Stop Porn Culture conference in San Diego, CA

Contemporary Radical Feminism in the Age of Porn
University of San Diego
June 18-19, 2012

Porn has moved from the back street to Wall Street, and is now a multibillion dollar global industry and a leader in technological innovation. As porn seeps into the mainstream economy, and softcore porn migrates into pop culture, the porn industry has become more hardcore and cruel. Porn images increasingly shape our visual landscape, and the pornification of the culture is played out on the bodies of younger and younger women who have grown up in a culture awash with hypersexualized representations of femininity. At the same time, much of mainstream popular and academic feminism has embraced a neo-liberal ideology that celebrates individual empowerment and agency while de-emphasizing the structural realities of gender, racial, and class inequality. In place of economic, legal and political liberation, we are supposed to be happy with individual “empowerment” in the form of stripping, waxing and hooking up.

Our goal is to rebuild a vibrant, radical, unapologetic feminist movement that energizes and mobilizes women and pro-feminist men into fighting the porn industry, and fighting for real liberation. Presentations will explore how to make radical feminism timely and relevant in the lives of young women, and how to build activist movements on the local, national and global level.

Topics include

The Pornification of Representation in Pop Culture
Heterosexuality and Hook Up Culture
The Political Economy of Porn
Sexualized Racism in Pop Culture and Porn
How “Queer” is “Queer” Porn?
Radical Feminism and the Right
Men, Masculinity, and Radical Feminism
Porn and the Culture of Humiliation
Organizing Against a Global Industry

Stop Porn Culture Slideshow Training

June 16-17, 2012
University of San Diego
San Diego, CA

Presented by the board of Stop Porn Culture

Come and get the experience, knowledge, and confidence to speak publicly against pornography in your community. The training will include in-depth presentations:

-the links between pornography and violence against women
-background on the economic industry that is pornography
-First Amendment and other free speech issues
-women in the industry
-the sexualization of children
-the question of “alternate” images
-how to organize in your community
-practice Q & A session

For more information and to register, visit http://stoppornculture.org/events/

Radical Feminist Seminar: Professor Dines Brings It On

After Sheila Jeffreys gave her talk, Dr. Dines once again took the floor and provided us with some visual imagery of the horrors of the sex industry in slide-show format. Although everything she showed is what comes in when one does a typical google search for “p*orn,” it was all pretty heavy stuff.

Professor Gail Dines

One important point Dr. Dines made, which I have thought about some myself, is how mainstream movies provide the same message as does porn, albeit in a lighter context. The message being, of course, that women are sex objects for men’s pleasure, and thus we really don’t care what is done to us. Dines also discussed how easy it is for  porn companies to use “product placement” in PG-13 and R movies, since most of the companies that produce mainstream films are owned by–you guess it–the pornography industry. Indeed, just walk into a Blockbuster (a company that gets, or at least used to get direct profits from the porn industry, for the record) and it would be hard not to take notice of the ways in which porn is mentioned as part of the movie plot even in the few-sentence-long descriptions! It seems logical then, to think watching mainstream PG-13 and R movies also changes the way both men and women come to view the role of themselves and each other in society. Indeed, I know my thinking has changed during periods of heavy movie watching, but fortunately, after breaks, my mind has felt a lot clearer.

 

Of course, men have more lines than  “slut!,” and “cumdumpster,”directed towards   women in mainstream movie and the viewer is not expected to ejaculate to the few minutes of sex one finds in a mainstream movie. This is why these films are much softer propaganda than pornography. It is also why men do not rent a mainstream movie when they want pornography: they know what they are looking to find, and they won’t find it there.

Taking apart the college circuit populars: Shira Tarrant

Shira Tarrant

As a current college student, one of the things that bothers me most are the pro-porn speakers, paid to travel around the country and tell a vulnerable student population how empowering anything we do in bed is, as long as women “consent.”

It is my understanding that attending uni is supposed to be about challenging one’s preconceived notions, rather than merely inviting speakers who already agree with mainstream patriarchal and white supremacist ideas,  whether or not they carefully veil these notions under the guise of “individual freedoms.”

One speaker popular on the circuit today is Shira Tarrant. Tarrant travels around the country presenting herself as being interested in making porn more egalitarian. This notion appeals even to women who are generally against the porn industry, because Tarrant presents herself as saying there is something wrong with the porn industry as it stands. However, when one takes a closer look at Tarrant’s writing, we find that is not the case at all.

“The sluttier the better”–that’s what men think, anyway

So, I’ve been reading all about this slut walk.

