I used to be part of the Boston-area Workshop on Gender and Philosophy (aka "WOGAP"), which was a wonderful group except for the volume of talks given in this anti-porn/speech act theory vein. The work was often extremely thoughtful, *except* for its politics. In talk after talk, as a regular consumer of gay male porn, I found that the arguments assumed so much, and just didn't compute in my experience. People were always willing to make exceptions for gay porn (when I brought it up), but I never saw how that was supposed to work. Why is it that something that is objectifying, and at the root of oppression for women, just fine for men? There was never an attempt to theorize sexuality and sexual identity in those discussions--just the assumption that *porn* *is* *bad* (with the unspoken suggestion that marginalized sex is bad--oh, but not the nice gay men who are our friends! or our lesbian sisters!), plus some fancy philosophical footwork to build up one's list of publications. (Ok--that was a little harsh. But the apolitical character of such e discussion in a *feminist* reading group was galling, though not so surprising given the depths of idealism that characterize analytic philosophy, whatever its other virtues, which really do exist.)
The saving grace was that the wonderful Nancy Bauer (of the philosophy department at Tufts) was a WOGAP member. Nancy has made it a side-area of her research to criticize this anti-porn line of thinking in analytic feminist philosophy, and to do so from the point of view of a nice blending of analytic and continental philosophy.
I was looking online to see whether any of Nancy's articles on the topic have been posted, and didn't find any, but I did find this posting (apparently posted in part by Nancy) from lbo-talk from 2000: http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-November/021811.html --very apt in this discussion eight years later.
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>
> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:21:46 -0500
> From: "Anthony Kennerson" <anthonyk6319 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Noam on Porn
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Message-ID:
> <77ddb9e80807282221t68f61cbep6bfe3ffb78a39f25 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Quoting Shag (aka the former bitch[lab]):
>
> <<oh now. dear. you have to see some of anthony's kennerson's woman's porn.
> what's her name? the really famous one. in her fifties now. used to be a
> nurse. the leftist, husband's name is ernest. freakin' too lazy to go look
> this up. anyway, i don't know, maybe it was my fantasy, but it never
> freakin
> occurred to me to really want to know whether anyone was having orgasms. i
> and my partner are usually just kinda thinkin' about our own. ho ho.>>
>
> Come on now, Ms. Shag....have you forgotten already??? LOL
>
> The woman's name is Nina Hartley, and she isn't mine (I would be so damn
> lucky), her (current) hubby is Ernest Greene (aka Ira Levine), who is a
> porn
> producer/director, long time sexual rights activist, and former radical
> turned liberal.
>
> Second, she's not in her fifties yet; she's only 46.
>
> And thirdly, she's actually enjoying a rennaisaince in her porn career,
> mostly playing a MILF (i.e. Mom I'd Like to F**k) or a "cougar" (single
> version of a MILF). Not bad for a woman who's approaching her 50s.
>
> And she's still mostly a social democrat in political thinking, though
> she's
> backed off considerably from her past political heritage as a Red Diaper
> Baby.
>
> I would recommend a trip to her forum to learn more about her, but her
> forum
> got hacked into by a bunch of low-life Islamic fundamentalists operating
> out of Turkey, and they had to nuke the forum because of the damage caused
> therein. I do have a few essays of hers archived at my Red Garter Club
> website, though.
>
>
> Anthony
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
--
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