Tag Archives: nothing but the fisk

The Gail Dines Principle: When Life Gives You Lemons, Blame It All On Porn (Or, How To Transform The Dominique Strauss Kahn Rape Scandal Into Yet Another "Porn Culture" Rant)

Posted on by
2

In the world of political punditry, there is nothing more annoying than the person who is so fixated on one subject, that he or she manages to turn every question on any other topic back to that particular obsession.

Oh, you don’t know what I’m talking about?? Well try this hypothetical example:

Wingnutter:  “Obama’s a socialist who was born in Kenya!!! He must be IMPEACHED!!!!”

Viewer: “Oh, that’s all fine and good…but what’s your position on raising the debt ceiling??”

Wingnutter: “Gee, Paul, I’m all for it, as long as we get rid of all this unnecessary big government spending and all these job-killin’ taxes…but seriously, we first gotta get rid of that socialist President who wasn’t even born here!!  Why don’t you ask him to reveal his birth certificate and prove he’s a citizen??”

Viewer: “Ahhhh….hasn’t President Obama already done that, like, twice?? And what does that have to do with the deficit ceiling?”

Wingnutter: “What are ‘ya, some kind of liberal?? That wasn’t a REAL birth certificate, and we can prove it!! Next question, please?”

New viewer: “OK, so what do you think about the FAMiLY LEADER pledge on marriage and other vows of fidelity to conservative social policies…and would you be willing to sign on to it?”

Wingnutter: “But, of course, absolutely, I’d sign in a heartbeat!!!.I believe in strong conservative family values..which is why we MUST get the truth about that socialist Obama and his Kenyan citizenship!!”

Yeah, now you get the picture.

Some people have so ridden their one-trick ponies so far to the ground that they don’t even know how to address other issues without ultimately boomeranging back to their obsession.

And then, there is the special breed of wingnutter, who is so obsessed with his pet cause that he can’t help but take even the most unrelated events and somehow connect them to his pet myopia.

Or, in the continuing case of antiporn “feminist” hit woman Professor Gail Dines, her pet cause.

As you all know, Gail has a hard-on for pornography. Obviously, it’s not the traditional kind of hard-on, it’s more like porn is her special obsession, her chew toy, the center of her universe, and the alpha and omega of her activism as an antiporn activist. To Professor Dines, porn is simply the root of male evil, the reason that men get erections and exist fo abuse, dominate, degrade, and ultimately, rape women; and there is no social ill on earth that she can’t attempt to connect to the prevailence of it. No matter how tangentally unrelated a particular issue may be, you may rest assured that Gail will find some way to connect that issue to the evil prevailence of the “porn culture”.

And today, at the CounterPunch website, Professor Dines manages to meet if not exceed her high standards of deflection and reductive reasoning in blaming porn and “porn culture” for current events.

In this case, the issue is the ongoing saga of former International Monetary Fund chairman Dominique Strauss Kahn, potential candidate for president of France, who has been embroiled in a particularly heated sex scandal. If you will remember, around a month or two ago an African woman who was at one time DSK’s maid dropped some very disturbing charges on him, basically claiming that he had physically and sexually abused her while working for him. The case claimed global notoriety (that’s what happens when billionaires and global leaders are involved in scandals), but ultimately resulted in nothing, because the French prosecutors ended up having to drop the case, claiming both a lack of physical evidence and major inconsistencies in the woman’s charges. It didn’t help matters either that major newspapers in France and around the world put out stories explicitly attacking the character of the woman accuser, all but calling her out as a prostitute and a golddigger merely setting a “honey trap” in order to blackmail DSK in order to both hurt his election chances against incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy and to get paid.

Naturally, in such a media environment, the woman accuser has gotten some support (both moral and financial) from people who feel that once again, a woman who makes an accusation of sexual assault upon a wealthy man is getting the shaft (no pun intended) and having her accusations not only dismissed offhand, but also treated with the usual amount of derision and slut-shaming and denial that all women making such charges are demonized with.

And, it should be noted that Strauss Kahn faces another round of rape accusations from another woman, which are still pending.

Now, this may play to the themes of how women are taken seriously or not when it comes to charges of rape, or how wealth and privilege have disjointed the criminal justice system to the point that those with money and power and the ability to set the media to their side can manipulate the system to their benefit, at the expense of the less privileged.

And if Gail Dines had attempted to analyze that aspect of the case, then there would be no issue.

Problem is, for Gail, everything must ultimately point back to porn…and her essay attempts, in her own cracked style of snark and sarcasm, to finger the “porn culture” for enabling DSK — and by extension, all porn using men, to get away with rape.

Buckle up, Clones…it may get a bit bumpy.

DSK and the Meaning of Consent

I have a great idea for a movie. Here’s the pitch: A poor, slutty immigrant takes a job as a chambermaid so she can have great sex with the hotel guests. One day she hits the jackpot. She walks into a room only to be met by an irresistible stud old enough to be her father. Known in his home country as “The Seducer” he offers her a full view of his impressive manhood.

Overcome with lust, she falls to her knees and the two have great consensual sex. But being a woman and all, she is a lying, scheming whore and accuses the seducer of rape.  The poor seducer becomes one more victim of “sex offender hysteria,” as one caller to National Public Radio named it, and now he must defend his good name.

Where to pitch this? I could go to the usual adolescent boy filmmakers such as Judd Apatow or Adam Sandler, since they specialize in making movies about manipulative predators who are really good guys underneath. But wait. I have a better place. The porn website Maid Bangers seems tailor-made for this story. The teaser on the website reads: “Tom and Steve are on a Mission … They conquer hotel after hotel. When they are in town, not one maid is safe! “ (Emphasis Theirs).

On the site, free teasers lure in the viewer. Take “Luna” for example. According to the text, “Luna was spotted by Steve in the hallway and he immediately went after her. He came up with some lame excuse to get her back to the room, and it worked great. Once in the room, she couldn’t resist the boy’s charm.” Sound familiar? “Maya” has a similar experience. “Tom and Steve invited her in and before she could really understand what happened, she had a cock up her ass & one in her mouth.” Just in case this sounds like a rape to you, don’t worry — the pictures surrounding the text show Maya having hot, orgasmic sex.

You get the point, do you?? Because we all know that all men are so alike in their mission to impale and rape women through porn sites like Maid Bangers.  Hell, DSK, when not spending his time screwing whole countries with “Shock Therapy” economic policies, probably was kicking up a six pack of Perrier and Jouet watching MILF Hunter videos seeking the best approach on how to conquer his next female victims.  Of course, how a French billionaire and public politician would happen to get his hands on such porn to begin with, or why DSK just didn’t go the Arnold Schwarenegger/Nicolas Sarkozy route and simply cheat with a hawt female celebrity or bed his own maid willingly, didn’t enter Gail’s hive mind when she was writing this claptrap.

And, as always with Gail, there is the disbelief that any woman would have enough sexual desires of their own to seduce men and women on her own merits merely because she can or because she actually likes sex. That’s just The Big Lie imposed by “The Pornographers”, you know….we all know that “our sexuality” is much better than that….right??

And no, Gail or Clones thereof, that is not an excuse for rape…that simply says that women are capable on their own of inducing sex without the need for men’s approval or any injections of testosterone or reading up of bad XXX vignette videos.

Addedum: I actually decided on a lark to browse through the Maid Bangers site (WARNING: link definitely NSFW for explicit sexual content)….and lo and behold, it is basically nothing more than a Bang Bus clone where somewhat professional porn performers act out their sex scenes under the plot and setting of playing “hotel maids”. All of the performers are under contract and model releases, right down to the 2257 forms, and the sex they do is very much consensual, open, freely sought, and well compensated. Hardly the virtual rape and “sexual slavery” that Gail pretends it to be…and nowhere close to any relation to the Strauss Kahn maid’s real life plight.

Also…Dines is a bit lacking in her research this time, because it seems like she got her information about the “Luna” scene straight from the guest preview page, rather than actually viewing the video (which requires a paid $29.95 per month membership), though if Gail really was up to it, she could have simply gotten the two-day $1 trial and gotten access to the actual video, or simply viewed the free trailer that was available.

Finally….how nice of Gail to focus attention on “Luna” as an example of an “oppressed” woman of color allegedly abused and gang raped by White men. It’s especially nice when the other women featured in the Maid Bangers preview, “Crystal”, “Missy”, and “Deseiree”, are all White women.  (There is one other Latina, “Maya”, who is featured, but somehow Dines managed to miss her.) Errrrrrrr…oopsie???

But let’s get to the heart of the matter, shall we?? Quoteh Dines with the money graph:

The Strauss-Kahn story belongs in the world of porn. It is here that all sex is consensual, no matter how manipulative and violent, and all women are whores who need a man to release their inner slut. In porn, women don’t do unskilled, low-paid work to feed themselves and their children. No, they work because this is where you go to get laid. Sites such as Fuck the Nanny, Nurse Hardcore, Naughty Bookworm, and Secretary Porn all tell the Strauss-Kahn story. Women don’t need a living wage, health care, safe housing, child care, or a career. They just need monster loads of “jizz” to make them happy.

Oh, so let’s see here. Fantasy skits like the vignette series mentioned above are, according to Professor Dines, not merely just fantasies to fuel the lusts of horny guys (and girls) seeking a quick means of getting themselves off and getting through the grind and boredom of the day. Nor, are they enterprises where the performers simply use such costume fantasies (now known and celebrated as “costume play” or “cosplay”) to act out their horniness and get paid a decent sum for that scene. Nope…according to Gail, they are the embodiment of corruption of real life nurses, secretaries, maids, teachers, and students who suffer the full and unadulterated effects of sexual harassment, coercion, degradation, and even rape, because impressionable men who view these scenes inevitably — actual experience with real live women who work these professions be damned — believe and act on the belief that ALL women in the universe should be their own personal sex toys and concubines, to be used and abused for life.

Course, that thesis fails to explain how such series can coexist with other vignette series such as My Friend’s Hot Mom  and Naughty Office (Naughty America) and Big Tits Boss (Bang Brothers), not to mention all those MILF and Cougar flicks, where the WOMAN is explicitly placed as the aggressor seeking the men to seduce, or where the WOMAN is the one with all the power who goes after the unsuspecting man (or woman) for a passionate sex session or two. But, I’m sure that Gail will have a talking point ready for that, as she usually does.

Oh, and Professor?? It is not necessarily inconsistent for someone to call for a livable wage, better workplace conditions, equitable pay for comparable work, safe and adequate housing, and universal health care, and still enjoy consensual cosplay featuring enthusiastically busty and horny women roleplaying. It really isn’t. Heck, you can even do all that and believe that coerced sex and rape is bad, bad, bad. Honest and for true.

Only in a porn culture could we take seriously the idea that what transpired between Strauss-Kahn and the unnamed woman was consensual. Only here could we actually spin a story of a single mother risking her livelihood to have Strauss-Kahn’s penis rammed down her throat.  And only here could we focus on the credibility of the woman while making light of the history of a man who was well known for his predatory behavior.

Riiiiight, Gail…because only in a “porn culture” could a prosecutorial panel investigating the case find not enough or conflicting evidence such that there wasn’t enough to warrant indictment. In Dines’ perfect world not affected by “porn culture” or male privilege, a man accused of what Strauss Kahn was accused of would simply be declared guilty by acclamation, and sent to the nearest Swedish Model camp for “reeducation” on how women should be treated…right after the castration and lengthy jail sentence.

Now, the brutality of the media attacks on the woman accuser certainly is problematic, as much so as the media attacks on the woman who filed those rape charges at Wikileaks mastermind Jullian Assange (Funny, but Dines had very little to say about that firestorm when that came down….not even a reference to the Pornwikileaks drama.) But, how is that any different from the most recent and still ongoing pilleraging now being bestowed on Carlee Anthony, the young woman who recently was acquitted of murdering her young child in a very nasty public trial? Oh, wait…Carlee Anthony is female, and upper middle class, and White…not quite exploitable material for antiporn “feminist” analysis. Plus, even porn’s rejected her (in fact, most porn folk I know are as convinced of her guilt as Dines is of DSK’s). When Gail starts digging into Nancy Grace as much as she digs into DSK, then maybe we may have something interesting.

And besides…there’s always the wrongful death suits and the media offers for book deals, which I figure will probably set the accuser up for life. Unless, working-class Black women aren’t seen as marketable as middle-class White girls.

And here’s where Professor Dines goes off the cliff, because she attempts to mine another sex scandal of foreyear.

And don’t let’s forget that this is a black woman. We know that black women have the tendency to be “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.”  If they could smear squeaky clean Anita Hill, a conservative Christian who spent her early career demonstrating her allegiance to the white Republican establishment, then every woman is fair game.  David Brock, a former research fellow with the right-wing Heritage Foundation, recalls in his book, Blinded by the Right, how he set about destroying Anita Hill by taking a “a scattershot approach, dumping virtually every derogatory—and often contradictory—allegation I had collected on Hill from the Thomas camp into the mix. Hill was an ambitious incompetent passed over by Thomas for a promotion. She was “kooky.” She was a man-hater. She had a “perverse desire for male attention.” She had a “love-hate” complex with Thomas. She made “bizarre” sexual comments to students and coworkers. She sprinkled pubic hairs into her law students’ term paper.” He now says that what he did was disgusting, but it worked, and Anita Hill became one more victim of a misogynist culture that protects its own at any cost.

Nice try, Gail, but some facts get in the way of your assault.

First off…all that and more were lobbed at Anita Hill when she made her historic sexual harassment charges at Clarence Thomas during his SCOTUS confirmation hearings. Mostly, though, they were made by fundamentalist Right wingnuts in an attempt to smear her charges and grease the wheels for Thomas’ ultimate confirmation vote. It was politics, not male sexual aggression, and definitly NOT porn, that motivated the smear attacks on Professor Hill.

Secondly, blindsiding David Brock as the premier hit man for the smears on Anita Hill without mentioning the fact that he didn’t just repudiate those tactics as “disgusting”, but openly and unabashedly backed up his “come to Jesus” vow by founding Media Matters For America to right that grievous wrong and openly oppose right-wing propaganda spinning, is a bit disingenious on Gail’s part. Kinda like the Right quoting former West Virginia US Senator Robert Byrd’s historic KKK membership to smear all Democrats as innate racists, forgetting that Byrd long since repudiated such bigotry and has backed it up with his votes….all the while covering up and whitewashing the Republican Right’s far more obvious and current racial bigotry.

And speaking of hypocrisy…here is the most delicious irony of all this smack from Dines’ piehole. Clarence Thomas, for all his Long Dong Silver fetishes and “pubic hair in Coke cans” lore, has been more or less the most consistent and fervent SCOTUS justice when it comes to advocating outlawing pornography from the face of the earth. In other words, he is far more on Gail Dines’ side of the debate, though not necessarily on the feminist wing. ‘Ya’d think that Gail probably knows that from all those meetings she has had with Pat Trueman’s Pornography Harms group or the money she probably gets from Morality in Media. But, I guess that when you are writing for a putatively lefty rag like CounterPunch, such facts get lost in the ether. (And, neither Nick Sarkozy nor even DSK himself are exactly political sex-positives on the issue, either.)

Leave it to Gail, of course, to close her rantage by getting back to the “porn determines real life” meme.

Next on the chopping block is French Journalist Tristane Banon, the goddaughter of Strauss-Kahn’s second wife who claims she was attacked by Strauss-Kahn. I was going to pitch this story, too, to the porn industry but it turns out someone beat me to it. The porn movie, Goddaughter 3, tells the tale of “a beautiful temptress who uses her alluring erotic skills to climb ‘the family’s’ ladder of power. She does anything with anyone to reach the top …. The danger, mystery, intrigue and hot, sultry sex are back!”

Ho, ho….very funny. Ha, ha….it is to laugh.

Besides that, isn’t that the tale of almost every recent mainstream TV drama series?? I mean, wasn’t that the theme of every single Jackie Collins novel?? (Remember the Lucky/Boss/Lady Boss series??) Why should porn get all the blame when Lifetime, FX, and the Big Four channels get to swaddle all over in the theme of “woman sleeps her way to the top” without any penalty?

Why??  Because Gail Dines is a crackpot pretending to be a “left feminist” riding a one-trick pony called “porn culture”. The sooner progressives realize her act and start listening to genuine progressive sex workers not so inclined, the better for all of us.

Memo to CounterPunch: Time to call in Nina Hartley again to repudiate this bullshit. I hear she’s available again.

Share

Nine Deuce = Four Six * 2 + BS Raised To Infinity

Posted on by
1

Oh, and I thought that she was just doing a Good Cop/Bad Cop scene.

But it seems that Nine Deuce has now totally drank the Kool-Aid, and has dived all in. And she offers this “News Flash” to all us idiots who still can’t understand why she’s so down on those who don’t quite agree with her and her GenderBorgian friends.

Allow me to break down each of her talking points one by one.

The existence of gay porn does not disprove the argument that non-gay porn is degrading to women. There might be a different dynamic going on in a lot of gay porn (I remain unconvinced), but that doesn’t really mean anything other than that maybe gay porn needs to be analyzed by itself rather than under an umbrella with hetero porn. What we’re talking about when we talk about het pornography is the comingling of power with sex, which is THE CENTRAL FEATURE OF PATRIARCHY.

