That's what B and MP brought up, so don't chalk it up to me.
> And as far as the NowThatsFuckedUp.com site and their "War Pics for
> Porn" deal: you are aware, aren't you, that the founder and
> creator of that website is now in a Florida jail awaiting
> trial...for obscenity charges concerning the pictures of.....you
> guessed it...conventional standard porn.
I'd defend him against obscenity charges for showing porn, but I don't approve of his encouraging soldiers to trade pictures of dead Iraqis for porn -- that's like adding insult to injury. Defense of freedom of expression only means defense of the right to express thought freely, rather than approval of the content of any particular expression. Conflating the former with the latter is likely to constrict rather than expand the freedom in question.
Defending pornographers' freedom of expression is one thing; pretending that Nina Hartley is representative of women in porn is another.
Much of straight porn is sexist, but even if much of porn were actually feminist, the current gendered pattern of production, marketing, and consumption of porn makes it sexist. It's like child care. There is nothing inherently sexist about child care, but the practice of making women shoulder much of it is sexist.
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>