessible. In a society where women were not still considered inferior to men, graphic depictions of sex which were not violent or degrading, which involved mutually consenting, non-coerced, non-objectifying sex, WOULD be stimulating and arousing.

The problem is that I can't see how to get to such a society in the future without doing something about the content of porn now. It is a bit of a catch-22 situation. But having discussions like these are at least a start.

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Borst:

You know what Saber, I'm going to go back and check everything I've written so far on this topic just to make sure, but I'm pretty sure that this is, in fact, the ONLY thing I have advocated making a LAW against.

I did, it's true, say that we need to "defeat" porn. I did NOT say, however, that that was some task to be done by the state, or even led by the state, be it through laws or some other mechanism. In fact, in response to the endless repetition of the word "ban", I'm quite sure I said that "banning things is useless, because it can't work".

What I have advocated is that women who are abused in pornography (and the sex industry more generally) have available some recourse against their abusers.

THE WOMEN. Not me. Not the police. Not Canada Customs. Not any film board. Not any other agency of the bureaucracy. Not, for that matter, just any woman. But women who, in fact, consider themselves to have been abused in the making of pornography. This need not be every woman in pornography, and almost certainly won't be. But the proposal is for the use of those women who have been abused. And, just in case this wasn't clear enough, let me stress again: NOT ME.

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Well, now I am really confused. All this time, I believed that we were carrying on discussion of the MacKinnon ordinance, which would permit women and children generally -- ie, not just those involved in the making of pornography and abused in that process (which would be criminal assault) -- to bring civil suits against producers and distributors of pornography for harm caused by sexual assault in general.

In earlier discussion, Thalia and MD have claimed that such an ordinance would not amount to government censorship, and others (including me) have characterized that position as hair-splitting, fairly cynical hair-splitting at that.

We have also pointed out the vulnerability of any expressive act or product to its re-construction in the minds of others as pornography. Some of us have experience with the chilling effect of civil suits. Some of us have experience watching others re-construct expressive acts or products. We feel we know where that-all leads, and we feel that, by any other name, it is still thought control.

That, anyway, has been my construction of this debate.

quote:

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Originally posted by The Baboon:
Good luck pushing that message.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Debbie:
I believe that porn is both a symptom of women's continuing inferior status in Western society AND a cause to the extent that it perpetuates that inferiority in the minds of men and women, to the extent that it conditions us to view women's sexual subordination as necessary and sexy. I believe that in a society that was TRULY equal, images of women being debased and humiliated for another person's sexual gratification would not be the norm and they would be loudly objected to by men and women alike. They might not be "unthinkable" (that is too much to hope for), but at the very least expressions of such thoughts would not be so widely and easily accessible. In a society where women were not still considered inferior to men, graphic depictions of sex which were not violent or degrading, which involved mutually consenting, non-coerced, non-objectifying sex, WOULD be stimulating and arousing.

The problem is that I can't see how to get to such a society in the future without doing something about the content of porn now.

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[ 11 October 2005: Message edited by: chubbybear ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Debbie:
And yet, there is this sense of entitlement to it.
Those who are against porn (or certain forms of it) generally seem to be told to simply get used to it, to "be cool" about it, to watch it WITH their partners if they are so upset about their partners using it, etc. The knee-jerk reaction of those who are porn-positive is to automatically label the women who oppose it (and in my expereince it usually IS women who oppose it which is why it is refreshing to see the well-reasoned comments of men on this issue) as prudes, puritans, "femin-nazis", totalitarian censors. These arguments have been disturbingly effective- many people are afraid to object to porn for fear of being labeled, of being attacked, of being accused of being fascists, when all they were trying to say is that we should assess the validity of certain forms of porn which might have serious repercussions for women, for men, for relationships. That is what I find most ironic about the freedom of expression argument- it is often used to silence the speech of those who would object to porn.

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quote:

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I don't object to most porn on behalf of the rights of the women actually in it (although in certain cases, I most definitely would- ie. Linda Lovelace). I object on MY behalf, because I believe that much of porn normalizes unhealthy views of sex and of women, views which violate MY right to equality, to non-discrimination, to freedom of expression, to security of person.

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quote:

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And yet, there is this sense of entitlement to it.
Those who are against porn (or certain forms of it) generally seem to be told to simply get used to it, to "be cool" about it, to watch it WITH their partners if they are so upset about their partners using it, etc. The knee-jerk reaction of those who are porn-positive is to automatically label the women who oppose it (and in my expereince it usually IS women who oppose it which is why it is refreshing to see the well-reasoned comments of men on this issue) as prudes, puritans, "femin-nazis", totalitarian censors. These arguments have been disturbingly effective- many people are afraid to object to porn for fear of being labeled, of being attacked, of being accused of being fascists, when all they were trying to say is that we should assess the validity of certain forms of porn which might have serious repercussions for women, for men, for relationships. That is what I find most ironic about the freedom of expression argument- it is often used to silence the speech of those who would object to porn.