Well…if the existence of gay porn shows that men who are into gay porn don’t quite care about “degrading” women (or, simply like to see men fucking and sucking other men), well, it probably doesn’t prove anything. Unless, you happen to believe, as some of your own allies and bomb throwers just so happen to believe (*cough*Luckynkl *cough, cough* Satsuma *cough*) that male sexual obsession for gay sex only replaces the recipient of gay sex for the woman in the “submissive” (and thusly, “degraded” and “abused”) role. Otherwise, you’re right, it proves not a Goddess damn thing about how straight male desire for porn inherently “degrades” women. That, I guess, is a given that needs no proof whatsoever…at least not to pure “feminist” masters such as you.

Choice does not equal progressiveness. You can choose to do heroin if you want to, and it might feel fucking awesome, but that doesn’t make you a freedom fighter. You can be a feminist and be into BDSM, but you can’t claim that BDSM is feminist. Just because something feels good does not mean it’s feminist.

No, some choices are not necessarily harmless to one’s self or others. Injecting a syringe full of heroin into your body certainly can do much harm to one’s person. Engaging in consensual sex with someone whom you want to be with, and who wants to be with you sharing the pleasures, however, isn’t quite so harmful as injecting heroin, now isn’t it?? Not, at least, unless it fundamentally upsets certain fee-fees of certain lunatic “radicalfeminists.”

And no, ND, you just don’t get to dictate to other women what acts become “feminist” and what acts aren’t. Feminists can be into BDSM, and even feminist who would never do BDSM sex themselves can respect the rights of those women — whether they call themselves feminists or not — who are. Unless you are endowed by the Goddess upstairs or the Rulers Above (hey, wouldn’t the latter be, like..a PATRIARCHY?!?!?!) with special powers to dictate their personal likes, then I don’t think you have the authority to read their minds and rule their brains.

F/m BDSM (generally) does not fetishize and sexualize the oppression of people who are still oppressed. Therefore, its existence does not prove that there’s nothing problematic about the mingling of sex with oppression in M/f BDSM, burlesque or not. Again, it’s a matter of the need for separate analysis.

Oh, hold the fuck up here….so female dominant/male submissive sex is perfectly OK with you even if it goes horribly awry because it doesn’t involve mixing sex with “oppression”??? In other words, it’s perfectly OK to harm men BECAUSE men innately harm women by merely THINKING about dominating them through sex?? I thought that radicalfeminism was opposed to ALL forms of domination and submission equally across the board?? Ahhh..OOPS.

Questioning a practice does not equal abuse or oppression. And you can’t spend 15 paragraphs explaining that BDSM, as a “choice,” fits the (warped) definition of feminism and then compare the consequences of your choice to the oppression that lesbians and gay men face. Unless you are ready to say that female submission is innate or that being gay is a choice.

I guess that means, then, that religious conservatives really do have a right to question BDSM sex as a “choice” on their terms?? Because , ND, if you are saying that being a gay person really isn’t a choice, but being into BDSM sex IS one that can be “undone”, when what’s to say that that Christian Rightist might not use your argument to support the opposite view (i.e., that BDSM sex is merely a perverse “lifestyle” that defies God’s plan for sex, just as homosexuality or non-procreative sex does?? And why should we not compare you to the fundies when you use terms like “consequences of your ‘choices’”??

In order for me to oppress you, I have to be in charge of something that directly affects your life. I’m not.

Ahhhh, WRONG…..all you have to do in order to oppress someone is to deny that person his right to full humanity and dismiss his/her right to free will. You and your GenderBorg sisters do that almost every other post.

If I were truly denying anyone’s agency, I’d refuse to question their assumptions and behavior. I assume we are all responsible for the choices that we make, even though social forces tend to influence those choices. I know that there are people who are aware that M/f BDSM and/or porn are tinged (or saturated) with patriarchal oppression and choose to participate in them anyway, either because there is some benefit in doing so or because they think they can do them “the right way.” I doubt that’s possible, so I’m asking people who think it is to explain how that might be. Would it be better for me to treat other adult human beings like babies who can’t bear to be asked defend their beliefs?

Well…it would help if you actually respected those who attempt to defend themselves from your bromides, rather than simply use their answers as fuel for your cannons to shoot them down even more.

I can have a theoretical problem with something and speak my mind about it without specifically addressing an individual. If you don’t fit the definition of the kind of person I’m discussing, don’t take it personally. Everyone has the right to judge everyone, but we don’t have the right to enforce our judgements. Therein lies the difference between free speech and oppression.

Oh, why should we even take it seriously?? Especially when you deliberately temper your responses with ad hominem attacks on people’s looks or personal tastes, or basically call people you disagree with as rapists and child molesters even when they have done nothing wrong?? Even when you attempt to wave the exclusive “feminist” flag to rip down anyone who happens to disagree with your analysis of their personal practices?? When you even go as far as to deny and dismiss their own freakin’ testimonials about their lack of personal harm?? Gee, now that’s a really good question there, ND….why should we take you seriously??

Your bigotry and ignorance, on the other hand, should be taken very seriously, simply because it is being spewed in the name of a movement that is supposed to stand for something progressive rather than reactionary.

This is “Logic 101″, ND?? More like Bullcrap One.

——————————————————————————————————-

The comments section is dominated by the usual voices with the usual boilerplate…until right to the end, where ND exposes her true paternalistic self. First, the comment before hers as a background:

[Comment by thorne on 2/26/09 @ 6:00 PM]

“Gayle – No shit, right? It’s incredible to hear the language of the oppressed co-opted by people who fetishize oppression.”

Did your read the part where we explained that we can be jailed or lose our kids? have you heard of the spanner case? Does it amuse you to play “this group is more oppressed than that group”? Our community has real life problems hate speach being the least of them.

We do not fetishize oppresion. What we do is power exchange. Power exchange does not magically turn evil whe it is MF instead of FM or FF or whatever.

I get that you want to make the point that the kink community is just and excuse for a bunch of male sadists to justify their abuse of woman. I get that the hundreds of comments by men and woman and the ocean of websites that explain otherwise will make no impression here.

I am also not taken in by the wide eyed, “all we are doing is questioning bdsm. If you lifestyle is ok why does it bother you when I we question it?”

It depends what the questionis doesn’t it?

Is it just innocent inquiry when someone wants to know if gay men are more likely to abuse children, and then asks the question over and over?

Oh, but get a load of ND’s reply to that one:

[Posted by Nine Deuce on 2/26/09 @ 6:27 PM]

Stop comparing your situation to the plight of homosexuals. And stop comparing my arguments to those of asshole homophobes. There is something to the idea that M/f BDSM fetishizes women’s oppression, and you aren’t going to take attention from that by setting up a false and easily discredited analogy.

Why are people getting fired for being into BDSM? Ah Talking about sex at work isn’t cool, whether you’re straight, gay, into BDSM, or celibate. It’s just not appropriate. And to be honest, if I were a parent, I’d be concerned if my child’s other parent were into BDSM because I wouldn’t want my child exposed to it. It’s absolutely ridiculous to think you ought to have the right to normalize that kind of behavior in front of children who haven’t got the critical thinking abilities to understand what’s going on.

We all know that the vast majority of child molesters are straight men, which has been shown in study after study. I’m asking the questions about BDSM because what I’ve seen on a lot of websites amounts to serious emotional and physical abuse, and because I have, whatever you guys want to claim to the contrary, read women’s writings about being upset and frightened by the treatment they receive. The fact that I’m not yet convinced that what you’re into is cool and meshes with feminism doesn’t make me dishonest, it just means that I’ve yet to be convinced that black is white and up is down.

Yup….people into BDSM who happen to get fired from their workplaces deserve to be fired because they boast about their work there. And….obviously, people who do BDSM should not be allowed anywhere around children..or, I assume, even to have or raise children, lest they be pollluted with such “degradation” and violence. Spoken like a true feminist, indeed…who happens to be an agent for the local Sex Morality Police Squad. Lou Sheldon would be proud of ‘ya, ND.
P.S. Ren Ev dispatches ND’s crap with the usual flourish here….and check out Ernest’s comment within, too.



P.P.S.: Natalia adds her own personal smackdown here…and Ren has a sarcastic follow-up. And also, see Trinity.

Share

Violet Blue vs. AVN: The Great IR Porn Smackdown (Part Deux)

Posted on by
3

OK..let us pick up where we last left.

Violet Blue had just published a scathing column smacking down Adult Video News for their latest issue on “Black Humor” involving the stereotyping of Black men in interracial porn.

Well..it didn’t take long for AVN to issue a rebuttal…and they pulled even less punches than Violet did.

The response came from David Sullivan, a regular columnist at AVNOnline, and it spared no one in its condemnation and personal attacks…especially not Violet and her allies. Unfortunately, like the folks at TheSword.com. it also was marred with plenty of myopia and adhominens.

The entire “rebuttal” was posted by Violet to her Tiny Nibbles blog; I originally attempted to obtain the original editorial at AVN, but it seems to have been deleted. I will fisk as I go along.

Editorial: Self-Righteous, ‘Sex-Positive’ Violet Blue Can’t Get Her Facts Straight
02/12/2009
By David Sullivan
[category: NEWS]

SAN FRANCISCO – Did you know that former Blackzilla star Shane Diesel is actually a woman?

That’s just one of the things you’ll learn if you read the blathering of self-righteous sex columnist Violet Blue in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Quoting from the gay website The Sword, which in turn misquoted AVN’s February cover story about the interracial porn market, Blue didn’t bother to check her facts. So, according to Blue’s column, well-known male performer Shane Diesel is “the female star of My Daughter is Fucking a Nigga”.

Of course, if Sullivan had managed to do his own damn research, he’d have discovered that it was the folks at TheSword.com. not Violet Blue, that had mistaken Shane Diesel (the Black male porn starlet) for Shane (the gonzo porn mistress). But, why let the facts get in the way of a good beatdown of a “self-righteous” dirty liberal sex columnist, ehhh??

There’s no room for research on Violet Blue’s soapbox; this is, after all, THEE Violet Blue, who took a porn actress to court in order to protect her sacred nom de porn. Treading the PC party line, Violet is all for the empowerment of “sex workers” and free expression…unless that sex worker infringes on Violet’s own capitalist “brand” by associating her name with the sort of sexual speech she doesn’t like.

Ah, yes…break out the old “political correctness” line so useful for right-wingers who happen to be porn producers who want to defend right-wing things such as racial stereotyping. Does Sullivan wonder why porn doesn’t get support from otherwise progressive folk?? Maybe he should look at his own work.

And how very adult of Sullivan to reserrect that old case of Violet Blue, Sex Columnist ve. Violet Blue, Porn Starlet as a slam on Violet the Sex Columnist….never mind the fact that the case was ultimately resolved peacefully, that The Other Violet chose voluntarily to drop her claim to the name (she now calls herself “No Name Jane”), and that she has even made up with Violet since then. And get this…No Name Jane is on Violet’s side on this issue, too!!!

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves..the fun is just beginning.

But this isn’t about Violet’s litigious bullying of a porn chick. It’s about the Plight of the Modern Negro.

Listen up, Porn Incorporated: Violet Blue is tired of your race-baiting tropes and tricks! She’s had it with the horrors of the racist patriarchy, and her pale, delicate white skin is burning red with rage!

Such “disturbing” titles as Chatsworth Pictures’ Oh No! There’s a Negro in My Mom! are keeping women like Shane Diesel down, Violet says, and the sell-outs at AVN are promoting the oppression by pointing out that such videos sell even during a recession…and framing a discussion of the market trend as funny.

Titled “Black Humor”, the AVN story examined the popularity of videos that combine big black dicks and little white chicks. Editor Nelson X spoke to performers and producers (both black and white), questioning whether the use of stereotypes is acceptable for the sake of marketing.

“There’s something more than a little disingenuous about AVN’s sense of humor,” Violet wrote. “The positive ability of porn is that is [sic] can show partnering that is charged because it crosses racial boundaries. I believe that damage is not done by the FACT of crossing those taboos, but in the WAY those taboos are crossed.”

In short, don’t get your freak on in a manner that violates Violet Blue’s political sensibility. And STOP LAUGHING!

Oh, wow…such rage and anger. Too bad that it’s all wasted on nothing.

First off, Mr. Sullivan (and I do assume that you are White, since you don’t say otherwise), it really isn’t your call to talk about the “Plight of the Modern Negro” or hate on Violet for having an opinion about your industry’s practices. Last time I checked, the Constitution allowed for freedom of speech and freedom of expression, and that does include Violet’s right to criticize you and your industry.

Secondly, maybe the rage roids must have clouded your thinking a bit, Mr. Sullivan, because NOWHERE in Violet’s essay do I even detect a sliver of her saying that people should not buy interracial sex movies that pander to the typical stereotypes; nor does she go anywhere near saying that those who produce such material are innate racists….only that they might pander to racist sensibilities merely for the quick buck at the time of a recession.

And oh, BTW…did it ever occur to you that Violet is one of the GOOD GALS who actually defends the right of the adult sexual media to exist?? She’s definitely not Gail Dines or Bob Jensen or Nikki Craft or Donna Hughes. Why point all your guns at her for speaking her mind??? Unless, you’re simply a right-wing libertarian wanting to score brownie points with the Big Boys by slamming a feminist woman to the ground, maybe??

Violet believes that titles such as I Can’t Believe You Sucked A Negro! and My Daughter is Fucking Blackzilla push the wrong buttons, exploiting ugly myths and stereotypes about black male potency. Spreading racism like a porno pathogen, these movies bank on the insecurities of the Caucasian male and damage the sexual health of the viewer – because, Blue seems to think, the people who watch porn can’t make the high-brow distinction between reality and a stupid porn flick.

Welll….most can, but a few can’t…and the issue for Violet is NOT that interracial porn exists or should exists, but that there are much better and more sensual ways to promote the virtues of hot IR sex without the racist garbage. But…I guess that one woman’s garbage must be another mainstream man’s cash cow.

And, it’s not just Violet who’s concerned…several Black porn performers (from Ebony Ayes and Angel Kelly to Heather Hunter and Janet Jacme to Sinnamon Love and Lacey DuVille) have long since complained bitterly about the quality of roles that they are forced to play….and many Black male performers have responded by forming their own performing lines in protest. But, once again, since Violet’s White and progressive, they can smack her down as a dirty elitist feminist concern troll bitch…right???

Oh, but it gets better….Sullivan now decides the it’s not enough to smack down Violet, but that Madison Young should get her beatdown, too, for agreeing with her…and for biting the hand that feeds her.

Her tender, sex-positive heart inflamed by the AVN article she skimmed, Violet sought solace from a porn star who agrees with her agenda. You think porn actresses are bimbos? Well, sit down, Mister: some of us are ARTICULATE, EDUCATED, QUEER and SEX-POSITIVE!

“I find AVN’s comments on interracial porn to be highly offensive and serves [sic] as a discredit to the entire industry,” said Bay Area BDSM performer Madison Young, bonding with Violet in a “white girl-to-white girl” chat. “AVN is the leading trade magazine for the adult industry, and for them to make statements like ‘Negro Porn Recession-Proof’ gives the anti-porn community further fodder for their arguments as opposed to spotlighting sex-positive productions.”

Of course, ‘Negro Porn Recession-Proof’ is the headline from The Sword blog, and not a statement from AVN. But why split pubes over such details?

Some of US??? Now, if Sullivan had said that of, say, Nina Hartley, who is well known for being all of the things that Madison is being attacked for, and who has also been quite critical of Black porn portrayal stereotypes, then I’m guessing that Sully would have gotten his ass kicked royally…and that’s before they have to extracate Ernest Greene from his carcass. But Madison Young doesn’t have Nina’s years or pub…so I guess it’s open season for the establishment journal to bash on her for her political views.

And even if Madison did manage the same mistake of mistaking TheSword.com’s title for AVN’s, that no more devalues her opinion than mispelling Vicky Vette’s first name as “Vicki” disqualifies her Booble Girl of the Year award.

As bad as that was, it got much worse..then Sullivan got real personal regarding Madison’s political philosophy and the conflict between that and her real world roles:

“Porn is a widely consumed medium and can act as a powerful tool to educate, create connection and communication between couples, and archive our sexual culture while providing a reflection of our desires on film,” Madison recited. “This can be a positive and sexually validating experience for women and men and persons of all genders.”

We’ve seen that brochure, too. But thankfully, Madison is here to enlighten the ignorant; the model, activist and director goes on to reveal that she reluctantly performs scenes for “mainstream” porn producers in order to fund her Femina Potens art gallery in Frisco.

“I prefer to perform in productions that are sex-positive or queer-produced, but it takes a lot of anal scenes to run a feminist art space,” she said.

Surely, such a fiercely intelligent and empowered woman could earn the necessary bucks by finding a job that doesn’t involve taking it up the ass for some greaseball caveman producer in Van Nuys. But that’s not the point; Madison is here to Subvert From Within!

“I recall in one of the interracial films in which I was featured, I actually got the director to allow me to teach a bit of a tantric lesson in the scene,” she said.

Madison Young: changing the way you jerk off, one tantric lesson at a time. (Submit written/illustrated interpretations of Madison’s tantric lesson to racistsexistpigs@avn.com.)

