A Great Article on Porn and Strip Clubs

We are working so hard to normalize sexism as something that is an innate part of masculinity and I’m just not quite sure why. If we can imagine that it’s possible for people not to murder one another or imagine that there be an end to war or child abuse or whatever other kinds of behaviour we’ve agreed, as a society, is unacceptable, or, at least, undesirable, why are we so avidly working to preserve sexism?

Why are we so unwilling to see porn or strip clubs or prostitution as something invented by a society that is not egalitarian? Just because you get an erection when you see a woman being objectified onscreen doesn’t mean women deserve to be objectified. And I don’t say that because I have a hate-on for erections, or masturbation, or penises, or even sex (though some women hate all those things and that’s perfectly fine). But because I can separate men from misogyny. I don’t believe that your erection is dependent on my subordination.

And you know why? Because I don’t believe you were born an asshole.

Street Harassment

Great article.

Love This

Love this!

Via the Carnival Against Sexual Violence:

These are all fairly minor events but they each illustrate this assumption that men believe it is okay for them to touch a woman, to grip her hands, to pressure her into going with them to wherever they want to go. This sort of mentality, that of control, is the first step, the beginnings of the idea that men should be able to tell women what to do, they should be allowed sex, they should have access to women’s bodies whenever they want.

more at

"So I'm Pretty. That Doesn't Obligate me to Sleep With You"

Girls Gone Anti-Feminist -- In These Times

Girls Gone Anti-Feminist -- In These Times

This may be the best analysis of "fun feminism" I have yet read. This is REALLY good!

Enlightened sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s calculated deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power— power that is fun, that men will not resent, and indeed will embrace. True power here has nothing to do with economic independence or professional achievement: it has to do with getting men to lust after you and other women to envy you. Enlightened sexism is especially targeted to girls and young women and emphasizes that now that they “have it all,” they should focus the bulk of their time and energy on being hot, pleasing men, competing with other women, and shopping.

Enlightened sexism is a manufacturing process that is constantly produced by the media. Its components—anxiety about female achievement; renewed and amplified objectification of young women’s bodies and faces; dual exploitation and punishment of female sexuality; dividing of women against each other by age, race and class; and rampant branding and consumerism—began to swirl around in the early 1990s, consolidating as the dark star it has become in the early 21st century....

This essay was adapted from Susan J. Douglas’ new book, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done (Times Books, March).

OH, you MUST be Kidding!

The Price of Pleasure - The Movie

"The Price of Pleasure"

synopsis:

The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships

Directed and Produced by Miguel Picker and Chyng Sun Co-Writer and Associate Producer: Robert Wosnitzer

Once relegated to the margins of society, pornography has become one of the most visible and profitable sectors of the cultural industries in the United States. It is estimated that the pornography industry's annual revenue has reached $13 billion. At the same time, the content of pornography has become more aggressive, more overtly sexist and racist.

The film features the voices of consumers, critics, and pornography producers and performers. It is particularly revealing when male pornographers openly discuss their views about women and how men should relate to them, and when male and female porn users candidly discuss the role pornography has played in shaping their sexual imaginations and relationships. Honest and nonjudgmental, the film paints both a nuanced and complex portrait of how pleasure and pain, commerce and power, and liberty and responsibility are intertwined in the most intimate aspects of human relations.

At the same time, the film examines the unprecedented role that commercial pornography now occupies in U.S. popular culture. Going beyond the debate of liberal versus conservative so common in the culture, The Price of Pleasure provides a holistic understanding of pornography as it debunks common myths about the genre.

The film features interviews with scholars of mass media (Gail Dines and Robert Jensen), economics (Richard Wolff), and psychology (Dr. Ana Bridges); writers on pornography and popular culture (Ariel Levy and Pamela Paul); producers and performers from the pornography industry (John Stagliano, Joanna Angel and Ernest Greene); and a former stripper/porn performer-turned-author (Sarah Katherine Lewis).

Payne

I'm not going to type his full name here (because it turns out he is now googling himself and getting off on all the attention he's getting in the feminist blogosphere), but most of you already know about he-who-will-not-be-named, he who spent much time masquerading as an anti-porn activist, pro-feminist, and rape victim advocate and has now pled guilty to the unthinkable. I was away from the computer for two months, so I am hearing about this late.

Years ago, I quoted to Mr.Me something a guy in one of my Women's Studies classes had said. Mr.Me was surprised that there were any men in such a class and told me, "He's just there to get laid."

At the time, I was furious with Mr.Me. Now I realize he was guilty of nothing more than telling the depressing truth.

I attended the Stop Porn Culture conference six months ago in Austin. I can not adequately express how disgusted I am - both because of Payne's behavior and my own utter lack of suspicion. I guess I should have known that Mr.Me knows all about these things from a male perspective and that somebody like Payne indeed was up to no good.

During that three day conference, we viewed graphic slideshows showing how women are depicted and exploited in pornography and in advertising. We had discussions that were rather personal in nature, especially outside the conference room. We hung out together in the hallways, outside the building late at night before heading back to our hotels, and during lunch and rest breaks. We discussed things like rape and rape prevention, protecting children, women and body image, and we brainstormed about activism.

There were only - I'm pretty sure - four men present.

Now I find out that one of them had child pornography on his computer and had - I believe before the conference - been charged with assault for touching and photographing an intoxicated young woman he had been asked - as a college R.A. - to escort safely to her dorm room (being the pro-feminist, anti-porn rape crisis counselor and oh-so sensitive truthworthy dood that he was).

Recently, as he prepared to plead guilty, he emailed his sick pity-party confession to hundreds of feminist bloggers, like he's apparently expecting - hoping - to someday possibly be welcomed back into his old clique again. For the record, Payne, if you and I end up sitting around the same conference table again, one of us is gonna end up gettin' shown to the door.

