Well, I don't know, the commonplace hostility to Dworkin makes me think she was on to something important. It certainly helps to decode a great deal of contemporary culture if we understand its roots in misogynistic violence.
Visit Fleshbot and
> check out the links. Porn is a lot more varied than this crude
> definition.
I know it is, and I don't wish to take away anyone's porn, but we do after all live in societies where violence against women is commonplace, and where that violence is frequently sexualised, and pornography is an industry that overwhelmingly sells young men dreams of encounters with females in which they get to take control. We can't afford to underestimate the effects of this. And why should it be, incidentally, that the US military uses porno to keep its killers butch? Why should it be that during the first Gulf War, air force pilots watched porno to get themselves in the mood for killing? Why, at the 2003 Air Force Academy Prom, were men treated to a play showing them how to stimulate women by teasing the nipples and clitoris? Are the military into sexual therapy these days?
I take for granted that no one on this list is liable to engage in misogynistic violence, but we ought to be sensitive to the intimate connections between pornography and rape: rather than disavowing this problem, maybe we should consider how a non-capitalist and non-patriarchical pornography might be different. Mercy! I'm getting the vapours thinking about it.