Ha, ha, ha. Bwaaahahahahahahaaaaaaaa!!! Yeah, way to cast light at her personal sexual tastes. You do know that there is a major subgenre of porn consumers who are into tantra…..right, Mr. Sullivan?? Not every consumer of porn happens to be a right-wing, redneck, cowboy-hat wearing yahoo with money pouring out of his ass, throwing money at sleazy titty bars and crusty badly lit porn shops, looking for the latest extreme gonzo extravaganza featuring Ava Devine and Bridgette Kerkove and Belladonna sharing a baseball bat up their collective asses and doing double anals and double vaginals with Mandingo and Jack Napier and other assorted “third leg” performers, concluded with bukkake facials from 20 men. There is an untapped resource in women and people of color who are discovering their own freaks and creating their own porn, and if the folks of AVN and the porn companies would just turn off their blinders and get off this “side show all freak all day” formula of showing sex, then maybe it may find the solution to getting through the recession. But, like the mainstream Hollywood industry that they would just love to copy, AVN is simply too stuck in the cookie cutter model to open their minds and their hearts…and if they keep attacking artists like Madison Young, they won’t be long for existence….not with South Florida and the Internet blowing up as alternatives to the San Fern Valley.

But enough whacking of Madison Young…lets go back to Violet Blue, since she’s apparently hasn’t been totally submitted yet. Like a bad reject of Max Hardcore, Sullivan then applies the proverbial dick to her metaphoric behind, without the pleasure of lube:

Violet Blue has a valid point about race-baiting porn titles – one which AVN addressed. If her knowledge of porn history 101 extended beyond the boundaries of Wikipedia, she might have pointed to the decade-old backlash against performer Jon Dough, who made the mistake of placing a tasteless Jew joke on one of his box covers. The First Amendment crusaders of Porn Valley suddenly developed an aversion to such humor, and the video box was swiftly recalled.

Blue might also have remembered the outcry over a mercifully short-lived trend of porn vids that combined hunting and animal killings with sex. The libertines of greater San Fernando didn’t much care for that “marketing trend,” either.

But Blue’s arguments are even more obvious than the cliches she targets in her ongoing, heavy-handed campaign against mainstream porn. (What else to expect from a woman who raved about Snuff, the crap-tastic literary flop from grossly overrated post-mod hack Chuck Palahniuk? Full disclosure: Palahniuk mentioned Blue by name in the book, a brutally stupid treatment of the Porn Valley gang-bang craze as metaphor for the American Wasteland.)

OK…and where, again, did Violet ever say that she wanted direct government censorship of porn she didn’t like?? If she did, it sure wasn’t in that column.

And as for the reference to the sex fictional novel Snuff….well, if Sullivan wants to make one OSS column about a satirical novel about a mythical gangbang look like a political editorial against gangbangs…well, that’s Sullivan’s myopia, not Violet’s.

But Sullivan waits until the very end to go into the final flameout.

In the end, Blue herself is a walking, yapping, self-promoting stereotype of sorts, as director David Aaron Clark pointed out in an online response to her lawsuit against the porn actress of the same name.

Clark wrote in his post for LukeisBack.com: “The ‘author’ Violet Blue is the typical example of that San Francisco ’sex-positive’ counterculture faker who blathers on about the ‘community’ and their own highly evolved sexuality, how all us sexual outlaws have to look out for each other, but is really nothing but a self-promoting, narcissistic wannabe capitalist who, if you get in the way of their quest for power and prominence, will swiftly resort to the very sort of behavior they decry in others outside their ‘tribe.’

“The best part of it all is that ‘Violet Blue’ is not exactly a unique or original turn of the phrase in the first place.”

Oh, let me count the many funny ironies in those paragraphs:

1) The ‘Violet Blue v. Violet Blue” reset (see earlier)’

2) The fact that he quotes as an expert David freakin’ Aaron Clark….interesting because Clark was well known as one of the most extreme gonzo producers known to man, infamous for double anals and driving implements up women’s asses and other kinds of freakery…..until he got religion after the Darrin James/Lara Roxx HIV/AIDS scare of 2004, and thusly converted into the biggest advocate for mandatory condom sex known to mankind…even going as far as to using the porn tabloids to bash Nina Hartley, Ernest Greene and Dr. Sharon Mitchell of the AIM Medical Foundation, who pioneered the STD testing procedures used regularly in the industry, as the main causes of the outbreak. The same outbreak, BTW, that ended up only infecting 2 people publically. But, Clark is so much better to analyze the impact of racial stereotyping porn than Madison Young or Violet Blue ever could, because they have absolutely NO conflicts of interest whatsoever. For sure.

and 3) The fact that he uses the pages of Lukeisback.com…that’s Luke as in Luke Ford, the gossip columnist mostly known and self-described as a “right-wing Jew boy” who used his position to basically smack down the industry he made lots of money in…..as well as the performers who didn’t meet his standards of self-hatred and loathing.

Yeah…but it’s only Violet Blue who’s the “self-promoting, sadistic, wannabe capitalist”. And only those who challenge the mainstream porn industry’s near-sightedness in favor of a slightly more humane, more sensual, more progressive vision of explicit erotica, who are the ones to resort to hypocrisy.

If there is a place in the depths of Hell called “Porn Hypotwits”, David Sullivan has his own room booked and ready for him. Violet Blue and Madison Young should be the least of his or AVN’s worries.

If it wasn’t for Mark Kearnes, AVN would go right into the killfile for me. Let’s hope that he doesn’t lose his senses.


Addedum: Included in Violet’s reset of her column was a Twitter tweet she received from performer Sinnamon Love about one incident where Sinnamon dispatched an attempt to force her to play the racist stereotype:

@violetblue I had a director ask me to eat watermelon and bug out my eyes in an interracial scene. I politely declined. No Step and Fetch it

Attagirl, Sinnamon….a few more rejections like that would be as lovely as you are.


Share

More Anti-BDSM Whackoid Smack From The GenderBorg (Your Turn, Polly!!)

Posted on by
4

Just as I promised earlier….more highlights for the mighty FAILFest that is the Great GenderBorg Anti-BDSM Crusade.

If you remember, all this started when Nine Deuce over at Rage Against the Manchine decided to mine her radfem credentials to blast women who are into BDSM sex as mere tools and “slaves” of men and perpetuators of “female slavery”…since the men who are into male domination in that particular subculture are nothing more than rapists. (Actually, ND tends to think that any and ALL men who are into ANY kind of porn or “patriarchial” sex not to her liking are prima facie rapists and abusers of women….it’s just that male doms are, to her, the most open and explicit examples.) A couple of male doms and their significant other “slaves” came in to defend themselves and their professed tastes; whereapon the rest of the GB tribe ambushed them as ignorant, blind traitors (for the women) or outright rapists (for the men).

I won’t reset all of the debate, since ND, Renegade Evolution, and the usual participants have more than enough documentation for you to ponder.

But I will today reference a particularly “brilliant” (in the way that serial killers, Dick Cheney, and Newt Gingrich  are brilliant) piece of GenderBorgian anti-BDSM agitprop produced by Polly Styrene at her own blog which attempts to make the case of how BDSM is so innately anti-woman. Basically, it says a lot more about the thinly-veiled biases and deep assumptions of GenderBorgian ideology than it does about the men and women who freely practice BDSM sex.

The prejudice comes right out with the title:

BDSM is violence against women

Yup…..even if the woman is dominant and the man is the submissive, it’s all about the woman being “violated”. But I guess that that doesn’t matter to Polly, since fem dommes don’t even exist.

Polly then begins with the usual mocking snark at women defending their sexual kinks:

You heard. Oh but oh noes, menz get beaten up too! Hmm, yes and men are sometimes sex workers, as Mr Douglas Fox constantly points out.

Now of course y’all are sitting here now, and going “But I’m into BDSM, and all that ever happens is that my manz handcuffs me with the  pink fluffy Ann Summers handcuffs and spanks me lightly. It’s a power exchange doncha know”

Only men who are “pimps” and “punters”, of course….never real live sex workers. And of course, only rich and privileged and pampered women who are so stupid as to partake in such anti-woman sex practices would ever come forth to defend such brutality.

She then resets Nine Deuce’s “experiment” of placing an ad in a local paper pretending to be a sub looking for a “power exchange”, which results in the usual biased and tainted analysis of the respondents:

The dudes in the first group were the least overtly terrifying of the bunch, but they were creepy and offensive in their own way. Most of them wrote what could best be described as novellas and used the word “art” in their comical and terribly written blatherings about their BDSM “philosophies.” Their descriptions of their sexual fantasies were like letters to Penthouse Forum written by dudes who wear eyeliner, with a lot of “trembling,” “aching,” and “quivering” in between the generous helpings of “pussy” and “cock.” They all described the mental and physical sensations they would cause our poster to experience down to the last detail with the kind of confidence that only men who are terrible in bed possess. Nearly all of them explained that their ultimate purpose was to help their submissives grow as human beings and that they understood that feminism had caused emotional conflicts for women who felt the “natural” “feminine” urge to submit to a (much older and wiser, naturally) man/dad/teacher (for a bunch of purportedly countercultural motherfuckers, these guys sounded an awful lot like Promise Keepers). Many of them addressed our poster as “little one.” Honestly, I thought I was reading the lyrics to a George Michael song half the time. Retch is right. These guys may have even fooled themselves into believing that their particular sexual fetishes are the kinds of things that women “crave deep within their souls,” but they’re kidding themselves with all their talk of transgression.

Now, let’s ignore the smack that ND implies that she knows from these respondents that they really would be “terrible in bed” based on their responses to her “ad”. (OK…you don’t really know these blokes, but you can pass judgment on their personal sex lives merely based on their responses because…what?? Special GenderBorg ESP??? Or merely imposing and projecting your pre-imposed biases about men and sexuality on them?? And remember, these were the least offensive of the bunch.

Then there were the dudes who didn’t bother to pretend there was any kind of philosophical basis for their desire to dominate and humiliate (their words, not mine) women. Their responses were all detailed descriptions of the kinds of sex acts they’d be carrying out on her, with nary a question about what she might fancy. They got very specific about the kinds of tools they were bringing to the table (literally and figuratively) and exactly how they would restrain our poster so they could “rape” her “asshole” and whip her “tits” and “cunt” with whatever instrument their shockingly uncreative minds could come up with (usually a belt). They too described the sensations this would cause for the poster, because they were just positive that they could make her “cum over and over” by hitting her and calling her a “filthy little slut,” a “cum slut,” or a “little whore.” These dudes made no attempt to disguise the fact that they get off on humiliating and hurting women, though they did dress that up a little with candle wax, leather, and various bizarre implements. (A lot of them were really into shibari, a — surprise! — Japanese bondage technique involving rope. Seriously, fuck Japan.)

Oh, please…do we really need such a literal reading?? And since when is “making her cum over and over” (that would be called in the civilian world “giving her an orgasm”, ma’am) considered a part of “humiating and hurting” her….unless you happen to believe that orgasms are part of the problem with BDSM sex…if not, THE WHOLE FRACKIN’ POINT of it all. (And Hello, ND….you were writing as a fem sub wanting a sexual encounter; I’d figure that you’d expect that your respondents would assume that and speak about that they had in mind. If you can’t deal with the answers, don’t ask the question to begin with.)

And then there was the third, and most shocking group, at least in ND’s mind:

The third group was by far the most frightening. They read the word “submissive” and creamed their shorts at the idea that there was a woman out there who’d let them act out Max Hardcore vignettes on her. None of them had anything to say about the “art” of BDSM or the sensations our poster would experience, but rather just told her which hole they’d like to rape her in (guess which one came in at number one) before they ejaculated on her face. Her wishes did come up a few times, always in the form of the insatiable desire to lick semen up after being raped. That’s about all I can say about that lest I break something or kill myself.

First off, Max Hardcore isn’t BDSM; he’s hardcore extreme gonzo.  Second, people responding to sexual fantasies tend to be a bit over-the-top and extreme in private one-on-one sexual conversation, and say things that they would never say or do in the public realm. And third…female dommes can think about “raping” their sub men with the same intensity (men do have mouths and anuses, you know).

The point of all this is that Nine Deuce takes what amounts to be mere extreme sexual fantasies — extreme ones, I’ll acknowledge, but no less fantasy — and makes them out to be actual ACTS that these men want to impose on her “submissive”.  In other words, these men are nothing more than potential rapists, if not ACTUAL rapists for merely speaking of these evil desires to “humiliate” and “abuse” women. The proper analogy here is to call for castrating people for not merely committing adultery, but merely THINKING of it in their brains or speaking of it to another person in private conversation.

But….that’s Nine Deuce’s particular myopia. What Polly Styrene does is simply run the pattern, catch the pass that ND offers, and, like Larry Fitzgerald knifing through the Steeler defense in Super Bowl LXIII, runs with it to the end zone….or, more appropriately, over the edge of Sanity Cliff.

Ok let’s look at what happens in real BDSM. It’s ’safe, sane and consensual’ right?

Well the dude below might have disagreed on BDSM being ’safe’. If he were still alive to disagree that is.

The “dude below” reference is to a tragedy that took place in 2007 where a British businessman was killed in a terribly botch bondage scene when he got suffocated.

Not good.  Also, not representative of what counts for the majority of BDSM. Yes, scenes can go horribly ary with calamitous results….just as planes can go down into the ocean and NASCAR drivers can lose their lives driving at 200+ miles per hour on oval tracks. But we’re talking about sex here, not stock car racing or flying….the rules are different.

And keep in mind the date: 2007. Yeah…one act in two years outweighs countless scenes where nothing even close to tragedy happens.

Polly continues:

And as for consensual. Well this is the argument that was recently put on ‘comment is free’ about why BDSM is different from christian cults. Namely that BDSM has a ’safe word’ and that consent is not given once, but can be withdrawn at any time.

Well even if that IS the case, there are still problems. But let’s be  honest, that’s  not always the case. Because if you are a ’slave’ you give consent once and that’s it.

Actually, the “safeword” is only one means of enforcing consent; another, as Ren Ev has pointed out, is to simply negotiate before the scene takes place what will happen and what is to be expected of both the dom and the sub.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg for Polly to prove the deadliness of BDSN:

Let’s consider the case of Glenn Marcus. Now if you google this guy you will find lots of people on BDSM boards defending him and saying what a great guy he is.

She then quotes freely from Ann Bartow’s Feminist Law Professor’s blog on the story of Glenn Marcus, who apparently is a especially brutal dom who especially loves his BDSM sex excessively violent and “degrading”. (And, who just happened to be a BDSM webmaster of a site (slavespaces dot com) which was a target of the federal government anti-trafficking laws….back in 2007.)

And of course, such evil can only lead to the ultimate slavery, according to Polly (and Ann Bartow), as in the case of “Jodi” (quoting from court testimonials, with emphasis in original):

In October 1999, the defendant arrived in Maryland, where he handcuffed Jodi to the wall and told her that he would punish her after he took a nap. (Tr. at 104.) While she was on the wall, Jodi testified that she had a moment of clarity and decided that she wanted to leave. (Id. at 104-5.) She told Celia, another woman serving the defendant, and Celia helped her get down. (Id. at 105.) Joanna awakened the defendant, who ordered that Jodi be returned to the wall. (Id.) When Jodi informed the defendant that she wanted to leave, he told her to shut up. (Id.) He then put a whiffle ball inside her mouth, closed her lips shut with surgical needles so that she was unable to speak, and placed a hood over her head. (Id. at 105-7.) While she was on the wall, he whipped and beat her with a cane extremely hard for an extended period of time and had sexual intercourse with her. (Id. at 106.) The defendant then took Jodi off the wall and attached her with handcuffs to a flat board, at which point he attempted to sew Jodi’s vagina closed using a sewing needle and thread, only stopping when the needle broke. (Id. at 106-7.) A butt plug was inserted into her anus (Govt. Ex. 2C, at 369, 1223), and the defendant used a knife to carve his initials into the soles of her feet (Tr. at 107). While this incident was taking place, Jodi was crying and screaming. (Id. at 107.) The abuse was photographed and Jodi had to write a diary entry about it, and these were placed on the defendant’s website. (See Tr. at 109; Govt. Ex. 2C at 365-74, 1217-24.) This was the most extreme punishment to which Jodi had ever been subjected. (Tr. at 123.) Prior to this experience, Jodi believed that she would be able to leave any time she wished. (Id. at 108.) However, after this episode, Jodi testified that she felt “completely beaten down,” “trapped and full of terror.” (Id. at 108.) She no longer wished to be involved with the defendant and remained with him only out of fear. (Id. at 170.)

The fact that she did ultimately leave him and even testified about his extreme abuse at his trial means not that much to Bartow or Polly….it’s all about smearing all male doms with the taint of Glenn Marcus.

The article goes on to the usual bit about whacking “feminists who claim that BDSM is a sexuality and we shouldn’t criticize it” as the same old privileged, “elitist” women who masturbate on the backs of “poor women” being ultimately abused and raped.  And then, Polly goes for the jugular:

Yes BDSM takes place in gay relationships, and yes men like to be dominated. But – as the response to Nine Deuce’s ad showed, there are still plenty of men out there who want to dominate and abuse women in horrific ways.

And yes, yawn, yawn, yawn, a BDSM community *controls* these guys. Oh give me strength. Look at all the defence of Glenn Marcus by the ‘BDSM community’. And anyway what about all those women outside the “BDSM community”. Those women who just read an article on the F word. Who are maybe a bit confused, not sure what their feelings are but hey – a feminist website says BDSM is feminist. That’s ok then!

To translate, if you are a “feminist” defending BDSM sex, even if it is freely wanted and consented to by the participants, and even if no injury or harm occurs within the scene, then you are an enabler of rapists and murders and misogynists..and MEN. Doesn’t even matter if you’ve never even heard of Glenn Marcus (or his court case involving prosecution of his website for “sex trafficking” due to its BDSM theme, which is much of the point of all the “defenses” of him)….if you defend him, you are a murderer.  Just as if you defend Douglas Fox’s right to exist as a sex worker, then you are a pimp and a rapist…because we say so.