Then it turns out that he's reading over all the comments about himself at all these feminist blogs, spending hours doing it like the self-obsessed ass he is.

Dude, you really make me sick.

For some reason, this makes me remember a Roseanne episode in which Jackie's boyfriend Fisher had beaten her. Roseanne tells him, "You know, I'm a pretty good judge of people, which is why I don't like none of 'em, but you really slipped beneath my radar. I liked you. And that really pisses me off."

I remember standing outside the conference building talking to a woman who, like me, was married to someone who had used pornography but had eventually realized it was wrong and given it up. Like me, she had for years been okay with pornography until she saw what it was doing in her own life and began to understand what it was doing in others' lives. I actually stood there and told her, "If I end up leaving my marriage, I will never again be involved with any man unless he is truly a feminist activist. I mean, he would have to really get it. He would have to be someone so committed that he would decide to attend a conference like this - you know, like the couple of guys who are here this weekend."

I am an idiot. Somebody just smack me.

Now, courtesy of Payne, I'm revising that night's statement. If I end up leaving my marriage, I will never again be romantically involved with any male person.

That's it.

Even the members of dood nation who show up for anti-porn conferences aren't necessarily the real deal.

Even the guy I married wasn't necessarily the real deal (although he is doing some training with these issues, I don't trust how deep that really goes). He too has always been seen as oh-so sensitive and sweet by every woman he meets.

Individual members of privileged groups should never, ever be completely trusted by members of oppressed groups. Never - not even if they, like Payne, manage to talk a good game. Never.

And I say that as a white person too. I try my best when it comes to racism, but I, of course, always have the option of taking a break from that fight, of choosing not to fight if it's inconvenient for me at that moment. In other words, I am privileged, and because I am privileged, I can not, should not, be completely trusted as an ally.

I heard somewhere about a group of native American activists in Washington State who were mobiling around a particularly urgent issue and found that several white would-be allies were offering assistance and attending some organizing meetings. The original members of the group decided to tell the white attendees that if they really wanted to help, what they could do was provide free childcare so that 1) as many native Americans as possible could attend, 2) white allies could actually be involved, but by doing support work rather than leadership, and 3) native Americans would be in charge of their own activism.

Maybe this should have been the only role for someone like he-who-shall-not-be-named at a Stop Porn Culture conference. Instead of sitting at a conference table doing his oh-so sensitive pro-feminist male routine, convincing an idiot like me that he's the rare man who gets it (when am I gonna learn???), he should have only been allowed a support role, like making coffee and picking up conference room trash at the end of the day.

I had thought that having male allies against pornography was important, because, after all, when women make the case against pornography, we get called uptight bitches who just need a good fucking. Andrea Dworkin, in a speech to "men's movement" men said the following:

What's involved in doing something about all of this? The men's movement seems to stay stuck on two points. The first is that men don't really feel very good about themselves. How could you? The second is that men come to me or to other feminists and say: "What you're saying about men isn't true. It isn't true of me. I don't feel that way. I'm opposed to all of this."

And I say: don't tell me. Tell the pornographers. Tell the pimps. Tell the warmakers. Tell the rape apologists and the rape celebrationists and the pro-rape ideologues. Tell the novelists who think that rape is wonderful. Tell Larry Flynt. Tell Hugh Hefner. There's no point in telling me. I'm only a woman. There's nothing I can do about it. These men presume to speak for you. They are in the public arena saying that they represent you. If they don't, then you had better let them know.

Then there is the private world of misogyny: what you know about each other; what you say in private life; the exploitation that you see in the private sphere; the relationships called love, based on exploitation. It's not enough to find some traveling feminist on the road and go up to her and say: "Gee, I hate it."

Say it to your friends who are doing it. And there are streets out there on which you can say these things loud and dear, so as to affect the actual institutions that maintain these abuses. You don't like pornography? I wish I could believe it's true. I will believe it when I see you on the streets. I will believe it when I see an organized political opposition. I will believe it when pimps go out of business because there are no more male consumers.

You want to organize men. You don't have to search for issues. The issues are part of the fabric of your everyday lives.***

So, as Andrea said, it would, I knew, require men to convince men if they were to be convinced at all. As Andrea said, "I'm only a woman." And women in the patriarchy can't convince men ourselves - because we just get dismissed. No, I figured, we would need male allies in this fight.

But then look what happens when someone like a Payne does show up at conferences pretending to be an ally.

I don't know. Maybe they should attend if they want to and listen but not be allowed to speak - and this guy definitely did speak. Fucker.

I can't decide. I'm not even making any sense. I just know I'm pissed off because, as Roseanne put it, "You slipped right under my radar. I liked you, and that pisses me off."

Well, anti-porn conference attending doodz, as George Bush would say, "Fool me once, can't get fooled again."

***source: Take Back the Day: I Want a 24-Hour Truce During Which There is no Rape

Buying and Selling Women - Who Gets In Trouble?

A teenage girl in New York City is charged as a prostitute:

As her advocate points out, she could not be said to have legally consented to sex in any other context, yet prosecutors will charge her for prostitution.

Meanwhile, the Bejing Olympics promise to be a boon to prostitution and human trafficking in China:

Just a few weeks from now, on August 8, 2008, the Bejing Olympics will begin and sex-for-sale will probably be part of the festivities….

When the World Cup was held in Germany in 2006, Julie Bindel wrote an article, "Foul Play",” in the UK Guardian (30 May 2006) about the explosion in sex trafficking that would be an overlooked sideline of the event. She also pointed out that other major sporting events, like the Olympic Games, are venues for this kind of exploitation. In my dumbness and innocence, it never occurred to me to connect sports and prostitution before reading Bindel’s piece; but I have since learned that sex-for-sale is rife and common, whether it be at the Olympics or the NFL Superbowl. Inevitably, girls are trafficked in, to meet the high customer demand.

