> I don't disagree with most of what you wrote, but this is surely a
> little
> glib. I take the point that the institutional setting is more
> important
> than what is consumed, but they clearly fulfil a different
> function: you
> read bell hooks and Noam Chomsky to learn something; you peruse
> pornography
> to have an orgasm. NC is read at WP because they need to understand
> American foreign policy, while the guys at NYPD read bell hooks
> because they
> need to understand what their main victims are likely to be
> thinking about
> them.
Noam told me he was invited to speak at West Point because the cadets wanted to hear an alternative to the likes of Samuel Huntington, whose crap they read in classes. He was received quite warmly - better than he's ever been received at Harvard - and they were very interested in talking with him after his lecture. I think there's a video of his appearance on YouTube.
An old acquaintance who had to take courses at the NYPD academy as prep for serving on the civilian review board staff said that it was all about sensitivity training - so they'd be nicer to the communities they're policing.
Your example wasn't porn at the AF academy but training guys to be attentive to the erogenous zones of their female lovers. Given that the AF Academy is full of wacko fundie Christians, I wonder how that went down.
> There is one other thing. People keep referring to some putative
> 'connection' between pornography and violence. My contention isn't
> that
> pornography *causes* violence against women. My contention is that
> pornography, at least the bulk of it anyway, is a form of violence
> against
> women in the same way that racist imagery is a form of violence
> against the
> designated 'race'.
Depends if the targeted population sees said imagery, doesn't it? Racist imagery is usually intended at least in part to be seen by the maligned race; I suspect most men would be uncomfortable to have women in the room watching porn with them.
By the way, this theoretical model of porn has a difficult time dealing with the popularity of girl-on-girl scenes in most straight porn. My late friend John Liscio explained that as a way for men to cope with the potential anxiety of seeing men on the screen - omigod, are they getting excited by an image of a male?????
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> The porn discussion has gotten sort of tired, but I
> actually think that Vogue and the like are far more
> dangerous to women and girls than pictures of people
> having sex or generally arousing the prurient
> interest.
>
> This is very true, but then isn't this at least in part because
> Vogue and
> the female Fox News presenters draw on the same traditions as
> pornography
> does?
Models have tiny tits and asses, and most het men don't find them very sexy; most porn stars have big tits and generous asses, and they're all about turning men on. Fox News babes are generally visible only from the shoulders up. Aside from that, lots of similarities!