Q. E. Frackin’ D.

And just in case you forget which side Polly Styrene chooses to roll with, her comments section includes all the usual GenderBorg participants….Stormy, Bonobobabe, mAndrea, Laurelin, and even Nine Deuce gets in on the fun.

I’ll simply let Ms. Bees and Wasps Agent speak for the collective though this comment:

OK, I need some “help” here radfems. I am now fully edumacated on “proper BDSM” and “whoopsies, accidents do happen BDSM”. So, into which category does the following, involving a paid professional, fully empowered and consenting, get put into?

Natel King (porn stage name of Taylor Sum(m)ers):
http://www.oneangrygirl.net/natel_king.html

It’s all just harmless, empowering fun right? Lots of safe words, an “industry” in which a shit load of sex pozzie feminist bloggers promote as being the ultimate achievement of womanyness. In fact, I believe there is a former radfem blogger on the F-Word promoting BDSM as fluffy kittens because her boyfriend likes it, so she does too. (geez, don’t all stampede to point out the lack of even basic feminism in that scenario)

OK, I lied. I don’t really “need help” with this one. Lots of women (and girls) get used up, injured, murdered, in BDSM and porn (and let’s face it, mainstream porn pretty much looks like BDSM porn these days). It is NOT feminist to promote such activities to females as “em-fucking-powering”. It is NOT prudish to be against such mainstream and voluminous damage to the specific females involved and the knock on effect to females in general.

Stop promoting BDSM to other women as empowering and “just play”.

Stop promoting porn (even so called nice porn) to women as empowering and a valid career option.

Stop promoting prostitution as empowering and a valid career option.

It is NOT healthy for the majority of female participants. It is NOT healthy for womankind in general. And it certainly ain’t feminist to promote it.

Now grow up you dim-witted third wave / librul / sex pozzie feminists. And get a fucking clue.

Yup…instead, start promoting the new fourth wave/neoconservative/sex-fascist “feminism” as the new movement??

I think I’ll end this now before I end up throwing my monitor at the wall.

Share

…And Then, Heart(less) Finally Goes Off The Cliff On Jill

Posted on by
Reply

Part Deux of our adventure featuring Heart of Women Spaces and her “pornstitution” myopia….

When we last left, Heart(less) was dispatching Renegade Evolution for the evol slut and sellout and enabler of rape and rapacity that only the God Emperor of Rome would represent in the eyes of the Good Radicalfeminist Womyn.

Now entering, from Stage Left: Jill from Feministe, the blog that a few months ago actually featured Ren Ev as a guest blogger on many topics, which probably steamed Heart(less) that much more, considering that in her mind, only like-minded GenderBorgians should be allowed to post in “feminist’ blogs. The main point of Jill’s post was to challenge Heart’s premise that women who enjoy sex for free (or at least say that they do) are doing a bad deed for women who are actually raped and abused (or those women who Heart claims are raped and abused and degraded by association with porn or prostitution or even a simple male erection.

[Posted by Jill on 11/14/08 @ 6:41 PM]

Huh. So when I have sex with men for free. I’ve never been paid for sex (at least not explicitly — I suppose some might argue that maybe dinner counts). Am I lowering the standards to rock-bottom? I mean, all these women giving away sex for free helps to create and sustain a market for sex, which means that some men will choose to pay for it. Are all of us who have consensual not-for-pay sex now complicit in the abuse and torture of women who are trafficked, raped and otherwise brutalized?

I have very conflicted personal views on pornography (my views on whether or not it should be legal to make and distribute are far less conflicted), but I don’t buy for a minute that a woman who does porn for free because she’s making it herself — in other words, because she’s going to make money off of its eventual sale — is somehow responsible for the exploitation of other women who don’t have that same privilege. Privilege is a tricky thing to navigate, and feminism doesn’t give us clear answers, but in my understanding, neither framework is supposed to be used to beat other people over the head with. Feminism is not a tool to shame other women. Understanding the dynamics of privilege isn’t a way to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator, or to guilt people for what they have.

We are all part of complicated systems of oppression. We are all complicit to one degree or another; the difference is, some people are outright exploitative of others and seek to cause harm. I don’t know Ren personally, but I read the same blog of hers that you do, and I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone would put her in that category.

And anyway, this post isn’t about Ren. It’s about the systematic exploitation of women. And yet somehow, the villain of choice is a sex worker herself, demonized simply because she doesn’t consider herself to be a victim? Come on.

Now…considering the usual brand of censorship that takes place at Womens’ Spaces, you’d think that that post would still be in moderation….but it was approved by Heart. Probably, because, in her mind, it enabled her to unfurl her banner, clear her throat, and unleash her pixellized wrath, and settle all the scores and vendettas that she had with Feministe for allowing a infidel and a slut like Ren Ev to post there.

The result is this long, windy, and quite telling comment that more than anything else reveals the madness behind Cheryl Lynn Seelhoff’s methods. Just sit back, relax, and allow me to be your friendly guide though this maze of bullcrap….and I’m providing running commentary all the way through just for langiappe and clarity.

[Posted by admin (Heart) on 11-15-08 @ 11:02 AM]

Jill, women having sex “for free” on their own terms in the privacy of their own bedrooms is not on a par with women creating videotapes of brutal, violent sex, or apparently brutal, violent, sex, and disseminating them over the airwaves, over the internet and into the homes and sexual psyches of however many men and boys, and girls and women for that matter, watch that stuff. Pornography and prostitution are “constructors.” We talk a lot as radical feminists, and other kinds of feminists, for that matter, about “social construction”, about the way nothing is “essential,” nothing is “inherent” or “immutable,” in other words, about the way people are not “just born that way.” People are the way they are not only because of accidents or incidents of their births but because of what they see in the world, what they learn in the world. The sexuality of little boys and little girls, of men and women who grow up seeing, or, in whatever manner, end up watching brutal sex in which women are tortured, brutalized, degraded and shamed are in fact having their sexualities *constructed* in that watching. They’re learning this is what sex is, this is what is really sexually exciting and titillating, this *humiliation of women*. This torture of and brutality towards women.

Remember, now, we are talking about “gonzo” porn here, featuring women who actually say that they not only consent to doing such stuff, but say that they enjoy the acts they do…or at least, they act like they do. Some people would say that that probably doesn’t meet the qualifications for rape, which consists of violence that is imposed without the consent of the victim (and usually with direct physical violence and injury. Some people, though, never met the likes of Cheryl Lynn Seelhoff and the Womyn Warriors of the GenderBorg, who have a…..well, a different view about consent and will and human nature.

Also note the implication that Heart raises that young impressionable girls and boys, if exposed to such evil, degrading, and essentially violent sex, will automatically respond that it must be “acceptable” and that that must be the ONLY way to engage in sex…thusly, gonzo porn (if not ALL porn) must be censored or banished to save womanhood and girlhood from the degradation of the male penis. Riiight…like rape and torture of women never existed beyond the tainted walls of a porn studio (or that men have never been abused or tortured or even raped).

Are you putting that out in the street? Are you filming this kind of sex and putting it out there for public consumption? Are you talking about what you’re doing 24/7 on your blogs in the company of, for example, guys who are the creators of extreme SM pornography and magazines affiliated with Hustler Magazine, in the company of various dungeon masters and you name it, all of whom are creating these kinds of materials — brutal, violent, degrading, humiliating sex for public view — for the general public? I don’t think you are. And no, whatever you’re doing, or other women are doing, for free in their own houses is not what I’m talking about there.

Shorter translation of Heart:That’s right, Ernest Greene…I’m calling your ass out right now, you brutal slaveholding rapist murderer male leftist MAN. You might be able to force Nina Hartley to be your concubine and “willing slave”….errrrrr….life partner and wife, and sell your brutal S&M deSade festivals and mass rapes to the public as “consensual BDSM”, and collude with that child molestor/serial racist Larry Flynt in imprisoning women with meat grinders…but we radicalfeminists are hep to ‘ya. And that goes for you too, Kink.com….we know that you were really behind Abu Gharib just fess up and admit it.

I mean, if someone puts a noose up in their yard in a threatening manner, or burns a cross, that person can do time and well they should, absolutely, because they are engaging in hate speech. If someone decorates their home, yard, business with Nazi insignia they may well do time as well. Because our society has determined at long last that at least some forms of “speech” are so destructive, so toxic, so hateful, so murderous, such a blight on the psyche of human beings that as a society we will not tolerate this kind of thing in the name of “speech.” And why? Because this kind of “speech” is only free speech for some. It’s free speech for racists. It’s free speech for white supremacists. Nobody is going to go into somebody’s home and arrest them for drawing their own pictures that only they see or for enacting their own racist scenarios, and why? Because they’re not disseminating that in the public sphere. When stuff like this is widely disseminated in the marketplace and just among the general public without legal consequences or ethical or moral sanctions — in magazines, in books, on the internet, television, movies– the message to one and all is, this is fine, this is good, there is no harm in this, this is all good times, this is free speech. And what gets lost is, for the victims of this stuff, or those who were victims and those who remember, there is no free speech. There is only, again, free speech for racists and white supremacists.

Ahhh…first off, Heart(less), most hate speech laws attempting to regulate away such actions as cross burnings and nooses on trees have been declared unconstitutional abridgments of First Amendment rights of free speech…the very same First Amendment that allows you to render your speech as well. Secondly, isn’t the answer to such “hate speech” not censorship but to simply overwhelm it with speech that promotes the truth and exposes the inherent lies and smears that such “hate speech” inevitably relies on?? Plus, burning crosses and hanging nooses on other people’s lawns isn’t just “hate speech”; it’s also tresspassing on other people’s property and threatening them implicitly….which, last time I checked, didn’t require any notions of “hate speech” to be considered illegal and actionable BEHAVIOR.

Oh…and just because such “hate speech” may be put out on the Internet or on television or in the media does not make it any more actionable merely because it is considered to be “hate speech”. Or, perhaps, you really do believe that people should be held responsible for their innermost thoughts if those thoughts don’t meet some politically correct criteria?? (I mean politically correct as in right-wing, centrist, OR left-wing standards of conduct.) If so, then that makes you, Ms. Seelhoff, to be the very person that “hate speech” laws were created to control and prevent….namely, a fascist.

And all this is to compare neo-Nazis and Klansmen and White Citizens Councilmen to…..gonzo porn starlets?!?!?!

In the same way, it’s one thing, again to do whatever a woman does in private. I’m not saying that what a woman does in private is meaningless– it is not. I think what she does in private is always political. But there’s a difference between that and filming something and sending it out into a world that basically endorses ANY — that means ANY — depiction of torture, rape, murder, humiliation of women.

Oh, I see….a woman’s private sexual affairs should be grounds for political critique and correction if those affairs don’t meet your “feminist” criteria….especially when it is used to depict “torture, rape, murder, or humiliation”.

You blog at Feministe. You know what that’s about. You read your spam queue, you read your incoming searches. You know that haters are out there 24/7 looking for incest materials, torture materials, rape materials, brutal sex, and you know what? They are finding that stuff. And they are getting off on it. And the abundance of it reassures them that there’s nuttin wrong with that, all the cool kids do it, I mean, what are women for, after all, but to be bound, gagged, tortured, humiliated, debased, why, after it’s all done, they put a big SMILE on their face, it was nuttin’ but a thing, you know?

Oh, really??? Does Heart(less) know that much about Feministe that she can read their spam queue to know that people over there are looking specifically for incest porn or kiddie porn or “brutal sex”?? Never mind that they can get plenty of that without ever setting foot in Feministe…or that they could just as well use search engines connected with sites like…Womens’ Spaces???

And what about the millions and millions of men who use the same search engines for the overwhelming majority of porn that displays….well, none of the above?? You know, like…..simple things like….single women masturbating, or couples having vanilla sex, or a couple sharing their spouses with another willing person?? Or, even…two or more WOMEN having sex??? Oh, but that doesn’t even exist in the GenderBorgian mind….ALL sex not approved by Heart IS by nature “brutal” and rape.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry over your coming here to my blog in your, as far as I know, inaugural comment here, to scold me for “shaming” women and “beating women over the head” and for being a bad feminist. Ha. Bitter and really, really cynical ha. I think in the context of this discussion, your scolding and apparent self-righteousness are absurd. I am thinking about all of the little 12 and 13 year old girls — yes — on Myspace posting photos of themselves in degrading, debased sexual situations and positions. I am thinking of all of the little 12 and 13 year old boys all the way to one-foot-in-the-grave men getting off on what these little girls are posting. I am thinking about the way those little girls and those boys and men have the view of sexuality they do, and of women’s place and women’s bodies they do, in part because the internet, the airways, the movie houses, the theaters, the publishing world are FILLED with this kind of imagery, imagery in which women, again, are gang raped, raped, period, bound, gagged, brutalized, manhandled, cuffed around, and again, this is what women really LIKE, the message is, this is what women are FOR. And so as women and feminists we say NO, some of us, we have to say NO, this is NOT what a girl’s body is for. This is NOT what a woman’s body is for. We were not born to be gang raped. We were not born to be brutalized, tortured, bound and gagged and to LIKE it. This is not the world we created and want. When we say this, we pay for it big time, and why? Because this IS the world as many men and many boys do want it, they want it to stay that way, witness your and my spam queue, witness your and my incoming searches, read the newspapers, watch the news, all we have to do is look around.

WOW….if we are to believe Heart, MySpace is now a hotbed of kiddie porn. Really. All those teenagers in bikinis and short skirts and sports bras…you know they are really attracting the pedophiles. Now, MySpace is pretty damn hard on adult images, enough so that several adult performers have had their journals removed for even linking to their sites or even posting suggestive pictures. But 13-year-olds posing suggestively and allowing themselves to be “brutalized” and “raped”??? Fine with them!!

But all this is a moot point anyway, because, in the mind of Heart, it’s all about the MEN and the BOYZ, who seek women like Renegade Evolution and conclude from watching her that ALL women are worthy of being raped and brutalized…because that is what MEN and BOYZ REALLY, REALLY WANT!!! KIIIIIIIILLLLLLLL THEMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!1111ONETHOUSANDONEHUNDREDELEVEN!!! (Or at least, castrate them and save their sperm so that we can propagate the species.)

The demand that is created by all of the above and similar things and phenomena for brutal, misogynist sex ends up fulfilled for the most part by the most marginalized women and girls in the world — children, the poor, the abused and abandoned, drug addicts, homeless women and girls, kidnapped women and girls, women who endured the “boot camp” of rape, gang rape and incest coming up. They are openly kidnapped and trafficked throughout the world, or because of their limited options and vulnerabilities, they end up trafficked throughout the world in some other manner, and then they can’t get out because they don’t have the power to, because they are sick, because they are debilitated, imprisoned, beaten by their pimps or procurers or johns, disocciating, and so their lives are an endless, enduring hellhole of pain, torture, degradation and shame that many do not survive. The pain and torture will not end even if they are so fortunate as to find a way out. Ahead of them will be years and years of post traumatic stress and physical infirmity, often manifested as severe pain in their bodies, pain for which doctors and health professionals have few answers.

Not that I deny that any of that doesn’t exist….but what about the rest of the women whose porn experiences aren’t even close to being that brutal, Heart?? Do they even have the right to even exist?? What about the overwhelming majority of men who actually consume sex work or porn that do manage to treat their clients/performers with respect and dignity?? Do they fall through the Matrix and get dissolved into the GenderBorg Memory Hole because they don’t quite fit into your fantasy world of Woman-as-Essential-Rape-Victim and Man-As-Thrusting-Penis???

You know, my concern is about the men who are “shaming” these women and girls every moment of every day throughout the world or who can’t wait for their next opportunity to do so. My concern is for the girls and women so shamed. My concern is for every girl whose initiation into sexual encounters is or will be brutal and degrading, humiliating, because boys and men think that’s what sex is about or because the girl thinks that’s what sex is supposed to be about and she is trying to be, as a girl, what she is supposed to be. My concern is for all of the women exited or escaped from the sex trade who battle agonizing pain and debilitation every single day because of their experiences of rape, torture, brutality at the hands of men, some of whom read this blog, and not only one person, there is quite a number of women exited from the sex trade who read here. So when I encounter women who have allied themselves with powerful white, heterosexual men (Hustler and its affiliates) and who every day are making a public statement that really, brutal sex is good times, really torture is good times, when I encounter women who agree with male power that the fact that money exchanged hands equals consensual sex, I’m calling it out as publicly as it is being put out there by whoever is putting it out there, and particularly if they are identifying as profeminist. When I encounter women who do this for free because it’s just so damn much fun, guaranteed, I’m calling that out. Because what they are doing harms all of us — men and women, boys and girls — in a way that what each of us does in private never can, does or will. (Which does not mean we should not be talking a lot about what we all do in private, we should be.) What they are doing is promoting, advocating for, phenomena, practices that shore up male heterosupremacy at its very core. And in the process, of course, they shame and erase all the girls and women in the world victimized byall the men who want and buy and make this shit and who are enriched and benefitted by it, with the result that these girls and women are effectively “beaten over the head” and “shamed” for men’s sexual pleasure. I’d suggest, Jill, that your outrage might be misplaced and better directed to those who end up even more likely to be victimized because, heck, privileged white women do it for free, the cool kids do it for free, put a smile on their face and tell the whole world how great it really is, as a cast of male porn publishers, Hustler Magazine, Larry Flynt and consumers of violent, misogynist imagery applaud wildly. Yeah, that’s helpful. That really brings us closer to our full humanity as women.