Bindel interviewed Alina, “a woman who knows something about the link between sex and sport. She escaped as traffickers tired to bring her into the UK from Athens….She had been abducted from…Moscow for the Olympic Games. When the games ended, Alina was considered ‘second-hand’ and sold on to another criminal gang who transported her to London in the hope that she would make money in a Soho brothel. ‘I was worn out, literally used up and spat out,’ she says, talking from a safe house in London. ‘During the games I saw hundreds of men, some British, who thought that a good time was watching sport, drinking and having sex. We were part of the entertainment.’”

The Olympic torch had a tough time on its journey due to protests over Tibet, a widely covered story. Animal groups have done some protesting of open-air markets where dogs are butchered live and of the bear farms where animals are milked for their bile. But, of all the ‘rights’ violations being leveled against China in order to discredit the Olympics, this particular one–trafficking, which involves all the nations of the world in a spirit of rape and degradation of women–is being ignored, as usual.

For the World Cup, British men could buy condoms at 500 branches of Superdrug with slogans emblazoned on them like ‘Lie Back and Think of England,’ and decorated with the cross of St. George....

China is the largest importer of trafficked Russian girls in Asia, with Korea being second. For the Olympics, will there be a large importing into Beijing and sale of Russians and their Chinese counterparts, along with all the other nationalities currently trafficked into the Chinese sex trade: girls from Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan?

If this is a typical Olympics, it seems a certainty. (Back during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, some male athletes insisted they be given geisha. The Japanese dressed up some pathetic prostitutes in geisha style and sent them to the men.)

Will girls be put to use to service the Olympic tourists in Beijing? Will the athletes themselves be celebrating their victories by buying sex?

via Heart at Women's Space

Yes, because under the patriarchy, every moment of every day is fine for objectifying women, even buying coffee (Occasionally, Best Friend does theme days, such as "schoolgirl" or adding glasses for a sexy "secretary" look, manager Heather Bacon said....At places such as Cowgirls, the barista is the brand."If I'm going to pay $4 for a cup of coffee" said one male customer, "I'm not going to get served by a guy.") and maid service.

In this world of misogyny mated with hyper-capitalism, being sexualized is oh-so empowering for women. Prostitution is "sex work," a free choice (and God knows, individual free choice is to be worshipped). Actresses in pornography are also sex workers, sexually liberated women making free choices (not). Even stripping as exercise is oh-so empowerfulizing. It's even possible to get a stripper pole in your hotel suite. And now, Tesco toy company in the U.K. has been offering stripper poles as toys for young girls - after all, a girl can never be too young to begin learning the joys of sexualized empowerfulment.

Seriously, I'll be post feminist in the post-patriarchy.

Update From Stop Porn Culture - July Conference

from Stop Porn Culture

Dear Supporters,

We've had overwhelming interest in scholarships to the summer institute on Media Madness. In order to accommodate as many people as possible, we are offering a two and a half day training as an alternative to the full institute. This training is free, though if you can give $50 we would appreciate it.

We will start on July 9th at 1PM and go until July 11th at 4PM. We will be covering many of the same things as the full institute but focus more on fighting the porn culture and hands-on training in giving the anti-porn slideshow. Though we will be using space at Wheelock, there is no college credit available for this training. You can sign up tos tay at the dorms, which are $45/night for a double and $35/night fora single.

If you are interested in attending this modified version, we need to hear back from you ASAP.

PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT call Wheelock as they are not handling this training. Contact us here are at the SPC email account.

If you want college credit, then you have to register and pay for the full, four-day Media Madness institute through Wheelock. If you want to attend the four-day Media Madness institute without credit, then you will also need to pay and register
through Wheelock. There are NO scholarships available for the four-day institute.http://www.wheelock.edu/professional/prof_institutes_desc.asp

We hope that one of these options will work for everyone. Feel free to email if you have any questions.

Hmmm...I had asked about a scholarship - apparently me and everybody else, eh?

Ah, well. I had been planning on driving, but that was before gas was $4 a gallon. I'm not driving across town if I don't have to, let alone cross-country.

Access Denied

To whom it may concern:

I don't know if you still read this (and maybe you should, although it's not all about you as you probably think - typed with Carly Simon choruses of "You're So Vain" playing in my mind and remembering when we were teenagers and you actually broke the lock on my diary to find out what was in there about you and then, right now, thinking that I should have realized even then that you didn't understand how not to violate women's spaces and that it's all about you), but in case you do still read this...

It's true that I ache almost all the time, and you can keep trying with your bullshit manipulative massages, but the reason you are going to find that access is always denied is that you still can't enter where I am, even if you tried, and I don't think you really do try.

You've spent a lifetime colonizing women and now you actually wonder why once your exploitation is discovered, access to our womanspace is denied? Really?

"How much longer until I can be close to you again?" you had the nerve to ask me this morning, all little boy bewilderment, telling me about yesterday's behind-the-wheel hardon (from thinking about little old me - aw, geez, hold your breathe and wait for me to take that as a compliment; older and wiser now, I've learned most men just aren't that discriminating and their hardons are NOT to be taken as compliments) and bringing me roses and catching up my tuition so I can crawl out of the pit of depression you've dug and get back to my real calling in life (the tuition-paying is an act some feminist friends have pointed out is not deserving of my gratitude but is better viewed as a simple "asshole tax").

"How much longer?" Really? How about you listen to this dude for two and a half minutes and then ask yourself, "How much longer?"

How much longer? Take your time. My sisters and I - my spiritual ones plus the biological one you molested for years - we're waiting. Just fucking waiting. Just fucking, waiting.

P.S. Access is denied as long as my sister is in pain and maybe as long as my sisters are in pain. I have no idea how you can fix that, which is why it's wise to avoid breaking people to begin with. Not my problem. Figure it out. Access denied.

