> Yoshie wrote:
>
> "Michael Pugliese posted a Salon article about it (he
> just reposted a link to it), but, like most things
> that he posts, it didn't get commented on. "
>
> No, Yoshie, Doug and others also commented on this
> phenomenon back then. To wit:
>
> http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:sMk3hP6WvtQJ:mailman.lbo-
> talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20040510/010273.html+lbo-
> talk+doug+aztlan&hl=en
I took a look at the link, but the comment in it refers to fake imagery of rape of Iraqi women (which surfaced around the time of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal), not the phenomenon that Chris Thompson discusses in "War Pornography" (East Bay Express, 21 September 2005), which is a website called NowThatsFuckedUp.com that encourages soldiers to turn in photos of dead Iraqis in exchange for free porn. You are confusing different issues.
Kelley wrote:
> At 09:25 PM 12/7/2005, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >In any case, I'm also responding to the point made by Joanna. It's
> >way too easy (at least today if not in the past) to defend Susie
> >Bright, Pauline Reage, and the like. But if we are only talking
> >about porn that clearly has political or aesthetic merits, we are
> >evading the question that some feminists raise, so that's not a
> >useful dialogue between feminists of different schools. Surely
> pro- porn
> >feminists need to discuss disturbing uses of porn, too, rather
> >than just meritorious or run-of-the-mill ones.
>
> But, pro-porn and anti-idiot feminists [1] do discuss this.
I mentioned Susie Bright and Pauline Reage because those are the names brought up in responses to Gail Dines and Robert Jensen. I wholeheartedly agree with Chuck0 that some anti-porn feminists have a bad record of teaming up with cons, the point that I've made here and elsewhere myself. But so far, responses to Dines and Jensen don't address the main reasons that motivate their criticism of porn. They argue: porn (like many other kinds of cultural products under capitalism) legitimates inequality; porn profits mainly accrue to male capitalists; even the most successful female porn star "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"; porn purveys a lot of racist imagery; and much of porn is sexist, notwithstanding entry of some female porn producers.
I believe that pro-porn feminists rightly won the "porn war" between pro-porn and anti-war feminists, triumphing over the voices for censorship (except we've lost when it came to recognizing minors' right to sexuality). But still and all, it is probably correct that much of porn is still sexist both in its images and the way its produced, marketed, and consumed, and pro-porn feminists should be able to criticize it clearly, in more sophisticated terms than anti- porn feminists do. Pro-porn feminists, however, are usually too busy fighting against censorious voices to get around to it.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>