Ah, yes…so the very existence of “pro-sex” and “pro-porn” feminists (or simply feminists who don’t manage to drink the GenderBorg Kool-Aid) poses a real threat of “silencing” those “prostituted women” who want to speak “the truth” about how damaging and degrading male sexuality (as expressed specifically by the kind of porn that Heart so opposes) really is….and stupid elitist, “privileged” sluts like Renegade Evolution are simply traitors and sellouts as well as mere cumdumpsters and sexbots and Sparkle Ponies who sell real women down the drain by giving approval to such “degradation” and “humiliation”.

Yeah. Just like those dirty queers and Leathermen and their public sex give real homosexuals a bad name with their spreading of HIV/AIDS and mindless pursuit of orgasms rather than searching for the true liberation of monogamy and “intimacy”. Sounds familiar, Heart???

I suppose the substance of, again, this inaugural exchange between us is somewhat unfortunate. But I tell you what, I lay awake nights thinking about how we might end the hate speech that is pornography and prostitution. Lots of us do. Because this causes grave, grave harm to girls and women. I will never stop saying that, I will never stop supporting girls and women so harmed (ALL of us) and I will never stop calling out those who are publicly insisting that really, it’s not all that. If that means I get called out for “shaming” or “beating women over the head” or being a bad feminist, then it will, I guess. I will point out, as I have here, how ludicrous that really is though. I actually do agree with you that feminism is not about shaming women or beating them over the head, but again, I think your indignation is misplaced. There are feminists who do that all the time, it’s the mainstay of their blogging careers, it’s the way they get people to read — shaming and beating other women over the head — and some of them have guest blogged at Feministe’s invitation. You might check that out.

I don’t do that kind of thing, though. You can scour my blog, you will not find it. And calling out apparently profeminist pornographers is not, I don’t think, that.

And so Heart concludes with the ultimate in projection: blaming “feminists” like Jill for allowing the likes of Ren Ev to “shame” and beat down antipornfeminists, and allowing infidels like Ren Ev to freely attack “feminists” and “silence” them.

Not at all like Heart, who has such an open door policy regarding critics of her philosophy. Just ask her friends, like Stormcloud (inventor of the infamous “Bee Anthology”, and stalker of Ren Ev, who threatened to out her to her family); or Witchy-Woo (who showed off her open-mindedness by taunting Ren Ev for her getting fired from her battered women’s shelter two years ago); or Sis/Pony (who flat out called Ren Ev a “whore” ); or Ginmar (who openly spoke that Ren was denying that she was a victim of rape when she had her nose broken recently) or….the list could go on and on, I’d dare say.

No, she doesn’t shame at all. It’s only the others who do it.

Karl Rove couldn’t have built a fascist movement much better.

Two words in conclusion for you, Ms. Cheryl Lynn Seelhoff (and this goes for the rest of the GenderBorg Collective, too): FUCK. OFF.

[Update: Ren Ev sends her finest middle finger salute here.]

Share

Heart(less) And The GenderBorg: Distorting Dissent (Part Two)

Posted on by
Reply

OK…sorry for being a bit late on the continuation of the last post….call me lazy.

When we last left Heart and the GenderBorg gang, they had dispatched the attempts by Renegade Evolution and Hexy to challenge their uniform monolith belief in the innate evil and universal harm that porn and prostitution is on EVERY WOMAN….the latter defined as “every woman who perfectly believes in the GenderBorg’s ideology, that is.

We now fast forward to another portion of the thread, where Heart decides to go after yet another challenger to her hive-mind ideology….namely, Jill Brenneman, former sex worker turned radical feminist turned “harms prevention” advocate.

Now, Jill B’s story requires a bit of background: At one time, she was a total believer in the GenderBorg ideology and even teamed up with various abolitionist organizations and activists; the most notorious of whom happened to be Nikki Craft, who runs the rabid antiporn site NoStatusQuo.com. Then, some time in the beginning of the 2000′s, Jill got a change of heart or some sense got implanted into her, and slowly started to back herself and some of the organizations she backed away from radfem ideology. For that act of apostasy and “betrayal”, Jill has been suffering ever since; including a series of nasty personal attacks on her experiences that Craft posted over at NoStatusQuo’s blog page “Stormwatch”. In one particularly screechy post, Craft goes all out and claims that Jill (then using the nome de guerre Jill Leighton) was using her experiences to trash radfems, if not out right lying about them.

Fast forward back to the WS thread, where Jill attempted to call out Heart directly on who’s doing the “lying” (reprinted in the comments section of Ren’s blog):

While you are focusing on my “lies”….. And how I don’t listen to survivors. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on radical feminist Nikki Craft’s website about me?

http://web.archive.org/web/20040229163134/www.nostatusquo.com/stormwatch/strap-on.html

Of which Nikki defended as Nikki writes” After I put up the stupid little several page website letting people know you had flipped sides, and left it up a few week, long enough for people to know it, I never posted about you again” Actually as verified by third party archive it was much more than a “few week”, was more than just a stupid little website, as in my opinion, this is the worst fear of any survivor, to be publicly called a liar about their experiences, or crazy, as Nikki calls me both and presents it as fact.

Personally, I wouldn’t do that to anyone. Regardless of politics or any other reason.

Are you willing to publicly deal with this? Nikki wages these efforts even with your allies all for the sake of radical feminist purity.

Should you choose to hide from this issue, it will be a statement of how you respond to survivors when this kind of incident is perpetrated against a survivor considered beneath others, and perpetrated by a radical feminist.

Why do you align with this kind of feminist Heart

Needless to say, that comment didn’t make it past Heart’s moderation. Get a load of Heart’s proclamation to her blog as to why; it is classic in the way Joe McCarthy and Karl Rove are at personal slander.

on 11 Sep 2008 at 4:17 pm137admin Identicon Icon admin

Note to Jill Brennemann:

In the comment of yours in moderation now, you’ve attacked a radical feminist woman, documenting your attack by linking to a repost of a 2003 thread at Strap-On.org. First may I say, Strap-On.org is not a reliable source of information so far as radical feminism goes. It’s a transgender site with a history of attacking radical feminists.

But to try to figure out what you were referring to, I followed the links in the link you provided back a ways through the web archive you linked to.

From my reading, you were involved with an organization called “Escape Prostitution”, http://www.escapeprostitution.com, in the early 2000s, and at that time, you were an abolitionist helping women to leave the sex trade. Radical feminists and abolitionists who knew of this organization referred women in the sex trade to the organization. At some point in 2002-2003 you changed your mind and begin advocating for “harm reduction” instead. For a while, women in the sex trade who were referred to Escape Prostitution for support in exiting found themselves instead at a “sex work” site not specifically for women who wanted out. Radical feminists were appropriately angered by this about face, which occurred rather abruptly and without warning. It looks like you closed the website down, but then for a while, some sort of abusive image or text was popping up, again, angering radical feminists who had supported your formerly abolitionist work.

Also around this time you were involved with another organization, “PROSPER.” Early on this was a radical feminist organization. As part of your work with this group, you advocated for bringing on a woman as board president who was not a feminist and who in the end changed the focus of the organization such that it no longer had a feminist focus and took a neutral stance towards “sex work”. The result was that at least one radical feminist left her work with PROSPER and wrote about it later.

This is two organizations that were once feminist or radical feminist and which focused on helping women exit the sex trade that after your involvement no longer had that focus.

Of course, radical feminists who supported your work are going to be angry about this! One of them wrote about what had happened, she was angry, she left it up for a while and she took it down. You note in your own comment that it isn’t up anymore. I’m sure if it was, you’d have sent me the link.

Yet you somehow want me to join you in condemning the radical feminist who wrote about this feeling angry and betrayed and rightfully so. You wonder why I am allies with “people like this”, siting to the fact that, you say and I guess you think the Strap-On thread somehow proves, that this radfem disputed your history.

I don’t know what happened there. I have learned to take just about everything posted to Strap-On about radical feminists (!) with a grain of salt. I do know that it would be highly upsetting for radfems to have trusted you and supported you in your leadership in two nonprofit organizations designed to help women leave the sex trade, only to watch as you do a 180-degree turn, blaming radfems for it!

I think you’d best take a look at your own alliances, no? There are people you are allied with who have spent much, much time calling women, radical feminists and not, liars, disputing what they say about their lives, realities and histories, calling them crazy, calling them every name in the book, launching ridiculous but damaging attacks, and in some cases, threatening and stalking us. So, how about you check that out.

Also, I don’t respond well to threats along the lines of, “If you don’t approve my comment, that will prove that everything I want it to prove is so!” No. I don’t really want to get into any of this stuff more than I have in this comment, it’s a morass, and I do not think you would come out looking so well in the end either.

For the record, I don’t fault you for changing your mind. People change their minds. I don’t even fault you for changing your mind quickly. I do fault you for blaming radical feminists for a change of mind that resulted in them supporting you for a while when your organizations had completed changed to something they wouldn’t normally have supported, but did, because they trusted you. I do blame you for attempting to use my blog to launch an attack on a radical feminist who works really hard, was understandably feeling betrayed by you, and who doesn’t have anything up on the internet right now about you at all. Why you think I should attack her on your and Strap-On’s say so, I have no idea.

There is but one small problem with Heart’s missive: The actual post linked in Jill’s original post that was rejected goes not to the StrapOn.org site, but to a post by none other than Nikki Craft HERSELF, at her own site NoStatusQuo.com, where she attaches some posts from a thread that came from StrapOn.org to a piece that all but calls Jill a liar, and even denies that she (Nikki) ever worked with Jill in the first place A direct quote from that particular post:


Unfortunately in order to “reposition” herself she’s having to lie about her work in prostitution. These lies are documented and will be posted soon here on STORMWATCH. And I don’t know who didn’t allow her to speak if she didn’t bleed for them. Ironically, at one point I felt if I had to read another of her postings I would leave the list she was posting her “Jill as ultimate victim” postings on.

It should be noted that I have never worked with Jill Leighton, never would have because I found out early on she was a liar and untrustworthy, have only had a few email exchanges with her over the years, and have had no connection with IDNP, would never believe that prostitution could be eliminated, and I am fully aware that many women go into prostitution because they “choose” to do so.

In these emails Leighton claims I am writing threats to her, which is not true. I will be writing more about these threats on this website.

Nikki Craft, 11.19.03

Once again, we see the GenderBorg Doctrine as enforced by Heart in full force: If you are a victim of violence and a woman, your experience will be respected…provided that you completely give yourself in full to the GenderBorg ideology; any variation from that, however, makes you an outright enemy to the sisterhood, and your personal experiences of abuse are automatically rebuked and ignored.

As Jill followed up in a post at Ren’s place:

Few thoughts on Heart.

She is calling Nikki’s website an attack on Nikki. Check out what Nikki had to say about me.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040229163134/www.nostatusquo.com/stormwatch/strap-on.html

Heart doesn’t reveal the information source of Nikki’s calling a survivor, in this case me, because it reveals the very top part is written by Nikki.

And later on in the thread:

Heart can’t post my post in it’s entirety. If she did it would reveal http://web.archive.org/web/20040229163134/www.nostatusquo.com/stormwatch/strap-on.html

Is archived by www.waybackmachine.org and that the waybackmachine crawled Nikki’s site to get this. Heart doesn’t provide this link, tries to make it sound as if I posted the shit about myself on strap on board. No,,, It was Nikki.

She backtracks some as she posts later that Nikki was justified because she was upset with the conversion of Escape the Prostituiton Prevention Project to harm reduction/trans theoretical.
Please, someone tell me how that would justify what nikki did?

On top of it, I didn’t even make the decision about Escape converting to a trans theoretical model. That was made by the Board of Directors of which I was not.

To add insult to injury, the reason why Escape became Prosper and ended the rad fem format was because of Nikki and Melissa. Nikki and Melissa threw their weight at radical feminists that had contributed to Escape and it’s website. Aside from Kelly Holsopple and Katherine Depasquale, all withdrew their material. All of the radical feminists quit the board of directors. It left a huge hole to fill, and given that Escape was suddenly persona non grata in radical feminism, gee, radical feminists wouldn’t join the org, so the board positions went to non radical feminists.

So Heart not only justifies Nikki’s actions but she throws in her own threat warning me if I continue to push this issue I won’t come out looking good. Oh yeah I will because the truth is entirely on my side and Heart, is lying to cover up the truth.

Be careful who you threaten Heart. You might not like the consequences if you act on the threat. And take that however you like Heart.

Oh and Heart. For someone so proud of her perception skills. It is fucking Brenneman, not Brennemann.

And the half effort to raise the trans issue Heart. Gee, maybe I’m trans as the last three letters of my name are man. That is fucking conclusive proof right there.

Yeah…the transsexual bashing doesn’t exactly help, either.

And then, Jill clears the record once and for all. I’ll simply repost it here without comment.

Jill Leighton/Jill Brenneman are the same. A movie producer for Paramount Pictures owns the rights to Jill Leighton the name and the story. This is through 2010. The producer and I were at huge creative differences of opinion over how much artistic license he could take in the screenplay as I balked at fictional rescuing characters to the level that he wanted. He had in mind a fictional family member hooking up with a fictional police officer of the Harvy Keitel, Thelma & Louise variation with a huge change in facts to make it work on Lifetime Television.

Nikki Craft. Yes the one and same Nikki Craft. Nikki feigned being very upset at the ideological change of what was then Escape The Prostitution Prevention Project to include harm reduction. Actually it was total disingenuous shit as Nikki coulnd’t have care less about as she phrased it “women who were traumatized and just wanted to get out of prostitution and went to the website only to be horrified at seeing harm reduction”

Nikki wasn’t so horrified that she didn’t contact virtually all of the website’s material contributors and pressured them, along with Farley’s assistance to remove their material from the site. Nikki and Melissa did very well in that effort as most did withdraw consent to use the material. It was replaced with harm reduction and eventually sex worker rights material although the organization did not fully covert to sex worker rights until 2006.

Same Melissa Farley. Despite my stint in the radical feminist movement, there were significant problems between Melissa and I and unresolvable issues between Nikki and I. Nikki’s ethical breaches are astonishing.

Heart supports Nikki’s website feeling that I must have planted the archived evidence to discredit Nikki. Not possible. It is archived on a third party archival portal called www.waybackmachine.org

The material that Heart refers to was crawled at Nikki’s website www.nostatusquo.com/stormwatch/index.html Which Nikki called an active disaster in the anti prostitution movement. The archives that heart believes could be falsified are crawled and archived with nikki’s nostatusquo.com url still embedded.

Heart’s post on this later indicates that Nikki’s behavior as illustrated by the blatant calling my experiences delusional lies and mocking and embellishing them for effect, as justified as rightful anger by radical feminists who were upset with the orgs ideology change.

While it is inappropriate for anyone else to remotely even defend themselves when Heart’s allies are going to be the recipient of any hostility. Any level of abuse is fine if the recipient is not a radical feminist and the perps are.

Outstanding feminism there Heart. The same logic is used by batterers. If only she didn’t make him so angry he wouldn’t have battered her……… It’s ok to be a batterer and abuser according to Heart, if the abuser is a radical feminist that has been made angry.

Heartless woman, that Cheryl Lynn Seelhoff. And that’s no smack intended at all.

——————————————-

One more example before I close this: further down the thread there is a discussion on how women victims of violence will sometimes engage in “self-harm”, that is injuring themselves deliberately, as a means of coping with the extreme violence. That moved Hexy, who was a victim of violence, to attempt to bring in her own experiences…which prompted this exchange with Laurelin, who is as hard core an radfem as it is, but obviously shows an actual bit of compassion for a fellow human being. (All comments were reprinted by Hexy at her blog Hexpletive).

First, a couple of comments by Laurelin:

121laurelin

I think there’s a biological/chemical component too. We know that bulimic women, for example, and women who cut, experience a sense of relief when they do these things that is caused by the release of endorphins.

I was a self-harmer, and although I wouldn’t say (even then I wouldn’t have said) that I ‘enjoyed’ it, it did, as you say, give me a release from intense emotion, no matter how brief. But it was still harmful. My arms, my thighs were still cut up and bleeding. I still felt the pain.

It was harmful.

122laurelin

‘Enjoying’ self-harm has to be seen in the context in which it takes place- in the midst of severe emotional pain or trauma.

Here’s Hexy’s response:

129hexy

Laurelin:

I had quite a lengthy period of self-injury, when I first got sick. I wouldn’t say I “enjoyed” it, but I would say it kept me alive.

One of those situations where the person in my head, me, gets to decide whether it was the best choice under the circumstances.

Hexy didn’t say whether that comment made it through moderation, but I will assume that it did.

Laurelin’s response was actually quite respectful and civil, almost human in considering the issue:

131laurelin

Hexy- I was not trying to say that self-harm is the ‘wrong’ choice, or that one should be prevented from chosing it. I am just saying that the context must be taken into consideration. I don’t agree that self-harm was a ‘free choice’ for me- it was one of a number of what I consider to be lousy choices available at the time.

132laurelin

and also the self-harm I undertook perhaps had some beneficial aspects… as far as my own experience goes, I can’t say for sure. But I do ultimately think that I harmed myself too, in the sense that my body was damaged (however superficially) by it.