Wait, I'll leave you one more clue:
right here, with audio

This and That Blog RoundUp

Sixteen Maneuvers to Avoid Really Dealing with Racism is wonderful and is at feministe. Hat tip What Tami Said.

Yesterday was International Women's Day. Women for Women International is a great organization: "sponsor a woman survivor of war and change a life!"

While some give their best, others give their worst. Here is Phyllis Schlafly on International Women's Day:

"The radical feminists want to remake our laws in order to eradicate everything that is masculine from our culture and create a gender-neutral society," concluded Schlafly. "The United States should seriously reconsider lending its stamp of approval to future IWDs."

I attended a speech by Schlafly one time. It was at a Jesuit college whose tuition was in the $20,000 per year range, which is quite a chunk of quarters to pay for an education if you are among the more than 50% female student body and what you should really expect is to stay home and have babies. We in the Women's Studies group attended, wearing matching t-shirts that had some sort of slogan on them (I can't remember now). Sometimes it was hard not to laugh. Hardly any actual students attended, other than our protest group. The audience was made almost entirely of old white Republicans. Apparently, the local Republican party had sent out emails about her visit, so that's who showed up at her speech.

Here, rightwingwatch dishes on this heapin' helpin' o' rightwing hypocrisy:

Why would such an independent-minded, ambitious, self-motivated and capable woman devote so much effort to making sure that members of her sex would benefit from their dependence upon men? How could Schlafly reconcile her professed anti-elitism and opposition to day care with the fact that, although presenting herself as a traditional wife and mother, she ran for Congress twice, campaigned hard for Goldwater, crisscrossed the country speaking out for conservative causes, wrote more than a dozen books and enjoyed the services of a housekeeper who stayed with her family for 26 years?

Kathryn Jean Lopez says that once Hillary Clinton's campaign is over, we can also do away with feminism:

It would mark the end of the silly-women-talk on the national political scene. The beginning of female candidates running as candidates, without a heavy serving of identity politics…America is ready to quit this feminist silliness that men and women are equal, and that women don’t have different, natural responsibilities to the children they give birth to than men do.
From Townhall.com

Right - because when women and people of color support candidates who look like them and may share their experiences in the world, that's called "identity politics," but when white doodz support candidates who are white and male, that's just called "voting." And god forbid parenting would be about men taking responsibility for their seed.

Let's explain it again for Schlafly and Lopez:

Translated from French, the above sign says, "Feminism never killed anyone; machismo kills every day." Hat tip The F-Word for these three items (and what a great name for a blog).

The Burning Times has a great post about the silencing of older feminists and how it prevents our passing on herstory. She also has links to two MORE great blog posts on this subject (dear dog, will I ever finish reading these internets??). I said this recently in a comment over at Heart's site, but I'll say it again. I am shocked every single day to discover how little herstory I know. We really do seem doomed to perpetually reinventing the wheel because our previous work on how to do it is constantly being erased. I am an educated woman. I was raised by a feminist to be a feminist (although my mom was a liberal and I'm a radical, but the point is that I was given more feminist tools in childhood than are most). I have a degree in Social Justice Issues with a Women's Studies concentration. I read all of the feminist herstory and theory I can find time to read. And yet, the more I read the more frustrated I become by my own ignorance.

The Burning Times also explains about "the porn test," with what may be one of the most insightful things I've ever read:

Porn does destroy women. Sometimes by tiny increments, sometimes in one fatal blow. It infringes upon women's lives, and is increasingly inescapable. The destruction of the individual woman by porn may take many years, but it is also a destruction of women as a class over many hundreds of years. For as long as porn exists, it will be destroying women, one by one, relationship by relationship, state by state, and globally.

on the death of ecofeminist Val Plumwood, covered over at the Society of Women in Philosophy

Yale Sex Week Shows What Porn Is - Organizers Surprised

So, Yale University had itself a sex week.

There was a presentation by Dr. Ruth, natch.

There were three presentations on "What Do Girls Want" day. First was a talk about female orgasm (no talk about male orgasm though; presumably it's only women's orgasm that requires special trainin' and all). Second was "Pure Romance" givin' away some free sex toys (personally, I have always found cold plastic to be oh-so romantic!). Third was a "Girls' Night Out," with an open bar, and the first 100 women in line could get freebies from the sex toy company. Wow, so that's what Yale women want? Orgasms, sex toys, and getting drunk? I smell a rat - and it has a penis. This sounds to me like what men want women to want.

Then, on "Seduction" day, there were two events. The first was "Seduction: How to Get the Girl You've Always Wanted" and the second was "Mystery: the Mystery Method, Ladies Want Him, Guys Want to be Him," both from VH-1's "The Pick-up Artist" (which I've never seen, but I assume doesn't have anything to do with pinstriping the quad-cab). Of course, both events promising to instruct in the fine art of seduction were about teaching men how to get women. As careful long-time observers of the mating habits of humans within the patriarchy already know, heterosexual sex is something which the male of the species gets from the female. "Seduction" is, therefore, mission accomplished, the male getting from the female.

Friday night was a lingerie show, which I assume involved gawking at wimmenz in sheer, skimpy lingerie, but no male gawkees. Attendees were asked to wear "business attire," which makes sense because we've known for a long time that women belong half-naked while men are fully clothed.

Well, at least the lingerie show was for a good cause, as the proceeds went to AIDS prevention (translation: no need to feel guilty about a cheap display of women hypersexualized and pornified for the male gaze, since it's all for a good cause). No cheap patriarchal objectification here, cranky feminists; move along.

One day a "group product manager" from Trojan condoms was there, giving out condoms and also "vibrating rings" (I don't know what the rings are, frankly, but I'm definitely not gonna dis' free condoms).