It goes along with this new “Yes means Yes” brand of feminism. A martian from outer space would think women got tired of fighting male supremacy and instead of reclaiming words that might actually mean something to us as women–i.e. “no” or telling men no women is a slut, because what does that word mean anyway?–we have totally capitulated and are calling that empowering. Sure, yes may mean yes, but if no means yes as well, what good does repeating this chant do, besides make the chanter FEEL empowered? And feminism has never been about how individual women feel, but rather about ending women’s subordination to men.

Updates on the pornstitution front

Hi my wonderful readers,

I have a very important paper to work on this weekend, but I didn’t want to leave you with blog post-less.

There is a new article that discusses the reasons feminists fight porn. As an fyi, the obscenity approach has gotten us nowhere, but my concern is that there now is NO legal way to recognize that porn IS violence against women. (See this story as well. )

Here are some gems from the first article, which quotes Gail Dines:

“We know that at age 14, the vast majority of boys have looked at porn and probably masturbated to it,” says Dines. “Literally their first introduction to sex is sites like bangedbabbysitters (dot) com. These aren’t adult men who can compare what they see to reality. They’re young and vulnerable.”

I think Dines would agree with me that for adult men to be watching MAINSTREAM porn websites like humantoiletbowls (dot) com or fuckyourstudents (dot) com does not benefit students or any womyn who wishes not to be treated like a human toilet bowl–and shouldn’t that be all of us?

The first comment to this article, by “purple octopus” probably says what a lot of  teen boys and men are thinking:

“Come on – what are they gonna do … try and ban it?”

That would never work, not in the U.S. of A., where free speech is held as THE most cherished value, even though the men who wrote the constitution meant the “free speech” for themselves, not for women or African slaves. After all, even after slavery ended, African-Americans had to learn to read on their own; how could they have “free speech” if they could not even publish their own newsletters?

Now that the U.S. has decided capitalism is the best way to run things, it’s the one(s) with the most money who get the most speech—nothing free about that.

If you would like to try to help us make our way out of this mess, there is a Radical Feminist Seminar followed by an anti-porn slideshow training and media school the last week and weekend in June. Please sign up, and if you can’t afford the fees, feel free to ask about scholarships.

Okay, this vent is turning out to be way longer than I wanted. I really,  really, really do have to write that paper, before I can participate in any more blogging fun–and how I quickly I have taken to this blogging world!

divisions among womyn break my heart

This semester at [insert name of college here], I experienced snobbery and exclusion because of a single speaker I invited to the school, one whose views many in the feminist/queer world did not agree with, although she was not to be talking about the subject with which they disagreed.

It is my view that several (at least) members of the student body would have happily seen my friend disinvited altogether. Yet, what if I had said the same thing about Tristan Taormino, a so-called “feminist” pornographer who the feminist group on campus actually sponsored? (and still sends out e-mails over two years later BRAGGING about having brought to campus!!). I think I would have been laughed out of the room.

I know a number of adult women survivors of childhood pornography and the sex work industry.  They are so thoroughly  wounded it is a trauma just to get through day-to-day life, never mind to have the simplest interactions with men. There is no way these women are going to get on stage and share their experiences of having been nearly killed every time their body was bought. Another friend of mine lives in fear of having people she sees on the street, in her place of work, etc, recognize her from the pornography that has been made of her, that is available all over the Internet. There is nothing she can do to take it down.

I have also met survivors of incest that included the use of pornography. Ironically, those of us who went and saw Taormino and were critical of her were so afraid to speak out that, in one case, anyway, it took finding each other via a feminist blog. Many anti-porn womyn simply didn’t attend the talk.  Another fellow student said the only reason she attend Taormino’s talk was to hear someone challenge Taormino; no one did, and she ended up going back to her dorm room and crying.

I recently had the opportunity to see anti-pornography feminist Gail Dines speak. Dines responded to many of the arguments that pro-porn “feminists” like to use. For example, she says, we only have real choices if we have lots and lots of choices. Yet, for women in our society, the choices are to be fuckable or invisible.

Dines focuses on the top 100, or the top 500 most popular porn sites. Thus, what she is discussing is what most men are watching. The stuff “feminist” pornographers are putting out are not even in the top 1,000 most bought and rented porn videos. Finally, Dines brings up the fact that pro-pornography “feminists” focus on feature films. These are the ones that have a storyline and that men will use to lure their girlfriend into getting off to pornography with them.  Yet, what makes the vast majority of money in the industry is what are called “gonzo” films. Max Hardcore would be an example of a creator of gonzo; his booth was the most popular at a 2008 convention held by the pornography industry. Many of his movies feature pedophilia themes and/or they show women choking on cock and having numerous men ejaculate on their face. But THIS is what mainstream porn is.

I thought feminism was supposed to be a movement for womyn, especially the most hurt women. But somehow, some women with privilege made it about their need for sexual pleasure instead.