Hope that makes sense. This is very hard to verbalise.

OK….so there are fundamental disagreements there, but at least an attempt at a genuine dialogue. Maybe, perhaps, there may be a real common ground forming??

Yeah, right.

Enter Heart with the stink bomb to slam the door shut on that.

133admin

Laurelin: Hexy- I was not trying to say that self-harm is the ‘wrong’ choice, or that one should be prevented from chosing it. I am just saying that the context must be taken into consideration.

The discussion at issue was about what self-harm in the context of male heterosupremacy means for women.

Responding to that by saying, as you basically have, Hexy, “Well, I wanted to,” is not a response at all. It is not in good faith. It’s an attempt at a reversal, a trying to make Laurelin the Big Meanie, as though she was saying fuck-all about you or what you might have chosen, ever. She was talking about HER OWN LIVED REALITY and her thoughts about it, she wasn’t saying ANYTHING about what you may or may not have done sometime, let alone about what you “get” to decide.

There’s been this ongoing ignoring on the part of the pro-sex trade side of basically everything that has been posted here *by survivors*. That’s why there are a whole bunch of spammed comments to this thread that are not going to see the light of day. There will be actual, respectful *engagement* — not this glossing over and just saying, over and over again, well, I like to work out, I like to shave, I chose to self harm, you’re a meanie for bringing it up, as though any of that is even remotely relevant — or comments will not, again, be approved. Ignoring survivors who are putting themselves out there, risking becoming ill because they ARE putting themselves out there, to just assert and reassert, essentially, that their lives don’t matter to you at all, all that matters to you is what you, yourself, might have wanted to do some time, amounts to erasure. It is destructively and triggeringly dismissive. It’s what men do to us 24/7.

Imagine that: a person’s full recounting of all her pain and suffering and hurt just flippantly dismissed and reduced to “I wanted to self-harm”…..all because she’s not one of THE CHOSEN ONES, THE TRUE FEMINISTS. I guess that only those women who are 120% with GenderBorg ideology will have their struggles endorsed as “survivors”….the rest of the womanhood can simply go straight to Hell, or else they must be lying, like Jill Brenneman did, like Ren did about her recent bad night with racist rednecks, or like Hexy did about….well, her entire life. Not even Laurelin thought that Hexy’s response was “meanie”, but who cares when you are in the middle of raging against the “Man-chine” and protecting your ideological flank against apostates and outsiders???

Obviously, Hexy was stunned enough to post this rejoinder….which, quite naturally, didn’t make it through Heart’s filters.

136hexy
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Laurelin:

Hexy- I was not trying to say that self-harm is the ‘wrong’ choice, or that one should be prevented from chosing it. I am just saying that the context must be taken into consideration. I don’t agree that self-harm was a ‘free choice’ for me- it was one of a number of what I consider to be lousy choices available at the time.

That I do agree with. Context is vitally important. I think you and I may just differ on how we see the best of a crappy selection of choices: to me, the ability to make that choice is still an act of power, however slight. I could choose to harm, or I could give in and die. The alternative made it a strong choice for me.

and also the self-harm I undertook perhaps had some beneficial aspects… as far as my own experience goes, I can’t say for sure. But I do ultimately think that I harmed myself too, in the sense that my body was damaged (however superficially) by it.

Hope that makes sense. This is very hard to verbalise.

I understand the difficulty. When I first began to try and vocalise my experiences of self-injury and what the experience meant to me, it was near impossible to put those feelings into words.

I wrote about my relationship with my SI scars recently. It sounds like you and I see the damage done to skin very differently. Those scars to me are now proof of a battle won, not proof of damage. We all prioritise these things differently, though, and I in no way mean to imply that your understanding of your scars and your experience is wrong or bad… I am simply pointing out that, like everything else we’re been discussing, the internal experience varies wildly from woman to woman even when the external experience looks similar.

Thank you for addressing me courteously, btw, it’s something you’ve never failed to do.

Heart:

Responding to that by saying, as you basically have, Hexy, “Well, I wanted to,” is not a response at all.

“Well, I wanted to”? ?

That’s how you read what I wrote? Laurelin seemed to recognise my experience. Your ability to recognise suffering and trauma in women seems firmly wedded to how closely their ideology resembles yours.

I didn’t self injure because I “wanted to”, Heart. I self-injured because if I didn’t find some way to ground the riot of pain in my head, to vent it and connect it to my body, I was going to kill myself. That you can read the words “[self-injury] kept me alive” and translate it to “well, I wanted to” really explains so much of the apparent understanding going on here. Talk about denial of lived reality!

Oh, and as for “what you may or may not have done sometime”? Such dismissive language, even as you accuse women of using the same. I wish I could show you my skin right now… years of using self-injury as a coping mechanism certainly, as Laurelin pointed out, leaves its mark on your skin.

[...]

137hexy
Your comment is awaiting moderation.

As for the words you’ve quoted from various prostituted women? I haven’t commented on them apart from saying that they’re important and should be heard because, well, I think they’re important and should be heard. What else would I say?

Women expressing their experiences = not something I’m going to argue with. Women denying mine, however? Well, see above posts.

The next comment is from Hexy at her own blog; it breaks the issue down succinctly:

Apparently, in addition to not caring how stressful and harmful it might be to those of us not on “Heart’s side” (I reject the label “pro-sex-trade” quite vehemently) to have no respectful engagement regarding our experiences, to have our experiences ignored when we put ourselves out there and risk our mental health to be beaten down and erased by women who only care about the lives, stories and pain of women who fit the right narrative, it’s now entirely acceptable to dismiss, minimise and erase the experiences of women who have battled serious mental illness and experienced self-harm and self-injury. I’m stuck wondering if there is any female experience Heart won’t co-opt as her own.

Doesn’t matter, hexy…because in the alter-world that Heart and the GenderBorg belong in, you are either with them or with the patriarchy, with them or with the “pornographers”, with then or….you’re a MAN (or at least, an apologist for MEN). Your experience doesn’t count unless and until you accept St. Andrea (Dwokin) as your personal savior and Sam Berg, Nikki Craft, and the rest of the Ministry of Women-Identified Women as your personal preachers. Anything less is surrender and death.

As I’ve said often, the “radical feminism” of Maggie Hays, Cheryl Lynn “Heart” Seelhoff, Sam Berg, Nikki Craft, and the rest of the GenderBorg Collective is about as feminist and radical as Sarah Palin is a feminist. And I’d bet that even Ms. Dan Quayle would be a perfect fit for this cult, too.

Pardon me now while I take a long, hot shower to remove the stench of frozen shit off my body. UGGGGGH.



Share

As Promised: Maggie Hays Shadow Boxing Pro-Porn Sand Castles (The Full Fisking)

Posted on by
1

OK….enough dilly dallying around; time to shake the trees and rake the leaves; mow the grass and kick some…..ahhhh, I mean, debunk some Maggie Hays lies.

You may remember that I commented that Maggie’s bombast about the “porno-iarchy” was only the SECOND whackiest post she had done on the subject.

As long winded and long that essay was, it doesn’t compare in sheer lunacy to an earlier essay that the Grand Sage of Antipornography Feminists had posted which supported to debunk what she perceived as “Bullshit Pro-Porn Arguments,” which she proposed that antiporn feminists could dispatch “With Confidence”.

Problem is, though, that most of Maggie’s inventive straw arguments that she claims to overthrow are simply inventions of her own cracked mind, pretty much used for the usual buttressing up of her standard boilerplate agitprop about porn’s capital offenses against “women and children”.

I will use the same methods and syntax as Ren Ev did in her debunking of the “Porno-iarchy” blast; but the words spoken by me are mine alone.

And no, I did not ask permission to paste this from Maggie’s blog; unlike her, I know what Fair Use is.

And a-waaaaaaaaay we go:

Begin with a photo of a broken record; then Maggie starts up:

See this? Yeah, that’s a broken record. I chose this image for this post because I sincerely believe that all the pro-porners, pro-prostitutionists, pro-sexploitation folks, pro-hate speech & pro-”sex work” activists (or whatever you rad fems wanna call them) sound like a fucking broken record with all their “same old shit” reactionary arguments that do nothing whatsoever to help women as a class, arguments that, on the contrary, bolster the patriarchal anti-woman status quo. Thus, I have decided to write a a list of the porn apologists’ bullshit arguments.

Ahhh, Maggie, dear…bad analogy; most of us now use CD’s and DVDs and iPods and mp3 players, now. Get with the program, please.

I’ll get to the delicious irony of Maggie Hays calling anyone out as “reactionary” and talking about “women as a class” soon enough.

I know these are all parts of the same broken record we hear every day; I know that some people (especially some men) are so stupid and stubborn in defending such a widespread violation of women’s bodies in order to maintain their own selfish sexual pleasure, I know all this. I also know that the pro-pornstitution folks are not only folks we meet online. The pro-porners we meet online are so easy to avoid or dismiss when we want to ignore them (thank fuck for that) while the pro-porners we meet offline are most often our co-workers, classmates, friends, even sometimes partners and so on. These offline people who defend porn aren’t so easy to avoid and, more or less often, we find ourselves in a conversation on pornography with them at some point.

It usually happens like this: They suddenly bring up pornography or prostitution for whatever reason, as part of a “joke” that we don’t find funny at all (but rather sad — as we do know that there’s a terrible sexual slavery going on out there and people keep on denying it) or simply because they’ve been influenced by pornified pop culture. Then we feel like we cannot tolerate these pro-porn arguments any longer so we start informing them on what we know about the sexual slavery industry. But, unfortunately, we’re feeling so upset that we just stop talking. There is just so much to say and we don’t know where to start. And, on top of that, there they go! Talking the same old reactionary bullshit arguments we’ve heard ten thousand times again and again, sounding like the same old broken record. . . And we start losing our confidence. . . so we stop talking.

Therefore I prepared this handy “Porn Apologists’ Bullshit Arguments List and How to Respond to Them with Confidence” collection in order to help myself and other rad fems to challenge those apologies confidently IRL. I constructed it as a dialog:

Just call it “The Official Maggie Hays Talking Points for Shouting Down Critics of Their Ideology” list, I guess. Perfect for witnessing those on the fence.

The list then starts rolling: I shall debunk each one as they come. “Porn Apologist” is the role played by the hypothetical “pro-porn” strawman argument; “Rad Fem” refers to Maggie’s response. (I’m also keeping all the links they use to their biases sources alive, just to prove the point.)

Porn Apologist: Women freely choose to sell their bodies in pornography and in prostitution. How can you criticize the women’s consent to be in porn?

Rad Fem: Contrary to myths, radical feminists have never criticized women’s involvement in the pornography industry as performers. Instead, we focus on the difficulties within which they make their choice to participate. Documentaries and articles on pornography in the mainstream media (which generally pick a very small number of performers out of the so much larger number of porn performers out there) typically show pornography performers as “happy women who have made a totally free choice”. However, the reality of the circumstances within which the vast majority of those women entered the porn industry are very much different from this whole mainstream media glamorization crap. A lot of thorough research on prostitution (based on interviewing hundreds and hundreds of prostituting women) has shown that child sexual or physical abuse or neglect, poverty, economic hardship, past experience of battery or rape, trafficking, socialization to the sexist and racist pornified culture, etc. are key factors for women who enter the ‘sex’ industry. Feminists do not condemn the women who are in the industry, but we empathize with them. We understand that they are terribly exploited and harmed in this industry. As one woman who used to prostitute said that, while she was in prostitution, she would have yelled from the roof-tops how wonderful being a prostitute was, but that, while now she’s still healing from her prostitution experience, she has “found that the worse thing of exiting prostitution is seeing the real reasons [she] became a prostitute. Seeing it could of never been a choice. It was just a way to self-destruct.”[sic]

Hmmmmm, never criticized women’s involvement in porn, Maggie??? Really?? So this wouldn’t be considered criticism of women performers, in your mind:

“Look at the industry’s biggest star, Jenna Jameson, who appears to control her business life. However in her book [How To Make Love Like A Porn Star] she reports that she was raped as a teenager and describes the ways in which men in her life pimped her. Her desperation for money also comes through when she tried to get a job as a stripper but looked too young — she went into a bathroom and pulled off her braces with pliers. She also describes drug abuse and laments the many friends in the industry she lost to drugs. And this is the woman said to have the most power in the pornography industry.” — Gail Dines and Robert Jensen, Article Pornography is a Left Issue (2005).

[transcribed from "Jenna Jameson: Porn Star Myth" from AgainstPornography.org]

Who cares that Jenna has publically in the same biography that Bob and Gail quoted so lovingly made clear that she has never been coerced by anyone within the porn industry, and that all the choices she made within the industry — including the bouts with drug abuse — were solely her responsibility, not the industry’s?? In the mind of the antiporn “feminists”, it’s all the same.

Oh….and how can Jenna’s career in porn directly be related to her rape as a teenager?? Osmosis?? Karma?? The notion that only women who suffer such traumas as rape are the ones ending up in porn, if not becoming successful?? OK, then what does that say for women like Nina Hartley, who has, by my last recollection, never been raped?? Or women like Vicky Vette, who only started out in porn in her late 30s…and whom has also never been raped as a teen or young adult??

And no, Maggie…simply quoting a former prostitute-turned-radical antiporn antiprostitution activist (however her personal experiences should be respected and acknowledged) as if she represents ALL porn performers (never mind that Rebecca Mott never did porn to begin with, BTW) just won’t wash either.

But then again, when you are as much of an ideological zealot as Maggie is, nuances like the diversity of experiences and respect for individuals don’t tend to enter the picture.

And once again, notice the way that Maggie conflates porn and prostitution as the same entity. For the last time (today), Mags: Prostitution is when you pay someone to have sex with them; Porn is where you pay to SEE someone have sex WITH OTHERS or WITH THEMSELVES. There is a difference.

Porn Apologist: Women in porn make a lot of money anyway.

Rad Fem: Some research and testimonies have suggested that most strippers, prostitutes and pornography performers do not make a lot of money. Although some do, the idea that all of them make a lot of money is another part of the pornographers’ and the mainstream media’s propaganda. Most female porn performers do not get rich, particularly due to their brief “shelf lives” — male consumers often want to see new women being exploited — so even if pornstituted females initially command a high rate per scene or per movie, their market value as “fresh meat” declines rapidly. Thus, even if there are a few really famous porn “actresses”, the vast majority of the women in pornography leave that business feeling exploited, pained and ashamed by this terrible experience or after being considered “overexposed” by the consumers and producers. So, the pornography industry keeps using and discarding female bodies after having used those human beings as if they were pieces of meat. There have been words coming from people who have been involved in the industry to testify of this brutal reality. Besides, even if these women get paid for performing in porn, does it mean that it should excuse the extensive physical, psychological and emotional harms done to them? So, once a woman has been paid, the torture committed against her body is expiated, huh? Well, that’s an incredibly cruel and unfair way of reasoning! No amount of money whatsoever should excuse any harm done to a woman’s body.

Well…let’s see. Now, there are the few contract girls and former Playmates/Pets/Honeys who can make a ton of money through websites and feature dancing as well as porn performing, and some, with decent financial planning and a sense of what they want to do, can even thrive enough to get rich. And then there are the many in the majority who get in, get their hits in for enough to supplant their middle-class lifestyles, and then get out to do less strenuous and more mundane tasks for a living. How they actually leave the business, though, is mostly a reflection of how they entered the business and what attitudes and objectives and goals they went into the business with. Obviously, some experiences are more traumatic than others; but to say that “torture” and “physical, psychological, and emotional harm” should be considered the default experience for ALL porn performers is nothing short of libelous to the many performers who don’t share Maggie’s ideological bias.

And what a bias she does show, too. The one source that she cites to prove her position that porn is innately evil: An article from AgainstPornography.com citing quotes from Traci Lords (and remember, SHE lied about her age to get into adult videos), to the antiporn documentary Not For Sale, to even Shelley Lubben’s blog. (That would be Shelley Lubben, the former starlet turned born-again Christian. You were saying, Maggie, about your movement rejecting Christian Rightists???)

Also….see Ernest Greene’s breakdown of the typical porn pay structure taken from here:

In het porn, female players can and do charge by the specific act. A few make big bucks, but most have pretty standard rates. Lesbian porn, as distinct from girl-girl material made for male audiences, is mostly pro-am for small production companies and it commands the dead-lowest rate, somewhere south of five hundred dollars per scene.

I can’t resist wondering aloud if the poster here who suggested that straight guys who don’t like their rates should just bend over and spread for other men would make a similar suggestion to lesbians. Somehow I very much doubt it.

Pro GG with no extras (vanilla licky-licky with fingers and a small toy or two) brings in anywhere from six hundred bucks to a grand, depending on the performer’s current popularity. Use of an anal toy kicks that up another couple of hundred.

A BJ-only boy-girl is rarely more than five hundred for the girl.

A vage-only boy-girl for a female performer is typically around seven hundred, with a few players being able to command a thousand. Twelve hundred is the going rate for anal with one male partner, though fifteen hundred isn’t outrageous for someone with an established name. A first anal or a first BG might run up to five thousand dollars, but that trick only works once and only for a fortunate few who come in as former Penthouse Pets or whatever and can command a premium for existing name value.

Stunt sex – DPs, ATMs, ATOGMs, double anals, double vages, cream pies, gang bangs and so on obviously escalate the price, sometimes into the thousands, but there are plenty of female players who do stunt sex for a lot less. However, you can bet that whatever they’re making, they’re making more than the guys they’re doing it with.