There was a "skull and boned" party, which I assume, like ladies' night (above) was another exciting event at which young women were to be served copious amounts of alcohol (that's the "skull" part, as in "out of your") and then possibly fucked while they were too inebriated to give meaningful consent (that's the "boned" part, if you're a sex poz cool kid, and the "rape" part if you're a drag of a radical feminist like I am). Oh, and at the "skull and boned" party, Vivid pornography company was handing out free DVDs. Yeah! Freebies. Porn star and apologist Jenna Jameson tells us most women who start making porn are already victims of abuse, and once they are in the industry, they will likely experience pain, abuse, disrespect, disease, physical and emotional damage, disassociation from their own bodies and sexuality, degradation, greedy and abusive pimps/managers, substance abuse, groping and sexual demands from complete strangers, painful breast implants, plus the knowledge that the electronic records of their treatment are out there for the public's viewing pleasure in perpetuity. Step right up everybody, free samples right here! Don't worry about the ill effects on viewers either. Free DVDs, right here!

There was also a chance to meet the girls from Vivid. There was a contest to see which female Yale academics looked most like possible Vivid girls (presumably that would be in case the whole Ivy League thing doesn't work out).

Oh, yeah, and there was a debate about pornography itself. I know you're relieved to hear it. In the blue corner were Ron Jeremy and a Vivid "girl." In the red corner were...um...well, it looks like two church dudes. Oh, and one lawyer. Yeah! Was it a feminist lawyer like Catherine MacKinnon, who might discuss the civil rights ordinance idea in which women harmed by pornography could sue its manufacturers? Damn. Nope. It was just some "First Amendment" dude, obviously pro-porn.

Where were the feminist voices? Well, I've read over the schedule multiple times, but I just can't find any (geez, it's almost as if radical feminists are completely silenced; oh wait, that is because we are). So, I'm guessing the debate was something like "porn: liberative sex education tool for the masses or Jesus is disappointed when you use your seed for any purposes other than to make a baby within the context of heterosexual marriage." Who asked about women, about how the industry treats the actresses, about what pornography teaches men about women (that "no" means "yes," that all women really want it - hard penis-in-vagina thrust-thrust-thrusting - from all men all the time, that women enjoy pain, that women are stupid and objects and "cum buckets" and whores and here for amusement and to facilitate men's orgasms), and about what that means when men who've watched that stuff then interact with real women at work and at school and in the home and on the street? Who spoke for prostitutes and girlfriends and daughters and wives who have been pressured or even forced to act out what men see in these films? Who spoke for men who have realized too late that pornography has put a thick wall of inhumanity between themselves and the women they have loved, or at least tried to love? Nobody, it would seem. And that was billed as "the great porn debate." Great, eh? Doesn't sound so great to me.

Wait, there is this by Gain Dines. She wasn't at any events though, just got an editorial in the Hartford Courant the week before.

Okay, so, anyway, here's the punchline: Yale was going to show that porn is sex poz and cool, right? A porno flick, right there in the Yale Law School auditorium. It's so mainstream. It's so harmless. It's so...holy shit! The film started running and guess what? It was so hideous, the organizers of the event had to turn it off. Cinemus interruptus, right there in the Yale auditorium! Reports Yale Daily News:

...partway through the showing, graphic rape fantasies began to play onscreen. Rape fantasies, bondage, the piercing of a woman’s nipples and the labeling of a woman as a “slut” who “deserved” violent sexual degradation — this was some of the footage played at one of Sex Week’s final events.

No kidding. That's what pornography is like? It's as if those cranky feminists actually know what they're talking about (okay, please pardon me while I gloat just a bit; I feel I deserve it, and Gail definitely deserves it, especially because after her editorial ran, she was, predictably enough, called a "fascist," "hypocrit," and "pseudo-feminist" (because real feminists know that "Three in the Seat," "Gag on my Cock" (complete with actual vomiting), "Grudge Fuck," "Use 'em, Abuse 'em, and Lose 'em," "Vivian's Painful Examination," and anything involving Max Hardcore is empowerfulizing and healthy).

As the Yale Daily News article linked above points out, and this is exactly what I was going to say, the event's organizers have apologized for their failure to advance screen the material, but that completely misses the point. The point is that this is what pornography is like. This is what people are watching. And if you're going to be all pro-porn and promote the stuff, this is exactly what you're promoting.

Could it be that other examples of misogyny experienced by the bright young women of Yale about which I've read are in any way related to pornography and its objectification of women - and that all of the above are related to patriarchy and misogyny?

How about this story of a photo circulated of frat pledges standing in front of the Women's Center holding up a sign that said "We Love Yale Sluts."

How about this story about female Yale law graduates finding themselves unemployable because of male classmates posting things about them online - like their alleged participation in gang bangs and things about the men wanting to "grudge fuck" or rape them.

Connect the dots, anyone?

The "Stop Porn Culture Conference"

It's hard to believe it's been a week since the conference, but it has, and I haven't blogged about it yet.

Thursday night, I didn't get any sleep and ended up driving all the way to Austin on no sleep - 460 miles. I left at four in the morning. The drive wasn't too bad. For some reason I was thinking I had never before driven that far in one day, but once I was on the way, I realized that Austin is very near Crawford, where I'd been for Camp Casey with Cindy Sheehan in 2005, so I must have driven that far on my own before.

Just outside Baton Rouge, my radio was picking up Catholic mass in French. Then over the Atchafalaya Basin and all the way to the Texas border, it was Cajun music. Finally, almost as if on que, I hit the Texas border and lost Cajun music but instead found some really cool Mexican music. What a country! Early lunch was at Waffle House.