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[ 12 October 2005: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]

quote:

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Originally posted by AmericaUSABdub2:
Sup everyone? ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by AmericaUSABdub2:
I dream of the day that I can cross paths with a feminist (male or female)!

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Originally posted by Michelle:
That way they won't keep receiving e-mail notifications of private messages when they can't respond.

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quote:

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Originally posted by rasmus raven:
I have a question. Is the definition of pornography in R. v. Butler substantially taken from the factum submitted by LEAF, and written by Mackinnon, or not?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Debbie:

And yet, there is this sense of entitlement to it.

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There maybe a point to that too, among some anyhow, I couldn't say. Interesting post, this brings it together for me a bit more. Few things more if I can be permitted, maybe there's some middleground here that's still open to discussion. I didn't like some of the broad statements being made about "porn" or the overly negative assumptions about the "average" porn viewer, but I also neglected to add that I don't see pornography, in and of itself, as a right or "entitlement" either. Rather, it can be seen as a reflection of social freedom on one hand or possibly a lack of freedom on another, depending on who we're thinking of, the consumer or the actors. It's not exactly a form of free speech in the traditional sense of political or personal opinions, and it's not *entirely* a simple matter of one's personal tastes either as it does involve other people in the production end of it.

Most porn is obviously based on traditional (if often juvenile) male fantasies, much of it is indeed contemptous, and some is downright degrading and violent, yes, even if only an enactment. There has to be distinctions made between the *kinds* of porn, though, before this can be analysed properly, same as any other subject, if they're to be understood in any objective context. Objective as in something most every dis-interested viewer can see for themselves, even if their personal reactions differ.

quote:

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The other go-to argument is that the women in porn have the choice to be there and who are we to question those choices or say they aren't valid simply because we disapprove. Whether or not the women in porn are there of their own free will is entirely besides the point.

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This I disagree on, its essential to consider whether the women freely chose to do it because she enjoyed it, or because she simply thinks it's an acceptable way to make money, or whether she was driven to it by real abject poverty or even coerced directly. Even a private tape someone consents to can become something else if it's released for public viewing without their permission. Same goes for guys as well as women.

This involves a lot of grey areas too I know, as women (and men) can be manipulated into things they don't really want to do, or made to think some things are expected of them, despite their natural aversion. In the end though, outside viewers can't judge that much so easily, so it comes back to those who have felt abused themselves to take the case up. If it is a real widespread problem, there's no reasons others can't take the issue up too and help to publicize it or offer financial support.

quote:

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The problem is that I can't see how to get to such a society in the future without doing something about the content of porn now. It is a bit of a catch-22 situation. But having discussions like these are at least a start.

Sorry- this has gotten quite long- but to recap: I'm not against any and all graphic depictions of sex, but I believe that as a citizen of this country I should be able to question the acceptability of some of the depictions of sex in our society, depictions which I believe violate my rights and the rights of all women. I think this needs to become a mainstream issue, not one on the fringes of feminist discussions, because I think it matters to everyone- to what kind of society we have and what kind of society we want.

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Fair enough, but to take something as far as legal sanctions, as Magoo has already touched on, means offering some tangeable evidence of harm done to one's own person, not our sense of propriety, and I've seen little evidence yet that pornography in general is a cause of misogyny or active oppression, or even a clear corrolation. Women had far fewer rights and abuse was probably worse in the days before porn became so readily available. OTOH, access to porn hasn't exactly protected our freedom of speech either.

What I'm wondering now, since this is such a subjective question, is whether the issue of choice or lack thereof can't be remedied best by trying to tackle the economic problems that may drive some (or most) women into the positions they wouldn't otherwise consider. Or even just try to teach our kids more respect for each other and themselves. Sounds old fashioned and banal I know, but social pressures can shift from one extreme to another if there's more money to be made, and I believe most problems are better dealt with where they arise rather than the images employed. Unless the image itself is the root cause, something I doubt here.

[ 13 October 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]

quote:

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I'm going to go back and check everything I've written so far on this topic just to make sure, but I'm pretty sure that this is, in fact, the ONLY thing I have advocated making a LAW against. ...

What I have advocated is that women who are abused in pornography (and the sex industry more generally) have available some recourse against their abusers.

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To which Magoo posed the question

quote:

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So what, exactly, is preventing these women from making their case currently? And what, exactly, do you propose must be changed so that in your opinion, they can?

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while skdadl said

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Well, now I am really confused. All this time, I believed that we were carrying on discussion of the MacKinnon ordinance, which would permit women and children generally ... to bring civil suits against producers and distributors of pornography for harm caused by sexual assault in general.