This is not because, as someone on this thread has suggested in a display of breath-taking ignorance, there is such a glut of male talent just clamoring to get in here they’re practically a dime a dozen. That would be good for a laugh if it weren’t such a blatant insult to the few men who actually do try to make the cut. In fact, the reason you see the same dudes over and over and over and over in video after video is because they are the ones who not only will have sex for the camera, but can do so with predictable results. That is a very small group of men. Sure, lots of horny dudes think they’d make great porn studs. About one male civilian under thirty in every ten I meet asks me if I thought he could be then next John Holmes. It takes me two questions to sort them out. Does he have a dick that’s at least ten inches long fully erect? Can he get it fully erect, keep it that way for an hour and then have a visible ejaculation in front of a room full bored men with no other source of stimulation, visual or otherwise? If the answer to either is negative, he has no chance.

In other words, Maggie, it isn’t just a matter of Average Man with HYOOGE Dick reporting to the studios with his dick hard and having a woman picked off the streets to plow into. And it’s just a bit more than just evil looking men in trenchcoats riding along in SUV’s and Hummers tracking down young women and locking them up in dungeons to have their way with them. There are still consent forms and procedures and HIV/STD tests and pre-shoot preparations before anything even begins to happen.

Let’s continue:

Porn Apologist: Pornography is not prostitution.

Rad Fem: The fact is that pornography IS prostitution, plus a camera.

See the last paragraph responding to point #1 above. Plus….if porn is prostitution with the camera, then would married couples having sex for free but taping their “sexcapades” for their own pleasure be considered prostitution, or porn?? Or both??

Porn Apologist: Look, prostitution is the world’s oldest profession. It should be legalized and regulated. That would make it safer.

Rad Fem: Prostitution is NOT the oldest profession, pimping is! Countries where prostitution has been legalized have become Number One destinations for traffickers. There is no evidence that legalization in any way benefits women in prostitution — indeed it simply legalizes the harm caused to women. Prostitution is inherently a form of violence against women and a violation of women’s human rights and dignity as persons. The belief that prostitution is “sex work” is being a direct cause for the widespread international and domestic trafficking of women and children for prostitution. The Netherlands (where prostitution is regarded as “just a job like another”) remains one of the primary destinations for victims of human trafficking (as again recently reported in the article “Home Office goes to Amsterdam for prostitution ideas” in politics.co.uk) and half the window brothels over there have been closed since 2006 because of an exponential rise in organized crime and money laundering and also the trafficking of women and children. Legalization is, in effect, a failed experiment.

Oh, this be prime bullshit here….let’s break this one down, shall we??

Never mind that “trafficking of women” is far more likely to occur in areas where prostitution is expressly criminalized (ever heard of Thailand, Maggie?? Indonesia??? The Cayman Islands???) and where attitudes about porn and women and sexuality are the most conservative and reactionary and explicitly “antifeminist”….and nearly as zealous about “protecting women from pornography and prostitution” as Maggie is. And forget about the basic fact that the same people who are most likely to support criminalization of sex work and sexual media tend to be the biggest consumers of porn and the ones most likely to be busted doing the same damn activities they would put others in jail for…or worse. See Senator Larry Craig, Senator David Vitter, former Governor Eliot Spitzer, Jimmy Swaggart, et.al.

Now, it should be noted that Amsterdam does have currently a more conservative government that is now in the process of questioning their more liberal stance towards sex in general….but that in no way justifies Maggie’s view that legalization is so failed and that her beloved “Swedish Model” is the only solution to the problem. (And also note that New Zealand has its own experiment with legalization that is five years old; the book is still out on that one, I’d think.)

And of course, the idea that legalized brothels in Amsterdam have anything whatsoever to do with the lives and professions of porn performers and sex workers in the United States — most of which operate out of their homes in private with their own websites and mom-and-pop productions, is a mystery that only Maggie can solve in her own special fashion. Not even the legalized brothels in Nevada, all of Melissa Fairley’s and Bob Herbert’s slanders notwithstanding.

Porn Apologist: Sexuality is good. Why are you anti-sex?

Rad Fem: Being against pornography and prostitution does not equate being against sex, FFS. Sexuality is just a part of being human and may involve a lot of strong feelings of affection and connection to another person when a sense of genuine care is involved. But pornography is stripped of any empathy and it fuses sexual desire with the degradation and abuse of women. Being against pornography does not mean being against sex, it simply means having recognized that there is a sexual world of imagination based on equality & respect and that goes beyond sexuality as simple “domination/subordination”.

This be another good one: the old “We’re not prudes, we really do LOVE sex…just OUR kind of sex” meme that is thrown up constantly in the “You’re victimizing us!!” frame. As porn literally speaking simply means the depiction of sex acts between human beings, the question certainly can be asked of Maggie and her allies: Is there any explicit depiction of sex involving a man and a woman together that you wouldn’t consider to be “degrading” and “abusive” to women?? I mean, loving couples can indeed have anal sex, or oral sex, or pretend to play dominant/submissive roles or role play, and single women can indeed masturbate using dildos and vibrators for their own pleasure. But being against that doesn’t make you any more of a prudish, anti-sex bigot…now doesn’t it???

If the shoe fits comfortably, Maggie, why not just wear it with pride??

Porn Apologist: Only conservative right wingers criticize porn. Are you a religious zealot?

Rad Fem: Radical feminists have, for a long time, opposed Christianity by recognizing it as patriarchal religion. Mary Daly, for example, is a prominent radical feminist writer of the feminist critique of Christianity. Radical feminists usually see Christianity as patriarchal and oppressive to women. So, no, I’m certainly not religious and I’m very much of an atheist. Perpetuating the myth that radical feminists “are siding with religious zealots” just because we oppose pornography has always been one of the favorite pro-porn tactics of the so-called “sex poz” lobby.

Oh, Maggie, just stop it!! We are well aware that there has always been a grand tradition of Puritanism amongst not only the Left, but of secularists and atheists; no one group is immune to anti-sexual discourse and ideology. And just because “radfems” may reject the explicit piousness of organized religion and the specific rhetoric of direct slut-blaming of women (particularly “feminists” who defy the supposedly Christian role of the woman as wife and mother) for the social ills of society, doesn’t mean that they aren’t capable of confiscating antiporn and anti-sex rhetoric for their own purposes.

And as for the alliance between radicalfeminists and Christian/Islamic Rightists: well that is so well known to be dismissed; from the passage of Catherine MacKinnon’s famous Indianapolis antiporn ordinance in the mid 1980′s through a Republican majority council; to the Meese Commisioner’s Pornography report which basically appropriated the Dworkin-MacKinnon doctrine of “porn degrades women by reducing them to sex objects” (while rejecting their methods of attacking porn through “civil rights” ordinances, preferring the old school form of obscenity enforcement and jail sentences); to the Bush Administration’s funding of “anti-trafficking” activists like Fairley (with the full approval of leading antiporn feminist activists like Donna Hughes, who even called Dubya a positive force, regardless of his overall antifeminism).


Porn Apologist: If there weren’t any porn, there’d be more rape.

Rad Fem: Do we ever suggest that the availability of loads of films showing children being beaten up would reduce child physical abuse? Of course not, because we know it’s not the case. So why would it be different with pornography? Few rapes get reported to the police and correlational studies only based on reported rapes have limits. While a few studies have shown a decrease in reported rapes, many other correlational studies, as shown here, have shown dramatic increases in sexual violence with the availability of pornography. Pornography has no “catharthic” effect whatsoever. Also, this “catharthic effect” porn apologist excuse quite sounds like a threat: “We need pornography or we will rape more!” Blah-the-fucking-blah. . .

By the numbers here:

1) Aside from the lunacy of comparing depictions of children being beaten with images of consenting adults having sex, there is this nagging fact that actually taping the act of children being beaten is evidence of a crime (corporal punishment aside). Besides, no one has seriously argued that actively censoring depictions of children being beaten would in any way reduce the rate of child physical abuse (as opposed to, I don’t know, prosecuting the abusers themselves, maybe???)….so why should porn be held to that standard??

2) “Correlational studies”, Maggie?? Yeah, right….you think that we wouldn’t notice that your “correlational studies” are all tainted by bias towards your position….and all of them have been thoroughly debunked by more reputable research?? (No wonder you attack them as “anti-woman”, ehhh??)

3) And of this “carthartic effect”: the only such theory that I’ve heard from is that porn induces men to sexual arousal (Ahhh..duuuh!!!!), which is quickly relieved through masturbation (which, in case you haven’t heard, Maggie, rapes no one but the offending hand); thusly, porn offers a safe relief valve for sexual arousal that would otherwise be resolved in less safe ways (through the next door neighbor or the nearest alter boy or simply whomever’s availaable at the moment). But of course, masturbation is nothing more than a male-centered means of imprisoning women to the patriarchy/”porno-iarchy”..so that’s gotta go, too!!

And once again…consider the source that Maggie uses….which includes some activists once again from the Religious Right.

Porn Apologist: Pornography has no effect whatsoever. It’s only a fantasy.

Rad Fem: So why do corporations spend billions of dollars each year on mass-mediated advertising if not precisely because they know ads have effects on people? Why would it be different with pornography? Pornography HAS effects, negative ones! Besides, as I said before, “an industry which relies on the suffering of half the population in order to keep catering to its ever-expanding demand is not fantasy!” Fantasy is in the head. Pornography is mediated and mass-marketed. I feel a lot more free not having my fantasies being controlled by pornography. . . Freud argued that the sexual abuse that his female patients had been experiencing in childhood (and had been telling him about) was just a fantasy. Freud knew that child sexual abuse was pervasive in his time, but he kept on denying it as “fantasy” (Source: Testimony of Jeffrey Masson, author of The Assault on Truth, in “The Los Angeles Hearing, Los Angeles County Commission for Women, April 22, 1985″; in Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin Eds., In Harm’s way: The pornography Civil Rights Hearings; 1997.)

Ahhh, Maggie, but you forget that fantasy only becomes known when it leaves the head and is expressed through media, whether written, celluloid, video, or pixels. And why should porn take the hit for what advertising does in general: exploit general fantasies and emotions for the purpose of selling products. The only difference with porn is that sex IS the product they are selling as fantasy. Actually, porn is much closer to mainstream media in that it attempts to play on emotions that human beings already have. Comedy makes us laugh; drama makes us cry; action movies make us rise to the end of our seats in anticipation of what happens next (or what will blow up next; and so on. Why are the typical fantasies of getting filthy rich, or powerful enough to blow whole groups of people up considered less hazardous and damaging than porn?? Could it be because of all that SEX?!?!?!

And on the point of bashing Freud for denying the existence of sexual abuse of children: Aren’t there people a bit more qualified than Jeffery Masson (who happened to be Andrea Dworkin’s life partner and a former playboy himself prior to being converted to an antiporn activist) to
analyze Freud’s take on child abuse?? Does that mean that ALL accusations of child abuse (of girls, of course…Maggie could care less about boys being abused, except when it serves her cause) should be taken as proven as true, in absence of any evidence??

Porn Apologist: Where is the harm in porn?

Rad Fem: The first people who are harmed are the prostituted women constantly used, abused and discarded by the industry. Then, the harms extend to the women outside of the industry. The easiest way of making violence invisible is by sexualizing it, making it appear as “just sex” to the viewer. Pornography makes rape, sexism and racism sexy. It makes force look like a thrilling sexual experience to men. Pornography desensitizes its users to female degradation, it makes them believe that women enjoy all sorts of pain and humiliation. Pornography increases the belief in rape myths. Pornography is pure woman-hating propaganda! Many women are coerced by their boyfriends and husbands into sexual acts they do not want because of those men’s pornography use. Pornography also increases the violence perpetrated against prostituted women. As reported by former prostitute J.W. in Massachusetts, for instance, she “considered the men who were into pornography to be the most dangerous and potentially violent since that is what aroused them”.

This mighty rant assumes a variety of myths: 1) that women who perform in porn are innately forced into it against their stated will; 2) that the depiction of people having sex automatically in itself promotes rape, racism, and misogyny independent of the influences of the overall outside culture, the State, the church, and other social and cultural institutions; 3) that penetration of a woman’s vagina by anything resembling a penis or a penis itself not directly motivated by “intimacy” or procreation amounts to prima facie rape, and that any sex act not motivated by the same emotions preapproved by Maggie’s ideology automatically counts as “degrading”, “humiliating”, and “violent” in and of itself; and 4) that the very act of persuading women to even engage in sex with men (even trustworthy boyfriends, husbands, and significant others) is in itself an invitation to rape; as if otherwise, women would have no need for sex in the first place. And you still say that you are not fundamentally anti-sex, Mags???

The idea that watching a woman willingly engage in sex increases the belief that she “enjoys” being sexually assaulted against her will is a figment only in Maggie’s imagination….and the most hateful antifeminist, woman-hating man as well. Only those who would hate sexually assertive women enough to want to punish them for inciting such desires would even come close to believing that consensual porn amounts to “woman-hating propaganda”.

And…we all know that women and girls are certainly not capable of exercising power sexually against men…now don’t we???


OK….that’s enough fisking for now….we will continue this tommorow.


Share

Don't Blame the Porno-iarchy, Maggie….Blame Your Own Freakin' Myopia!!

Posted on by
Reply

Oh, WOW….Maggie Hays is getting her zealot freak on again.

First off, Mags…did you get permission from Twisty to steal from her tagline??

Secondly…..“porno-iarchy”?!?!?!?! Don’t you know that “porno” as a suffix and a noun went out with the 70′s?? Wouldn’t “porn-iarchy” be a better term???

Now, I’m not going to fisk through the entire thing, since Ren Ev has already done so magnificently. But, let’s just go through some highlights:

I blame the porno-iarchy for all the misogyny, degradation, abuse, and racism that are inherent and blatant in the content of mainstream pornography.

Which means the all the misogyny, degradation, abuse and racism that take place outside of “mainstream pornography” — that is, in the wider world — are perfectly OK with you, Maggie?? As long as they all can be blamed on “the porno-iarchy”??

I blame the porno-iarchy for all the harms caused by pornography to women and children (and sometimes to men) in this unjust male-supremacist society.

Oh…so she actually admits that some men might be harmed by porn?? I thought that all men who used porn were simply innate rapists??

And change “male-supremacist” with “secular” or “Godless” society…and then tell me there’s much difference between this and the Religious Right.

I blame the porno-iarchy for so many women and girls having to make themselves look “sexy” or “fuckable” to men in the goal to achieve a false sense of “empowerment” (been there myself when I used to go clubbing).

As if women weren’t doing such before porn became popular?? And what about the idea that the reason some women might dress to make themselves “fuckable” or “sexy” to men (or, perhaps, to other women) might be because she’s actually looking for sex for her own pleasure??

Oh, but of course not….everybody knows that sexual pleasure not redeemed by “deep intimacy” or “radicalfeminist” politics is simply male-defined and invented by the “porno-iarchy” to enslave women in their own selfish orgasms!!! It must be true because Maggie said so!!

I blame the porno-iarchy for the fact that so many women and girls have to force themselves to have sex when they don’t necessarily want to in order to please their boyfriends and husbands.

I blame the porno-iarchy for the fact that so many women and girls are sexually coerced into sexual acts (coming from the ‘domination/subordination’ pornographic mind) they do not really want to practice.

Oh..and who are you to determine whether women want to or not want to engage in such “domination/subordination” practices?? Even when the woman is in the dominant position?? Of course, even if a woman says outright that she chooses for herself what position she favors, we all know that in a “porno-iarchy”, there is no such thing as mutual consent or even pleasure; it is all nothing short of rape…even if the individual participant insists she was never coerced and that she was never raped; and that she actually wanted to do it.

And….why, Mags, is it only women who are forced to have sex against their will?? Do you assume that men don’t have the same right of refusal when women insist on getting it on??

Oh, I forgot…men are simply coarse animals who can’t control their sexual instincts (unless given the proper radfem treatments of “john schools” and Bob Jensen/Kyle Payne/John Stoltenberg/Richard Leader seminars where they are taught that their penises are nothing short of dangerous weapons to be castrated for the good of society). Therefore, they aren’t capable of self-control….right??

Again…substitute “homosexual” for men and “ex-gay treatment centers” for “john schools…” and you are precisely into crackpot Paul Cameron/NARTH territory. How fitting for a “progressive feminist”.

I blame the porno-iarchy for blaming the victims of rape (saying that’s “her fault, she’s responsible for what happened because blah, blah, blah. . .”) and not the rapists.

Oh, nice one, Maggie…too bad that you can’t find one single example of a leading “pro-porn feminist” ever blaming a woman for being raped. On the other hand, I could find countless examples of antiporn “feminists” going so far as to say that women who dress “sexy” not only deserve to be raped or beaten; but that their very existence triggers men to rape innocent women in response. But…it’s all about the ‘porno-iarchy”, not the scapegoating, slut-shaming, hateful slanders of your side.

I blame the porno-iarchy for the (usual) censoring and demonizing of radical feminists in the malestream media.

I blame the porno-iarchy for accusing us of “siding with religious zealots”.