I started getting really stressed driving through Houston and it took me a while to figure out that it wasn't just the traffic. I had, until last Friday, forgotten that my Katrina-week meanderings had led me through Houston. Some part of my brain, apparently, remembered quite clearly - that prehistoric part of the brain that hides yet stores trauma. So, driving through Houston was very distressing since, apparently, that part of my brain thinks that "driving through Houston" equals "holy shit, New Orleans is underwater." Saw an IKEA store, which we don't have in Louisiana, and decided to stop in on the way home.

I got to Austin about two hours early for the conference and managed to find my hotel in city traffic (hadn't thought about having to find my hotel AND read a map at the same time; I'm obviously used to having someone with me). I got to La Quinta (brand new, very nice hotel, nice breakfast included) and checked in. When I got to the room I realized it was the first time I'd ever had a hotel room to myself. I've shared rooms with the husband, the kidlet, and my mom before but this, finally, was MY OWN ROOM!

I managed to find the University of Texas, which is in the middle of downtown Austin. Obviously, the way to make sure a town's Main Street doesn't die out is to have a university in the heart of downtown - wow! Parking was a nightmare on Friday though. I ran into the drugstore and got a notebook (of course, I'd forgotten to bring anything to write on for a three day conference). I managed to find the conference room, which began with a "5" but was on the third floor (okay, New Orleanians don't generally think that the bottom floor will be level "3" because we don't have basements).

There were introductions all around. I had brought two king cakes from New Orleans and had to explain what they were. Apparently, many people were rather frightened by purple and green sugar - who knew? In fact, they seemed to find that even weirder than my warning about watching out for the plastic baby. I introduced myself and explained that I'd always been a feminist, had been raised to be a liberal feminist, but that years as a military wife had turned me into a radical feminist. Everybody laughed and nodded and someone said, "That'll do it."

Next was the slideshow about pornography, presented by Rebecca Whisnant. I'm going to stop here and write about the slideshow next time (have to get some sleep for Mardi Gras weekend).

Some Porn Seems to be Training for Pedophiles (explicit)

Some pornography functions as training manuals for pedophiles. Sickening.

read more digg story

What Porn Is: Selections from Mainstream Porn

Just sex? Erotica? Liberation? Free speech? A celebration of women's sexual freedom? REALLY???

read more digg story

The Burning Times: When Will Men Take Prostitution Seriously?

A South African MP wants to make prostitution legal during the World Cup events of 2010. The BBC does a story called "On the Game" (oh, clever boys!). "The Burning Times" asks whether men will ever take prostitution seriously and links to some online reviews of individual British prostitutes (as radical feminists complain, prostitution IS the commodification of women's bodies - look at the reviews, as if it were Consumer Reports or Blue Book or something). "Burning Times" quotes the men's reviews of their purchases, and then responds:

Between the glum faces and the not wanting him to touch her and the lack of eye contact and everything else, you’d think these men would take the hint. Perhaps the man complaining of the saggy breasts he had hired for half an hour was no oil painting himself? Perhaps the women were repulsed by the men and what they were expected to do with them? Perhaps, just perhaps, the women would rather be anywhere else on the planet than giving this sorry human being a ‘massage’. And heaven forbid that these ‘working ladies’ should have real bodies owned by real women, and not live up to some male-media-produced fantasy of eternally pert breasts and no “signs of recent childbirth”. Don’t these women realise that their bodies belong to the men who pay for them, and they expect to get what they pay for? I really hope the man who wrote the review about the sagging boobs and stretch marks is happy with his own body, and feels very lucky that every square inch of it belongs to him and no-one else. That is his privilege as a man in a patriarchal world, to own his own body, and that of a woman (or lots of women) too if he chooses. We must change that. We must create a world in which every woman owns her own body and no-one else has a claim on it.

Well said! The entitlement of these men is just amazing. They've paid their fee, and for that they want access to a pert, perfect pornalicious body as well as the sort of lustful wild abandon and mega-moaning and begging for more that they've seen in their precious porno flicks.

"Real sexual relationships are not hard to find. There are plenty of adults of both sexes who are willing to have sex if someone treats them well, and asks. But there lies the problem. Some people do not want an equal, sharing relationship. They do not want to be nice. They do not want to ask. They like the power involved in buying a human being who can be made to do almost anything."
--Joe Parker of the Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation, in "Not For Sale"

Two Days to the "Stop Porn Culture" Conference

Or I guess technically a day and a half, at this late hour.

The Jefferson Parish Council today voted to block hotels in the parish from renting out rooms by the hour. I know they're trying to cut down on hourly rentals to johns and drug users, but I don't know - I still feel some nostalgia for those places from when I was a teenager (well, it was better than parking at the lakefront and plus those places weren't quite as sleazy back then as they are now - or maybe I've just gotten old). Hat tip to Gentilly Girl, who points out that this will likely just send the criminal activity across the parish line.

Heavens, I love this po-boy and Barq's photo from YatPundit.

This story from Heart - "The Padlocked Vagina - Rape as Torture in the Congo" - is beyond words, so I won't say anything other than that it's graphic and you should still see it. Be sure to follow the link to the letter to Ken Burns about his failure to include women's realities in his "The War: An Intimate History." An intimate his-story...

On second thought, maybe I will say something else, the same thing I end up saying practically every day: "Why do men hate us so much?"

"A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is done, no matter how strong the weapons, or how brave the warriors."
(Ines' Hernandez-Avila. "In Praise of Insubordination," Transforming a Rape Culture.)

Finally, check out these two articles from ladoctorita at her blog "unconventional beauty."
Part I: "Hear no Evil" about no one listening to women's concerns about other women or about men threatening them.
Part II: "Nobody Listens to Women" about Julie Jensen, whose 1998 death was initiailly ruled a suicide but whose husband is now on trial for murdering her - which makes sense since she left a note with her neighbor twelve days before she died basically saying, "If I should die, he probably killed me."

I'll end with a video that seems apropos and that's probably it until after Austin. Guess I'd better get packing (everything at the last possible minute as usual).