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First, allow me to establish that I not now making things up in representing my own position. What I have said about the law, including the Dworkin-Mackinnon model law, is

quote:

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It makes it possible for women who have specifically been harmed in the production or consumption of pornography to legally pursue their oppressor, and to do so as a matter of civil rights law (human rights, in Canadian terms).

... here’s the relevant issue: if a rape is filmed, what is the status of the film? ...

Not every rapist becomes as (in)famous as Bernardo. Not every rapist murders his victims. But does that mean that there is better reason to permit the resultant films and images to circulate freely? Most importantly ..., does it mean that the women raped in them should have no recourse to prevent these images circulating?...

It is clear that the women most directly victimized in pornography are those used on the ‘supply side’. That makes it crucial to give those women mechanisms for fighting back. ...

[all from my first extended contribution to the 'radical feminism' thread; please note the emphasized passages, all italicized in the original]

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quote:

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The idea is that it would be a mechanism by which specific women, harmed in specific ways, could seek some measure of redress -- and do so in a way that advanced the cause of (a democratic interpretation of) human rights ...

... Yet, the law remains one phrased in terms of "obscenity" and "community standards", and included in the criminal law. It remains enforced by the police, customs and film boards, rather than by women. Women who are abused in the industry still have no recourse whatsoever to act against the industry -- the women appearing in pornography still have no right to control when, where or whether their own bodies will be displayed once their image has been committed to film. ... certainly the most obvious move is to get pornography recognized as one possible type of hate literature under the hate crimes provision (something that would be done in the courts, not the legislature). Another, crucial, move would be to establish - whether through the courts or by new legislation - that any contract provision limiting a woman's right to control her image after it has been taken is null and void.

[all this from my second extened post on tactics, above, emphasis here is added]

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Now, it should be clear from these what is, and has been, my primary goal to achieve, in terms of the law -- specific recourse for specific wrongs.

I do propose, at the end of all these considerations, the use of hate crimes legislation as part of a (Canadian specific) way to do this. You might object to that. And, on thinking about it again, that does go beyond providing a recourse simply for those abused in the making of porn. It would make possible challenging porn for what it sells. This would certainly provide a recourse for those injured from the consumption of porn (in the same way that a neonazi assault on a person of colour is different from a random assault on a person of colour), so does pick up that side of things. But it could be challenged in different terms than those applying to the making of porn. So, OK. Let's separate these two issues.

I also propose ensuring in law a woman's right to control the use of her image, even after it's taken. This seems to me to be a way, not entirely alien to liberal law, to deal with classic cases of precisely the kind that Thalia cited in the previous thread. Cases where a woman -- regardless of the conditions under which a performance was first obtained -- no longer wants certain of her own performances to be publicly available; cases where a man publishes images of a woman without her consent, and with malicious intention, and the woman wants them removed.

What I was thinking of was this: part of the difficulty with the whole "speech" argument in relation to pornography is that most porn these days is visual -- still images, video and film of actual women actually doing or having done to them whatever acts are in question. In that sense, they are not fantasy, not representations. In particular, unlike oral or written speech, there is (typically) a distinction between the "author" of the text, the agent to whom the "speech" is attributed, and the agent(s) actually enacting that "speech". This can be neatly summed up in the formula "her body, his speech". This disjunct should be a familiar one to most Leftists, since it's just another version of the traditional capitalist way of doing things: labour's product, capital's property. Just as our traditional (reformist) agitation has been aimed principally at denying capital their desired "propery rights" in favour of labour's control over their own product, so too am I thinking of how we could deny pornographers their desired "property rights" in favour of the pornographed's control over their own body. I don't claim that my proposal is necessarily the way to do it, but it seemed a straightforward enough way to achieve the goal.

This, hopefully, at least begins to give an answer to Magoo (probably not a whole one, but at least the beginning of one). The principal difficulty for women who appear in porn lies precisely in their lack of control over the images in which they appear. This is, of course, compounded by the legal system's bias against women who have been prostituted. The very fact they appear in the images is taken as evidence against their right to complain of any abuses. But even where they can successfully fight their abusers over a specific abuse, they still lack any control over the images taken of the abuse. That's the key piece. Of course, then there's the obvious inequity in wealth and power between the abuser and the abused and consequent differential access to judicial redress ...

Now, I've proposed a couple measures in the present Canadian context that might be productive. But, skdadl is quite right, we were discussing the Dworkin-Mackinnon proposal. As should be evident from the quotations above, I have taken them to be offering precisely the kind of narrow mechanism aimed at specific abuses that I have been advocating. skdadl and others have taken them to be offering something entirely different. This is why I have asked for more precise demonstration of what's wrong with their actual text. Where's the part that is this supposed "sweeping ban of all porn" that everyone's going on about?

Since no one else (other than Thalia) seemed willing to go back to the original (the Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Cambridge, and Massachusetts versions are also available, along with an excerpted version, brief description and a book-length discussion of the Ordinance, due the tireless labours of Nikki Craft) I took it upon myself to do so.