I blame the porno-iarchy for not letting us rad fems educate enough people on the harms of pornography ’cause of the malestream media being tied to the pornography industry, ’cause pro-porners are endlessly trying to silence us and ’cause of ‘leftist’ liberal stubborn pornography-protecting mind (as Gail Dines & Robert Jensen say ‘Pornography is a Left Issue‘, not a right-wing one)

Too easy, Mags….I don’t see anyone shutting down Gail Dines’ workshops or attempting to censor Bob Jensen’s slideshows or beating down antiporn activists. (Unless you consider Maxine Doogan an antiporn activist, that is. Errrr…OOPS.) And last time I checked, wasn’t Wheelock College a “malestream” institution?? What about the Justice Department, which has funded plenty of Melissa Fairley’s studies that you use to buttress your arguments?? Or the significant support from the Bush Administration that your side has received??

And please….you just don’t get to define what the Left is or should raise as issues, given your close ties to the Farthest of the Right.

I blame the porno-iarchy for some women defending pornography and prostitution in the name of ‘feminism’.

I blame the porno-iarchy for the pro-pornstitution ‘feminists’ being unfairly magnified by malestream media.

I blame the porno-iarchy for slandering us, radical feminists, and totally misrepresenting our views or simply not understanding why we’re so angry at the pornstitution industry (because of the HARMS!!!).

Because only tried and true, pure, antiporn “feminists” like Maggie Hays are assumed to be telling the truth; everyone else is merely apeing the “porno-iarchy” in deep denial of the real “HARMS!!!!”) And of course, the “malestream” media simply eats the “pro-porn” lies up….note the big fat $400 MILLION contract that Nina Hartley just received to promote her book on talk radio…..ahhhhh, wait, hold up…..that wasn’t Nina??? That was really that anti-porn feminist activist Rush Limbaugh?? Oh…never mind, so sorry.

The rest of it I will defer to Ren Ev, since she debunks so well.

Actually, this was only the second most whackoid rant that Maggie has produced…the winner I will tackle with a full fisk anon. Hint: Think of broken records and building sock sand castles to knock down.


Share

Responding to NoPornNorthHampton:

Posted on by
2

Ahhh..lookee here. It seems that my commentary on Gail Dines and her appearance on Penn and Teller: BULLSHIT! seems to have attracted some interest.

Particularly, the good folks at NoPornNorthhampton, who just so happened to break me off a comment attempting to refute my and P&T’s takedown of Dines’ fundamental makeup of porn and its supposedly harmful effects.

In particular, this section which I wrote in the original:

OK….so the fact that it’s mostly girl/girl sex and solo masturbation scenes and mostly “vanilla” hetero scenes found in most porn sites and movies which make up nearly 80 to 90 percent of the porn being viewed in the US means absolutely nothing to Professor Dines; it’s that nasty-ass gonzo and the circus-sex acts of facials and anals and gangbangs that really count… [....]

Apparantly, Adam or one of his groupies had an issue with that; using a “recent academic study” that attempted to analyze porn DVD titles from the Adult Video News website to prove me wrong.

Wosnitzer: “We went through Adult Video News every month. [It] publishes a list of the top 250 best sold and rented adult DVDs… [W]e avoided the issue of ‘What is pornography?’ because AVN defined it for us, in a sense… We took the top 50 from each month, went back over a six month period, randomly generated took the top 50 films. We coded by scene. We had a total of 304 scenes that we coded over this randomly generated list of the top 50 films…

Wosnitzer: “We can read aggression and violence defined as any action causing or attempting to cause physical or psychological harm to oneself, to another person, animal or inanimate object, intentionally or accidentally, whereby physical harm is understood as assaulting another verbally and nonverbally…”

Bridges: “…I’m going to begin to talk about what it is that we found after looking at these 304 scenes in these 50 top selling pornographic films. In total in the 304 scenes we coded a total of 3,376 acts of aggression. That ends up averaging…to an aggressive act every minute and a half. The scenes on average contained eleven and a half acts of verbal or physical aggression…”

Now first off: these folks do know that analyzing this “random generated” (more like, pulled out of their asses) list or “top 50 videos” ignores the main point that most of the more popularly consumed and produced porn comes directly off the Internet, not from the major porn studios…and that analyzing 50 videos out of nearly hundreds if not thousands of adult videos that are released every year probably wouldn’t reflect the true diversity of content of porn in the first place.

Then there is their quaint and very open definition of “aggression”. which could include anything from an overly aggressive kiss or an insertion of the digits into another person’s naughty bits (remember, in Dines and NPNH’s worldview, any means of penetration of a woman is de facto defined as near rape, regardless even of the woman’s stated wishes), to open-handed slaps on the face or breasts or buttocks; to direct physical attacks designed to maim or injure. Not to mention the “verbal aggeression”, which basically can be reduced to: “He called her a WHORE, a BITCH, a C*NT!! He said one of those seven dirty words!!! Oh, the humanity!!!” The notion that dirty talk is designed more as a turn-on for the woman as much as for the man seems to be absent from their “studies”…but then again, actually pursuing the opinion and thoughts of the actual actors in those scenes probably wasn’t in their minds when they cooked up this “study”, now wasn’t it??

Bridges: “We also coded for, what…we’re calling loosely in this talk, ‘extreme acts’ (of sex acts). The only sexual sequence that we coded, which is…when one thing follows another, was something called ATM…’ass-to-mouth’. This literally involves anal penetration followed by oral sex…she is literally eating her own shit. That occurred in 41% of the scenes that we coded…”

Ahhhh, dude…I’ve seen my share of ATM (and ATOGM) scenes, and I can attest with absolute certainty that there is positively, absolutely NO “shit-eating” involved at all. In fact, the performers of such acts are thoroughly prepared well in advance for those scenes through enemas and douching and all other precautions to insure that no “accidents” even remotely occur. Perhaps you got that confused with the “scat porn” study???

And considering how open your concept of “aggressive” sex acts are, how can we know that you have not taken liberties with your definition of “extreme” sex acts, too?? Would that include plain anal scenes (of course, taking a dick up the ass must be total rape, because no respectful woman would ever enjoy such a deviant…errrrr, patriarchial activity?? Or…gang bangs (read: sex with more than one man)??? Or blowjobs leading to facials (because REAL women prefer their sex strictly missionary, and with none of the nasty sperm present…eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!!! How gross!!!)

And why deal with percentages, anyway…..why not just state the number of scenes you saw that contained the offensive acts….or, better yet, just name the movies and the scenes so that anyone wishing to analyze your study for accuracy can see them for themselves??

Bridges: “Slapping happened 30% of the time… Most of the aggressors in these films were men…73%. By far the most common recipient of aggression was a woman. Even when women were aggressing, they were generally aggressing other women…”

Bridges: “How did the person respond when they were aggressed?… In 95% of these 3,000 and some acts of aggression, the person was either neutral, as in no change of facial expression or verbal expression, or was sort of saying, ‘That feels great. Keep doing it. Right on.’ And in only 3% did we see some overt expression of displeasure or pain. Again, it seems to be very important to the people who are watching this to believe that the recipient of aggression is fact enjoying it, is choosing it at some level…”

Ahhh, but you do know that there is a fundamental difference between a mild to moderate slap to the butt or breast or even to the face designed to stimulate the nerves and enhance sexual pleasure, and a genuine slap intended to hurt, maim, or injure the person. I would guess that the women who consented to doing those scenes already know the difference quite well, and would probably not appreciated outsiders interpreting their views for them. Maybe there reason why they reacted as it there was no pain was because…well..there really wasn’t any pain, and that it didn’t get to the level of violence or injury??

But, so much easier for antiporn ideologues to believe that women are either lying about this or dupes of the patriarchy, right??

Bridges: “…in couples research we know that couples, even couples who fight a lot, as long as there’s a lot of good in the relationship, about five times more good than bad, they actually do pretty well.

“Less than 10% of the videos showed any kind of a positive act, and that included kissing… caressing happened maybe twice. Something like a verbal compliment, ‘Gosh, you look pretty’, not, ‘Slut bitch, come over here,’ that happened maybe five times in the 304 scenes. So we have a ratio of positive to negative behaviors of 1 to 9, which is not a sustainable, happy relationship.”

Oh, I see…because the kind of porn that you analyzed does not meet some arbitrary ratio of “positive behavior” (kissing, caressing, and such) to nasty, negative, degrading behavior (dirty facials, anal sex, slapping), that proves your point that porn should be banished from the earth?? Never mind that there really is a subgenre of porn that emphasizes exactly what you see as “positive” (do the names Tristan Taormino and Candida Royalle ring any bells??). Is your issue really with porn content, or is it really about women and men who don’t meet your narrow, hyperromanticized standard of sexuality as being only legitimate for “emotional intimacy”?? Does it ever enter your mind that these are ACTORS performing SCENES that may not reflect upon their own private sex lives; that these women and men may be perfectly capable of having strong emotional personal relationships while still depicting acts they may enjoy on the side for their own pleasure??

But even all that ignores the main point: this is still (however NPNH may attempt to spin and distort it) a small minority of the porn that is available for consumption in the United States; and most of it still remains quite vanilla: het couples performing mostly standard sex acts; single women masturbating; and girls sharing each other (sometimes with their BF’s or husbands watching). To emphasize this small sample and attempt to condemn the whole genre of adult sexual media is not only a big lie, but a huge slander on everyone: the performers, the consumers, and those who defend consensual sexual expression.

Sorry, Adam and NPNH, but your old dog still can’t get beyond the same old trick. Try again when you have something new.

Share

Speaking of Breaking Eggs (And Men's Balls)….Luckynkl's Latest Descent

Posted on by
1

A disclaimer before I start here: The following post contains material that might be more than a bit unnerving and emotionally upsetting for some readers. Though this is a blog assumed to be read by adults, reader discretion may be advised.

Now then….there are depths to which some self-identified radical feminists may stoop to in order to sell their utopia of a society freed from the hazards of “patriarchy”: no rape, no abuse of women, no porn, no prostitution, none of that “male-identified” and “degrading” sex, no “funk-filled bratwursts”, no “plastic tits”….well, you get the picture. Until today, I wouldn’t even think that the Womyn Warriors would be so capable of going beyond themselves and going for outright gen(tlemen)ocide…not even Heart or Nikki Craft would go that far.

Luckynkl, on the other hand, doesn’t mind going there early and often…and today, thanks to Renegade Evolution, we got to hear her promote her latest utopia screed on The State of the Womyn’s Union and how to get beyond the main obstacle of co-existing with those carbon life forms with the penises.

Needless to say, she says a lot…and it is worth an in-depth analysis. (And, since I am a man with a working dick who can sometimes get real anal with APRF loonys like lucky, I volunteer myself to give the fisking.

(The quote is directly from lucky via Ren; unfortunately, Ren doesn’t give out the original link for fear of getting more “outing threats” and wasting her bandwidth on these fools. I don’t really give a damn, on the other hand, so if anyone can send me the original link, it would be quite welcome.)

And, awa-a-a-a-a-ay we go…..

Yes, the boys are mad. Their minds have gone completely around the bend and they’re totally off their rockers. They are raping and killing women and children at will now. The more they get away with it, the more powerful and emboldened they will feel and become. At this point, they might as well just declare open hunting season on women. In fact, I think they already have.

Yeah, we dick-swaggers must be mad indeed….why, men are killing and raping and murdering other men as well as women and children with impunity these days. Now, there are some women who are doing the same to men, especially using the time honored “Lorena Bobbitt” maneuver of cutting off men’s dicks…but we all know that those aren’t real women…they must be transsexuals, right???

Women got out of the box during the 60’s and 70’s and men are now pulling out all stops to stuff them back in. Men didn’t get where they are by being the smartest, the strongest, the fastest, the bravest, the most skilled or by fair competition . Men got where they are by being the most murderous motherfuckers in the history of the planet.

So…what does that make the great female rulers like Catherine the Great, Czarina of Russia?? Joan of Arc?? Queen Isabella of Spain?? They slayed their fair share of men in their day….and they managed to get their way to the top of the heap. And, what about the modern-day female leaders like , say, Margeret Thacher, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Condeleeza Rice, Madeline Albright??? They may have had men pull the triggers and drop the bombs for them, but they match up pretty damn well when it comes to plunder and murder…don’t ‘ya think???

Despite the evidence all around them, many women still remain in denial and refuse to see how much men hate them. I fear for these women. Kissing men’s ass is not going to save their own.

Probably because they are around men that really don’t hate them at all and would even fight to protect them…but we all know that’s just a front for the coming fraticide. Men can be so cagey, you know.
The good news is, the dragon is dying. Masculinist societies historically do not survive. They self implode and reach the logical conclusion of self destruction. But as the dragon dies, he becomes more dangerous than ever. Men want their sex class, their slaves and their free labor and they will destroy the entire planet before they will ever allow women to be equal, must less, liberated or free. So be prepared. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

Now…why does this remind me of the classic far-right Cold Warrior who simultaneously talks on on side of his mouth about the all-powerful Soviet Empire that crushes democratic dissent like Goliath stomps a fly…yet is supposedly so weak that he can be beaten with only the slightest puff of wind?? Or…of so many Dubya press conferences on Iraq. (“We may need more troops to win the war because those terrorists are so invulnurable….but the “surge” is working!!! If those stupid Democrats and cut-and-run/surrender monkey liberals would just shut the hell up and let us fight, we could have ‘em licked by October!!!”)

Oh..and exactly what the fuck is a “sex class”, lucky???? I thought that only Nina Hartley and Violet Blue had the monopoly on those???

The burning times are upon us again. Men have declared war on women and we are in the midst of a holocaust. Still, people refuse to see. History is repeating itself. The Jews, too, refused to see or believe. Until it was too late.

Ah, yes….nothing like analogizing the fate of women everywhere to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany…except that I don’t see that many guys — not even Rush Limbaugh or ByrdBrain….OK, maybe ByrdBrain, a little — forming Stormtrooper gangs to round up, beat up, rape, and kill women….except, maybe, in Iraq, thanks to our fearless bombing of that country in the name of “democracy” and “fighting terrorism”.

Usually, when you have to resort to The Shoah to represent your myopia, you are one foot removed from the loony bin.

But all this is minor compared to lucky’s “money paragraph”:

The good news is, men will not survive. This is a female planet and Mother Nature has grown tired of the boys’ and their fuckery. Males have been scheduled for termination and extinction. Which includes human males. Males in several species have already disappeared. The Y chromosome in human males continues to progressively degenerate. Until finally it will eventually go *poof.* Trans can take it up with Mother Nature. Somehow tho, I don’t think she’ll be impressed. Have a Y chromosome? Bye, bye.

Hmmm… I wonder if we can somehow speed this process up?
Ahhh…I, uh, hate to break this to ‘ya, lucky….but getting rid of all men would not only get rid of that troublesome Y chromosome and all the hazards it supposedly causes for the world; it would also, you know, like, get rid of the only proven method of growing the human species from which Womyn Warriors like you are created.
You see, lucky, men have these little squiggly things called SPERM, which have to be released during that activity we call SEX, in order to attach itself to a female EGG, which allows it to feritlize into a ZYGOTE, then an EMBRYO, and then, after nine months, a full born CHILD….from which you can develop through your ranting and cult worship into fine “radical feminists” who will fight the good fight against men and their savage erections. Dead or nonexisting people can’t be converted, you know…and unless you have unlocked God’s or the Goddess’ or Darwin’s secrets of transformation without our knowledge, I fail to see how your revolution will come to fruition without any fruit, seeds, trees, garden, or planet.
In fact, lucky….more than likely, it will be the transexxuals and the hermaphodites who will be most likely to survive in a world without bio-men, because their taking characteristics of BOTH sexes/genders will allow them to cross-produce and survive even when most cis-gendered folks are toasted.
And then, you forget that the men might find a way to beat the system by….well, doing sex change operations or passing as women in order to survive and pass on the species…just how will you be able to
ferret them out, through the usual panty checks???
P.S. HIV/Aids is virtually non-existent among the Lesbian population. There isn’t a single case on record of a lesbian transmitting the disease to another lesbian through sexual contact. It was labeled a “gay disease” because it was epidemic among gay males. It is males who sexually spread the HIV virus and are primarily responsible for most other STDs, like the HPV virus (which causes cervical cancer in women). Men are walking viruses.

Ahhh…not really, lucky. Yes, lesbians don’t have as much risk for HIV-AIDS as gay men do (mostly due more to sharing dirty needles during drug use and unprotected anal sex); but that doesn’t mean that they can’t contract the virus through unprotected sex with infected men (even the most self-identified lesbian can occasionally suck a cock once in her life); and women are just as capable of carrying and spreading unwittingly STD’s as any man can. But, thanks anyway for the info….was that taken out of The 700 Club???

So warning: Having sex with men may be hazardous to your health. Protect yourself. Become a lesbian.”

But remember to throw away your personal pleasure devices, your birth control pills, the men who might actually care for you, and all that other “patriarchial” bullshit before you enter the luckynkl gates of Womyn Warrior Heaven on Earth. You might want to cleanse yourself of any independent thought, morality, and intellegence, too….the Goddess of “Real Womyn” don’t take too kindly to ideas of dissent from the Gospels of Dworkin/MacKinnon/Jefferys/Craft/Dines/Barry/Jensen (oh, wait..he’s one of those MEN….he doesn’t count, even if he does pimp APRF ideology).

Uhhh, no thank you, luckynkl….I reserve my right to live to my fullest age, and any sound woman who’s not under the cult worship of Radical (Right) Feminisism will see your utopia for what it is and where it leads women: Nowhere FAST.

I think I will soak in a septic tank now…so much more cleansing after reading this crap.

BTW…..you do know that Ren’s been on a freakin’ ROLL of late regarding righteous rants, do you???

Share