Jackson Katz in "Tough Guise: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity:"

Three Days to the "Stop Porn Culture" Conference

I SOOO love this woman. Watch it, watch it, watch it - woman flashes men during feminist anti-porn rally wearing signs that say "Make Love Not Porn" and "Porn is Fake, Girls are Real:"

I love this woman too - "Until" by Ayisha Knight, Def Poetry Jam:

"Why Many of us Feel Betrayed by Bill Clinton."

Not to mention that there's that little matter of the 22nd amendment. As a feminist, I had wanted to give Hillary Clinton credit and NOT assume that eight years for her would necessarily mean eight more years for him, but they are making it clear that this is VERY much a matter of eight more years for him.

But, of course, Andrea Dworkin said it best.
"Are you Listening Hillary? President Rape is Who he Is:"

...President Rape is who he is. Proud President Rape. Everyone turned from Juanita Broddrick. Everyone looked away. Every asshole blinked. It's pretty fucking brilliant to use force after the fuck, as he did with most of the others I know about, intimidate them, have them threatened, destroy their reputations, say they're lying or stalkers or a little mentally unhinged, having delusions of grandeur as if being fucked or mauled or harassed by him was something one dreamed of.... Always easier to blame the woman. Are you listening, Hillary? So much easier to be angry with them rather than with him. Have I got your attention, Hillary? You decide these women, every last one of them, are pieces of shit and he's the shinola. More than anyone you know how cold and premeditating the bastard is. When did your heart die? ... I'd be sick to think I had become as corrupt as you. How many women have you helped him hurt by protecting him and knocking out the opposition? Two political parties, one neo-fascist and the other neo-rapist. Or is it proto-rapist? You and I were girls together and now it's this: I'm nouvelle raped and you defend a rapist through which you defend rape through which you think the women, not the rapist, are the problem. Maybe women are just fucking stupid, you and me babe. I'm glad you're not president or on the Supreme Court. You are a running dog collaborator. You take the side of the rapist, not the raped....

I'm really tired of women who don't care. ... Hillary's best friend, the new feminism, no one's a victim here, it's so embarrassing when a woman's raped, it's so declasse, it's annoying, the wrong time of the day, the wrong day of the week, not during office hours, the woman can barely keep herself together, she might collapse emotionally, which would be messy, or make emotional demands, which would be unpleasant, or you might have to think that it could have happened to you if it happened to her but it didn't happen to you so it doesn't have to be your problem, you don't need to get near the mess of it, the disaster of it, the desperation of it. Just cut her loose and let her die.

Feminists pretend we're on top of all this, as if we've done something about it. We roll the ball up the hill and a fucking rapist pushes it back down and we roll it up again and another rapist slams it down. But never admit not being in control, all polished and shiny, just keep smiling in public, the women on top of everything, and when will a woman be president of the United States? Oh, soon, don't worry. And what difference will it make? Oh, don't worry. We'll get it because we have to have it, even if it's a cookie-cutter Hillary married to ex-president Rape....

Four Days to the "Stop Porn Culture" Conference

Late Monday night and it's four days to the "Stop Porn Culture" conference. Check out their website. There are some great videos about pornography and its effects. I like their film "A Drug Called Pornography: Understanding the Harmful Effects" (Includes interviews with Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, Andrea Dworkin, and Jackson Katz).

So, I wanted to switch from NOLA blogging to feminism blogging these last few days before the conference.

Here it is, my nomination for the ultimate, best ever, kickass feminist poetry slam:

I showed this to myNigel last night and he didn't think it was the coolest thing ever.

That's okay. I am ready, ready, as Eve Ensler might say, "I am Leaving my Father's House:"

Finally, a quick "Ten Great Comments of Dr. King:"

Yes, It's Carnival Tiiiiiime!

It looks like I'll be moving my blog over from myspace to here.

Yes, it's carnival tiiiiime:

And just in time, there's a new album by the "Blind Boys of Alabama" coming out on January 28, one recorded in New Orleans and featuring New Orleans musicians. Check out the video:

Chris Rose has been busy the past ten days or so. He tells us about being "Clueless in Seattle" and then tells us about "Party Time on Tiger Mountain" when LSU won their big game:

Cruising down St. Charles Avenue, we passed streetcar stops packed with ready revelers. You could feel it in the air, a strange brew of humidity and history.

In the Garden District, we passed a middle-aged couple decked out in Ohio State colors. They were walking the long walk. "Let's offer them a ride," I told my friend. It seemed like the right thing to do. So we pulled over.

They got in the back seat. Before making introductions, I admonished them: "Are y'all crazy?" I said. "Haven't you heard about crime in New Orleans? How could you just jump in the back seat of a stranger's car?"

They had no answer at hand. They hadn't thought through all the things that could go wrong. Truth is, they just wanted a ride. It seemed like the right thing to do.

They were Amy and Allen Glass from Columbus. First timers to New Orleans unless you count Allen's three hours here many, many years ago and by all accounts, it was a very long three hours.

I asked how their visit was going this time around. It was going very well, Amy said. "What we have noticed," she said, "is that everyone here seems to be so in love with this town."

I reckon so, I told her. We've all had ample time, opportunity and reason to move on, I said. If you're still here, well, yeah . . . it must be love. Crazy love....

But first: I heard drumbeats down Poydras. Then horns, a glorious echo from the heavens. There, to greet my arrival downtown for this hallowed occasion, was the St. Aug Marching 100. God's own band, the way I see it. I don't know whose idea it was to have these guys march down the street before the game, but it was a good one.

It began to rain. A good rain. Louisiana rain. The tower of the Hibernia Bank building was lit in purple and gold. Through the mist, it was perhaps the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

The band played on. The crowds swelled behind the Marching 100. A motorcycle cop played his siren in rhythm with the band, and I wondered how he did that. There was so much noise, so much commotion. I fell in with the second line. It seemed like the right thing to do.

We marched to the Dome, a legion of strangers in the night. The group disbanded. Most headed for the Dome. I turned to head back down Poydras, toward my perch on Tiger Mountain. A guy said to me -- yelled to me, really -- "ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?"

Football, I thought? Who gives a dang about football? Let's do life.

I saw Sean Payton dancing with a police officer on the neutral ground and . . .

OK, that didn't really happen, but you got the sense that it could, that you just might see or hear anything on this night. It was like Mardi Gras, except it was just us. Just us, and a few thousand friends from Ohio.

I started thanking people dressed in red, doing my Love Potion No. 9 routine, thanking strangers for being here, for coming here, and it is a very annoying habit I have. Many folks shook my hand and said "You bet!" and "Thanks for having us!" and many averted their eyes.

My favorite, however, is this story about a New Jersey man who read about the murders in New Orleans and came here to start a peace project as well as to memorialize and humanize the dead. Until I read this, I hadn't thought about my stepbrother in many years. I didn't know him particularly well, as my mother married his father when I was seventeen, and he lived with his mother. One night back in 1989, when he was seventeen, he was in a car with some friends underneath the Earheart Expressway. As a gunman aimed at my stepbrother's face, he put his hand up and was shot three times - once each in his hand, his wrist, and his neck. At dawn, a truck driver reported the scene to police. As our recent New Jersey transplant understands, over time only a handful of people remember each murder victim. Their stories soon fade from public memory - if they were ever even there, as most of the murdered children of New Orleans, like my stepbrother, merit only a brief paragraph in the Metro section of the Times Picayune. It's nice that someone is keeping their stories, their very individuality, alive - here in a city where murders are the most mundane of statistics. Rest in peace, R.B.

Krewe de Vieux rolled last night. I managed to miss it yet again, in bed with the flu this time. This year's theme was "The Magical Misery Tour." Call them raunchy or brilliant, love it or hate it, this is carnival, organic, home-grown. Someday soon when I finally get around to emailing Barbara Ehrenreich (whose blog I stumbled across last night and who dissed us a while back by refusing to include New Orleans' Mardi Gras in her recent book on partying in the streets because, the heretofore-brilliant-but-on-this-subject-ignorant Ehrenreich said, Mardi Gras is too commercialized to count as an organic street party), I'm going to send her the preceeding link. I'm going to tell her about the Cajun Mardi Gras (and here - le Courir de Mardi Gras a Cheval, riding on horseback and dancing, begging, and clowning for the chicken and other ingredients to make a communal gumbo feast; how commercial is THAT?) and New Orleans' Mardi Gras Indians and about second lining. Really, it's shocking that an academic of her caliber would demonstrate such ignorance. There is no corporate sponsorship of any sort for Mardi Gras, and the fact that lots of tourists come here to watch our home-grown holiday doesn't MAKE it commercial. It's still a party we throw for OURSELVES, young and old. It's still "dancing in the streets," Ms. Ehrenreich, and it's very much about "collective joy" (these terms come from her book title, which I'm not going to mention).

The New Orleans News Ladder has a great dedication (check down the left side, in purple).

Also check out great political satire at The New Orleans Levees (We Don't Hold Anything Back).

The Huffington Post suddenly joins the "earth is round" society and dares to ask, ""Did Oil Canals Worsen Katrina's Effects?"

Unfortunately, I won't be in town next weekend for the usual family gathering for the ALLA parade on the West Bank. I am very excited to be attending the "Stop Porn Culture" conference in Austin, Texas, although I'm amazed how after months of NOT having a life, suddenly three things I wanted to do all came up the same weekend (the third being a house party to watch the results come in from the South Carolina Democratic primary). Sigh.

Finally, in honor of the Martin Luther King holiday, some youtube gems.

King's last public speech (been to the mountaintop):

King on war (so relevant today, American is NOT the policeman of the world, he said):

King on the drum major instinct (if you want to be a drum major - meaning the star of the show - be a drum major for justice, for peace, for righteousness):

This sermon - about being a drum major for peace - was the last sermon Dr. King gave before his death. In it, he talked about what he hoped could be said about him at his funeral when the time came. Re-rediscovering it tonight, I was thinking about how some family and friends have been emailing about what our "bucket lists" would include (prompted by the new movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman) and I realized that my bucket list needs to include having lived a lifetime of commitment and activism, or, as Dr. King said:

Every now and then I guess we all think realistically
(Yes, sir) about that day when we will be victimized
with what is life's final common denominator—that
something that we call death. We all think about it.
And every now and then I think about my own death and
I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it
in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask
myself, "What is it that I would want said?" And I
leave the word to you this morning.

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I
don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to
deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long.
(Yes) And every now and then I wonder what I want them
to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel
Peace Prize—that isn't important. Tell them not to
mention that I have three or four hundred other
awards—that's not important. Tell them not to mention
where I went to school. (Yes)

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin
Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving
others. (Yes)

I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin
Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on
the war question. (Amen)

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try
to feed the hungry. (Yes)

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did
try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes)

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my
life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve
humanity. (Yes)

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say
that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I
was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major
for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things
will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave
behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of
life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a
committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to
say.

If I can help somebody as I pass along,

If I can cheer somebody with a word or song,

If I can show somebody he's traveling wrong,

Then my living will not be in vain.

If I can do my duty as a Christian ought,

If I can bring salvation to a world once wrought,

If I can spread the message as the master taught,

Then my living will not be in vain.

Rest in peace, MLK (with a footnote to the Clintons: I'm just wondering, um, how many dark nights DID Lydon Johnson spend in a jail cell to get civil rights legislation passed??? P.S. Dear President Rape, please shut up, shut up, shut up.)